1900 EDWIN MANNERS DIARY (MDP)
First entry is a letter in the front cover of the journal.Edwin Manners
Attorney and Counselor at Law
1 Montgomery Street
Jersey City, N.J.
May 1, 1900 Dr. John D. McGill:
My dear Doctor:--
Ever since the Chancellor's death, I have felt like sending you some word of condolence, but a certain depression of spirits and trouble with my eyes have kept me from doing so until today. Yet you must have known my feelings in the loss of your noble brother. He was my father's counsel when I was admitted to the Bar, and associating with him in several of my father's cases, I came early to know and appreciate his worth. The offices of honor and trust he held, he filled with notable ability and that quick dignity which is so distinguishing. But at present I refrain from any but the briefest tribute and express to you my sincerest sympathy and that of my sisters.
Believe me, dear Doctor
Always truly yours,
Edwin Manners.
First Journal Entry
January 1, 1900
After the usual new year greetings, I took a turn about town. There was some discussion as to whether this is the last year of the nineteenth or the beginning of the twentieth century. The calculators, without considering origins, and practical men who count and exact a hundred cents to the dollar adhere complacently to the former view, which is the one most widely accepted. Some historians, religionists and poets, psychologically moved by the change from 8 to 9, which is a sufficient reason for childlike and beautiful minds, argue for the latter and rise to Vergil's tune:
"The great series of ages begins anew, and the great months begin to roll!" And forsooth the received or Dionysian chronology is doubtful, and the question depends upon the correct date of the nativity and the point in time when the Christian Era began. Yet why attempt to disturb in anywise a well-established system of reckoning? One century glides into another without let and noiselessly, unmarked by revolution or cataclysm? The arbitrary division is indifferent, but not the spirit it fires. Let the cycle of better feeling commence at once!
January 4, 1900
There are those, ay, whole races of people, who seem or feign to dislike sentiment - perhaps 'tis skepticism of the maker's sincerity and not the feeling, which is only too rare and precious if genuine; yet I can not but take their mistrust as a badge of dishonor, that shows their hard make-up; nor do I mistake it for strength. Virility is a virtue of much worth, and may mean stoutness of heart, but certainly not insensibility or car-diac toughness in the day of provocation or on happier days. It may subsist with the finest sentiment. And then the dearth and beggary of its want; for without some sympathy and insight, there can be nothing good on the earth; there can be no art; there can be no love, there can be no great good thing.
January 11, 1900
No matter what you have learned or lived amongst - it will all affect you sensibly, whether consciously or not - throw away your glass or copy and the love of the schools, and address yourself directly to the thing in hand, whether it be an act or a communion with God and nature. That is to be original and not to come off second best.
January 12, 1900
'Tis only when one learns through experience how gracefully to suffer himself to be cheated that he attains to much ease and philosophy in business. He begins then to be more self-possessed and better succeeds.
January 13, 1900
Consulted the oculist, Dr. Arthur T. Muzzy, at his office on Jersey Avenue, in regard to changing my eye-glasses or spectacles and the condition of my eyes, the right eye in particular seeming or being of late less clear and occasionally crossed by threads and shadows. He thought best to advise me to continue the use of my present glasses; suspected the rupture of a blood vessel, from a dark spot in the outer part of the eyeball, and prescribed treatment. He did not think the rupture in my case very serious. I hope so; I see well enough now, but can ill afford any diminution or loss of sight. My eyes have always done good service, though no doubt often overtaxed since Early Greek days, when Greek was read by gas-light before breakfast. But what recent use of them has proved excessive and cause the trouble or hemorrhage in question I can not distinctly recall.
January 25, 1900
If you have the mind, you may write entertainingly or a "Rill* for the Town Pump" and leave the immortality of the soul to your "Friend from India", who has been dreaming about it for many centuries and found rest in Nirvana. Yet strangely not only the great, but too frequently the little masters seek the large and spacious theme. Limited abilities only betray thereby their poverty and show less likely a plummet-thought and the color and perspective of life. Have but deep places in your words, suggestive shadows and light, the true spirit of the thing, and it may still matter what you say, but less than how you say it. Then let your pen run boldly on: you have achieved the end that crowns the work. Indeed good style in writing is not a kind of decoration of a subject, separate there from, but it is one with it; it is substance or thought duly matured and finished and put with distinction. *a small stream of water
February 16, 1900
Consulted Dr Henry S. Oppenheimer, of No. 16 East 32d Street, New York, an eye-specialist, concerning the trouble with my right eye. He said that Dr. Muzzy's treatment had gone too far, and reversed it, remarking that the pupil was very much contracted and should be dilated. Under Dr. M. my sight had become so dim as to be almost extinct. Dr. O., however, saw nothing in the condition of the eye to prevent the restoration of vision, if care was taken and proper remedies applied.
Dr M. had prescribed Eserine; Dr O. directed the use of atropine.
March 2, 1900
Felt forlorn and got into bed. Dr. John D. McGill was sent for, and said that the symptoms indicated a recurring attack of my old ailment, typhlitis or appendicitis, modified and less severe.
March 8, 1900
Intimacies are so dear, have a care to prize and preserve them. I wonder if you want some inkling of me, a personal touch, a look of humor or love, a casual mention - mentions of manners, a fragment broken with a sigh or laugh or less for you to finish, a dropped remark that shotted round, suggestive vanishings of the soul caught iris-hued before they got to heaven. Yes, verily you do, and even so do I desire, and each likewise of each; for man is most of all to be considered. Come then to me, warm heart, and I will be as warm, and tell you something individual and strange, something none else can tell.
