“RIVERS ARE DAMP”: MISS MARTHA EMMELINE HUNT

Her inability to bridge the gap between day-to-day life and thelife of the mind and spirit stands in sharp contrast to HenryDavid Thoreau’s deliberate attempt to reconcile the two atWalden Pond, where he moved on July 4, 1845, days before MarthaHunt’s death, and also to the story of her brother William HenryHunt, who made the most of his opportunities and against theodds forged a satisfying life.

— Leslie Perrin Wilson, 2006

Résumé

Razors pain you, Rivers are damp,Acids stain you, And drugs cause cramp.Guns aren’t lawful, Nooses give,Gas smells awful. You might as well live.

— Dorothy Parker, 1937

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Martha Emmeline Hunt was born to Clarissa Flint Cutter Hunt and Daniel Hunt, of a farm family which lived in two adjacent houses on Punkatasset Hill in Concord.

Either this infant or a later sister Ellen Maria Hunt (born in 1837) had a club foot. Both Martha and Ellen would drown themselves, Martha at the age of 19, Ellen at the age of 23. Another Hunt sister later also would drown herself, as would a female cousin who lived nearby. (Also, a half-sister by their mother’s 1st marriage, Clarissa Cutter, would drown, albeit the record states that this particular drowning had been accidental.)

Edward Jarvis, a local resident, was the schoolmaster for Concord’s grammar students.

1826

1785 Nathaniel Bridge 9 months 1812 Isaac Warren 1 year

1786 JOSEPH HUNT 2½ years 1813 JOHN BROWN 1 year

1788 William A. Barron 3 years 1814 Oliver Patten 1 year

1791 Amos Bancroft 1 year 1815 Stevens Everett 9 months

1792 Heber Chase 1 year 1815 Silas Holman 3 months

1793 WILLIAM JONES 1 year 1816 George F. Farley 1 year

1794 Samuel Thatcher 1 year 1817 James Howe 1 year

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May 10: On the last leaves of a book of ITALIAN EXERCISES, Miss Martha Emmeline Hunt, the schoolteacher of a class in District No. 4, the West Quarter of Concord, kept a journal for about two months prior to her suicide in the Concord River. On this day her jottings included the following:

O Father! Thou art incomprehensibly great and perfect, and I, amere atom of the dust, deep-sinning and unholy creature,incapable of conceiving of Thee, except as the Author of allthat is conceivable to us. O, how the thought of Thee, fills mysoul! Now is everything great, pure and beautiful. O, this islife — this my only life — Thee in all things! O, why may I notalways have self thus lost in Thee!

1795 JAMES TEMPLE 2 years 1818 Samuel Barrett 1 year

1797 Thomas O. Selfridge 1 year 1819 BENJAMIN BARRETT 1 year

1798 THOMAS WHITING 4 years 1820 Abner Forbes 2 years

1802 Levi Frisbie 1 year 1822 Othniel Dinsmore 3 years

1803 Silas Warren 4 years 1825 James Furbish 1 year

1807 Wyman Richardson 1 year 1826 EDWARD JARVIS 1 year

1808 Ralph Sanger 1 year 1827 Horatio Wood 1 year

1809 Benjamin Willard 1 year 1828 David J. Merrill 1 year

1810 Elijah F. Paige 1 year 1829 John Graham 1 year

1811 Simeon Putnam 1 year 1831 John Brown

1845

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June 13, Friday: Captain Edward H. Faucon brought the Frolic to anchorage near Macau after a 4,470-mile passage from Bombay by way of Singapore. Her sailing time had been 34 days. If the Anodyne arrived anytime during the following two days, it would mean defeat.

On the last leaves of a book of ITALIAN EXERCISES, the Concord schoolteacher Miss Martha Emmeline Hunt was keeping a journal of sorts prior to her suicide in the Concord River. On this day her jottings included the following:

O, my God, art thou indeed my Father, who doth thus desert me!O! What have I done? I must indeed be worse, than the worst ofliving beings, for thine infinite perfection hath condescendedto the lowest sinners — but I am so lost! The earth is a thousandpointed dagger, without a friend who careth for me —myselfagainst myself— everything arrayed in the bitterest reproachagainst me — and for what? Not for what I have done, but forwhat I have not done.

