Juvenile Letters, 1819–1822

Princeton, May 5th, 1819. l

According to your desire, as soon as I was a little recruited and had got my pen, ink and paper together, I set myself down to scribble away a scrawl to let you know I was safely landed at “Princetown in the Jarsys” at ten minutes after ten o’clock A. M., without having sustained any material injury, except a cut of the thumb, and a little broken-heartcdness at leaving — you know what — behind me. I frightened them not a little with my mask, and diverted them as much with my dandies. I have been diverting myself a little with playing on my flute. I must confess I was not fairly out of the city, before I wished to be back again, and I shall not soon forget the delightful hours I spent last week in Philadelphia. I wish you could persuade

four mother to let you come up and spend some time here. As have made you my confidant, I will not say I had a bad pen, &c., but will candidly confess it is the best I can posssibly write, and I repose on your honour that it will not be shown to any body.

PRINCETON, June 6th, 1819.

REV. AND DEAR SIR, — For such I expect will shortly be your title both from the long faced and crabbed style in which you write, and your parson-like division of your sermon; but

1 This and a few other letters of the same year are inserted because they are the first in the series of a correspondence which soon took a different complexion. At this date Alexander was a boy of fifteen, and his friend whom he had just been visiting in Philadelphia, was a few years younger. The former was in the Junior Class of the College of New Jersey, the latter was at school.

VOL. I. 1 waiving this subject I proceed to unfold the dark mystery of my not writing to you. Imprimis, you attribute my silence to bashfulness, and you were quite right in your supposition that it was not on that account 1 had not written, for since my extremely pleasant trip to the city, I have but few grains of that commodity (at present) on hand. I say at present, for I know not in what luckless hour it may return. 2dly. You pretend to think that I have not esteem enough for you to favour you with an epistle. My dear fellow, I am tempted to think that you belied your conscience when you put that sentence down. odly. Your letter was so far from being illegible that I think you must have meant what you said as a sarcasm upon my wretched scrawl — but the true, only, and unsatisfactory excuse, which I have to offer, is pure laziness. How far this excuse may go, I know not, but I hope that this letter itself will supersede the necessity of any farther apology, and if you prize my poor scrawl, this will be a little more acceptable on account of its being delayed.

Five of your school-mates have entered College, viz., James Stuart, and Sharpe, the Sophomore class; J. B. Clemson, J. S. Miercken, and J. M. Savage, the Freshman.

PRINCETON, June 28th, 1819.

DEAR JOHN, — I was very agreeably surprised this morning by your letter, which I began to fear was never to arrive, and which, as you certainly know, afforded me great pleasure, which I think is sufficiently manifested by my sitting down to answer it immediately. I shall answer what requires it in your own letter first, and then proceed to add something of my own. You ask me to suggest some subjects of debate for your society. I know of none at present except two which have lately been discussed in a club at college, viz.: Is a man bound (by the laws of equity) to fulfil oaths taken to save his life, or when his life is in jeopardy 1 and Should any one swerve from the truth to preserve his life, or estate1? Both these are moral questions, and I should have no scruples of conscience, hindering me from saying No to the former, and Yes to the latter. I cannot think of any now, but if I fall across any I shall let you know of them. The health of my father is much better than it has been for some time, he is at present at Somerville in this State. I have not been very well for a week past, occasioned, I am led to suppose,

1 Stuart died a Presbyterian clergyman, in 1829. James T. Sharpe is a physician in Salem, New Jersey. Clemson is an Episcopal clergyman in Pennsylvania. Miercken died Captain of a Liverpool Packet.

by going into the water too often. I have been to swim every day for a fortnight, in fact it is the only time when I feel comfortable. I hope to see you up here before the Dog-days, so that I may have the pleasure of teaching you how to swim. I have wished very much to sec a Velocipede but have not been gratified, nor do I expect to be, till I visit the city again.

PRINCETON, Sunday, August Is*, 1819.

