By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.

VII.—THE WELL-BALANCED ECCENTRIC.

At length we have an Eccentric American who was practical, successful, useful, and happy; who was a conservative radical, a laughing philanthropist, a non-resisting hero, a lovely fighting Quaker, the popular champion of an unpopular cause, and—most singular of all!—a Christian in fact and act, though counted a heretic by evangelicals, and excommunicated by his own sect. It is just because his life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him, that Isaac T. Hopper takes rank as one of the grandest and rarest of Eccentrics. For, as the reader may know, we have declared from the outset of this series that the true man in a false world is necessarily eccentric; that uniformity is always at the expense of principle. “Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out often thousand.” And isn’t that odd?

The key to this symmetrical eccentricity of friend Hopper is found in the counterbalancing qualities of his character. A powerful will was offset by a conscience equally imperative. A native bravery was balanced by softness of heart, so that he was at once incapable of fear and of cruelty; combativeness was mollified by simplicity of manner and frankness of speech. A genius for finesse was by an all-pervading benevolence and love of justice enlisted in the service of the slave and the convict; a lively sense of humor sweetened the austerities of a formal religion, softened the asperities of a life of warfare and informed great natural pride with geniality. With less love of abstract justice, he might have been a great lawyer; with less conscience and benevolence he might have been a great soldier; with less earnestness and dignity he might have been a great comedian; with less philanthropy he might have been a great business man; with less executive will he might have been a great preacher. Balanced as these qualities were, he was a rare Eccentric—being lawyer, soldier, comedian, business man and minister combined.

“The boy was father of the man,” in his case. Born in 1771 to poor parents, farmers in New Jersey, he early made manifest extraordinary qualities.

Bravery.—A cosset lamb which he had reared was seized by a foraging party of British soldiers from Philadelphia and cast bound into their wagon. The lad of ten years ran and climbed into the vehicle, cut the cords with a rusty jack-knife, and then stoutly resisted the captors, until the officer in command, attracted by the outcry, rode up and ordered the lamb restored, out of admiration for the wee patriot’s pluck and devotion. He would fight any man on behalf of all of his pet animals, of which he always had a menagerie, caught and tamed by aid of a certain brute free-masonry which he possessed.

Justice.—Isaac and his brother trapped partridges. One day the former found one in his brother’s trap and none in his own; first removing the bird to his own trap he carried it home, saying he took it out of his trap—the little lawyer! But before morning conscience asserted itself, he confessed the deception and restored the game—the little justice!

Humor.—His love of mischief kept him in continual disgrace, and the house and school in continual turmoil—albeit his love of justice usually led to reparation of damages; if he got others into scrapes he was quite willing to shoulder the consequences; he could fill a schoolmate’s dinner pail with sand, and then dry all tears by giving up his own lunch. One night he went to see old Polly milk. Fun soon got the better of the boy, he got a twig, the cow got a sensation, and Polly got a surprise. There was a lacteal cataclysm and a tableau vivant; mingled strains of wild juvenile laughter and wilder feminine screams, accompanied by a rude barbaric clangor of cow-bell and tin pail. The boy went slippered and supperless to bed, but he lay there hungry and happy, waking the wild echoes of his raftered chamber with shouts of laughter over the persisting vision of how the maid turned pale and flew, and the cow turned pail and ran, with altitudinous tail and head. The artless sports of our childhood are often our most enduring joys, and Father Hopper never forgot this chef d’oeuvre of his childhood, though he was only five years old when he thus essayed the part of Puck; for he afterward secured the cow’s bell, and for fifty years used it as a dinner bell, refusing to substitute a more melodious, but less memorial monitor. He immensely enjoyed reviving at once the household and his own thoughts with it, and often with a sedate Quaker chuckle told the story when he tolled the bell.

Not the least curious antithesis in this mixed character was his open-heartedness and cunning; his simplicity of speech and shrewdness of management. From the age of nine years he marketed the farm produce in Philadelphia, and there was known as “The Little Governor,” for his precocious dignity. When asked the price of a pair of fowls, he replied, “My father told me to sell them for fifty cents if I could, if not, to take forty.” He got the fifty before he would part with them, however—just as, years on, he would frankly give up his plans to an antagonist and still beat him.