INDIA

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June 17, Tuesday: The nation was learning that former president Andrew Jackson had died:

On the last leaves of a book of ITALIAN EXERCISES, the Concord schoolteacher Miss Martha Emmeline Hunt was keeping a journal of sorts prior to her suicide in the Concord River. On this day her jottings included the following:

The world smiles; many people are living happy harmless lives.Thank God, that He has made some people so happy, ... It is wellthat the world knoweth not, what unutterable and inconceivablethings are burning the very being of those who seem so happy.

Apparently after reading the new book NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE by Frederick Douglass or reading in the New-York Tribune the review of this book by Margaret Fuller (or perchance memorializing the memorable appearance that Frederick had made in Concord, at which she presumably had been present, or after attending some more recent local anti-slavery lecture that is not of record), her comment was:

We cry loudly for the poor, oppressed Slave, and well we may.

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Our loudest cry is but a faint voice which should burst forthin such anguish, as should rouse the whole earth for freedom.But slaves are not confined to color. O, God perhaps in thy sightthey are least slaves. Slaves! Are we not all slaves? We murmurthat Thou hast tried us beyond our strength. We think ofourselves, more than of Thee. — Then we are lost. This is slavery— this is death.

July 5: On the last leaves of a book of ITALIAN EXERCISES, the Concord schoolteacher Miss Martha Emmeline Hunt was keeping a journal of sorts. On this day just prior to her suicide in the Concord River, her jottings included the following:

Our nature is oppressed to its last power of endurance. Our innerlife bursts out in bitter reproaches. — But we are no longerourselves.... We lay the blame on our bodies. They are diseased.They cramp the spirit. But herein hast Thou even blessed us.These heavy chains are the links in the trial, that is to purifyus for new freedom.

Walden Sat. July 5th–45: Yesterday I came here to live. My house makes me think of some mountainhouses I have seen, which seemed to have a fresher auroral atmosphere about them as I fancy of the halls ofOlympus. I lodged at the house of a saw-miller last summer, on the Caatskills mountains, high up as Pineorchard in the blue-berry & raspberry region, where the quiet and cleanliness & coolness seemed to be all one,which had this ambrosial character. He was the miller of the Kaaterskill Falls, They were a clean &wholesome family inside and out –like their house. The latter was not plastered –only lathed and the inner doorswere not hung. The house seemed high placed, airy, and perfumed, fit to entertain a travelling God. It was sohigh indeed that all the music, the broken strains, the waifs & accompaniments of tunes, that swept over theridge of the Caatskills, passed through its aisles. Could not man be man in such an abode? And would he everfind out this grovelling life?It was the very light & atmosphere in which the works of Grecian art were composed, and in which they rest.They have appropriated to themselves a loftier hall than mortals every occupy, at least on a level with themountain brows of the world.There was wanting a little of the glare of the lower vales and in its place a pure twilight as became the precinctsof heaven Yet so equable and calm was the season there that you could not tell whether it was morning or noonor evening. Always there was the sound of the morning cricket

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July 6: Frederick Douglass lectured in Hubbardstown (Hubbardston), Massachusetts.

Henry Thoreau recorded his purpose in moving out to the new shanty on Walden Pond: “I wish to meet the facts of life- the vital facts, which are the phenomena or actuality the Gods meant to show us – face to face, and so I came down here Life? Who knows what it is, what it does? If I am not quite right here, I am less wrong than before; and now let us see what they will have.”

On the last leaves of a book of ITALIAN EXERCISES, the Concord schoolteacher Miss Martha Emmeline Hunt was keeping a journal of sorts. On this day just prior to throwing herself into the Concord River, her jottings included the following:

True spirits should exult, rather than despond. A Cato lackedone thing to greatness, a patience to live on. Rise up, O! Lord,in all the strength thy God has given thee, rise and resist. —Struggle on. — That thou hast struggled through darker hours,let this bear thee up.... Heaven knows the leaden weights thatpress down the bursting soul.... Let me but rest myself in God,and [no further writing]

That evening she left her boarding house and started to walk to her family home, which was about a hundred rods from the Concord River. In the dusk she turned down a bypath to the river, and remained near the river in the dark. Her father heard her come into the house after midnight. She commented that she was planning to start walking to her school early the next morning, before the heat of the day came on.

