A careless glance at Revolutionary literature leaves the impression that America was like Bethesda in those days, and that the multitudes about its troubled pools had no thought but to be healed of their political infirmities. There were many writers, however, who were undisturbed by the general excitement, and whose works have enduring charm from the fact that they deal with life, which is old as the earth, rather than with political problems which arose but yesterday. Crèvecœur's Letters from an American Farmer , for instance, is a joyous, a charming bit of literature, giving idyllic pictures of nature and human life in the Colonies. Here also is Jonathan Carver's Travels through the Interior Parts of North America , a brave book, as fascinating as Parkman's story of the Jesuit explorers. Among the historical writers are Hutchinson, who carries out the work of Bradford and Prince; Ramsay and Belknap, History of the Revolution in South Carolina . His twelve-volume work, Universal History Americanized , is as suggestive as Noah Webster's Dictionary , or Brown's novels, of a strong tendency in the new nation to look at life and letters from an independent viewpoint. Belknap's New Hampshire  is one of the best of our early histories.") ?> who are precursors of our modern historians. Among biographies are Wirt's admirable Life of Patrick Henry , and Marshall's judicious estimate of the father of his country. The latter is in marked contrast to Weems's Life of Washington  (1800), a grossly inaccurate work which was once more widely read than any other American biography. For naturalists there are the works of John Bartram and of Alexander Wilson; and for those interested in what we may call personal literature, there are the letters of Abigail Adams, of Eliza Wilkinson, and of Dolly Madison—delightful letters, reflecting clearly the spirit of the women of the Revolution.

Here is variety enough to tempt one who loves to explore outside the beaten trails of literature. We offer these books merely as a suggestion. Our work here is to consider two unclassified writers, the one a stormy product of the age of revolution, the other a gentle soul who belongs to no age or nation but to all humanity.

(1737–1809)") ?>

One who knew Paine well refused to write about him, saying that he was such a mixture of vanity and greatness, of frankness and concealment, that it was impossible to tell the story of his life. Library of American Literature , IV, 56.") ?> That was a century ago, and time in its merciful way has softened the man's offenses and magnified his service; but we still have no mind to attempt a biography. We note that Paine, who served three countries, was always the man without a country, "a citizen of the world," as he called himself; that he was at home everywhere, and had a home nowhere; that he was always helping others, always in sore need of help himself; forever looking for trouble and, as trouble is accommodating, forever finding it. He wrote his most inspiring message in the midst of a disastrous rout; he merrily knocked theology to pieces while starving in prison, with the guillotine waiting for his head. So he reminds us of the stormy petrel, a restless bird that appears with the first whitecaps of a gale, and that chippers most contentedly in the midst of turmoil and danger.

Paine arrived here in 1774, just as the storm was gathering. No one missed him when he left England; no man welcomed him to America; but with a letter in his pocket from Franklin, recommending him as "an ingenious, worthy young man," he went to Philadelphia, found work on the Pennsylvania Gazette , and was presently up to his ears in political agitation. As we study him there, with his shady past and resourceful present, his journalistic sense and his extraordinary talent for interesting the public, we are reminded constantly of Defoe, whom of all writers Paine most closely resembles.

Paine's first work shows that, like other writers of the period, he was in favor of union with England; but after the battle of Bunker Hill and the burning of Portland and Norfolk, he declared that "the country was set on fire around my ears, and it was time to stir." He opened the new year (1776) with his Common Sense , the first open assertion of American independence, and probably the most powerful pamphlet that ever influenced a nation's history. Every paragraph of this stirring appeal bristles with epigrams sharp as bayonets; every argument suggests the thud of a ramrod driving home a charge, and the ending is like the brattle of a trumpet calling to action:


"O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. Oh, receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind!"