April 9, 1900
A cool brisk day. Although debilitated and depressed in spirit - a month or more of illness in bed scarcely over, my good sisters got a carriage and insisted that I should go to Dr. Herman Knapp's, West 40th Street, opposite the old reservoir, and have my eyes examined and treatment prescribed. Marie went with me, first to Dr. Muzzy's New York office, East 57th Street, as arranged, and then to Dr. K's, Dr. M. meeting us there a few moments later for consultation. The waiting room was crowded with patients, yet professional etiquette gave entrance to Dr. M. and his patient after but a short delay. Dr. Muzzy detailed what he had done in treating my eyes at his Jersey City office and at my home. Dr Knapp, after what seemed to be a lengthened scrutiny of my optics with the opthalmoscope, gave an opinion that was indeed discouraging, if not very positive or conclusive. He doubted the recovery of my usual vision in the right eye. (I have been near-sighted since early manhood,); but thought the left eye in good condition except for the appearance there around of belladonna poisoning, caused by the salve ordered by Dr. M. He changed that to an expensive kind of drops; directed the use of a little calomel, rest and care of the eyes and observance of the usual hygienic rules. More technically, from what I could gather from the consulting oculists, although they talked with some uncertainty, designedly or not, the cause of my right eyes dimness or loss of sight was that being myopic and hence more liable to accidents, probably an overuse or strain had resulted in the rupture of a small blood vessel in the ball of the eye, or the ligature of the retina had parted from the eye's glove. The latter was to be feared; internal hemorrhage too. I suspected that both had occurred. I came home tired, threw myself on a lounge, but could not sleep; there came over me a miserable defenseless feeling as if fate had struck me a staggering blow in the face and I could not strike back or help myself; I kept asking myself if this was not a dream ' a nightmare, this cruel fate; yet too clearly otherwise I knew the persistent fact and fervently repeated Milton's invocation: -
"O Spirit! x x x what in me is dark, Illumine! What is low raise and support!"
April 16, 1900
It is a fearful charge to make and therefore I do not make it. I am uncertain - scientific certainty is difficult of attainment in any case. But the more I study the structure of the eye and consider my general health and the particular condition of my right eye at the time of first treatment, the stronger grows my suspicion that the mistakes of Dr. Muzzy tended to extinguish the sight of that eye, if indeed they were not the proximate cause of that calamity. I do not think by these words, strong or doubtful, that I do an injustice. That Dr. M. made several serious blunders is obvious enough; but whether they were sufficient to blind the eye treated may never be known. With me it matters not now: I must accept as gracefully as possible the inevitable. The old orange of life I have squeezed too hard. It has become cracked, battered, flat and by far too dry. Will it refill with dear flavors: will it resume the roundness of youth? Not altogether, but perhaps in some measure. I have gone out and on, moving freely, lightly, though weighted with grave responsibilities. Life was so sweet; its warmth and joy enchanted me. I went from one excitement and new sensation to another: I did what my poor strength could not endure. I had supreme movements, when I could truthfully say, I have lived; beyond this lies death. For supreme moments have their correspondingly deep depressions. I approached the dark pit: it looked so precipitous and cold - no glory of light there. I shuddered and turned: I longed again for the bright things of earth, and a sudden access of spirit and will saved me from the cruel bodkin. Some fortitude and philosophy still kept me: I have not lost my nerve - I could fight a good fight, and God favoring, may still live many happy peaceful days.
April 21, 1900
Chancellor Alexander T. McGill died this morning at his home, no. 270 Barrow Street, Jersey City. He had been on the death list for the last year or longer. Early as the Bar I knew him, and valued him as a friend and counselor. I was with him in some causes of my father's, in which he displayed wit and shrewdness, and by puzzling but fair questions interposed in his quiet dignified way disconcerted the opposing attorneys. Not perhaps a great man, in the sense of striking or brilliant faculties, he was sufficiently rounded and conscientious in the discharge of his duties. He was in a measure slow, stepping by process rather than bounding to just results, but had the excellent trait of developing with his opportunities. In his death, I have a sense of personal loss. I recall with him the passing of a coterie of Barrow Street men who made life brighter and more interesting: Attorney General Gilchrist silver-voiced and impulsive, with hands behind his back holding a handkerchief and with an erect elegant carriage; Congressman Hardenbergh, fluent of speech and the kindliest of men, and my father, Mayor Manners, a man of moods, but the keenest observer of them all.
April 28, 1900
Vacated my offices in the Fuller Building and had the law books and office furniture removed to my house, No. 287 Barrow Street, where I shall have for the present my business headquarters as well as my home. This may or may not mean the abandonment of my profession, never too actively practiced or seriously held. I like the law, not so passionately as literature and love, but still well, yet the stress of it impinges hardly on my energies to their detriment and that of their true purposes. The management of my properties gives me a sufficient grasp if realities and practical affairs. And besides I hate to be called a lawyer, an author or what you will; I hate to be classed - I am so nondescript. I would not be limited and labeled. I prefer so much more the universality of my simple manhood.