July 6th I wish to meet the facts of life –the vital facts, which where the phenomena or actuality theGods meant to show us, –face to face, And so I came down here. Life! who knows what it is –what it does? IfI am not quite right here I am less wrong than before –and now let us see what they will have. The preacher,instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest, at the end of the week, (for sunday alwaysseemed to me like a fit conclusion of an ill spent week and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one) withthis one other draggletail and postponed affair of a sermon, from thirdly to 15thly, should teach them with athundering voice –pause & simplicity.stop– Avast– Why so fast? In all studies we go not forward but rather backward with redoubled pauses, wealways study antiques –with silence and reflection. Even time has a depth, and below its surface the waves donot lapse and roar. I wonder men can be so frivolous almost as to attend to the gross form of negro slavery –there are so many keen and subtle masters, who subject us both. Self-emancipation in the West Indies of a man’sthinking and imagining provinces, which should be more than his island territory One emancipated heart &intellect– It would knock off the fetters from a million slaves.

TIMELINE OF WALDEN

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July 7: Frederick Douglass lectured in Princeton MA.

In the Hunt family home near the Concord River, Miss Martha Emmeline Hunt rose at 5AM and, taking with her some little articles that she would need during the day, began her trudge toward her District No. 4 one-room schoolhouse in the West Quarter of Concord. However, she was seen, for some two hours, to be remaining along the riverbank. Then she was not any longer noticed. One must speculate at the impact of this on the scholars in that little building waiting for their teacher’s arrival

July 7th I am glad to remember to-night, as I sit by my door, that I too am at least a remotedescendant of that heroic race of men of whom there is tradition. I too sit here on the shore of my Ithaca, afellow-wanderer and survivor of Ulysses. How symbolical, significant of I know not what, the pitch pine standshere before my door! Unlike any glyph I have seen sculptured or painted yet, one of Nature’s later designs, yetperfect as her Grecian art. There it is, a done tree. Who can mend it? And now where is the generation of heroeswhose lives are to pass amid these our northern pines, whose exploits shall appear to posterity pictured amidthese strong and shaggy forms?Shall there be only arrows and bows to go with these pines on some pipe-stone quarry at length?There is something more respectable than railroads in these simple relics of the Indian race. What hieroglyphsshall we add to the pipe-stone quarry?If we can forget we have done somewhat, if we can remember we have done somewhat. Let us remember thisThe Great spirit of course makes indifferent all times & places. The place where he is seen is always the same,and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. We had allowed only near-lying and transient circumstances tomake our occasions But nearest to all things is that which fashions its being. Next to us the grandest laws arebeing enacted and administered.Bread may not always nourish us, but it always does us good it even takes stiffness out of our joints and makesus supple and boyant when we knew not what ailed us –to share any heroic joy –to recognise any largeness inman or nature, to see and to know– This is all cure and prevention.Verily a good house is a temple– A clean house –pure and undefiled, as the saying is. I have seen such made ofwhite pine. Seasoned and seasoning still to eternity. Where a Goddess might trail her garment. The less dust webring in to nature, the less we shall have t pick up. It was a place where one would go in, expecting to findsomething agreeable; as to a shade –or to a shelter –a more natural place.I hear the far off lowing of a cow and it seems to heave the firmament. I at first thought it was the voice of aminstrel whom I know, who might be straying over hill and dale this eve –but soon I was not disappointed whenit was prolonged into the sweet and natural and withal cheap tone of the cow. This youths brave music is indeedof kin with the music of the cow. They are but one articulation of nature.Sound was made not so much for convenience, that we might hear when called, as to regale the sense –and fillone of the avenues of life. A healthy organization will never need what are commonly called the sensualgratifications, but will enjoy the daintiest feasts at those tables where there is nothing to tempt the appetite ofthe sensual.There are strange affinities in this universe –strange ties stranger harmonies and relationships, what kin am I tosome wildest pond among the mountains –high up ones shaggy side –in the gray morning twilight draped withmist –suspended in low wreathes from the dead willows and bare firs that stand here and there in the water, asif here were the evidence of those old contests between the land and water which we read of. But why should Ifind anything to welcome me in such a nook as this– This faint reflection this dim watery eye –where in someangle of the hills the woods meet the waters edge and a grey tarn lies sleepingMy beans –whose continuous length of row is 7 miles, already planted and now so impatient to be howed –noteasily to be put off. What is the meaning of this service this small Hercules labor –of this small warfare –I knownot. I come to love my rows –they attach me to the earth –and so I get new strength and health like Antaeus–My beans, so many more than I want. This has been my curious labor– Why only heaven knows –to make thissurface of the earth, which yielded only blackberries & Johnswort –& cinqfoil –sweet wild fruits & pleasantflowers produce instead this pulse What shall I learn of beans or beans of me– I cherish them– I hoe themearly & late I have an eye to them.– And this is my days work. It is a fine broad leaf to look upon.My auxiliaries are the dews and rains –to water this dry soil –and genial fatness in the soil itself, which for themost part is lean and effoete. My enemies are worms cool days –and most of all woodchucks. They have nibbledfor me an eigth of an acre clean. I plant in faith –and they reap –this is the tax I pay –for ousting Jonswort & therest But soon the surviving beans will be too tough for woodchucks and then –they will go forward to meetnew foes.