MY DEAR FRIEND, — As I begin to feel rather ashamed of my neglect, I have dared to face your displeasure with a few lines. I dare say you will think I am out of paper from this specimen, which is really the case, as it is Sunday and there is no other in the house. I expect that by this time you have waxed exceedingly wrothy with your humble servant on account of his long silence, of which he has no very plausible excuse to offer, except a certain — degree — of — laziness — which the extreme heat of the weather has tended to increase.

By the by, the mercury in Fahrenheit’s thermometer was yesterday at noon, as high as 110° in the shade, and 112° in the sun, which, if I am not very much mistaken, is enough to give the yellow fever to every man, woman, and child in the country.

After all this preamble I will proceed to inform you that we confidently expect you up here, as soon as your holidays begin, which I suppose are now near at hand, and that I shall be extremely disappointed if you should fail to fulfil your engagement; I wish you could persuade your mother or some one of the family to accompany you, as I suppose the weather is very unpleasant in the city at this time. I must confess that I am not able to hold out any great inducement to come into this dreary, out of the way, dog hole, except perhaps change of situation and pity towards me who have to stay here five months, without seeing, hearing, or feeling, any thing worth being seen, heard or felt.

I cannot forbear mentioning the happy hours I spent in my short but delightful stay in the city last Spring. I am certain that if you promised yourself half the pleasure which I enjoyed there, you would fly up here as soon as your vacation commenced. But alas, I have no such enticements here for you, as Philadelphia has for me. If your mamma should fear to trust you with me and our Princeton boys, be so good as to inform her that we have some with faces a yard long, and moreover that I will insure your life and morals, for the small sum of one cent.

It is stated by our Princeton astronomers that two comets are visible at once at 2 o’clock A. M. If it is a fact, I suppose you have heard of it before this; for my part, I think five o’clock is time enough for me to rise without getting up to view the comets. Velocipedes are beginning to be introduced here. I have not seen one yet.

The bell rings for church, and I am forced to go; remember me to all, &c.

p. g. — I had three beautiful flying squirrels for the children, but unluckily the old cat demolished them, and now enjoys a pleasing “otium cum dignitate” in the bottom of the mill pond with a stone round her neck.

PRINCETON, August 23, 1822.

MY DEAR FRIEND, — The agreeable visit of your sisters to our village has forcibly reminded me of the duty, so long neglected by me, of writing to my old friend and correspondent. What I shall have to say will appear in the sequel, for as yet I feel so great a dearth of writing materials in my brain, that I must needs push forward, and let the thoughts arrange them selves ad libitum. Since I last saw you, many strange and unex-

1 The only suspension of this correspondence that ever took place, was from April, 1820, to the date of this letter. It was in this interval that Alexander’s mind became engrossed with the subject of his personal religion. The first relief he obtained is described by himself in the following record: “On September 3, 1820, walking across the field, hardly daring to ask for faith or repentance, these words burst upon my mind — ‘Waiting for the moving of the tcatcrs.’ I saw myself the impotent man in a moment, and I thought that Christ had been saying to me, ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ hundreds of times in my hearing, but now it seemed to be addressed particularly to me. From that moment I felt able to trust my whole hope and life upon the Lord.”

At the end of this September he finished his college course, but delayed a public profession of faith until the next year; then the return of his birth day, and the death of a young friend, combined to make him feel the risk of further postponement. He was received to full communion by the session of the Princeton Church, March 30, 1821, and sat at the Lord’s table for the first time on the following Sabbath, April 1st.

On the 13th of that month he made a private entry to this effect: “When I look forward to future life, a dreary darkness presents itself. What am I qualified for? I never can, in conscience, embrace any other profession but the ’ gospel of Christ; ’ but alas, where are my qualifications? I never, never can be a speaker.” In a note written some time afterwards he says: “I thank God for having shown me that this conviction was in some measure unfounded and hasty. Though I never can be eloquent, yet God’s spirit may make me a useful preacher.”