May 3, 1900
This afternoon Mrs. Otto Crouse called in her carriage, and Blanche and I went with her for a drive. The sunny air was warm, but freshened by occasional breezes; the grass grew greener; the leafing trees put forth white blossoms and delicate tints; earthy and pungent odors arose, and a quickened sense of freedom after so many days of confinement to the house gave additional zest to my enjoyment of the reawakened spring. We drove northward on Hudson Boulevard to some green-houses, where Mrs. C. bought a bunch of long-stemmed beauty roses of the florist and kindly fixed one of them in the lapel of my coat.
The drive over, we dined at Mrs. C.'s on Bently Avenue, a Philadelphia capon being served. Before dinner Mrs. C. read a brief historical sketch, prepared by her, about a Connecticut officer in the Revolution and his clock, the officer being connected with her family (Bowen). Judge Crouse got home somewhat late, and was mostly occupied quieting his baby son Wellington, the little "Duke" furnishing the music of the occasion in a chorus of cries!
May 23, 1900
In compliance with a previous arrangement I sold to Rosario D'Amato a house and lot on Fifth Street, this city. The property is included in the site of what is at present called "Little Italy Park", soon to be laid out and improved as a recreation place for the people. A few days ago I gave Clerk Bonton of the Street and Water Board an option on the adjoining lot, subject to a certain lease.
May 26, 1900
Dr. Herman Knapp gave my eyes another careful examination. He found the left eye in good condition, with the exception of a slight interior inflammation, which he thought temporary; but despaired of restoring objective vision to the right eye. He would not medicate, but simply recommended as much rest as possible for the eyes, particularly at night.
May 28, 1900
My sister Marie has been kindly reading to me Count Lyof Tolstoy's "Resurrection" or "Awakening" as it is preferably called. As it traverses much ground I have ruminated over, it impressed me greatly. The book is strong and thoughtful, graphically written, but not eminently artistic; not in that it has a purpose, an inescapable quality of great work, indeed of all work; but because it becomes at times too much of a preachment, a preachment of false doctrines, and because its repulsive parts leave after them a bad taste: it is otherwise with the author's compatriot Tourgueneff and the German Goethe. Tolstoy is a great soul and analyzes well the predicament of souls, yet with all his hero's determination to fly against convention, he is saved in the end, with whatsoever logic, conventionally enough. While apparently radical, even fanatic, "Resurrection" is substantially sane and conservative, aiming at the amelioration of man's condition. In fact I am tempted to find fault with it's commonplaceness; for besides the rehash of much that has become stale and served it's turn, is it not commonplace or old-fashioned, with a kind of certainty, to predicate of an act good or evil, to speak of a man's animal and spiritual or moral nature as separate entities, as higher or lower, when in truth there is but one nature, variously manifested, and it's functions are co-ordinate. Which think you is the greater, more divine, to create a child or conceive an idea and shape a poem!
Tolstoy has swung too far in going from a life of pleasure and indulgence to one of sterile asceticism. He is caught on the rocks. It is not there that spiritual elevation comes, for neither the best of the flesh nor that of the soul grows there. In medio tulissimus ibis*. May he swing back to the thick of things, natural and medial, whose progress is gradual, steadying and much better than his caricature indicates. Let him retake his earlier manner, mellowed by time, and cultivate more peculiars as his genius directs the rich fields of vision and love. The world is very beautiful; its poetry is everywhere, but it hath love for it's central charm!
Whether "Resurrection" is more characterized by art or philosophy matters not: in truth, it is a mixture of both. There should be no conflict between the two, no more than between science and religion. In the highest there is one harmony. *
June 7, 1900
Do not imitate, but assimilate; you can not assimilate too much of the excellence of the past, in order to advance truly. Be your own peculiar self; rely on your native observation, powers, and inspiration, which will be tinctured with the medium in which you move; but if you desire a noble example of reticence and art, of beauty, eloquence, sublimity, consider the way and work of Milton, who, with unerring touch, avoiding bulk and redundancy on the one hand and specious decoration and finery on the other, sail forth in his compact book of perfect make. For the literary worker, his is the supreme example in the English language, indeed, I might say of all languages save only the Greek.
June 21, 1900
At Philadelphia today the Republican Convention renominated President McKinley for the Presidency and named Governor Roosevelt of New York for the Vice Presidency - an excellent ticket, considering the waywardness of politics, and a logical resultant of the recent war with Spain. Expansion and sound money (the gold standard) will probably cause it to win, as the Democrats, or a section of them arrogantly ruling in an undemocratic way, seem determined to put up again the redoubtable Bryan with all his silver bells on.
July 3, 1900
This afternoon we closed our town house, and went to the country for the heated term.
July 31, 1900
After some delay, I delivered to the city my deed of property to be used for park purposes and received the city's warrant for the consideration. This was moderate enough but fair, and I accepted it both to help along a public improvement of a philanthropic character - a park for the poor - and to influence others to keep to the medium in prices, and I am told that my example had that effect, even some of the poorer lot owners, to whom it was the chance of a life-time and who would exact from the city the uttermost farthing, being held in check thereby. While the prices paid for the several parcels included in the park site show much disparity; it is more apparent than real. The money - consideration unqualified is misleading. In my case the value of two leases and other considerations should be added to those appearing in the deeds of this and the adjoining lot. Both of these properties, by the way, were held in my own right and not in a representative capacity as some unwittingly had it. I bought them of Joseph F. Randolph, Esq., in 1886.