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July 9: On the night of July 9th, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ellery Channing used the Pond Lily to help others search for the body of a suicide, a Miss Martha Emmeline Hunt about 19 years of age who had been superintendent of one of the district schools, with 60 pupils.1 She had left her bonnet and shoes and handkerchief at a spot on

the bank of the river some ways below the bridge, a half a mile across a pasture from her parents’ home, early

1. During his summer vacation in Concord in 1853, the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway was boarding with some Misses Hunt at a pleasant cottage on Ponkawtasset Hill and they informed him that they had been Martha’s cousins, and were concerned that George William Curtis, in his HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS, “had suggested that Martha’s suicide was due to the contrast between her transcendental ideals and the coarseness of her home.” Conway continued, in his late-life autobiography, that “They described the family of their cousin as educated people. One of these sisters walked with me to the river and pointed out all the places connected with the tragedy, and some years later another cousin drowned herself there.”

Not far from this spot, lay an old, leaky punt, drawn up on the oozy river-side, and generally half-full of water. It served the angler to go in quest of pickerel, or the sportsman to pick up his wild-ducks. Setting this crazy barque afloat, I seated myself in the stern, with the paddle, while Hollingsworth sat in the bows, with the hooked pole, and Silas Foster amidships, with a hay-rake.

“It puts me in mind of my young days,” remarked Silas, “when I used to steal out of bed to go bobbing for horn-pouts and eels. Heigh-ho! — well! — life and death together make sad work for us all. Then, I was a boy, bobbing for fish; and now I am getting to be an old fellow, and here I be, groping for a dead body! I tell you what, lads, if I thought anything had really happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o’ sorrowful.”

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that morning, and to have walked to and fro on the bank for several hours.

This was a sexual opportunity not to be missed, and every male in Concord who had heard of the matter had thronged to the river bank (but apparently Henry Thoreau was out in his cabin on the pond, behaving himself).

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In the Pond Lily, the young man with the long pole

My personal interpretation of what these eager male hookers were up to, on the river that night, is that, when their pole finally hooked the corpse in an eye socket, and it was hauled to the surface, what Nathaniel got a good look at, and perhaps a feel of, was his ideal of the perfectly passive female body. The realization of this sexual ideal of True Womanhood proved to be much too much for him:

