Part 3 (1/2)
His features were small and delicate, and set in the fra about the sensitive mouth, which was not seldo sray eyes, set near together; eyes keen to observe, and quick to express change of thought; eyes that ment
His feet and hands were of aristocratic sh the latter were not worn away by ablutions; in fact, they assisted his toilet to give you the iround,--a real son of the soil, whose appearance was partially explained by his hu,” he said, ”that I hain't no kinder use for” His clothes seemed to have been put on hio
The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of this realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, ah it all What co to this man?
Perhaps his , with a short pipe in his , it was Old Phelps He was essentially a conte on a country road, or anywhere in the ”open,” was irksoait, not unlike that of the bear: his short legs bowed out, as if they had beenOn land, if welike a sailor; but, once in the rugged trail or the unmarked route of his native forest, he was a different person, and few pedestrians could coar estimate of his contemporaries, that reckoned Old Phelps ”lazy,” was si It is the unjustness of civilization that it sets up uniform and artificial standards for all persons The primitive man suffers by them much as the contemplative philosopher does, when one happens to arrive in this busy, fussy world
If the appearance of Old Phelps attracts attention, his voice, when first heard, invariably startles the listener A sh-pitched, half-querulous voice, it easily rises into the shrillest falsetto; and it has a quality in it that makes it audible in all the te of a boatswain's whistle at sea in a gale He has a way of letting it rise as his sentence goes on, or when he is opposed in argument, or wishes to mount above other voices in the conversation, until it do Heard in the depths of the woods, quavering aloft, it is felt to be as inal force, as the northind or the screa about the ca held in the flain so voice, which seems about to end in defeat; when he puts on some unsuspected force, and the sentence ends in an insistent shriek Horace Greeley had such a voice, and could regulate it in the same manner But Phelps's voice is not seldom plaintive, as if touched by the dreamy sadness of the woods themselves
When Old Mountain Phelps was discovered, he was, as the reader has already guessed, not understood by his contehbors, farrown thrifty and prosperous, cultivating the fertilethe timbered mountains; while Phelps, with notdeer, had pursued the even tenor of the life in the forest on which he set out They would have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps owned more of what ether, but it was true This woodsman, this trapper, this hunter, this fisher, and philosopher, was the real proprietor of the region over which he was ready to guide the stranger It is true that he had not a h his knowledge was superior in these respects); there were other trappers, and uides: but Old Phelps was the discoverer of the beauties and subliers broke into the region, he hts and wonders of nature I suppose that in all that country he alone had noticed the sunsets, and observed the delightful processes of the seasons, taken pleasure in the woods for themselves, and climbed mountains solely for the sake of the prospect He alone understood as hbors, who did not know that he was a poet and a philosopher, I dare say he appeared to be a slack provider, a rather shi+ftless trapper and fisherman; and his passionate love of the forest and the mountains, if it was noticed, was accounted to him for idleness When the appreciative tourist arrived, Phelps was ready, as guide, to open to him all the wonders of his possessions; he, for the first time, found an outlet for his enthusiasm, and a response to his own passion It then becarown up here in the companionshi+p of forests, hly developed in him the love of beauty, the aesthetic sense, delicacy of appreciation, refines and ht, had evolved for his And it was a sufficient syste as it was not disturbed by external skepticism When the outer world caive to it as to receive from it; probably more, in his own estimation; for there is no conceit like that of isolation
Phelps loved his mountains He was the discoverer of Marcy, and caused the first trail to be cut to its summit, so that others could enjoy the noble views from its round and rocky top To him it was, in noble sylobe To stand on it gave hi of heaven up-h'istedness” He heard with iher, and he had a childlike incredulity about the surpassing sublimity of the Alps
Praise of any other elevation he seely hear it, any more than a lover hears the laudation of the beauty of another woman than the one he loves When he showed us scenery he loved, it made him melancholy to have us speak of scenery elsewhere that was finer And yet there was this delicacy about hiht us to see, any more than one would over-praise a friend of whom he was fond I remember that when for the first tih the forest, the splendors of the Lower Au Sable Pond broke upon our vision,--that low-lying silver lake, imprisoned by the precipices which it reflected in its bosom,--he made no outward response to our burst of adleaave him As some one said, it was as if his friend had been ad to say much himself, but well pleased to have others praise