August 2, 1900
The other day I was tempted to talk beyond what was strictly pertinent to a pretty shop-girl, of whom I made some purchases. She frankly confided to me that a certain policeman was paying her attention. I swirled at the simple details of this courtship la bas*; it's avowals were so fresh and in some respects novel to me. I happened to know the officer in question and remarked encouragingly that he was a fine fellow. "Yes", she said, thoughtfully, "but I don't know; I sometimes think I shouldn't marry a policeman - he sees too much!" And I afterwards mused upon this. I felt that I too may have seen too much, and had hence been partially shut out from the Garden of Eden. There is a fair field for discovery in this world, but it is duly limited, and they who seek to pry into it's secrets, purposely hid, transgress the limit and must still experience the bitterness -
"Of man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe."
How perennially true is all the story of the Bible, how beautiful, whether it be history or symbolically intended! *
August 16, 1900
Rutland Farm
At the old farm at Harlingen, amid the Somerset hills, I am staying for the summer. As the days of Alexandrine length wear on in their going, I rest, soothed by their monotony, and read and ruminate. I am lying in the hammock on the lawn, looking up through tree-tops at the blue sky, chasing Argonaut-like some golden cloud-fleece as it sails silently away far out of reach, or athwart the conner-board* of the farm-house watching the deeper blue of the Sourland mountain range kiss the meeting horizon. The farm-house, whose central portion has stood probably one hundred and fifty years, the ends having been added at different times and the whole re-inclosed, imposes itself substantially and pleasantly on the view. Not without an impression of large proportions and grandeur. Yet it is but a huge play-house, whose children or specters of the past appear at the doors and windows no less than their more familiar but hardly less strange successors do now. Two cockerels break the peace with a bout before the porch, while the silly hens stand or go indifferent by. The dog Rutland, lying in the doorway with his muzzle on paws, pricks up his ears, rises, with a growl on hearing the butcher's wagon in the lane and barks savagely, persistently, until a bit of meat on bone thrown to him brings sufficient quiet to hear the ring of the cleaver and catch kitchen voices engaged in barter or flirtation. The advent of the grocer, less heralded, is more smooth, yet a form of excitement not to be despised where the mildest incident is an event of interest - not that I could not enliven this account with occurrences of a truly tragic nature, but reticence is sometimes best. Helen who has slipped away to the village returns with the morning mail - the welcome letters, commented on and smiled over, the newspapers bringing stories of the other world of town so intently seized on. Marie takes a seat nearby under a shade tree and reads along to me, this time, Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann. We are delighted and disappointed. We remark admiringly Eckermann's adoration of the Master, although keeping ourselves well in hand. Agreeable indeed is the mass of Goethe's talk, its variety and wisdom, and on topics so congenial; but I who love colors in the concrete am somewhat bored by his harping on the theory of colors. While characteristic of master, his evenness and terrestrial content, though of a high level, wide, cultured and parcel of a most interesting and reposeful phenomenon, evince some superficial hardness and certain limitations. One longs for the sparks and despairing depths that flash and open momently in men of less repute, but in this I take it more stimulating and great, in this their tremendous never satisfied struggle for the stars! There is naught but shallow contentment this side of heaven. Then follows a turn at the barns or bars, petting the live-stock, while the pigeons perch or circle overhead. An inspection of the men at work in the fields, a spin on my wheel or horse-back ride complete the morning. After the noontide meal, came a little chatter, a doze, inditing of letters, a woodland walk or drive, and the day is done, and we gather on the porch to think it over or sing. Later we are all in the sitting-room, wall-papered with pictures, to read the magazines and newer books: we are all here - Virginia, Marie, Helen, Blanche, Harold and I - all save Sheridan, whose strange indivuality keeps him to-night in his room apart and across the wide hall in the large central room, dear Clarence, a remarkably bright boy obscured, sleeps and wakes unavailingly, but no doubt for some inscrutable reason and fulfilment. *
September 6, 1900
A Confidence
Woman has always had a fascination for me. This is perhaps natural enough and shows that I am properly constituted. Both the profligate and ascetic are abnormal, but I am neither of these. What seems at least to be peculiar is that I do not meet her half-way: I hesitate and look charmed; I say to myself, Hold! as this distance, neither too far nor too near, I like her best. Nearness to the clay, a suggestion of coarseness, if not always, seems generally to repel me. This feeling permits of an occasional flirtation or save short, if serious, breach of custom and the stiff moral code, but acts as an obstacle to marriage, which lacks the brevity of wit and wine and cultivates material indulgence, the clay at the expense of the spirit! I dreaded its captivity, its proprietorship, its low values and selfishness. I disliked to see an idol cheapened. There is less about married women of that superlative refinement and idealism which is found instinctively in maidens old and young. Marriage is a long-time bond; love, a child's dream and illusory. And how much, how very much there is in life besides love. However, it may be with women, a fine individual freedom compensates for every thing with men. Early I had my particular love-dream: it was beautiful, so beautiful that after it the world took on a dimness strange as mist or women weeping: stars dropped from the sky and days were sunless; and after it the deluge might have come and found me waiting for it, not unwilling to meet death. Yet what is greater, what more glorious than such a dream, though never realized? It was the climax of my life, and after it came marshes, ignes fatui* and the slow marking of time for the final kick-off. And herein, in this repugnance to a civil institution, commendable in some respects, and yet a fiction whereby the state as pareus patriae* shirks it's duty and shifts it's burden on the citizen with such ugly results - herein, in the unfulfilled dreams, in the unreasonableness of the accepted, lies one of my life's tragedies. * *
September 13, 1900
Yesterday, amid the fragrance of the fields, subdued and earthy smells, I caught the scent of a horse, a cow and a woman. Bah! Said I to myself, they are all animals.
