[Boston—Friday, 26 October 1866]
Friday. Weather becoming colder—my first thought on looking out was—the sky looks like snow. After Lissie came from her studio yesterday we lunched and made 7 calls. Found the old ladies, the Misses May—“Cousin Mary & Augusta” at home. Proper old ladies, fading out of life with gentility—full of good hearted-ness too, with sufficient sternness in their compositions to prevent any compromise with their principles. They have a picture by Stuart of “Uncle Jo. May” and a good strong old painting of a face and a literal portrait of Mrs May hanging in their small back parlor. They were much pleased by our visit evidently. But there is something indescribably melancholy in the fading out of lives which have not been springs of joyousness even in their best estate. The blearing of the eyes, the slowness of hearing, and other marks of decay, the incapacity to perform even the little duties which have made up almost all the joy they have had in existence, fill us with strange questionings. We wonder why they don’t die tomorrow, not one at a time but the two or three who are dependent upon each other! Yet the nearer we come to such lives, we perceive a nutty flavor which life possesses and perhaps even a growing perception of the eternal expressed in the open sympathies around them which sweetens existence to the end.
Friday Evening Hepworth Dixon of the London Athenæum and Saml Bowles, were here. Mr Dixon has just returned from his journey to Utah, has been in the country nearly 3 months, has slept in a bed only 18 nights, has written 2 volumes, has seen, the Mormons, the Moravians, the Shakers, visited all familiarly, has studied all the Communists he could find trace of, many of them true powers in the Republic, such as the Bible Communists, in especial, at Oneida N.Y. has barely escaped with his life from the Indians in Holliday’s stages, finding travel in the west difficult and dangerous beyond that in any other part of the world. He sails next Wednesday from New York for home.
Such restless ceaseless irritable activity is at once glorious and sad to contemplate. “I am never sick” he said, “I am as tough as an old nut, can bear everything, except hunger, which makes me mad, wild, fierce (and his eyes glared as he said this) but not faint as it does many. While on this terrible journey across the Plains, having been 30 hours without tasting food, I leaped out at one of the stations & shot a prairie dog. “You’ll not eat that” said our driver “the rattlesnake, night-owl, and prairie dog are kin, and people go mad who eat them.” “I shall try” said Mr Dixon, “cook the creature and we will see. So after he was cooked I sat down and ate a leg of the animal with great relish. The driver could not stand this and in spite of his fear finished all I did not need.”
His account of the insufficient aid against the Indians, of the poorly manned forts, of brave men shot down at the way stations, the wife of one of whom they rescued & carried to Denver, is heart rending, even more hideous yet is the frivolous, disgusting disregard paid by Mr Seward to the state of affairs there, and his ignorance of anything out of Washington. He did not even know of the existence of the Moravian school from whence 500 educated girls are sent every year to marry the men who are to rule and civilize our land. Our poor poor country! Our glorious country! All will be right yet if we pray and labor.
Mr Dixon returned to breakfast Saturday morning and continued his fire of talk about the Indians. He frankly confessed he would have turned back and nothing would have tempted him beyond Denver had he not crossed the ocean for the purpose, of many years, of seeing the Mormons. He seemed fatigued like one desiring he hardly knew what and asked if he might come again. He has something of the petty autocrat which a writer and editor may fall or dwindle into, if he be not too large for that by the inherent greatness which is in him. He said his was the first journal on either side of the water to recognize Hawthorne. He was the first man!!!!! I laughed at him a little for that but he was inclined to be pugnacious on the subject. Although writing books for money all the time, he seems rather to have transferred his interest from literature to political economy and institutions. On the whole he is clearly the coping pugnacious individual called “the Athenæum” with plenty of working ability, plenty of mental and physical activity, coming out not infrequently in saucy jollity.
This breakfast business rather broke up my day. They did not cease before ½ past eleven, Lissie having slipped away to her studio at ten, then came housekeeping, a little writing, when it was time for a walk. I long to grasp the days and hours tighter,—happy are they who hold a firm grasp in spite of interruptions. I believe this is something we must acquire and can.