David Buttrick fainted, but an old carpenter commented that he would as lief handle dead bodies as living ones, and the men gathered around and twisted and stomped on the girl’s limbs locked in rigor mortis in a prolonged pretense that they were forcing her to assume a proper posture for the dead. The family told the hookers who had just been thus pawing the body that the poor girl had attempted to drown herself before, by walking into the river up to her chin, but that a sister had gotten her to come back out of the water. Hawthorne would use 10 paragraphs of his journal of this day in THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE, as an account of the recovery of the body of the suicide “Zenobia”2 who had drowned as an “Arcadian affectation,” omitting the unromantic

drew her towards the boat, grasped her arm or hand; andI steered the boat to the bank, all the while lookingat this dead girl, whose limbs were swaying in thewater, close at the boat’s side. The fellow evidentlyhad the same sort of feeling in his success as if hehad caught a particularly fine fish; though mingled,no doubt, with horror. For my own part, I felt my voicetremble a little, when I spoke, at the shock of thediscovery; and at seeing the body come to the surface,dimly in the starlight. When close to the bank, someof the men stepped into the water and drew out thebody; and then, by their lanterns, I could see howrigid it was. There was nothing flexible about it; shedid not droop over the arms of those who supported her,with her hair hanging down, as a painter would haverepresented her, but was all as stiff as marble. Andit was evident that her wet garments covered limbsperfectly inflexible. They took her out of the water,and deposited her under an oak-tree; and by the timewe had got ashore, they were examining her by the lightof two or three lanterns.... As soon as she was takenout of the water, the blood began to stream from hernose. Something seemed to have injured her eye, too;perhaps it was the pole, when it first struck the body.The complexion was a dark red, almost purple; the handswere white, with the same rigidity in their clench asin all the rest of the body.... If she could haveforeseen, while she stood, at 5 oclock that morning,on the bank of the river, how her maiden corpse wouldhave looked, eighteen hours afterwards, and how coarsemen would strive with hand and foot to reduce it to adecent aspect, and all in vain — it would surely havesaved her from this deed.

I never saw or imagined a spectacle of such perfecthorror.

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description of the continuous flow of blood from the nose (a description which I also omitted, above). Hawthorne also changed the grapple wound from the eye socket to the “breast.”3

Since a “young brother of the deceased, apparently about twelve or fourteen years old” was on the bank watching this, we may presume that the hooking party was being witnessed by Daniel Otis Hunt, who had been born in 1831.

When they got the makeshift bier back to the Hunt farmhouses on Punkatasset Hill, Mrs. Maria Pratt and others laid the body out for its interment.

Here is a puzzle. Where is the body of Martha Emmeline Hunt buried? Was there a burial service? (If this event had occurred in England, we know from the act of July 4, 1823 what would have needed to have happened to such a corpse: the body of the suicide could be interred in a churchyard or public burial place only if such interment occurred within 24 hours of the coroner’s inquest and certificate, took place after 9PM and before midnight, and was bereft of any accompanying Christian religious observance. We know, further, that in the case of an English suicide, any goods and chattels of the deceased would be forfeit to the Crown. We need to research and discover how American law bore on this circumstance, and what happened specifically in Concord.)

Here then is Hawthorne’s entry in his AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS, as rendered into poetry by Robert Peters:

2. Margaret Fuller was held by authorities in the 19th Century to have evinced a death wish, for, staring across the gap of raging surf at the dead bodies of her husband and her baby stretched upon the beach, drowned one after the other in the attempt to get to shore, she could not force herself to leap into the ocean, and was still on the ship clutching the mast when it broke up in the waves. And, she had been a school superintendent, just like this Concord River suicide Martha Hunt!3. Were Margaret’s breasts that fascinating, in spite of her twisted spine?

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Hawthorne also had a few choice words to say about his rowing companion on this expedition, Ellery:

The Drowned GirlI

We caused the boat to floatonce or twice past the spotwhere the bonnet was found.The poles or the rake caughtin bunches of water-weed, whichin the star-light, looked likegarments. All this timepersons on the bank were anxiouslywaiting.

II‘What’s this?’ cried he.I suppose the same electric shockwent through everybody in the boat.‘Yes, I’ve got her!’

IIII felt my voice trembleat the first shock ofseeing the body cometo the surface, dimlyin the star-light.

