Life in the Open Air, and Other Papers
LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR,
AND OTHER PAPERS.
BY
THEODORE WINTHROP,
AUTHOR OF "CECIL DREEME," "JOHN BEENT," ETC., ETC.
Let me not waste in skirmishes my power,
In petty struggles. Rather in the hour
Of deadly conflict may I nobly die,—
In my first battle perish gloriously.
From an unpublished Poem by Theodore Winthrop.
BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
1863.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
University Press:
Welch, Bigelow, and Company,
Cambridge.
NOTE.
This is the last volume of Theodore Winthrop's works. The reader will be interested to know that, with a very few slight omissions, they are published precisely as he left them. Beside these, which he had himself prepared for the press, there remains manuscript enough for more than another volume, comprising poems, lectures, sketches, the beginning of another novel, and a completed earlier tale; but not in fit form for publication. A man who wrote so much and so well was not of course indifferent to the publication of his works, for the desire of an audience is part of the author's instinct; and that they are first printed after his death is not owing to any want of effort upon his part, but to circumstances which no author can control. He can but do his work. It is for others to receive or decline it.
At the close of a lecture upon the Fine Arts in America, which he wrote in 1856, Winthrop said: "This composite people may, in its wide realm, attain to the most varied splendor of success in all pursuits that can make its future rich, refined, noble, and happy. But let us not forget that our march must be sustained by a hearty devotion to the true principles of freedom. If we fail of public or private duty,—if we cleave to any national wrong,—this great experiment of mankind will fail, and our life corrupt away, through slow decaying, to dishonorable death."
In that faith Theodore Winthrop wrote and fought,—he lived and died.
G. W. C.
Staten Island, February, 1863.
The portrait in this volume is engraved from Mr. Rowse's crayon likeness of the author, drawn from life a few years since. The wood-cut of Katahdin is copied from an original sketch in oil by Mr. Church.
CONTENTS.
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291 | |
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This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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