Today as I strid* my horse, it's ears were pricked, it's nostrils dilate, it's eyes a-fire; I saw the cow calve and turn a mild wistful look on the wonder of it's doing: a farm-maid tripped gracefully toward the house, stooped to pick up a fallen fruit, and then stood erect, health-flushed, and smiled at me, and I said to myself, they are all spirits. *straddled
September 20, 1900
I should like to be good, if I could only accept the many forms of good which I see before me, but none of them seems to be wholly good, none of them has flowered into beauty. I must make for myself a greater mould, even though I break myself in the making. It will be the knowledge of good and evil, of old forbid, but superiority to these. I will master the fates: I must be a master. I see the children Evil and Good playing before me, the one with somber fascinating face, the other of celestial look: they are natural foils and companions, each of the other, and their reciprocal, relative actions inform and balance life, while they give to it pathos and joy, brightness and tragedy. I love them both, even as a father loves; for they are only children of early years, of early ages, not yet in bloom. I have seen and gone beyond. I am a man, unmoved by passion, fear or regret, of the latest time, still developing, and hold straight on the free highway to universal love and beauty.
September 27, 1900
Returned to town after a beneficial stay at "Rutland Farm" and opened house to remain. Marie came in in the evening after a two week's visit to Narragansett Pier. She went to see our cousins, the Cookes, at their summer cottage, "Sea Meadow".
October 3, 1900
Resigned from the Directory of the Ramos Fire Escape Company and severed my connection with it as counsel.
October 17, 1900
Apropos of the recently established Hall of Fame at New York University, the announcement is made that the committee of electors have voted and their majority choice has fallen on thirty more or less distinguished native-born Americans. The names of these are to be put on its so-called tablets of honor. It is an interesting movement, however unsatisfactory it may prove to be. Distinction is something indefinite and illusive, something that can not be conferred or measured by committees and fame is uncaught in shrines, but of peculiar growth, and would better be left to the people at large, to the people and the process of times. They make or unmake repute. A contrast or two between certain worthies within and without over Walhalla will throw a puzzling light on the inadequate method of selection and the doubtful character of the enterprise itself.
What must be thought of an American Hall of Fame that includes Peter Cooper, the glue man, and excludes Fenimore Cooper, the romancer, who, in intellectual proportions, most nearly resembles Walter Scott; that sets up the utilitarian Howe with his sewing-machine and casts down that fine flower of genius, Edgar Poe, the only poet America has produced, according to some competent foreign critics, and a short-story writer unmatched in any language; that finds a pedestal for Horace Mann, a legislator of little distinction, who effected a few reforms in education, but has no place for Madison, the co-author with Hamilton of the "Federalist" and father of the Federal Constitution, the world's greatest political charter?
What provincialism is shown by many of the judges: what Philistinism, and what a wretched abandonment of the ideal for the practical!
And has it come to this, my countrymen? Then you and I and all of us who can not live by bread alone must perish!
The comparisons I have made may be too sharp calculated to ridicule the scheme and in a degree unfair; but even so, for the purpose and under the circumstances, they are clearly justified. And the impulse of my presentment is the eloquence of truth.
October 26, 1900
Last night William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate for President, was in town. He met with much enthusiasm, red-fire, and music, but the cheering was not confident of victory. As he passed in an open carriage from the Heights down Mercer Street and around the City Hall to the Tabernacle, he was escorted by several Democratic clubs with a rabble following. He looked pale, worn, with throat muffled, but complacent. A deeper or different man might have had misgivings. He made five or six speeches, seemingly earnest and sincere, but of no great eloquence. In some respects his ideas are advanced and noble, but his election would give too much assurance to the elements of discontent and disorder; for while he makes a valid contention for peace and industrial fairness as against militarism and trusts, he illogically seasons his speech with appeals and illustrations calculated to create prejudice, distrust, envy, and array one section of the people against another. This is extremely impolitic. It is the part of good statesmanship to allay unworthy feelings and while not ignoring evils to take upon the whole an optimistic view. This can honestly be done at present when social and industrial conditions have so much improved, and the nation has become a leader so puissant* among the nations.
He wisely avoided a discussion of the money question.
*mighty
November 6, 1900
There is an election fever; its symptoms are especially marked in the quadrennial contest for the presidency. I felt its tension today, a spirit of unrest, if not altogether of uncertainty. After breakfast I raced through the morning papers, then took down two books or three from the shelves, read like picking fruit and suddenly replaced them. I could not remain still enough for study while before me, before the United States audience was going forward the great Federal play. So I prepared my ballot, a crazy quilt of pasters, and deposited it at the polls. Talk with politicians about the polling places and at the City Hall, a brisk walk down town, where I viewed with interest the Commercial Trust building, rising skeleton-like with it's steel frame on lower Exchange Place, and several haltings on the way back brought me up to noon and luncheon. After which a slight stimulant put me on the lounge in a siesta of composing dreams. But it did not last long; for soon that wonderful magnet, New York City, drew me over the river and into the very vortex of its life. I experienced a certain happy relief - similia similitus cerrantur*, in it's high intensity, especially in its pandean or demonic clamors and brilliancy at night. Not a few quick sensations thrilled me and the senses felt keenly the gratifying season. The crowds, notwithstanding some jostling and minor disputes, were in the main good natured and orderly, the defeated acquiescing in the result of the returns with a philosophy that augurs well for the people and their republic. Only one case of violence I noticed: a Bryan man on the ferry-boat lost his temper and struck an exasperating Republican until the blood flowed, but the assailant was quickly taken into custody as the boat touched the Jersey City side. When the satisfying news of President McKinley's re-election was finally confirmed beyond all doubt, I returned home to sobriety and bed.
