36 Staten Island Association of Arts and Sciences 



. . . and the incoming stream of tramps and liners met the out- 

 going stream which carried the imagination seaward, to the 

 islands of the buccaneers, and the haunts of all the heroes and 

 villains of histor}^, in the old world. The children did not look 

 with incurious eyes upon this stirring scene . . . the walls of 

 their nursery were covered with their drawings of the shipping. 

 . . . They were of an age, before they left Staten Island, to 

 realize something of the historic implications of their en- 

 vironment." 



One feature, at least, of his early surroundings left its impress 

 upon his memory, and we find it embodied in the poem entitled 

 The Old Lowe House, Staten Island, which we infer to mean 

 the old Daniel Low mansion, located close to where he lived and 

 with which he must have been familiar : 



. . . Relic of a romantic taste gone by, 



This stately monument alone remains, 



Vacant, with lichened walls, and window panes 



Blank as the windows of a skull. But I, 



On evenings when autumnal winds have stirred 



In the porch vines, to this gray oracle 



Have laid a wondering ear and oft times heard, 



As from the hollow of a stranded shell. 



Old voices echoing (or my fancy erred) 



Things indistinct but not insensible. 



The literary merits of Seeger's writings have been discussed 

 by others more competent for the work than the reviewer. To 

 the reviewer the interest attaching to his writings is not con- 

 cerned with the features which enlist the attention of the literary 

 critic- — the choice of words or phrases, or the rhythm of verses — 

 but in what they reveal or indicate of the underlying mental 

 processes — the ideas, impulses and convictions of the author — 

 of which his writings are the outward expression. 



Alan Seeger was an evolutionist and a fatalist. He was evi- 

 dently a firm, believer in the doctrine that " whatever is is right," 

 because everything that happens is foreordained and inevitable. 

 This mental attitude is well expressed in his poem The Hosts : 