Isaac’s sympathy with the enslaved was aroused as early as the age of nine by listening to the harrowing narrative of a native African captive; and he was only sixteen years old when he assisted to liberate a slave who had acquired the right of freedom by residence in Philadelphia. The lad was at that time apprentice to a tailor, his uncle, in the city. Slavery still existed in all the states of the union, though the movement for its gradual abolishment had been begun in several of them. Pennsylvania had taken a long step in this direction by enacting the gradual emancipation of her own citizens’ slaves, and decreeing that any slave from another state, coming by his owner’s consent into Pennsylvania and there abiding continuously for six months, should be free; and that any slave landing there from a foreign country should immediately become free by that fact. It was in enforcing this law, as also in preventing the kidnaping of free negroes from Pennsylvania, that Hopper soon distinguished himself. Philadelphia became a modern city of refuge, and Friend Hopper a recognized deliverer of fugitives and freedmen, from either Southern or Northern states. It is thus a fact, not often remarked as to the relation of human slavery to our government, that the first blows at the institution were the work of state rights; and that the remedy provided for this trenching of one state upon the institutions of another, in the fugitive slave law of Fillmore’s time, was an encroachment of federal power over the previously reserved rights of the states. The National Anti-Slavery Society was formed many years later; the national conscience was not yet quickened on this question; but Philadelphia had even then a local anti-slavery society, and with it Friend Hopper identified himself. He made himself master of all the laws, findings, decisions and proceedings relating to slavery and manumission, as well as, incidentally, an adept in the proverbially intricate Pennsylvania laws of contracts, property, evidence, and general processes, so that he soon became the best authority thereon in Philadelphia. In fact, he was the embodiment of that enigma which, it is alleged, could “puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer.” His standing in court became so well recognized that no lawyer was anxious to take a case against him. “You had better consult Mr. Hopper,” said a judge to a veteran counselor who asked his opinion on a slave case before him, “he knows more law on these cases than you and I both together.” “I thought I knew something of law, but it seems I do not,” said a magistrate petulantly, upon being tripped up in a slave case by Friend Hopper, a layman. The latter did not scruple to use in behalf of freedom all the technicalities and delays of law; and his craft in these devices was not the less effective because his openness of manner made him seem an unsophisticated and rather simple fellow. His dignity, simplicity and directness of speech in quaint Quaker phraseology, compelled the respect of courts and won the confidence of juries. If needs were he would procrastinate and continue a case in court three or four years, until the master would tire out and sell the manumission of the slave for a nominal sum. In case of attempted kidnaping he took the aggressive against the abductors, and forced them to pay roundly for the benefit of the negroes; generally those who came to carry off others were glad enough to escape themselves. Hopper and other friends advanced large sums of money for the purchase of manumissions, which were invariably repaid, in part or entire, from the subsequent earnings of the freedmen.

Unbroken success at length brought Friend Hopper a factitious reputation, insomuch that it was difficult to enlist Philadelphia officers of law heartily against him; if a magistrate reluctantly granted a process, the constables more timidly executed it. “Did you say I dared not grant a warrant to search your house?” demanded the Mayor upon one occasion.

“Indeed I did say so, and I now repeat it,” rejoined the imperturbable Quaker. “I am a man of established reputation; I am not a suspicious character.” (This was what the world calls “bluffing.” The slave was at that moment locked in his house.)

“Is not this man’s slave in your house?” asked the Mayor.

“Thou hast no right to ask that question, friend Mayor. A man is not bound to inform against himself. Thou well knowest the penalty for secreting a slave.”

Getting no evidence sufficient for a search-warrant, his house was watched day and night for a week. Friend Hopper, with perfect urbanity, tendered the planter the use of his warm parlor as a guard-house, for the nights were cold. This was surlily refused. In the morning he had a good hot breakfast prepared for the shivering men outside, but they dared not accept it. They had learned that Hopper was most dangerous when most agreeable, and feared a trick from the gift-bearing Greek. A ruse was preparing for them. At night a free colored man was employed to run out of the house. The guard sprang out of their hiding and seized him, but immediately released him on perceiving their mistake. Hopper arrested them and put them under peace bonds. This made them cautious. The next night the same negro made another rush and was not stopped. The third night it was the slave who did the rushing; he ran past the irresolute guard and escaped to other hiding, until Hopper could negotiate his manumission with the discouraged master.

