第62章 Personality Letters (2)

"Edward Bok has persevered like the widow in scripture, and the most obdurate subjects of his quest have found it for their interest to give in, lest by his continual coming he should weary them.We forgive him;almost admire him for his pertinacity; only let him have no imitators.

The tax he has levied must not be imposed a second time.

"An autograph of a distinguished personage means more to an imaginative person than a prosaic looker-on dreams of.Along these lines ran the consciousness and the guiding will of Napoleon, or Washington, of Milton or Goethe.

"His breath warmed the sheet of paper which you have before you.The microscope will show you the trail of flattened particles left by the tesselated epidermis of his hand as it swept along the manuscript.Nay, if we had but the right developing fluid to flow over it, the surface of the sheet would offer you his photograph as the light pictured it at the instant of writing.

"Look at Mr.Bok's collection with such thoughts,...and you will cease to wonder at his pertinacity and applaud the conquests of his enthusiasm.

"Oliver Wendell Holmes."

Whenever biographers of the New England school of writers have come to write of John Greenleaf Whittier, they have been puzzled as to the scanty number of letters and private papers left by the poet.This letter, written to Bok, in comment upon a report that the poet had burned all his letters, is illuminating:

"Dear Friend:

"The report concerning the burning of my letters is only true so far as this: some years ago I destroyed a large collection of letters I had received not from any regard to my own reputation, but from the fear that to leave them liable to publicity might be injurious or unpleasant to the writers or their friends.They covered much of the anti-slavery period and the War of the Rebellion, and many of them I knew were strictly private and confidential.I was not able at the time to look over the MS.and thought it safest to make a bonfire of it all.I have always regarded a private and confidential letter as sacred and its publicity in any shape a shameful breach of trust, unless authorized by the writer.I only wish my own letters to thousands of correspondents may be as carefully disposed of.

"You may use this letter as you think wise and best.

"Very truly thy friend, "John G.Whittier."Once in a while a bit of untold history crept into a letter sent to Bok;as for example in the letter, referred to in a previous chapter from General Jubal A.Early, the Confederate general, in which he gave an explanation, never before fully given, of his reasons for the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania:

"The town of Chambersburg was burned on the same day on which the demand on it was made by McCausland and refused.It was ascertained that a force of the enemy's cavalry was approaching, and there was no time for delay.Moreover, the refusal was peremptory, and there was no reason for delay unless the demand was a mere idle threat.

"I had no knowledge of what amount of money there might be in Chambersburg.I knew that it was a town of some twelve thousand inhabitants.The town of Frederick, in Maryland, which was a much smaller town than Chambersburg, had in June very promptly responded to my demand on it for $200,000, some of the inhabitants, who were friendly to me, expressing a regret that I had not made it $500,000.There were one or more National Banks at Chambersburg, and the town ought to have been able to raise the sum I demanded.I never heard that the refusal was based on the inability to pay such a sum, and there was no offer to pay any sum.The value of the houses destroyed by Hunter, with their contents, was fully $100,000 in gold, and at the time I made the demand the price of gold in greenbacks had very nearly reached $3.00 and was going up rapidly.Hence it was that I required the $500,000 in greenbacks, if the gold was not paid, to provide against any further depreciation of the paper money.

"I would have been fully justified by the laws of retaliation in war in burning the town without giving the inhabitants the opportunity of redeeming it.

"J.A.Early."

Bok wrote to Eugene Field, once, asking him why in all his verse he had never written any love-songs, and suggesting that the story of Jacob and Rachel would have made a theme for a beautiful love-poem.Field's reply is interesting and characteristic, and throws a light on an omission in his works at which many have wondered:

"Dear Bok:

"I'll see what I can do with the suggestion as to Jacob and Rachel.

Several have asked me why I have never written any love-songs.That is hard to answer.I presume it is because I married so young.I was married at twenty-three, and did not begin to write until I was twenty-nine.Most of my lullabies are, in a sense, love-songs; so is 'To a Usurper,' 'A Valentine,' 'The Little Bit of a Woman,' 'Lovers' Lane,'

etc., but not the kind commonly called love-songs.I am sending you herewith my first love-song, and even into it has crept a cadence that makes it a love-song of maturity rather than of youth.I do not know that you will care to have it, but it will interest you as the first....

"Ever sincerely yours, "Eugene Field."

During the last years of his life, Bok tried to interest Benjamin Harrison, former President of the United States, in golf, since his physician had ordered "moderate outdoor exercise." Bok offered to equip him with the necessary clubs and balls.When he received the balls, the ex-president wrote:

"Thanks.But does not a bottle of liniment go with each ball?"When William Howard Taft became President of the United States, the impression was given out that journalists would not be so welcome at the White House as they had been during the administration of President Roosevelt.Mr.Taft, writing to Bok about another matter, asked why he had not called and talked it over while in Washington.Bok explained the impression that was current; whereupon came the answer, swift and definite!