A teacher had opened a studio in
Lake Street. Why did I not try my hand? I would find it a diversion from
other things. I had always loved etchings. I wished I could do that.
Well, this artist taught etching too. She inspired me at once to see
him. His name was Stoddard, and she gave me the number. I conceived an
enthusiasm for this new activity, thinking that it would take me out of
myself and away from the America that was closing around me with such
depressing effect.
Then Abigail and Aldington in supplement of each other began to recall
the names of men then living whom they characterized as light-bearers.
"Really," said Abigail, "there are only a few men of real importance in
America to-day. These politicians and orators--Seward, Sumner, even the
late Webster--amount to very little after all. They are even less than
Lowell, whom Margaret Fuller recently characterized as shallow and
doomed to oblivion. Longfellow is an adapter, a translator, a
simple-hearted man. Whittier--well, all of them have fallen more or
less under the moralistic influence of the country."
"That is what I like about Douglas," I said. "He is not a humbug. I like
his ironical voice against all these silly movements, like liquor laws;
these ideas like God in the little affairs of men; all this barbarism
which breaks into religious manias; all these half-baked reformations.
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