The three days, Sept. 15th, 1820, March 30th and April 1st, 1821, he ever afterwards commemorated as times of peculiar humiliation and prayer.

pected things have no doubt befallen each of us, and I have had a goodly share of vicissitudes, painful and pleasant, during the three years just elapsed, but whether any of them could give you any pleasure, I cannot say. I presume I need not tell you that my time spent in college ran sadly to waste; indeed, I can not look back upon the opportunities of acquiring useful knowledge which I then abused without shame and regret. Like most brainless and self-conceited boys, I undertook to determine that such and such studies were of no importance, and made this an excuse for neglecting them, although the wise of every age have united in declaring their utility. I was foolish enough to suffer almost all my previous knowledge of classical literature to leak out e cerelro, and consequently 1 found myself a much greater dolt when I was invested with the title and immunities of an A. B., than when I entered as an humble Freshman. I had acquired, not a vast amount of erudition, but an insufferable budget of silly opinions, self-conceited views of my own abilities, and innumerable vicious habits, which alone are sufficient to neutralize all the good which a college course can give in the way of knowledge. The labour of the two last years has but slightly repaired these injuries, and I have hardly reached the point which 1 ought to have attained, at the term of my collegiate race. To proceed with my egotistical harangue, (for I have nothing better to give you,) 1 have devoted most of my time since to classical reading, and my eyes I think are opened in some measure to those beauties, which, blinded with ignorant self-sufficiency, I was unable to perceive formerly. It is the fashion of this superficial age to decry the study of ancients, and more so in America than in Europe, more among the idle and ignorant coxcombs of this day, than the men of science and taste. I had caught this song at college, and like other graduated fools I presumed to laugh at those authors who have been the models of taste, and fountains of polite learning, for more ages than we have lived years. Homer was a favourite butt for my ridicule. I have read the old fellow’s Iliad twice through of late, with new pleasure at every opening, and it is my intention if my life be spared, to spend one hour per diem for the rest of my life in reading the classics. No doubt, this prosing must be offensive to you; my next letter shall be more taken up about present concerns, as I hope to receive something from you to serve as a cue for my response. If you are curious to know what I am now studying — I have been for some weeks upon metaphysics, another of my old despicable*; I now am much enamoured with it. You know, doubtless, that I expect to enter the theological seminary this fall. I anticipate the course of theology with a great deal of pleasure; many of my best friends expect to enter with me, and the studies are such as suit my taste. Theology is certainly a noble science, inasmuch as its subjects are the most exalted in nature, i. e. the relations subsisting between man and his Maker. “This is that science,” says Locke, “which would truly enlarge men’s minds, were it studied, or permitted to be studied everywhere, with that freedom, love of truth and charity which it teaches, and were not made, contrary to its nature, the occasion of strife, faction, malignity, and narrow impositions.”

I did not expect, when I began to write, that I should take up two sheets — but I am proverbially garrulous, and as I shall not put you to the expense of a double postage, I shall continue to run on. I remember with many pleasing associations the time which I spent in your city, about three years ago. The traces of sundry fair countenances remain indistinctly .marked upon my memory, and sundry boyish freaks I remember sometimes with pleasure, and sometimes with a little shame. But why should I be ashamed 1 Dulce est desipere in loco, (and the 1st of May and thereabouts is assuredly the proper season if there is such a locus in the whole year,) and it is no less sweet to remember these desipientias. I might indulge in the usual mawkish reveries usual upon such occasions, such as talking about “halcyon days” and “departed joys never to return;” but I will not falsify, I hope to enjoy happier moments than these; I have enjoyed happier moments, rendered so by nobler and purer joys than those.

I think it probable, that I shall take a journey Southward in the Autumn, to see my relations in Lexington, Staunton, and other parts of Virginia; my travelling lately has all been tow ards the North. My health appears to me to call for a jaunt; I have not been sick, but my flesh runs from me by degrees, to my great sorrow. A year ago I had a very respectable portion of fat; at present my sharp bones poke out their heads, threatening to pierce the skin. Have I not talked long enough, and incoherently enough, and tiresomely enough, and nos-met-ipsically enough? Farewell. Write, I beg of you. Amicus usque ad aras.

PRINCETON, September htth, 1822, Saturday.

