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1839
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[p. 34]
THE FALLS OF BASH-PISH:
OR, THE EAGLE'S NEST.
To the Editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.
Two of our friends, who were on a pedestrian tour, called to see us last week. Their way of life is sedentary, and they wisely chose this mode of repairing the waste (I should more deferentially say expense) of mind and body, in their studies. As men of taste, they combined with a plan of exercise the purpose of turning aside from the highway, to see the natural beauties of our romantic county of Berkshire. But on inquiring by the wayside and at the inns, they could obtain no information but that there was a “sightly view” at such a point, or a “fine prospect” descending such a mountain. Of the manifold treasures hidden in our hills they could get no report, and this led thorn to suggest that residents in n country worth visiting should write some account of their surroundings, which should be a sort of guide-book to the explorer. It struck me this was a reasonable species of hospitality, and having just returned from a visit to some falls in our neighborhood, quite unknown to fame, I determined to send to you a copy of the notes I made at the time of the excursion. A description of the favorite haunts in our immediate neighborhood, would be a more literal compliance with the suggestion of our pedestrians, but besides, that in speaking of these domestic lions, I could scarcely divest myself of the partiality resulting from fond associations with such old and familiar friends as Monument-Mountain, the Ice-glen, the Roaring-Brook, the Precipice, &c, the journal to Bash-pish is already written, a resistless argument in its favor.
-----
September 11, 1838. A bright, warm September morning. Our party is arranged, and we are on the point of starting for Bash-pish. Every thing is propitious, save that the rain we have so earnestly desired to lay the dust, has not fallen; but what signifies it? with such a party we surely may endure without complain! dust, heat, rain, or any other of the lesser evils that may chance to “light o' our shoulders.” While we have Mrs.----- and the ----- 's with us, we have moral influences that are equivalent to sunshine and showers, and all the life-invigorating and life-restoring powers of the natural world. Our party includes eighteen persons, counting by that respectable designation five school girls. As far as they are concerned, it is sure to be a party of pleasure; for, all the miseries ever heaped on a devoted party of pleasure, so called, could not counteract the joyful sense of escape from music lessons, French, Latin, arithmetic, and all those tasks at which they assuredly sow in tears, if they are hereafter to bear their sheaves rejoicing. But here is our omnibus, a long open wagon, and merry voices are ringing round it; and there is the appendix to this great work, a barouche, in which the more delicate members of the party are to take their turn, with the little unconscious traveller, who, having travelled but four months on this road of life, as yet neither looks backward nor forward.
We proceeded down the county road: a soft, and as the travellers among us said, Italian atmosphere, seemed like a transparent veil between us and the mountains, and made them look blue, and hazy, and distant; while every nearer object was clear and defined. The Mountain Mirror on our right, true to its name, reflected like those polished silver plates, anciently used as mirrors, and gave back clearly the image of the sylvan beauties that stood thickly around it; while Scott's pond, on our left, looked as blue as the heaven above it.
At Stockbridge a portion of our party were awaiting us, and congratulations poured in upon us on our happy prospects. The clouds that threatened yesterday have vanished—we run no risk in the open omnibus—the wind is westerly, the most trustworthy of winds, and so kissing hands to our God-speeding friends, while one of our party was muttering, as he clambered over the high wheels of the omnibus, “Jual diavolo di Carro!” we proceeded onwards, and next drew up at the inn, in the pretty village of Barrington, where the street is enfolded in the mighty arms of old elms. What beautiful memorials of the departed are the trees they planted, with their roots struck into the earth whence we have all sprung, and their stems mounting heavenward whither we all tend! Some one suggested that the Barrington inn furnished tolerable claret, and it was voted prudent to secure a few bottles for our lunch, to which, in the true vein of travellers, we were looking forward to as the next great event of the day. Our admirable purveyor, A----- , went to procure it. The man who happened to be serving the bar,—for the honor of our county I trust he was not an accredited official of the Barrington inn,—seeing A----- 's blonze, and observing his foreign accent, deemed it an apt occasion for a speculation; and having delivered the claret, said it was two dollars a bottle. “Due scudi!” (two dollars,) exclaimed our friend; “my good sir, the barkeeper asked me but half a dollar for a bottle yesterday.” The man drew in, muttered some apology, and quietly took the tendered half dollar per bottle. Such a circumstance might have been noted down by our
[p. 35]
travellers abroad, or foreigners here, as characterizing a district; and yet we have passed up and down this good county, for the better part of half a century, without meeting a similar instance—so reliable are the conclusions of generalizing travellers!
The drive from Barrington to Sheffield is along a meadow road, and for the most part on the margin of the Housatonick. Green fields and a stream of water, great or small, will always constitute beautiful scenery; but when that stream has been the play-fellow of your childhood, and has smiled on you through all the chances of life, there seems to be a soul breathed into material things. Some of us needed all this spiritual communion, to endure with christian patience the clouds of dust that enveloped us, even through that
“woodland scene,
Where wanders the stream with waters of green,
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink,
Had given their stain to the waved they drink;
And they whose meadows it murmurs through,
Have named the stream from its own fair hue.”