*
November 13, 1900
Last Sunday evening Walter Collins, only son of Justice Gilbert Collins of the Supreme Court, died and this afternoon I attended the funeral at his father's house on York Street. The Rev. Frederick E. Mortimer, of St. Mark's Church, read impressively the Episcopal burial service. Walter had undergone an operation for appendicitis, but it was too late to save him. Through kind appreciation, I was asked several years ago to aid him in his preparations for the Bar, and our close relations gave me some advantage of intimate knowledge. But dividing straits and the poor tests we humans apply left him still a question, guarded by the reticence of nature. He was bright, genial, fond of play, yet studious to a degree, fond of books, of superior books, yet impatient, and perhaps a little too personally evident and effusive. He inclined to odds that might weigh against eminent success as a lawyer; yet legal success is nowadays so much a practical, business affair that it is common enough and we may well bless the bearer of more individual traits and rarer qualities. But he has all too soon taken them away with him. Naturally his early death has cut his father to the heart, shattering parental hopes.
Lament for the passage of youth in life or death - youth, whose appreciation is better than that of age; lament, for it is good to season happiness with sorrow, and time will soon blunt the edge of grief. It does matter to us now; it makes a despairing difference and philosophy can not help it; but thought widely, universally, it may matter little whether we continue under the sun or go beyond it's ken - in either case we fulfil the purpose of our being; if we live, it is best and if we die, that too is best.
November 22, 1900
The Sword of Damocles hangs over me ready at any moment to fall upon my eyes or appendix, and in either event it is equivalent to giving up the ghost. This is what I gather inferentially from my physicians, though they give encouragement and confidence. Yet strangely enough I am not perplexed; else or otherwise, how could I write in a manner so unperturbed? And yet I do not know, for certain, motive or condition. Forsooth I am well enough. But as I go on with Time, though it's caress and softening touch endear me to it, to the delights of earth, a stronger, subtler impulse toward enduring good succeeds, a feeling for performance of effects that are here, seemingly at least abortive and can not run on like the planets to age-worn perfection. I love unknown seas and the starry plain of vastness. I long for Time's quintessential eternity. It is low to doubt, something like calling all men liars, and renders everything nugatory*. It seems like special pleading to be skeptical, so paltry, so mean and captious, when believing accounts for so much, is high-bred, substantial and glorious. I who doubted rest in peace, nothing doubting. Hence a sweet serenity has seized me that keeps me composed, or positively happy at the thought of falling asleep, again, I seem to say, on the loving breast of the universal comforter, where all must be well. *useless
November 26, 1900
Dr. Leonard ((S.)) Gordon called this evening and talked substantially about the city and former times. He wanted a photograph of my father and any old records and relics I might be willing to give to the museum of local history in the Free Public Library.
December 1, 1900
At the Court House this morning I witnessed the unveiling of two paintings, one a portrait of the late Chancellor McGill, the other that of the late Justice Lippincott, of the Supreme Court, who sat in this circuit. I went up on the car with Justice Collins, who now presides in the Hudson Circuit. We exchanged a few friendly words.
December 8, 1900
Had this evening a few laughs at a Palma Club stag - much the same old thing with different persons enacting.
December 13, 1900
If in some degree the present mental attitude, its angle of incidence, were changed and the mind liberated somewhat, conservatively, from its set and inelasticity, a clearing for more ideal conditions would be made and progress in noble living quickened. Just what measure of change should be suggested is a matter for mature consideration. It should be along the line of conduct and a finer, more individualistic interpretation of the conventions and laws that govern it. Indeed these should be so recast as to permit the utmost personal freedom in development and speech consistent with safety. And where society must step in to restain, the restraint should be commensurate and the remedy, not punitive, but fitly adapted to a mind and body diseased, and it matters not what you call it - moral, physical or personal. The accused should be judged as a peculiar distinct unit and not as one of a class whose units differ widely in heredity, and environment. The judgment should be liberal, charitable, proceeding not so much on precedent as in forr conscientiae*. The objected plea, that criminals must be severely punished in order to keep up the bars, lest in letting them down the wild bull of chaos be let in, is unworthy of the times ' we have gone beyond that. It is virtually an apologistic acknowledgement that present methods are wrong, inadequate, and is neither scientific nor magnanimous. It is not the province of government to punish or revenge; its duty is to protect and cure. There should be no prosecutors, but examiners; no prisons, but remedial schools. *
December 25, 1900
A delightful Christmas day - the air cool, crisp, the light showering sparkles and brilliants everywhere, bathing the world in beauty. Marie, Helen, Blanche and I went down to Perth Amboy to Virginia's for the holiday dinner and memory. We went down the Bay - a bright morning sail - to Staten Island and over the island and sound to the house on High Street, where we received much hospitality and good cheer. The John W. Beekmans welcomed us with open arms and seemed genuinely to enjoy our stay - Harold especially. And I was loath to go; I really felt that shuddering divide, the dark sense in farewells of being and dying, of the unreturning and enduring - transitoriness, twilight, eternity; when we took leave of them at night and turned our faces homeward.