Thus far, we have considered Old Phelps as simply the product of the Adirondacks; not so much a self-rowth amid primal forces But our study is interrupted by another influence, which complicates the problem, but increases its interest No scientific observer, so far as we know, has ever been able to watch the development of the primitive man, played upon and fashi+oned by the hebdomadal iteration of ”Greeley's Weekly Tri-bune” Old Phelps educated by the woods is a fascinating study; educated by the woods and the Tri-bune, he is a phenomenon No one at this day can reasonably conceive exactly what this newspaper was to such a mountain valley as Keene If it was not a Providence, it was a Bible It was no doubt owing to it that Democrats became as scarce as moose in the Adirondacks But it is not of its political aspect that I speak I suppose that the most cultivated and best informed portion of the earth's surface--the Western Reserve of Ohio, as free fro owes its pre-eminence solely to this co except a collegiate and a classical education,--things not to be desired, since they interfere with the self-manufacture of man If Greek had been in this curriculum, its best known dictum would have been translated, ”Make thyself” This journal carried to the community that fed on it not only a complete education in all depart, but theassurance that there was nothing leaned in the universe worth the attention of man This panoplied its readers in completeness Politics, literature, arts, sciences, universal brotherhood and sisterhood, nothing was omitted; neither the poetry of Tennyson, nor the philosophy of Margaret Fuller; neither the virtues of association, nor of unbolted wheat The laws of political economy and trade were laid down as positively and clearly as the best way to bake beans, and the saving truth that the millennium would come, and come only when every foot of the earth was subsoiled
I do not say that Orson Phelps was the product of nature and the Tri-bune: but he cannot be explained without considering these two factors To him Greeley was the Tri-bune, and the Tri-bune was Greeley; and yet I think he conceived of Horace Greeley as soreater than his newspaper, and perhaps capable of producing another journal equal to it in another part of the universe At any rate, so completely did Phelps absorb this paper and this personality that he was popularly known as ”Greeley” in the region where he lived Perhaps a fancied rese to do with this transfer of name There is no doubt that Horace Greeley owed his vast influence in the country to his genius, nor much doubt that he owed his popularity in the rural districts to James Gordon Bennett; that is, to the personality of the enious Bennett impressed upon the country That he despised the conventionalities of society, and was a sloven in his toilet, was firmly believed; and the belief endeared him to the hearts of the people To thearment of unrenewed iote grise to the soldiers of the first Napoleon, who had seen it by the campfires on the Po and on the Borysthenes, and believed that he would coainst the enemies of France
The Greeley of the popular heart was clad as Bennett said he was clad
It was in vain, even pathetically in vain, that he published in his newspaper the full bill of his fashi+onable tailor (the fact that it was receipted may have excited the animosity of some of his contemporaries) to show that he wore the best broadcloth, and that the folds of his trousers followed the city fashi+on of falling outside his boots If this revelation was believed, it made no sort of impression in the country
The rural readers were not to be wheedled out of their cherished conception of the personal appearance of the philosopher of the Tri-bune
That the Tri-bune taught Old Phelps to be more Phelps than he would have been without it was part of the independence-teaching mission of Greeley's paper The subscribers were an areneral And I a to the audacity of criticising his exemplar In some recently-published observations by Phelps upon the philosophy of reading is laid down this definition: ”If I understand the necessity or use of reading, it is to reproduce again what has been said or proclaied in all the perfection they possibly can be, to sho certain language has been spoken by the original author
Now, to reproduce by reading, the reading should be so perfectly like the original that no one standing out of sight could tell the reading froe was spoken”
This is illustrated by the highest authority at hand: I have heard as good readers read, and as poor readers, as alion If I have not heard as many, I have had a chance to hear nearly the extreood reader
Certainly but few, if any, ever knew every word of the English language at a glanceof every mark of punctuation more clearly; but he could not read proper 'But how do you know?' says one From the fact I heard him in the same lecture deliver or produce remarks in his own particular way, that, if they had been published properly in print, a proper reader would have reproduced theain the same way In the midst of those re part of a speech that so did not sound much more like the man that first read or made the speech than the clatter of a nail factory sounds like a well-delivered speech Now, the fault was not because Mr Greeley did not kno to read as well as almost any man that ever lived, if not quite: but in his youth he learned to read wrong; and, as it is ten ti than it is to learn it, he, like thousands of others, could never stop to unlearn it, but carried it on through his whole life
Whether a reader would be thanked for reproducing one of Horace Greeley's lectures as he delivered it is a question that cannot detain us here; but the teaching that he ought to do so, I think, would please Mr Greeley