IVI could see how rigid she was. She did not droop over the arms of those who supported her, with her hair hanging down, but was all stiff, as marble.They examined herby the light of two or three lanterns.Her arms had stiffenedand were bent before her.She was the very image of death-agony.

VThey deposited her under an oak-tree.When the men tried to compose her figure,her arms would return to that same position.One of the men put his foot uponher arm, for the purpose of reducing itby her side; but, in a moment, it rose again.Blood began to stream from her nose. Something had injured her eye, too.Perhaps it was the pole, when it first struck the body. The complexion was a dark red, almost purple. The handswere white, with the same rigidity in their clench as in all the rest of the body.Two of the men got water and washed away theblood from her face. But it flowed and flowedand continued to flow.

Peters, Robert Louis. HAWTHORNE: POEMS ADAPTED FROM THE AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS. Fairfax CA: Poet-Skin / Red Hill Press, 1977.

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“What a gump!...On the whole, he is but little betterthan an idiot. He should have been whipt often andsoundly in his boyhood; and as he escaped such wholesomediscipline then, it might be well to bestow it now.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne, about Ellery Channing

July 11: Frederick Douglass lectured in South Wilbraham, Massachusetts.

A death notice for Martha Emmeline Hunt appeared in the Concord Freeman.

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July 26, day: Asher Benjamin died in Springfield, Massachusetts at the age of 72.

The full obituary of Martha Emmeline Hunt appeared in Boston’s Unitarian newspaper, the Christian Register. The likely author of this anonymous piece, according to Leslie Perrin Wilson’s reasoning, would have been the Reverend Barzillai Frost of Concord’s Unitarian First Parish church.

OBITUARY.Miss Martha E. Hunt.

In Concord, on the 9th inst., Miss Martha E. Hunt, aged 19.This young lady, in great depression of spirits, and a temporaryinsanity, threw herself into Concord river and was drowned. Fromremarks dropped to her friends, from her letters, but especiallyfrom her private journal, kept up to the day before she committedthe deed, we have a clear view of her state of mind. There isnothing in this journal that makes it improper to publish

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extracts.Although kept carelessly in pencil, scarcely legible, on thelast leaves of a book of Italian Exercises, yet it revealsglimpses of thoughts and feeling, scarcely less deep thanAugustine’s Confessions. The case of this young lady is sointeresting and instructive, that I cannot but think, someaccount of it, will be useful to the young and especially tothose exposed to like mental trials.From childhood, Miss Hunt, was subject to a constitutionalmelancholy, that brought her, at times, to the verge ofinsanity.She was gifted by nature, with a fine intellectual and moralconstitution. She had an unusual thirst for knowledge, and greatdiligence in its pursuit. But she had a still greater thirst forspiritual excellence. This made her extremely dissatisfied withher present attainments under the most favorable circumstances.She had a physical constitution that subjected her at times toextreme depression of spirits. She was accustomed to habits ofstudy and mental abstraction, that were unfavorable to facilityin the ordinary duties of life. This increased herdissatisfaction with herself. She also had an extremesensitiveness and diffidence, which made her shrink fromcommunicating her feelings to others. She was thus cut off fromthe sympathy and advice of minds that might have cheered andguided her aright and not left to struggle alone with her mentaltrials. And nobly did she sustain that struggle. Her journalgoes back only about two months. But, during that time, whilethe darkness was thickening around her, while the light ofreason was becoming less steady, none but the noblest qualitiesof mind and heart and the most Christian resolutions appear onher Journals. In the darkest hours, when her mind was strugglingwith doubts and almost with despair, there is no trace ofscepticism. She turned in filial confidence to God. Sometimesher mind rises to the highest devotions. May 10. She records.“O Father! Thou art incomprehensibly great and perfect, and I,a mere atom of the dust, deep-sinning and unholy creature,incapable of conceiving of Thee, except as the Author of allthat is conceivable to us. O, how the thought of Thee, fills mysoul! Now is everything great, pure and beautiful. O, this islife — this my only life — Thee in all things! O, why may I notalways have self thus lost in Thee!” And, when she sunk into thedeepest gloom, she still clung to God as her Father, often witha pathos, as touching as that in which Jesus cried out in theagony of the cross.June 13. She records. “O, my God, art thou indeed my Father, whodoth thus desert me! O! What have I done? I must indeed be worse,than the worst of living beings, for thine infinite perfectionhath condescended to the lowest sinners — but I am so lost! Theearth is a thousand pointed dagger, without a friend who carethfor me —myself against myself— everything arrayed in thebitterest reproach against me — and for what? Not for what Ihave done, but for what I have not done.” Even in this dark hour,conscience could bring up nothing of positive sin against her;so pure had she been. She seemed mortified and wounded, that hermind dwelt so much on herself. In one record she writes. “Am I