Reading it now, in peace and serenity, we are unable to appreciate the effect of this pamphlet, which brought men to their feet like the waving of a torch over a powder magazine. Unnumbered thousands of copies were sold as fast as they could be printed; every Whig newspaper in the Colonies was aflame with its spirit. Odell, the Tory satirist, winces as he writes:

That describes it exactly. Within a few months its words were repeated in almost every home within the vast circle of frontier cabins, and the unknown author was for a moment the most talked of person in the whole country. Common Sense  made a sensation, it was credited to Franklin.") ?>

It is hardly too much to say that this one pamphlet changed the whole character of our Revolution. Though the Colonies were in arms at this time, they were fighting not for independence but for their rights as English subjects. When Common Sense  appeared, men faced a new issue, and by hundreds and thousands they accepted Paine's fiery assertion that America must be free. When the Continental Congress met, some six months later, a large Patriot party had arisen, and the Declaration of Independence was inevitable. The estimate of Paine's contemporaries, that Common Sense was worth an army of ten thousand men to the Continental cause, hardly exaggerates its influence.

While serving in Washington's army, during the terrible retreat across New Jersey, Paine began hastily to write The Crisis , and finished this inspiring appeal while his company dodged about like hunted foxes, hoping to escape capture or annihilation:


"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of men and women. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."


So begins The Crisis, and one must perforce read to the end. Its cheerfulness even in defeat, its indomitable optimism, its faith in God and in the American spirit, uplifted the nation like the news of victory. Washington himself was so moved that he ordered it to be read before every company of his soldiers. Unfitted as he was for military service, Paine accepted a lucrative civil office; but he never forgot the fighting soldiers. Sometimes The Crisis  appeared after a victory, more often after a defeat; and occasionally it ridiculed the proclamation of some pompous English general in a way that made men laugh and cheer in the same breath. The first number appeared in 1776, the last in 1783, and with peace in full sight Paine ends his work with a prophetic look into the future and a plea for a union of all the states into an American nation. His plea was answered, four years later, by the adoption of the Constitution.

The rest of Paine's career belongs to European literature. The Colonies were grateful, giving him money and an estate at New Rochelle; but he was essentially an agitator, as uneasy in peace as a fish out of water, and presently he went abroad to exhibit an iron bridge which he had invented. Fox and Burke received him kindly in England; but after the latter's apparent desertion of democracy in his Reflections on the French Revolution , Paine seized his pen, as one would take a musket, and fired his Rights of Man  (1791) at Burke and the English Constitution. This brave, outspoken book produced such a terrible sensation that the alarmed government outlawed the author. Before the storm broke over his head, Paine flitted away to Paris, where he arrived in the midst of the French Revolution.

We can only outline the rest of the story—his career as French citizen and deputy to the National Assembly; his noble plea for mercy for Louis XVI; his imprisonment and narrow escape from the guillotine; his ill-judged and ill-written Age of Reason  and his sad last years, when he was at war with himself, with his friends, and with the only country which had appreciated him. From his poverty and obscurity in Paris he was brought home by Jefferson, who in his hour of triumph remembered all the neglected patriots that had served America in her hour of need. He died in 1809, and an empty tomb and monument at New Rochelle still mark the spot where he once was buried. For his body was removed to England, as if to remind us that in death as in life he was a man without a country.

(1720–1772)") ?>

When Franklin in the flush of worldly success began his Autobiography , the modest Journal of John Woolman  was just drawing to its close. One author begins by telling us that he writes largely to gratify his vanity; the other, writing as he had lived with no thought of self, shows in his first line the spirit of the old monks, who worked or wrote or taught their fellow men alone for the glory of God:


"I have often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my experience of the goodness of God, and now, in the thirty-sixth year of my age, I begin this work."


Both books hold the mirror up to human nature; both contribute to the chief end of literature, which is to know men; but while one makes us think of man in his body and estate, the other is the tender, exquisite story of a human soul, "the sweetest and purest autobiography in the language." Journal .") ?> As the latter is a book that few discover or appreciate, we cull a few paragraphs, that the reader may decide for himself whether he belongs with the simple-minded folk who like The Journal of John Woolman :


"My mind, through the power of truth, was in a good degree weaned from the desire of outward greatness, and I was learning to be content with the real conveniences, that were not costly, so that a way of life free from much entanglement appeared best for me, though the income might be small. I had several offers of business that appeared profitable; but I did not see my way clear to accept of them, believing they would be attended with more outward care and cumber than was required of me to engage in. I saw that an humble man, with the blessing of the Lord, might live on a little, and that where the heart was set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving; but that commonly, with an increase of wealth, the desire of wealth increased. There was a care on my mind so to pass my time that nothing might hinder me from the most steady attention to the voice of the true Shepherd."