On one occasion he instituted a fictitious suit for debt against a freedman in order to gain time to secure evidence of his freedom. On another, he offered to become bound to the United States for the return of a slave to court, and the simple magistrate so entered the recognizance. When the day came Hopper was there but the slave was not, and magistrate, owner and lawyer for the first time discovered that the bond was worthless, as the United States could not be a party to it. Again he entered into an undertaking to produce a slave or pay $500 for his freedom—after his master had once before agreed to free him for $150. He produced the slave, and professed to have failed in raising the $500, and demanded the return of his bond. The slave, previously instructed, as soon as the bond touched Hopper’s hand, bolted and escaped by a back door and an alley. The master was so furious at this trick that he assaulted several free colored people, for which he was arrested and threatened with such heavy penalties that he was glad to remit the $150 first promised him for a bill of manumission, and to pay some damages to the other negroes besides.

“There is no use trying to capture a runaway slave in Philadelphia,” exclaimed an irate and discouraged master. “I believe the devil himself could not catch them when they once get here.”

“That is very likely,” answered Friend Hopper with a twinkling eye; “but I think he would have less difficulty in catching the masters, being so much more familiar with them.”

In dealing with so desperate a class of men as usually made a business of man-chasing, incensed as they were by his successful tactics, Hopper was often in extreme peril, and he always showed a coolness and dexterity equal to the most daring of them. His adventures and escapes outdo romance. After making all allowance for supposed consciousness of the weakness of a bad cause on the part of his antagonists, and the moral effect of his name; after picturing his insensibility to fear, his calm, good-natured, and dignified bearing, and above all, that remarkable will-power, under which officers in the rightful discharge of their duties had been known to surrender to him—maugre all this, it seems wonderful that in the hundreds of cases he had to do with, he neither used force nor (save once) suffered by force. It seems as if there could have been found some one man in the United States cool enough to face down or reckless enough to strike down this man of peace—but there was not. It must have been the power of passiveness, the irresistibleness of non-resistance. “The weak alone are strong.” This is Scriptural eccentricity. Even in this world of force he who, when smitten on one cheek, can turn the other, may conquer—though this is a definition of success by cheek that is not usually accepted.

The solitary occasion upon which Friend Hopper suffered violence was when a posse of kidnapers guarding a negro threw him bodily from a second story window. Though severely hurt, as it afterward turned out, he gained a reËntrance, and while the guard were yet congratulating themselves on being well rid of him, he walked into the room, cut the captive’s bonds and secured his escape. He seemed to bear a charmed life, and when years later he went to Europe, he found the reputation of a wizard had preceded him.

These efforts lasted during his forty years’ residence in Philadelphia, and continued after his removal to New York (1829). Not less than one thousand persons owed their escape from servitude to him, some of them becoming useful members of society. One was a missionary to Sierra Leone, one a bishop, several were preachers and teachers. So this one tailor made nine men multiplied an hundred fold.

He made other than black men. His labors in behalf of prison reform and for the raising of fallen men and abandoned women, and the relief of the unfortunate, if less exciting, were not less apt to draw our admiration and sympathy. The story of “The Umbrella Girl,” which has traveled the rounds of the press for forty years, is a good example of his tact in conducting a delicate case to a happy end; one hardly knows which most to admire, the goodness or the shrewdness of the philanthropist. His biography, by Lydia Maria Child, abounds in narratives of these acts; it would make an admirable Sunday-school library volume.

His success in reclaiming the lost and despairing was largely due to two beautiful traits, viz.: his confidence in human nature and his patient long-suffering. Seventy and seven times could he forgive and lift again a brother, because he believed there was an imperishable spark of the divine there. He was accustomed to say that there was not one among the prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary with whom he would be afraid to trust himself alone by night with large sums of money in his pocket.