The first driblets of professional tourists and su the Adirondack Mountains a few years ago found Old Phelps the chief and best guide of the region Those ere eager to throw off the usages of civilization, and tramp and camp in the wilderness, could not but be well satisfied with the aboriginal appearance of this guide; and when he led off into the woods, axe in hand, and a huge canvas sack upon his shoulders, they see Jew The contents--of this sack would have furnished a modern industrial exhibition, provisions cooked and raw, blankets, , pork, Indian uide: he knew every foot of the pathless forest; he knew all woodcraft, all the signs of the weather, or, what is the sa, how to make a Delphic prediction about it He was fisherman and hunter, and had been the comrade of sportsmen and explorers; and his enthusiasion, and for its untamable wildness, amounted to a passion He loved his profession; and yet it very soon appeared that he exercised it with reluctance for those who had neither ideality, nor love for the woods Their presence was a profanation auide into his private and secret haunts a party that had no appreciation of their loveliness disgusted hi irls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition And, for their part, they did not appreciate the benefit of being accompanied by a poet and a philosopher They neither understood nor valued his special knowledge and his shrewd observations: they didn't even like his shrill voice; his quaint talk bored the of the activity of his youth; and the habit of conte increased with the infirmities induced by the hard life of the woodsman Perhaps he would rather talk, either about the woods-life or the various probleery of the camp
His critics went so far as to say, ”Old Phelps is a fraud” They would have said the same of Socrates Xantippe, who never appreciated the world in which Socrates lived, thought he was lazy Probably Socrates could cook no better than Old Phelps, and no doubt went ”gu” about Athens with very little care of as in the pot for dinner
If the summer visitors measured Old Phelps, he also measured them by his own standards He used to write out what he called ”short-faced descriptions” of his co as true It was curious to see how the various qualities which are esteemed in society appeared in his eyes, looked at merely in their relation to the lied by their adaptation to the primitive life It was a uide, who rates his traveler by his ability to endure on aPhelps brought his people to a test of their naturalness and sincerity, tried by contact with the verities of the woods If a person failed to appreciate the woods, Phelps had no opinion of hih he was perfectly satisfied with his own philosophy of life, worked out by close observation of nature and study of the Tri-bune, he was always eager for converse with superior e of travel and inal ”speckerlation” Of all the society he was ever permitted to enjoy, I think he prized most that of Dr
Bushnell The doctor enjoyed the quaint and first-hand observations of the old woodses of the doctor's rowth of the tree, the habits of wild aniration of seeds, the succession of oak and pine, not to y, and theof Old Phelps, when, several years ago, he conducted a party to the summit of Mount Marcy by the way he had ”bushed out” This was his mountain, and he had a peculiar sense of ownershi+p in it In a way, it was holy ground; and he would rather no one should go on it who did not feel its sanctity Perhaps it was a sense of some divine relation in it that made him always speak of it as ”Mercy” To him this ridiculously dubbed Mount Marcy was always ”Mount Mercy” By a like effort to soften the personal offensiveness of the noion, he invariably spoke of Dix's Peak, one of the southern peaks of the range, as ”Dixie” It was some time since Phelps hih the erness in the oldthe foot of the mountain flows a clear trout stream, secluded and undisturbed in those awful solitudes, which is the ”Mercy Brook” of the old woodsman That day when he crossed it, in advance of his co some object of which he was shyly fond, ”So, little brook, do I meet you once ed froetation upon the rock-bound slope, I saw Old Phelps, as still foreround, and heard him cry, with an enthusiasain!” His great passion very rarely found expression in any such theatrical burst The bare summit that day ept by a fierce, cold wind, and lost in an occasional chilling cloud
So in the rude wind, wanted a fire kindled and a cup of tea uide's business Fire and tea were far enough froht He had withdrawn hied blanket, still and silent as the rock he stood on, was gazing out upon the wilderness of peaks The view from Marcy is peculiar It is without softness or relief The narrow valleys are only dark shadows; the lakes are bits of broken mirror From horizon to horizon there is a tumultuous sea of billows turned to stone You stand upon the highest billow; you coh creative act; the y has only just become repose This was a supreme hour to Old Phelps Tea! I believe the boys succeeded in kindling a fire; but the enthusiastic stoic had no reason to complain of want of appreciation in the rest of the party When ere descending, he told us, with led humor and scorn, of a party of ladies he once led to the top of the an immediately to talk about the fashi+ons! As he related the scene, stopping and facing us in the trail, his mild, far-in eyes cae to a kind of screareatest view they ever saw, talkin' about the fashi+ons!”
Impossible to convey the accent of contempt in which he pronounced the word ”fashi+ons,” and then added, with a sort of regretful bitterness, ”I was a great mind to come down, and leave 'em there”
In common with the Greeks, Old Phelps personified the woods, mountains, and streams They had not only personality, but distinctions of sex It was so beyond the characterization of the hunter, which appeared, for instance, when he related a fight with a panther, in such expressions as, ”Then Mr Panther thought he would see what he could do,” etc He was in ”is The afternoon we descended Marcy, ent away to the west, through the primeval forests, toward Avalanche and Colden, and followed the course of the char stream, Phelps exclaimed,
”Here's little Miss Opalescent!”
”Why don't you say Mr Opalescent?” some one asked