I received, a few minutes ago, your very welcome letter; and I begin an answer immediately, because I think it probable that a private opportunity of transmitting it will occur during the day. I feel relieved from much embarrassment by the receipt of your goodly two-sheet epistle. You know that a man is in a situation rather awkward when he commences writing to a new friend, or an old one metamorphosed by absence and years. What shall be my topics? where shall I begin? are the questions which rise in his mind; there is no common ground upon which he may venture, but the ice once broken, all to be done is to seize the cue presented, and swim down the current of your thoughts, wherever they lead you. Now the current of my thoughts is very apt to lead me into dry prosing, or trifling, or some such shoal; still, at all risks, here it goes, neck or nothing. I pray you to be content with whatever may meet your eye, let the partiality of friendship blind you to all faults. And, as I was talking of letter- writing, let me say a few words more upon the same subject. A letter, as I take it, is intended to stand in lieu of an absent friend, to be his proxy in all things, to talk in his stead, and convey his own ideas, in his own style of conversation. Now, so far as the letter is a faithful representative, it. is a fair picture of the disposition and sentiments of its author, and its value is to be estimated not so much by the intrinsic weight of the opinions expressed, or the intrinsic excellence of the style, (though these things give it new value,) but by its resemblance to the writer. If the writer be a festive mercurial fellow, and the letter be as sage as an epistle of Seneca, I would not give a groat for it; still I would always have a letter be a vehicle of instruction, (such I am afraid this will not be.) But even this instruction must be given in the same way that its parent would give it viva voce. That letter which is so characteristic as to present its writer to my eyes during the perusal, is worth its weight in silver. And to obtain this excellence, the writer of a letter must be exceedingly passive, and just pen down whatever comes next. So I intend to do, hoping that it will be as acceptable, as if I should indite a profound dissertation. As this is almost my first letter, I hope you will pardon me for dwelling so long upon epistolary writing. I am not a friend to quotations in general, but as I intend to spin out a long sheet, I cannot forbear giving you one from the prince of letter writers, Cowper. It appears to me to be the very’ thing. “I am very apt to forget, when I have any epistolary business on hand, that a letter may be written upon any thing or nothing, just as that any thing or nothing happens to occur. A man that has a journey before him 20 miles in length, which he is to perform on foot, will not hesitate and doubt whether he shall set out or not, because he does not readily conceive how he shall ever reach the end of it, for he knows that by the simple operation of moving one foot forward first, and then the other, he shall be sure to accomplish it. So it is in the present case, and so it is in every case similar. A letter is written as a conversation is maintained, or a journey performed, not by preconcerted or premeditated means, a new contrivance, or an invention never heard of before, but merely by maintaining a progress, and resolving as a postilion does, having once set out, never to stop ‘till we reach the appointed end.” By quotation and otherwise, you perceive I manage to maintain a progress, if nothing more. “An interminable preamble,” you may possibly exclaim,” What grand display is to be made after all this ’ pomp and circumstance 1” I will tell you: I am endeavouring to explain to you

the terms upon which this correspondence is to be maintained, upon my part. As my humour is, so will my letter be. If I am grave and sober you may expect at least a dull letter. If I have been reading poetry, Cowper, and Thomson, and Shakespeare, and Ovid, as I have been all the last week, you may look for just such a foggy, sublimated, ethereal production as the present.