His biographer tells the following in point:

Charity for convicts was truly eccentric in that day. The general sentiment regarding prisoners and prison management was far different from what it now is. It was with great difficulty that consent could be got to even hold religious services in prison; the authorities declaring that the prisoners would rise, kill the minister, escape in a body, and burn and kill indiscriminately. At the first service (1787) they had a loaded cannon mounted on the rostrum, by the side of the messenger of Christ, a man standing by with lighted match during the prayer and preaching, the prisoners being carefully arranged in a solid column in front of the cannon. Thus was accompanied the first preaching to prisoners in this country. Deplorable as was their situation behind the bars, their punishment was hardly less after their release. “Who passes here leaves hope behind” might have been written over the prison door outside and inside. (Was the North then more humane in its regard of convicts than the South was in its regard of slaves? In which respect has public sentiment more improved, and in what states most?)

Among the insane, too, he was a missionary. He had the clairvoyant sense to understand, and the mysterious power to control them, such as made him when a boy a tamer of wild animals. In fact, among all the depraved and unfortunate elements of society his face was a benediction, his tones pulsated hope, his hand lifted to better lives. I fancy that his cheery, hearty, homely, sympathetic presence came from the feminine side of his nature, while the strong uplift and commanding presence came from the masculine side; and that he seemed both mother and father to the unfortunate; to be a representative of both home and heaven. The grandest natures that walk the earth are these congenital marriages, combinations of the two sexes in one person. The weakest, those which are only masculine or only feminine.

Friend Hopper’s appearance was much in his favor in this work. His erect form, jet black, curly hair, plain, rich Quaker costume, and dignified port made him conspicuous in a crowd. But his face was the study. Its lines mingled of strength and tenderness gave it that representation of benign efficiency which sculptors and limners try to give to their personifications of divine attributes. Humboldt’s was one of those faces—and I remember once seeing some children, constructing a “play” world, paste a likeness of Humboldt to the ceiling. When asked what that was for, they explained with perfect sincerity and reverence, “That is God.” Happy the childhood that hath received such beautiful conceptions of the All Father! It was often remarked that Hopper’s face bore a strong resemblance to that of Napoleon Bonaparte. Joseph Bonaparte, when he resided at Bordentown, frequently commented on the remarkable likeness, and declared that Isaac T. Hopper could easily excite a revolution in Paris.

In 1829 Friend Hopper had reduced himself to insolvency by the expenditure of money and time on behalf of others, and he closed his tailoring business at Philadelphia, removed to New York, and accepted the agency for the publications of the Anti-Slavery Society. Here his activity in behalf of slaves got him worse enmity than in Philadelphia it did. New York’s commercial interests made her a Northern stronghold of pro-slavery sentiment. The press was violent against the Abolitionists, the courts were unfriendly, and “Judge Lynch” more than once summarily adjudicated their cases. One of these mobs directed their attack toward Friend Hopper’s store, after having sacked several places. He was apprised of the danger but refused to budge, to call in help, to close his doors, or to put up his shutters. He received the howling rioters, standing impassively on the steps. Not a word was uttered on either side; the mob stopped its course there, because the sight of its master compelled it to pause, and presently it passed on to other spoliation. It was quite fit that in the same city twenty-five years later, the mob which hung negroes to lamp posts and burned colored orphan asylums should single out the house of Isaac T. Hopper’s daughter for destruction, while she was away nursing soldiers in the hospitals!

The commercial spirit of slavery invaded every interest of society and every church. Even the Quakers became infected, insomuch that Friend Hopper and others were tried and expelled the society for their connection with anti-slavery publications. Thus the persecuted sect of old turned persecutors. This was the severest penalty this Eccentric was called on to pay for his adherence to his work; for he loved the faith and associations of his fathers. It was he who remained orthodox and regular, however, and the society which became eccentric to true Quakerism; they narrowed and declined. “His character grew larger and his views more liberal, after the bonds which bound him to a sect were cut asunder,” says his Quaker biographer; “it is astonishing how troublesome a living soul proves to be when they try to shut it up within the narrow limits of a drowsy sect.” He lived to be solicited to return to the society, and to decline a connection with a church which he thought had abandoned its own faith and practice.