December 31, 1900
Break, in the barren places, lines of literature, show the initiative and peculiar way. Start the procession of Spirits!
Nineteenth Century
Good-bye, old Nineteenth Century, a parting hand; you have not done badly; you look up well out of the ruck* and some sordidness; you had some predecessors, there were Pericles and Augustine and Elizabeth; they had their fine points and a few salient, superlative; You made too much of the indifferent and not enough of the really great; but then you hold to the spirit of democracy and, with all it's faults, that is best, best for the general welfare; you had that startling cometary man Napoleon, who broke your path, though his temperament was not yours, no more was Goethe's long spent in the Eighteenth cycle. Yet he rests nobly with you; you had Darwin, an elemental poet, lacking in form, - would that he had written like Lucretius, in De Rerum Natura!- and Keats, Poe, Shelley, Tennyson, soul's of beauty and exquisite style; your most natural and puissant poet was Byron, but he frayed his edges in life and blunted his scimitar; Hugo represents your imagination, though it flashed in a deal of rhetoric; and there was Carducci ((. Y))ou had in Webster an orator, a man in Lincoln and a statesman in Bismarck; if I must select from the clutter of romancers and novelists, I should name Scott Balzac. Hawthorne, Dickens and Hardy - and Tolstoy, and you had a warm fellowship temperament in Whitman, as encircling as nature, and in Ibsen a realistic and symbolic dramatist of penetrating and revealing power; you had Grant, the silent conqueror in the century's greatest war, and Rockefeller, the most salient representative of it's industrial and commercial life, and a splendid line of inventors, chiefly American; musicians and artists, not a few; and there were certain men apart - Wordsworth, Carlyle, Emerson, Wagner, Browning - great amorphous souls, with elemental fires and dark, mixed communings of the spirit, yet initial lacking in crucial expression, voicing only in eruptions of shreds and patches the deep internal music, the voidance of the soul in complete sustained utterance, and yet your peers in note; they charactered your age: you have made the mass, the complex, a wonderful comfortableness, a great average and material advance; you had ((sane clear rising)), and have made yourself agreeable and helpful to the many, though they grumbled - their privilege and consolation; good-bye; old boy - a friendly good-bye; you will not be forgot! *rubbish
Cash Account. January, 1900
Sometimes people are accused of being morally oblique by those who are only mentally obtuse.
To make the local universal, to treat the every day incidents of life as the important thing they are, to deem the humblest worthy of study and record, to get at a person or picture and quicken them in living expression, - this is to evince the democratic spirit, to show the creative hand, the eternal touch.
The truest friends of the people, the people without distinction or class, that is of all the people, are not the rich or the poor, but the well-born.
Knowing the impossibility of complete expression, even the most finished work being only a fragment, one naturally hesitates to express himself or portray a character, lest he be misleading or come short of or fail to delineate even saliently the whole man.
Cash Account. March, 1900
Morality in the popular and conventional sense means conduct according to some system of rules, artificial and repugnant in particular or so general as to be of as small distinguishable value as if one should say, all men resemble one another. Essentially it is not abstract, but individualistic and concrete. It consists in harmony of living, in a personal knowledge of one's powers and limitations and the use of the former within the latter at the point which best conserves health and happiness. And this varies, as the thermometer varies, with each individual, and therefore each individual of necessity must have a moral code of his own and be a law unto himself.
Any precept for practice or doctrine of duties in religion, ethics or the philosophy of right and wrong, that has rigidity of law and therefore is not elastic enough to fit nicely the peculiar case of each individual may be an excellent method for training or mental calisthenics, but is of small pertinence as a system of morals for practical application. And this is true, whether man is considered in his relation to man or in his wider relation to society and the state. Perfect the unit and the whole will become perfect.
Young men and women, (the old have found a sufficient modus vivendi*,) who have some knowledge of the powers and limitations and good wills or self control, need have no fear of what the world, the flesh and the devil can do unto them - they are safe; but the unfortunate ones, often singularly interesting and well worth our study and concern, who are not so constituted or trained soon fall by the wayside and seem to be by an inexorable law unfit for life. They give nevertheless examples and lessons to life. *
Cash Account. August, 1900
Article entitled "Jersey City's Population"
JERSEY CITY'S POPULATION
The Census Returns Make It 206,433 - In Hoboken the Count Shows a Total of 59,364.
The Director of the Census in Washington yesterday made public the figures of the population of Jersey City and Hoboken.
The population of Jersey City, according to the official count of the returns, is as follows:
Jersey City 1900: 206,433 1890: 163,003
These figures show, for the city as a whole, an increase in population of 43,430, or 26.64 per cent. from 1890 to 1900.
The population in 1880 was 120,722, showing an increase of 42,281, or 35.02 per cent. from 1880 to 1890.
The population by wards in 1900 is as follows: Ward 1: 19,190, Ward 2: 19,185, Ward 3: 17,392, Ward 4: 13,133, Ward 5: 14,204, Ward 6: 15,540, Ward 7: 14,186, Ward 8: 19,112, Ward 9: 14, 937, Ward 10: 15,505, Ward 11: 22,754, Ward 12: 21,295.