You mention that your character has undergone little change. No man is the proper judge of his own character. The changes of our bodily frame, and of our mental part, are so gradual and imperceptible, that they appear nothing to ourselves. “Law John! how you have grown!” has doubtless met your ear ofttimes from the mouth of some good old dame; and the same exclamation was mentally ejaculated by me, in a higher sense, while perusing your letter. I must say something of my own habits and character. Without being guilty of the enormity of eaves-dropping, I have by various chances heard the opinions of divers persons respecting myself, and if I am to judge of myself by these, I am truly an odd compound of qualities. “He’s a tolerably clever fellow,” say some; “but very eccentric.” I acknowledge that I am a clever fellow, and also eccentric. As to the last attribute, I heartily wish I had none of it, and that my orbit were less elliptical. Like a comet, I am sometimes heated, and extravagant, indulging in untimely mirth; and soon, as you might prophesy, chilled with melancholy. Sometimes I am accused of unseasonable levity, and oftener of moroseness and obstinacy; so that, if I take all the advice which my kind friends so liberally bestow, I shall soon find myself in the predicament of the old man, who with his son carried the ass to market j you remember the fable. I have long since determined to shape my own course, without reference to the opinions of every counsellor; if I can discover the path of duty, I hope I shall muster up courage to tread it. The advice of my parents, and those who have a right to counsel, I shall always deem invaluable. As to my habits, there are some which I cannot but deplore, but which I fear will cleave to me usque ad canitiem: among these I rank first, an unconquerable spirit of trifling, and levity; my natural temperament makes me ready at all times, upon all occasions, for any silly jest — (verbal jokes, I mean, I have no taste for ’ practical jokes.’) Habits of idleness appeared deep-rooted in me when I left college; I have, however, happily acquired a taste for study; so that, as it is my greatest pleasure, I wish 1 could say that my improvement has been proportional to my labour; I seem to have been very laboriously doing nothing.

I concur with you in your general remarks upon education; still I would amend your proposition, by saying that boys are sent too early to colleges, instead of “schools.” The three or four years spent in college are usually looked upon by the student, and the world, as the top-stones upon the structure of his education. A structure so soon erected, and so slightly, must needs totter under every hurricane. As far as I am enabled to judge from my own experience, I think that boys should leave school, about the age that they usually leave college, i. e. about 18. This indeed docs not accord with our present collegiate system, for in that time they would have made a greater progress than boys do in their whole college course. But let the standard of college attainments be elevated far above its present degree. Let the servile work of learning to read Latin and Greek be kept to the schools, and even there let it be taught upon some plan which shall not disgust the scholar, and make him loathe those noble authors, which are prostituted to the base purpose of teaching boys their accidence. Let boys be thoroughly versed in the learned languages before they enter any college. This is the plan pursued in most of the European universities. It is absolutely necessary that the student should be able not merely to read, but to talk Latin, before he can enter them. Let the studies of the schools be so diversified, and so suited to the taste of the learner, that he may take some pleasure in them. A school thus conducted, would not, I think, cramp the genius of any boy, but rather add wings to it, and assist its discursive flight. I think it necessary that boys should be sent early to school. Habits of idleness soon become inveterate; still, let the studies be proportionate to the scholar’s capacity. Another reason I have for this is, that boyhood is the time when we receive with most pleasure, general knowledge; the lighter kind of knowledge obtained by indiscriminate reading, and which then amalgamates itself with the boy’s previous knowledge, and sticks by him through life. Now wrhere is the person who has much taste for this knowledge, whose education was not commenced early 1

To go on with my Utopian scheme. I would have the student learn in college, the higher branches of education — the higher mathematics, if his taste led him to pursue it, the philosophy of the mind, ethics, natural law, political economy, and the classics; not construing and parsing, (for I would have him familiar with them.) but investigating their beauties, drawing from them rules of pure and correct criticism, and thus improving his taste and judgment. Above all, I would have Shakespeare’s rule adopted:

“Talk logic with acquaintance that you have,

And practise Rhetoric in your common talk:
The mathematics and the metaphysics

Fall to them as your stomach serves you.

No profit grows where is no pleasure taken.

In brief, sir, study what you most affect”

September 10th, Tuesday.

I was unable to obtain an opportunity of sending what I had written on Saturday, and therefore I shall continue to scribble as I have leisure until such an opportunity presents itself. My father returned yesterday, quite ill, from Newtown, Pa. He went on Saturday for the purpose of assisting Mr. Boyd in the administration of the Lord’s Supper. He preached in the morning, and attempted it at night, but fainted away. We were very much alarmed when he returned. His disorder is the dysentery. We hope that the disease is subdued by the administration of very powerful medicines yesterday and to-day. He is, however, still extremely weak, and keeps his bed.