In New York Friend Hopper also continued his work on behalf of prisoners and offenders. Public interest at length awoke; the Prison Association was formed, and organized efforts began in that direction. Father Hopper was made its agent, and he became a very active one, for though seventy-four years old, his movements were as elastic, his spirit as young, and his hair as unstreaked of white as ever. In the legal relations of this work, Friend Hopper was frequently before the legislature and the governor of the state, and his appeals uniformly secured ameliorations of law or pardon of convicts. “Friend Hopper, I will pardon any convict whom you say you conscientiously believe I ought to pardon,” said Governor Young. Hopper always addressed his excellency as “Esteemed friend, John Young,” and the Governor in reply adopted the Quaker “thou” and “thee.” When he was seventy-eight years old the Prison Association struck a bronze medallion likeness of Hopper, from the fine portrait by the artist Page, representing him raising a prisoner from the ground, and bearing the striking text:

No one this side of the White Throne knows how many he was instrumental in rescuing from worse than death. One whom he had lifted from prison, from the insane asylum, from the gutter many times, and at last made a safe, good, and happy woman, thus wrote him:

Isaac T. Hopper’s democratic spirit was one of the most conspicuous of his minor traits. It was founded in his natural lack of reverence and intense love of justice, and fostered by his religious training and political experience. He came honestly by it. His mother revealed it in her parting injunction to him upon his leaving home: “My son, you are now going forth to make your own way in the world. Always remember that you are as good as any other person; but remember also that you are no better.” Fowler, the phrenologist, made a happy guess when he said of Hopper:

How remarkable was the benevolence of a man thus keen-sighted for human defects, and immovable by human excellence, that he became so great a philanthropist; but for this counterbalance of sympathy and justice he would have been a cynic—with his keen wit, a satirist. His democratic manners showed more conspicuously in the old country than here. The following incidents illustrate his irreverence and coolness:

Father Hopper lived verily to a “green old age.” On his eightieth birthday he thus wrote to his youngest daughter, Mary:

“My eye is not dim, nor my natural force abated. My head is well covered with hair, which still retains its usual glossy, dark color, with but few gray hairs sprinkled about. My life has been prolonged beyond most, and has been truly a chequered scene. Mercy and kindness have followed me thus far, and I have faith that they will continue with me to the end.”

A few months later, going to visit a discharged convict for whom the association had built a shop far up in the city, Friend Hopper took a fatal cold. It was a long and painful sickness, but he restrained his tendency to groan by singing, and said: “There is no cloud. There is nothing in the way. Nothing troubles me.” His heart was with his past work. His son-in-law wrote: “Reminiscences are continually falling from his lips, like leaves in autumn from an old forest tree; not, indeed green, but rich in the colors that are of the tree, and characteristic. I have never seen so beautiful a close to a good man’s life.” On the last day he said: “I seem to hear voices singing, ‘We have come to take thee home.’” And again he spoke low to his daughter, “Maria, is there anything peculiar in this room?” “No; why do you ask that question?” “Because,” said the dying patriarch, “you all look so beautiful; and the covering on the bed hath such glorious colors as I never saw. But perhaps I had better not have said anything about it.”

His last act was characteristic. Calling for his box of private papers he took out one and asked to have it destroyed, lest it should do some injury. He confided to his eldest daughter as a precious keepsake a little yellow paper, fastened by a rusty pin; it was the first love letter of his first love, her mother, written when she and he were fourteen years old, children in school. Love of justice and love of love in his last breath!

Truth is the source of every good to gods and men. He who expects to be blest and fortunate in this world should be a partaker of it from the earliest moment of his life, that he may live as long as possible a person of truth; for such a man is trustworthy. But that man is untrustworthy who loveth a lie in his heart; and if it be told involuntary, and in mere wantonness, he is a fool. In neither case can they be envied; for every knave and shallow dunce is without real friends. As time passes on to morose old age, he becomes known, and has prepared for himself at the end of his life a dreary solitude; so that, whether his associates and children be alive or not, his life becomes nearly equally a state of isolation.—Plato.