We trust that the poet from whom we quote, when he shall have cast off the burden, we are sure he unwillingly bears, of a party-paper, will come back to the more genial task of illustrating other points of his native county, as well as he has done "Monument Mountain," and " Green River."
Sheffield has far less rural beauty than most of our villages, but it has a compensation in lying in the shadow of the Jahconick, and in having their western horizon defined by the beautiful outline of that lofty mountain. At Sheffield we proved the virtue of a name; for having culled for lunch, a table was spread for us with stacks of eggs, bread and butter, cakes, pies, &c, besides a smoking quarter of lamb—in short, a fair country meridian dinner, for which, being called a lunch, we paid only eighteen cents each!
At Sheffield, some slight indications that we were a party of pleasure appeared; for all such seem to share the curse that fell on Seged, when he devoted nine days to happiness. There were various signs of fatigue, restlessness, and anxiety. Some were lolling on the beds—others stretched on the floor—some bewailing the dust—and others noting mares' tails and mackerels' hicks, that promised we should at least have no dust to complain of after to-day. But what are we to do with rain in our uncovered ark? “Wait till the rain comes,” wisely says one of us, who never sees any evil in the future, and bears every present evil so lightly, that to her it seems to have neither form nor weight. From Sheffield, in spite of various guide-boards, inviting us to shorter and better routes, we adhered to that which follows the course of our favorite river, that now, though it has lost nothing of the grace of the infant, is dilating into a breadth that ranks it among rivers in our land of mammoth waters. It is, in this dry time, somewhat in the condition of the sixth age, its bed being a world too wide for its shrunk sides. Well may it linger, and turn, and double on its track, like a good spirit loving the smiles it makes; for, in some sort, it is the creator of this scene of abundance, beauty, and contentment. But oh, the dust! the dust! we can hardly see our fellow travellers through the clouds between us; and feel that farthest from them is best. We have now left the county of Berkshire, and entered the state of Connecticut; and in passing over a high hill to the village of Salisbury, we stopped on a summit, called, I believe, Prospect Hill; but where in this country of farstretching views, of valley and upland, is there a hill that might not be so designated? From this hill we first saw the two lovely lakes that lie cradled in the valley, separated only by a strip of terra firma, wide enough for a carriage road. Mrs.----- gave them the fitting name of the Twins; and the curious little hill on the right, whose natural inequalities present to the eye the image of terraces, battlements, and turrets, she called Castle-Hill. There is much use in associating names with points of a landscape; besides that, that seems hardly to have an individual existence which has no name. They serve as a sort of “open sesame” to the memory; and when afterwards we hear them, they, and their dependencies, and surroundings, pass before us almost as vividly as when the eye first rested on them. There is good sense as well as good taste, in giving a name that is obviously descriptive—it stands some chance of being generally adopted. Our people do not readily change the homely designations of “Great Pond,” and “Little Pond,” for the fine and foreign names bestowed by amateurs. The west was mottled with clouds which reflected the last rays of twilight, when we drove up to one of the two inns in the old village of Salisbury. Our arrival produced a change in the little dwelling, like setting the wheels of a factory in motion. All the energies of the landlady, who, her husband being absent, has double duty to perform, are put in motion. Here are twenty persons to be fed without any previous preparation for such an onslaught; twenty persons to be accommodated with lodging and all its accessaries, and some among them habituated to whatever there is of refinement and elegance in the country; but luckily there are half a dozen girls, in their teens, easy material for stowing, who will sleep soundly on feathers, straw, or a bare floor, and be sure of a merry waking after; and all of us have learned Touchstone's true philosophy, "When we were at home we were in a better place, but travellers must be content.” A party of pleasure must be poorly fitted for their vocation, if they cannot convert the incommodities of a narrow inn into materials for laughter. After a due investigation, it was settled that Mrs.----- , and her tail of girls, should take possession of the ball-room; that Mrs.----- , her nurse, and child, should have a little nest of rooms, some ten feet square—a strange penning up for one what last year at this time was fêted in lordly palaces, the cynosure of all eyes. To M., and F., and F., was assigned the only carpetted apartment as compensation for their French couches, psyches, mirrors, dressing-rooms, bathing-rooms, &c at home; and I sent two of my young handmaidens to secure apartments for the rest of us at the inn over the way. They returned, charmed with their success. They had engaged for the gentlemen the refinement of separate apartments, and for the four of us that remained, “such a delightful room—so Saxon.” I had some misgivings as to the quality termed Saxon; but what was my dismay, on retiring to my quarters, to find a townhall, (called by courtesy, ball-room,) built by the good citizens of Salisbury for their civil assemblings. By the feeble glimmerings of our lamp, I perceived at the upper
[p. 36]
extremity of the apartment, some fifty feet long, an orchestra, which the fervid imaginations of my young purveyors had, I presumed, converted into a dais. The room was illuminated by eight windows with not even a paper curtain—nothing but the dark scarlet bombazet demi-curtain, which seems the favorite ensign of our country inns. Beside the windows, there is a door opening on to a piazza, large enough to have afforded egress and ingress to all the gods of our Saxon fathers, and quite in character for their impartial hospitalities: it had no fastenings to exclude volunteer guests. And further, this " delightful Saxon" apartment had a sanded floor, which, as my young companions chose to course up and down its fifty of length, was rather unfriendly to the sweet offices of sleep. But in spite of this—in spite of the windows rattling in their casements—in spite of a rising northeaster—of the blowing open of the door, and the pelting in of the rain, a king might have envied our sound sleep on the teamsters’ beds of this “delightful Saxon” apartment! Such wonderful transmuters are exercise and fatigue, of straw-beds and coarse coverings into down and fine linen.
