[325] To the Same.
ST. DAVID'S, Sept. 14, 1874.
DEAR FRIEND,—It was very amiable in you to write to me on getting home; and, not to be outdone, I am going to write to you; and for the both sad and amusing story you repeated of Mr. G., I will give you a recital of the same mixed character.
I have been this evening to hear the Hampton Singers. Two of them, by the bye, are our guests,—for we offered to relieve the company of all expenses if they would come down here,—and very well behaved young men they are. The tunes they sing, remember, come from the tobacco and cotton fields of the South. I asked them how many they had. They said, two hundred, and that there were a great many more which were sung by the slaves of the old time. Is it not an extraordinary thing? I do not believe that more than ten are ever heard from the farms of New England. I don't remember more than five. What a musical nature must these people have I imagine that no such musical development, no such number of songs, can be found among any other people in the world,
The chief interest with me in hearing them was thinking where they came from, what was the condition that gave birth to them. Their singing is both sad and amusing, but partakes more of aspiration than of dejection; and it has not a particle of hard or revengeful feeling towards their masters. But here again,—what sort of a people it is! The words of their songs are of the poorest; not a soul among them has arisen to give us anything like the German folk-songs, or like Burns's. Still, their songs are a wonderful revelation from the house of [326] bondage; such sadness, such domestic tenderness, such feeling for one another, such hopes and hallelujahs lifted above this world, where there was no hope
Heartily yours,
ORVILLE DEWEY.
To Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.
ST. DAVID'S, Nov. 24, 1874.
DEAR FRIEND,—I have read and read again what you have written upon the Great Theme. What a subject for a letter! And yet the most we can say seems to avail no more than the least we can say. Some one, or more, of the old Asiatics—I forget who—says he "would have no word used to describe the Infinite Cause." I suppose no word can be found that is not subject to exceptions. The final words that I fall back upon are righteousness and love. Even the word intelligence is perhaps more questionable. If it implies anything like attention to one person and thing or another, anything like imagination, comparison, reasoning, we must pause upon the use of it. To say knowledge would perhaps be better, for there must be something that knows its own works and creatures. To suppose the cause of all things to be ignorant of all things seems like a contradiction in terms. It would be, in fact, to deny a cause; to say that the universe is what it is without any cause. Even that awful supposition, the only alternative to theism, comes over the mind sometimes; but if I were to accept it, "the very stones would cry out" against me.