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indeed so selfish, that I think only of self?” And in anotherplace, “selfishness is the thorn that pierceth so.” It woundedher generous nature, that her diseased thoughts should run somuch on her own sufferings. But there was no scepticism. Sheadds. “Unto Thee, O God, is my cry. Support me through this darkhour, and in thy strength I will live.” This forcibly remindedme of that touching expression of the Psalmist, “Though He slayme, yet will I trust in Him.”In all this trial, she preserved herself from misanthropy, aswell as from scepticism. In all her dreadful sense of lonelinessshe never once complains of neglect. In all her highaspirations, and the consciousness of noble powers, she nevercomplains of not being appreciated. She lays the blame, not uponGod, nor upon others, nor upon outward trials, but upon herself.And when most unhappy, she rejoices in the happiness of others.June 17. She records, “The world smiles; many people are livinghappy harmless lives. Thank God, that He has made some peopleso happy,” and then she adds, touchingly, “It is well that theworld knoweth not, what unutterable and inconceivable things areburning the very being of those who seem so happy.”Towards the end of the Journal, she is evidently sinking deeperin gloom. Apparently after hearing an Anti Slavery lecture, sherecords, “We cry loudly for the poor, oppressed Slave, and wellwe may. Our loudest cry is but a faint voice which should burstforth in such anguish, as should rouse the whole earth forfreedom. But slaves are not confined to color. O, God perhapsin thy sight they are least slaves. Slaves! Are we not allslaves? We murmur that Thou hast tried us beyond our strength.We think of ourselves, more than of Thee. — Then we are lost.This is slavery — this is death.” In a few of her last entriesher mind is evidently approaching that crisis, in which itsclearer light is to be extinguished, the will dethroned, and themind borne a helpless victim on the dark waves of despair. Theday but one before her death she records. “Our nature isoppressed to its last power of endurance. Our inner life burstsout in bitter reproaches. — But we are no longer ourselves.” Buteven in these moments of despair, she seems to have had glimpsesof the true cause of these feelings and of their great moralpurpose. In the same entry she writes, “We lay the blame on ourbodies. They are diseased. They cramp the spirit. But hereinhast Thou even blessed us. These heavy chains are the links inthe trial, that is to purify us for new freedom.” In anotherplace she writes, “Exult, O Soul, in thy trials. They are thesteps that lead to life.” The last entry which was made July6th, the day before her death shows a still clearer view of thenature of this trial and how it was to be met. She writes, “Truespirits should exult, rather than despond. A Cato lacked onething to greatness, a patience to live on. Rise up, O! Lord, inall the strength thy God has given thee, rise and resist. —Struggle on. — That thou hast struggled through darker hours,let this bear thee up.” But this noble purpose was borne downby the returning floods of despair that rolled back on her soul.She adds, “Heaven knows the leaden weights that press down thebursting soul.” But even in this hour her mind turned in prayerto God. The last unfinished sentence written probably a few