In a letter to his wife he writes thus of his missionary journeys and labors:


"Of this I may speak a little, for though since I left you I have often an engaging love and affection toward thee and my daughter and friends about home, and going out at this time is a trial upon me, yet I often remember there are many widows and fatherless, many who have poor tutors, many who have evil examples before them, and many whose minds are in captivity; for whose sake my heart is at times moved with compassion, so that I feel my mind resigned to leave you for a season and to execute the gift which the Lord hath bestowed upon me, which though small compared with some, yet in this I rejoice, that I feel love unfeigned toward my fellow creatures. . . ."


While Woolman is at home, tending his little shop and cultivating his fruit trees, an alarm flames out on the frontier: Indians are on the warpath, and brave men are hastening with their families to the protection of the towns. At such a time he thinks only of the misguided savages, and with a "tender concern" he pushes westward through the wilderness to meet them.


"My companion and I, sitting thus together in a deep inward stillness, the poor [Indian] woman came and sat near us; and, a great awfulness coming over us, we rejoiced in a sense of God's love manifested to our poor souls. After a while we heard a conch shell blow several times, and then came John Curtis and another Indian man, who kindly invited us into a house near the town, where we found about sixty [Indians] sitting inside. After sitting with them a short time I stood up, and in some tenderness of spirit acquainted them in a few short sentences with the nature of my visit, and that a concern for their good had made me willing to come thus far to see them; which some of them, understanding, interpreted to the others, and there appeared gladness among them. . . ."


After hearing a soldier's story of war and barbarism his heart is moved to compassion, and his record reminds us of the treasured old volume of Thomas à Kempis:


"This relation affected me with sadness, under which I went to bed; and the next morning, soon after I woke, a fresh and living sense of divine love overspread my mind, in which I had a renewed prospect of the nature of that wisdom from above which leads to a right use of all gifts both spiritual and temporal, and gives content therein. . . . Attend then, O my soul, to this pure wisdom as thy sure conductor through the manifold dangers of this world.

"Doth pride lead to vanity? Doth vanity form imaginary wants? Do these wants prompt men to exert their power in requiring more from others than they would be willing to perform themselves were the same required of them? Do these proceedings beget hard thoughts? Do hard thoughts when ripe become malice? Does malice when ripe become revengeful, and in the end inflict terrible pains on our fellow creatures and spread desolations in the world? . . . Remember then, O my soul, the quietude of those in whom Christ governs, and in all thy proceedings feel after it. . . ."


To some readers the above quotations are enough to indicate that Woolman has for them no vital interest; but others will surely ask, Who is this man that writes with such exquisite simplicity, with the refinement of gentleness and the purity of the pure in heart? There is little to say in answer: that he was an obscure, self-educated Friend or Quaker of Mount Holly, New Jersey; that his early years were spent on the farm, as a clerk, and as a teacher of poor children; that he was a tailor "by the choice of Providence," and kept a little shop; that his honesty brought many customers, but he avoided as "cumber" all business beyond a simple living for his family, having, as he said, seen the happiness of humility and formed the earnest desire to enter deeper into it; that he went up and down the land on missionary journeys to rich and poor, to slaves and slave owners, preaching mercy and justice as the rule of life, and love as the solution of all earthly problems; that he often did heroic things but always concealed his heroism; that in the excitement of the days before the Revolution he went on a mission to the Friends in England with the same message that he had carried to his countrymen; and that on this last journey of love he died among strangers, who cared for him as their own. Having told this, we leave the reader with the book, as we would leave him with a child or a friend; such a friend as we have sometime known, who is in the world but not of it, who is wise from his very artlessness, who lives with God and loves his fellow men, and whose counsel has no taint of earthliness—in a word, a friend who makes us know and trust the saints of all ages.