That the Tri-bune taught Old Phelps to be more Phelps than he would have been without it was part of the independence-teaching mission of Greeley's paper.The subscribers were an army, in which every man was a general.And I am not surprised to find Old Phelps lately rising to the audacity of criticising his exemplar.In some recently-published observations by Phelps upon the philosophy of reading is laid down this definition: "If I understand the necessity or use of reading, it is to reproduce again what has been said or proclaimed before.Hence, letters, characters, &c., are arranged in all the perfection they possibly can be, to show how certain language has been spoken by the, original author.Now, to reproduce by reading, the reading should be so perfectly like the original that no one standing out of sight could tell the reading from the first time the language was spoken."This is illustrated by the highest authority at hand: I have heard as good readers read, and as poor readers, as almost any one in this region.If I have not heard as many, I have had a chance to hear nearly the extreme in variety.Horace Greeley ought to have been a good reader.Certainly but few, if any, ever knew every word of the English language at a glance more readily than he did, or knew the meaning of every mark of punctuation more clearly; but he could not read proper.'But how do you know?' says one.From the fact I heard him in the same lecture deliver or produce remarks in his own particular way, that, if they had been published properly in print, a proper reader would have reproduced them again the same way.In the midst of those remarks Mr.Greeley took up a paper, to reproduce by reading part of a speech that some one else had made; and his reading did not sound much more like the man that first read or made the speech than the clatter of a nail factory sounds like a well-delivered speech.Now, the fault was not because Mr.Greeley did not know how to read as well as almost any man that ever lived, if not quite: but in his youth he learned to read wrong; and, as it is ten times harder to unlearn anything than it is to learn it, he, like thousands of others, could never stop to unlearn it, but carried it on through his whole life."Whether a reader would be thanked for reproducing one of Horace Greeley's lectures as he delivered it is a question that cannot detain us here; but the teaching that he ought to do so, I think, would please Mr.Greeley.
The first driblets of professional tourists and summer boarders who arrived among the Adirondack Mountains a few years ago found Old Phelps the chief and best guide of the region.Those who were eager to throw off the usages of civilization, and tramp and camp in the wilderness, could not but be well satisfied with the aboriginal appearance of this guide; and when he led off into the woods, axe in hand, and a huge canvas sack upon his shoulders, they seemed to be following the Wandering Jew.The contents--of this sack would have furnished a modern industrial exhibition, provisions cooked and raw, blankets, maple-sugar, tinware, clothing, pork, Indian meal, flour, coffee, tea, &c.Phelps was the ideal guide: he knew every foot of the pathless forest; he knew all woodcraft, all the signs of the weather, or, what is the same thing, how to make a Delphic prediction about it.He was fisherman and hunter, and had been the comrade of sportsmen and explorers; and his enthusiasm for the beauty and sublimity of the region, and for its untamable wildness, amounted to a passion.He loved his profession; and yet it very soon appeared that he exercised it with reluctance for those who had neither ideality, nor love for the woods.Their presence was a profanation amid the scenery he loved.To guide into his private and secret haunts a party that had no appreciation of their loveliness disgusted him.It was a waste of his time to conduct flippant young men and giddy girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition.
And, for their part, they did not appreciate the benefit of being accompanied by a poet and a philosopher.They neither understood nor valued his special knowledge and his shrewd observations: they didn't even like his shrill voice; his quaint talk bored them.It was true that, at this period, Phelps had lost something of the activity of his youth; and the habit of contemplative sitting on a log and talking increased with the infirmities induced by the hard life of the woodsman.Perhaps he would rather talk, either about the woods-life or the various problems of existence, than cut wood, or busy himself in the drudgery of the camp.His critics went so far as to say,"Old Phelps is a fraud." They would have said the same of Socrates.Xantippe, who never appreciated the world in which Socrates lived, thought he was lazy.Probably Socrates could cook no better than Old Phelps, and no doubt went "gumming" about Athens with very little care of what was in the pot for dinner.