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minutes before she left her boarding house, was this, “Let mebut rest myself in God, and” Here she broke off. Her mind seemedscattered. She left her boarding house, after school which shewas keeping about two miles from home; and started to go home.— I think for sympathy, to help her through the struggle. Justbefore reaching home at dusk the spell returned and she turneddown a bye path to the river which flowed in front of herfather’s house about a hundred rods distant. There she wrestledwith this terrible temptation till past midnight. She got thevictory and went up to the house. She told her father, who heardher come in, that she should return very early before the heatcame on, to her school. She rose at 5 o’clock, and startedevidently for that purpose, as she took some little articleswith her, which she would want there. But as she passed by thepath that led down to the river, the temptation returned. Shewent down. And there she struggled against these feelings twohours, as she was seen there after that time. But reasontottered, the mind lost its power of self control. God permittedthis, that he might call to himself a spirit that had alreadysuffered too much upon the earth.The most touching thought that rises in view of this case is,that she should have gone through this mortal struggle alone,without one kind word to cheer and strengthen her. Our mostbitter regret is, that having struggled so nobly against thisdelusion, having arrived at such right views of its course, andsuch noble resolutions as to the manner she would meet it, shecould not have had the sympathy of one strong, Christian friendto bear her triumphantly through this trial. This was all sheseemed to need. But this she could not have, because she did notreveal her heart to any one. This should teach the young, andespecially those who are struggling with any trying experience,to seek the sympathy and guidance, of older and more matureminds. How can friends or minister afford this sympathy, andcounsel, unless you open your hearts to them. We learn anotherlesson no less important, in regard to the religious educationof the young. It is not the outward misfortunes and sufferingsof life; it is not the temptations of the world alone, that theyare to be educated to meet. Still severer trials, still greatertemptations await them in their own minds. In the words of thedeceased, we know not what unutterable and inconceivablethoughts are burning the very being of those who seem happy insociety. In another place she exclaims. “My animal wants are allsupplied. O! who shall supply the wants of the mind?” This singleinstance, appeals to us with the force of a hundred sermons, tocarry Christian education and sympathy to meet these wants.Communicated.

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August 1: On West Indian Emancipation Day, in nine abolitionist pic nics in nine Massachusetts towns, Charles King Whipple had arranged for circulation of a pledge not to “countenance or aid the United States government in any war which may be occasioned by the annexation of Texas, or in any other war, foreign or domestic, designed to strengthen or perpetuate slavery.” In Worcester, William Lloyd Garrison, the Reverend Adin Ballou, Stephen Symonds Foster, and Frederick Douglass signed this pledge.

At one of these nine pic nics celebrating the anniversary of West Indian emancipation, in Waltham, Massachusetts, Waldo Emerson lectured. His remarks would be printed verbatim in the New-York Tribune by Ruchames.

One day after departing from Dresden for the Ludwig van Beethoven festival in Bonn accompanied by his wife Clara, Robert Schumann suffered an attack of “anxiety and dizziness.” The trip was aborted and they would travel instead to his family in Zwickau.

An abbreviated obituary of the suicide Martha Emmeline Hunt appeared in the Concord Freeman.

George William Curtis’s posthumous LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS contained the information that that the “good clergyman of the town” of Concord had interested himself in the situation of Miss Martha Emmeline Hunt, the suicide, but had failed to gain her confidence (presumably this reference would have been to the Reverend Barzillai Frost of Concord’s Unitarian First Parish church).

We cry loudly for the poor, oppressed Slave, and well we may.Our loudest cry is but a faint voice which should burst forthin such anguish, as should rouse the whole earth for freedom.But slaves are not confined to color. O, God perhaps in thy sight

1895

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they are least slaves. Slaves! Are we not all slaves?

This work contained nine essays that Curtis had authored during earlier years, and most of them had been previously published:

• EMERSON

• HAWTHORNE

• THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

• RACHEL

• THACKERAY IN AMERICA

• SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

• LONGFELLOW

• OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

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• WASHINGTON IRVING

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

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Prepared: June 10, 2013

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request wehave pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out ofthe shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). Whatthese chronological lists are: they are research reportscompiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data moduleswhich we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.To respond to such a request for information, we merely push abutton.

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Commonly, the first output of the program has obviousdeficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modulesstored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, andthen we need to punch that button again and do a recompile ofthe chronology — but there is nothing here that remotelyresembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know andlove. As the contents of this originating contexture improve,and as the programming improves, and as funding becomesavailable (to date no funding whatever has been needed in thecreation of this facility, the entire operation being run outof pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweakingand recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation ofa generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward andupward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place your requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.Arrgh.