The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863

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"The first time I saw Theodore Winthrop," said one to me a few days ago, "he came into my office with a common friend. They were talking as they entered, and Winthrop said, 'Yes, the fellows who came over in the Mayflower can't afford to do that!'

"'There,' thought I to myself, 'there's another of the Mayflower men! I wish to my soul that ship had sunk on her voyage out!' But when I came to know him, I quickly learned that with him origin was not a matter of vain pride, but a fact inciting him to all nobleness of thought and life, and spurring him on to emulate the qualities of his ancestor."

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"In such a Platonic republic as this a man found his place according to his powers. The cooks were no base scullions; they were brethren, whom conscious ability, sustained by universal suffrage, had endowed with the frying-pan."

"My hosts were a stalwart gang.... Their talk was as muscular as their arms. When these laughed, as only men fresh and hearty and in the open air can laugh, the world became mainly grotesque: it seemed at once a comic thing to live,—a subject for chuckling, that we were bipeds, with noses,—a thing to roar at, that we had all met there from the wide world, to hobnob by a frolicsome fire with tin pots of coffee, and partake of crisped bacon and toasted dough-boys in ridiculous abundance. Easy laughter infected the atmosphere. Echoes ceased to be pensive, and became jocose. A rattling humor pervaded the forest, and Green River rippled with noise of fantastic jollity. Civilization and its dilettante diners-out sneer when Clodpole at Dives's table doubles his soup, knifes his fish, tilts his plate into his lap, puts muscle into the crushing of his méringue, and tosses off the warm beaker in his finger-bowl. Camps by Tacoma sneer not at all, but candidly roar, at parallel accidents. Gawky makes a cushion of his flapjack. Butterfingers drops his red-hot rasher into his bosom, or lets slip his mug of coffee into his boot drying at the fire,—a boot henceforth saccharine. A mule, slipping his halter, steps forward unnoticed, puts his nose into the circle, and brays resonant. These are the jocular boons of life, and at these the woodsmen guffaw with lusty good-nature. Coarse and rude the jokes may be, but not nasty, like the innuendoes of pseudo-refined cockneys. If the woodsmen are guilty of uncleanly wit, it differs from the uncleanly wit of cities as the mud of a road differs from the sticky slime of slums.

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