The population of Hoboken, according to the official count, is as follows:
Hoboken City 1900: 59,364 1890: 43,648
These figures show for the city as a whole an increase in population of 15,716, or 36.01 percent, from 1890 to 1900. The population in 1880 was 30,999, showing an increase of 12,649, or 40.80 per cent., from 1880 to 1890.
The population by wards in 1900 is as follows: Ward 1: 10,955, Ward 2: 8,472, Ward 3: 14,218, Ward 4: 14,983, Ward 5: 10,736. Printed photograph from the drama "Richard Carvel" with caption as follows: "RICHARD CARVEL," AT THE EMPIRE - A SCENE FROM THE SECOND ACT - JOHN DREW IN THE TITLE ROLE - IDA CONQEST AS DOROTHY MANNERS. Cash Account. November 1900
New York Times letter to the editor by Manners entitled:
Protest of a Lover of Genius.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
What must be thought of an American Hall of Fame that includes Peter Cooper, the glue man, and excludes Fenimore Cooper, the romancer, who, in intellectual proportions, most nearly resembles Walter Scott; that sets up the utilitarian Howe with his sewing machine and casts down that fine flower of genius, Edgar Poe, the only poet America has produced, according to some competent foreign critics, and a short-story writer unmatched in any language; that finds a pedestal for Horace Mann, a legislator of little distinction, who effected a few reforms in education, but has no place for Madison, the co-author with Hamilton of the Federalist and father of the Federal Constitution, the world's greatest political charter?
And has it come to this, my countrymen? Then you and I and all of us who can not live by bread alone must perish!
Jersey City, Oct. 17, 1900. E. M.
Appeared Sunday, October 21st. See October 17th ante.
November 8, 1900. (Memoranda.)
Called on Dr. David Webster, the specialist, of No. 327 Madison Avenue, Manhattan Borough. He examined my eyes and glasses; said that the difficulty with my right eye was detachment of the retina, caused probably by over-strain, and advised extreme care in the use of the my other or left eye, protection by smoked glasses from snow-light and other light-glare, and temporary, if not permanent, abstention from professional work. My sight seems to be as clear and effective as usual, which indicates the caution and prodigality of nature in providing us with two eyes, as well as its sense for balance and beauty. But I have sometimes, though chiefly unconscious of it, the uncanny feeling that I carry about with me a dead or dying orb and should be penitent or do something desperate or hold a funeral, and yet considering the many deaths, partial or seeming, one experiences in body and soul, from conscious existence to final dissolution, to be of this mood or mode of thinking would keep me too morbidly busy for the more valuable parts of life's exigencies.
Answering my questions, Dr. Webster tried to assure me that if errors had been made in the treatment of my right eye, they are not sufficient to cause its blindness. This may be an honest opinion, influenced or not by professional esprit de corps*, but it is not a fine one. A delicate sensitive organ like the eye at a critical juncture, may be lead by right remedies to light and strength, whereas a mistaken remedy, an abuse, an error of judgment might prove to be the last straw that broke the camel's back. It must be borne in mind that my eye in the first instance was not in a bad condition. I could see with it as well as with the other eye, barring a slight thread-like appearance that occasionally crossed it. I was reluctant to go to an oculist, not feeling the need, but thought best to take no risks. I took greater chances by going. From the moment his treatment was applied, the eye grew gradually worse until sight was extinguished. It is not so much a question whether treatment caused the injury, as whether proper remedies could not have prevented it. They could. I know how crude legal procedure often is, I know something about the blunders of physicians and surgeons, and I protest it is a crying shame and strange, that with their reputed proficiency and advance, practitioners are not more skilful, more subtle, and safe.
Nevertheless I liked Dr. Webster; he was courteous and sympathetic. His office in my case was only that of examination and advice, and there should be no implication of criticism, unless it be for his too complacent assurance. *
1900
Two loose newspaper clippings, one entitled "$45,000 Bequest to Princeton.", and one with an ad for the public auction of the residence of Mrs. Constance Biddle, 340 West 70th Street, on one side and a poem on the other.
$45,000 Bequest to Princeton.
PRINCETON, N. J., April 18. - President Patton announced to-day that the university had recently received the sum of $45,000 by the will of Augustus Van Wickle of Hazelton, Penn. The gift was made in honor of Nathaniel Fitz Randolph, who gave the ground on which the college was originally built. Mr. Van Wickle is a graduate of Brown University and he gave a similar bequest to it, also $30,000 to Lafayette College.
Without haste! without rest!
Bind the motto to thy breast;
Bear it with thee as a spell;
Storm or sunshine, guard it well!
Heed not flowers that round thee bloom,
Bear it onward to the tomb!
Haste not! let no thoughtless deed
Mar for aye the spirit's speed;
Ponder well and know the right,
Onward then with all thy might,
Haste not, years can ne'er atone,
For one reckless action done.
Rest not! Life is sweeping by,
Go and dare before you die:
Something mighty and sublime
Leave behind to conquer time!
Glorious 'tis to live for aye
When these forms have passed away.
Haste not! rest not! calmly wait;
Meekly bear the storms of fate!
Duty be thy polar guide.
Do the right whate'er betide!
Haste not! rest not! conflicts past,
God shall crown thy work at last.