On the eleventh day of April, 1837, Walter Aimwell entered as apprentice the printing office of one of the leading printers of Boston. He boarded in the city, not far from the office. There is no record of his leisure hours, or of his experience at any time during the remainder of this year, excepting a passing allusion which we shall hereafter meet.
On the third of October, 1838, he began to keep a sort of journal or note-book, in which he seems to have recorded striking matters of fact which he met in his reading, and to have inserted occasionally a composition of his own.
At the commencement of the book, which contains one hundred and sixty-six carefully written pages, he does not show as good penmanship as in the letter he wrote to his mother, a year or two before. Very likely he had written nothing worth mentioning since. From remarks that he afterward makes, it is to be presumed that he was dissatisfied with himself in this respect, and was determined to see if he could not make some improvement, both manual and mental, by practising by himself.
After we have seen the successes of a person distinguished for anything, his first attempts become interesting. Here is transcribed, without any alteration whatever, Walter Aimwell’s first essay, dated October 5th, 1838, just twenty-five days before he was sixteen years old.
“WEALTH.
“How few in this world are contented! Man is forever grasping at something,—either wealth or fame or honor. One man spends his whole life in hoarding up riches; his days and his nights are all employed in laborious exertions to procure that which, when he dies, he leaves behind him. He cannot be happy; the more he gets, the more he wants. Perhaps he starts in life penniless. He eagerly looks forward to the time when he can have money enough to live easily; he aims no higher than this. By his exertions he obtains the desired object. But when he gets it, he is no more satisfied than before; he sees men, who, he thinks, were made for the most menial offices, rolling in their carriages; his imagination is filled with splendid houses and lands and servants and carriages; and he makes it the whole object of his life to gain these. He engages in all manner of speculations, and at length, perhaps, becomes rich. But is he happy? No; he has cares now that he never had before, and which he would gladly get rid of; he watches his property with a jealous eye; it engrosses all his time now to take care of what he has got, till at last death steps in for a share. And now of what use is his money to him? All he can now claim is a little spot of earth large enough to contain his dead body. And if he have children, it is too often the case they revel in the riches which has cost him a life of hard labor, and soon spend it in profligacy; and they, in turn, are left penniless.
“This is, generally speaking, all the satisfaction a man that pursues wealth gets. But the true Christian, the philanthropist, has higher and nobler ends to live for than this. He does not confine his attention exclusively to wealth nor honor nor fame; but he aims in some degree to benefit his fellow-men. His pleasure does not consist in counting his money, but in doing good with it. He spends his time, or a part of it at least, in visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, or perhaps carrying the heralds of the cross to the destitute. And when death visits him, he can look back upon his past life with some satisfaction; he knows that he has made good use of the talent which his Maker has given him. He lives like a man and dies comparatively happy. For my part, give me neither poverty nor riches.”
Surely, many a boy younger than Walter Aimwell was at this time, can write a more noticeable composition than this. The only thing about it that is particularly promising is its unaffected common-sense, giving a kind of rough strength to the phrasing. Upon the whole, it is not equal to what might have been expected of him in a year and a half after the date of the Lynn letter. Let us see if he did any better at the end of another year and a half.
His last entry in the note-book for the year 1838 was “The Last War; Recollections of a Lecture by A. H. Everett;” an interesting and well-written article of six pages, of the usual letter-paper size. It bears testimony to his strict attention to the lecture and full comprehension of what was said, as well as to a very retentive memory. And here let me intimate to the youthful reader that Walter Aimwell’s complete attention to whatever he turned his mind at all, was one great secret of his power and constant progress.
In the spring of 1839, he read, in his careful way, the Life of Alexander the Great, and wrote in his note-book an abridgment of what he had perused, dated March 13th. On the 15th of April, he enters some original reflections upon the character of Alexander. I copy, as before, without alteration:—
“After perusing the life of Alexander, one is struck at the uninterrupted success of his arms, in subduing cities and countries, suppressing and punishing revolts, and maintaining a government over those cities which he had conquered. The principal events of his life were foretold and described long before he opened his eyes on this world.... This is more strongly confirmed (if stronger confirmation is necessary) by the appearance of Jaddus, the high priest of the Jews, to Alexander, bidding him to march on boldly, and assuring him that the Almighty would follow him. By this, we see that God sometimes makes use of the ambition, power, or vices of one man to punish nations that deserve the divine wrath.
“Undoubtedly, Alexander had in his youth many qualities and virtues which exalt as well as adorn a prince. But these virtues gave way to those vices which afterwards so strongly marked his character.... It is true that he possessed an ardor and a fortitude that surmounted every obstacle; but his cause was not a good cause; it was not the cause of a patriot; he fought not for liberty, but for plunder.... But what is most striking in his history, is the manner of his death. We see the conqueror of Asia—the self-styled son of Jupiter Ammon, ‘The Great’—fall by his own vices!... Alexander had accomplished all that was intended for him to do; and he was left to his own depraved appetites and passions.... Strange to relate, after the death of Alexander, every one of his family connections perished by violence. Thus, in some measure, were his iniquities visited upon his family. His kingdom, also, as was foretold by Daniel, was divided into several factions.”
The whole article is interesting as the exercise of a lonely boy’s mind; but limited space compels me to make selections.
In May, he writes a very readable article upon France. It occupies several pages. I extract only one passage:
“I recently heard a gentleman remark, who had resided several years in Paris, that while there he saw a painting representing Jesus Christ seated upon a throne writing on a scroll the words ‘Liberty,’ ‘Equal Rights,’ etc. They say, themselves, they cannot preserve their liberty without religion. ‘And,’ say they, ‘we want a new religion; we have got tired of Christianity. First, the world had the Patriarchal religion, then the Jewish religion, and next the Christian religion. Now it is time for another. We want one as superior to the Christian religion as the Christian is to the Jewish.’ But pure Christianity is to them a new religion.”
Behold how the common-sense of an honest boy pushes out the corner-stone of a pretty pile of sophistries in many a mind assuming to be in advance of its age, in longitudes west from Paris.
It seems that he thought some apprentice-boy, servant, or somebody else in his boarding-house, meddled with his private papers. Being extremely modest by nature and discipline, this was really a great annoyance to him. Probably he had no means of securing his writings, finished or in progress, from the observation of one determined to see them; yet he was too much in earnest in his own plans of improvement to be willing to relinquish them. Accordingly, on the eighth of June of this same year, he inserts a specimen of secret handwriting, which prying eyes might look at for weeks and not read a word without some assistance; and when, at last, they should succeed, they would find the sentences not sufficiently flattering to make them forget their trouble in deciphering them. Of this secret manner of writing only a few specimens remain. Probably it was mostly used for private hints to himself; and when their purpose had been accomplished, these secret hints were destroyed.
During the time he kept this first note-book, his reading and subjects of thought appear to have been of a very miscellaneous character, as will be seen by a few titles, taken as they stand in the index he carefully made: “Colossus of Rhodes;” “Conscripts;” “Consumption;” “Dogs;” “English Language;” “Milky Way;” “Mohammed Ali;” “Mr. Shinplaster;” “Skin;” “Smoky Chimneys;” “Spartan Heroism;” “Stoves,” etc. etc.