I was going on in answer to your letter on Saturday. Your disgust for the ancient classics is by no means wonderful. The method of teaching them in our institutions of learning, is calculated admirably to have that effect. When I commenced studying them after I took my degree, it was merely from a sense of their importance, and not from any love to them. I detested them as most nauseous, and felt disposed to esteem all their admirers arrant pedants, and crack-brained fools.

The words of Byron suited me well,

“May he who will, his recollections rake
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorred
Too much, to conquer for the poet’s sake,
The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word
In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record
Aught that recalls the daily drug which turu’d
My sick’ning memory; and tho’ time has taught
My mind to meditate what then it learned,
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought
By the impatience of my early thought,
That with the freshness wearing out, before
My mind could relish what it might have sought,
If free to choose, T cannot now restore
Its health, but what it then detested still abhor.”

But I still persevered. Mr. Hodge and I devoted an hour each day to the study of the Latin and Greek writers, and continued this practice for eighteen months, during which time we had read several authors: and the effect has been a thorough revolution of my taste. I could now obey Horace’s exhortation, and spend my days and nights in perusing these authors, but I do not think the time would be profitably spent. Of late, I have been engaged in reading our English poets, for whom I have a GREAT esteem. Cowper is my favorite among them all. He resembles very closely my other favorite Horace. As it regards pungency of satire, and close and powerful argument, I think these poets are unequalled by any of their own nations. If I except the odes of Horace, and a few blots in the satires, I think they are also parallel as to morals: I mean, of course, to measure each by the standard of the age in which he lived. Their faults are somewhat alike also; an apparent contempt of harmony of verse, wrhere an idea would lose one morsel of strength by gaining in elegance. I hope you wrill determine not to for swear the reading of these authors as I did when I left college.

Tlmrsday, September 12th.

You talk about my crying you mercy on your fourth page: what shall I say upon my ninth? May I presume that you have had patience to read thus far 1 For want of any thing to say, I tell you as another item in our domestic annals, that as I have not been well, 1 have been threshing in our barn for an hour, and consider it a very excellent kind of exercise, for cold weather especially.

Monday, IQth

I see no reason why I should not continue to write, even though I have nothing to say, until I am able to send this to you. I have avoided saying any thing of my father’s health for some days, because I wished to inform you that he was recovered. This I am not yet able to do; he has been becoming weaker and weaker, and though the disease appears to be checked, yet his strength is completely prostrated; he has not sat up since his illness commenced. We believe that he will gradually recover now; but we have been much alarmed. We have, however, had the satisfaction of seeing him at ease under all his pain, perfectly willing to live or die, as the will of God might be.

TKENTON, November 4th, 1822.

I came down to this place on Friday last, and the solicitations of friends and other attractions, have kept me thus long, and shall keep me probably some days longer.

I rode down on Saturday with a friend to Point Breeze, the seat of his Ex-Majesty Joseph, or to use his proper title Le Compte De Survilliers. We spent a long time very agreeably, in strolling about his elegant villa and grounds, gazing upon his buildings, and lakes, and bridges, and splendid statues. I felt transported to some of those European palaces which we poor Americans are forced to hear of, with itching ears, without the pleasure of seeing them.

The improvements which are still almost in embryo, display much taste in the planner, whoever he was, and are in a style entirely new to me. He has a daughter lately arrived from Europe, La Comptesse, &c.

To go on in the journal style. I heard Mr. Armstrong preach a most eloquent sermon yesterday morning; he is one of my favorites. At night, Mr. Ly brand, the Methodist, — a very good preacher, — the coolest Methodist I ever heard. The Trentonians say that the Presbyterians have got the Methodist preacher, and the Methodists the Presbyterian.

My studies3 begin on Thursday, then I am in for a six months’ siege. I am rather afraid that my health will fail. The college commences at the same time; a great accession is expected.

My father has entirely recovered his health; and lides about the country.

1 The Rev. “William J. Armstrong, pastor of the Presbyterian church.

2 In the Theological Seminary at Princeton, which he entered at the time specified.