Afterward, I
recollect, how it came to me that instead of any special lyrical or
epical or literary attempt, the sea-shore should be an invisible
_influence_, a pervading gauge and tally for me, in my composition.
(Let me give a hint here to young writers. I am not sure but I have
unwittingly follow'd out the same rule with other powers besides sea
and shores--avoiding them, in the way of any dead set at poetizing
them, as too big for formal handling--quite satisfied if I could
indirectly show that we have met and fused, even if only once, but
enough--that we have really absorb'd each other and understand each
other.)
There is a dream, a picture, that for years at intervals, (sometimes
quite long ones, but surely again, in time,) has come noiselessly up
before me, and I really believe, fiction as it is, has enter'd largely
into my practical life--certainly into my writings, and shaped
and color'd them. It is nothing more or less than a stretch of
interminable white-brown sand, hard and smooth and broad, with the
ocean perpetually, grandly, rolling in upon it, with slow-measured
sweep, with rustle and hiss and foam, and many a thump as of low bass
drums. This scene, this picture, I say, has risen before me at times
for years. Sometimes I wake at night and can hear and see it plainly.
IN MEMORY OF THOMAS PAINE.
_Spoken at Lincoln Hall, Philadelphia, Sunday, Jan. 28, '77, for 140th
anniversary of T. P.'s birthday._
Some thirty-five years ago, in New York city, at Tammany hall, of
which place I was then a frequenter, I happen'd to become quite
well acquainted with Thomas Paine's perhaps most intimate chum, and
certainly his later years' very frequent companion, a remarkably fine
old man, Col.
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