THE MOUNTAIN. xi 



potism of circumstance, it could not be a finished closet 

 production, sand-papered into extreme smoothness, pol- 

 ished, varnished, and tortured into severest proprie- 

 ties. Unfortunately, the felicities and graces of the 

 word have not been consulted, nor refinement, finish, and 

 ornamentation of style adhered to. The asperities of the 

 mountain, that rugged, formless, semichaotic old pile of 

 moss-covered rocks, had insinuated themselves into the 

 brain, and overwhelmed, with the intoxication of enthu- 

 siasm, the soul of the blundering scribe, and it could not 

 be otherwise but that roughness must appear in and 

 characterize the scripture. It is known of a number of 

 popular lecturers that they have delivered their lecture's 

 several hundred times, and afterwards published them 

 in a book.* Think of a small patch of garden being 

 weeded every five minutes over and over, all its walks 

 scraped, trees clipped into primmest attitudes, every bush 

 fixed up to be looked at, every grass spot shaped "so 

 nicely' a perfect paradise of proprieties and gentili- 

 ties elaborately dressed for great occasions!! These 

 lectures, and their consequent books, were of course de- 

 signed for, and generally delivered to, large, cultivated, 

 and highly refined metropolitan audiences, where intel- 

 lectually cormorantine men, having swallowed all litera- 

 tures, arts, and sciences, have become dainty and fas- 

 tidious; and the world of thought and sentiment, under 

 the "refining suggestions of woman's brain," have been 

 required to be mellowed into divine softness and sublima- 

 tion, delicacy and grace. Such rasped and burnished 

 production could not be expected from a rude fighter, 

 a common private in the ranks of the sanguine order of 

 knights of the lancet, who was required to be on per- 

 petual duty in actual service, and at constant hand- 

 gripes with the emissaries of death. Alas ! beloved sub- 

 scriber and friend of the sentimental and delicate order, 

 only disappointment awaits you. This rough mountain 

 production is not a thing that could be printed on satin 

 with gold, and that a hypercritical, over-cultivated, mor- 

 bidly-intensated, intellectual virtuoso, or fastidious liter- 



* How charming to read Everett's Lecture on Washington in a 

 book, after hearing it delivered one hundred and eleven times! 