Wednesday morning.—The winds are howling, and the rain driving, and our strolling company must be housed for the day. Picturesque travellers, we must make our own pictures. Shadows are always ready, and it will be strange, if with the bright spirits around us, we cannot put in our own lights. Half a dozen propositions are already afloat for the amusements of the day. “Shall we get Mrs.----- to read Shakespeare to us?” or “shall we prepare for waltzes and tableaux?” It is agreed that the blonzes of our Milan friends will make charming costumes for the girls, and the scarlet curtains will work up admirably into bandit gear—it will be the first real service the detestable things ever rendered. In the meantime, I have set my merry girls and our Italian cavalieri to sweeping the sand off the floor. A----- is decorating it with a series of family portraits he has discovered, evidently painted by some unlucky tinto, who had no other mode of furnishing the quid pro quo; for the landlord has sat for three portraits— once with folded hands, then reading, and then meditating; and the landlady is presented in the vanities of a most versatile wardrobe. Our Italian friends seem to produce strange perplexity in the minds of our entertainers. The woman who waited on our little party at breakfast, came to me after it was over, saying, in a most apologetic tone, “I am afraid you can't understand me any better than I can you;” and my assurance that I was her countrywoman, brightened her countenance with the first perception that we were not all outlandish folk.
The floor is swept. A----- has crossed the brooms as trophies over the door—some are tossing B----- in a blanket—others gallopading, and the rest waltzing with the family portraits! We shall have no lack of amusement.
At eleven, the whole party assembled at the upper inn, where a centre-table having been tastefully arranged by the young ladies, so as to give a most civilized aspect to the apartment, we gathered round it. Our amateur artists busied themselves with finishing up the sketches of the previous day. The girls cajoled the landlady out of her knitting work, and sat most demurely at it. Our Italian scholars translated English into Italian poetry; and one of our foreign friends improvised verses in his own language, till, by common consent, each individual occupation was abandoned, and every eye and ear was devoted to Mrs.----- , while she read to us the first scenes in the Merchant of Venice. I doubt if a theatrical representation of Shakespeare, with all the aid of scenic effect, and dramatic illusion, can equal such a reading of the play as Mrs.-----‘s. The acted play is necessarily cut down and garbled, and nine-tenths of what remains is travestied by bad actors; but, read by Mrs.----- , Shakespeare is truly interpreted, and every word delivered in a voice that is the most effective, as well as the most delicious organ of the soul. That voice, with her electrifying eye, and her miraculous variety of expression, breathe a living spirit into the written words, and each character appears before you in its individuality and completeness; not only the intellectual Portia, the cool, subtle and avenging Shylock, but the grave and generous Antonio, the sagacious Gratiano, &c. &c.—such characters as on the stage, are either automatons or buffoons. But Mrs.----- , who seems in the versatility of her talents as well as in her genius, to be “near of kin” to her great master, had no sooner closed her book than she sprang up stairs into the ball-room, to teach L----- a gavot, and finding in a corner of the room an old crimson banner, belonging to the citizen-soldiers of Salisbury, and a sort of helmet-cap that had probably graced their commander, she donned the one and flourished the other, impersonating an heroic chieftainess, who might have appropriated the words of Clorinda—
“Son pronta ad ogni impresa;
L'alte non temo, e l' umili non sdegno."
Here is the summons to dinner. How has the rainy morning been charmed away!
It is a pity that metaphysicians instead of scoffing at the theories of philosophers older than themselves, and striking out new systems to be scoffed at in their turn, do not observe the minds around them, and the laws that govern them. Here is our kind little landlady who has been perfectly happy all the morning in the satisfaction she was preparing for her guests. How cheerfully she has performed the multifarious labors of housewife, cook, and maid of all work, crying " anon, anon!" to every one's bidding, and casting her smiles like sunbeams beyond the clouds that were scudding before her. The odor of a turkey roasting for dinner, (a rare dainty at this season in these country parts,) acted as a charm against fatigue and disquietude of every sort. The dinner hour came—the turkey was served—the hungry guests sat down to dinner. It was a moment of honest triumph to the good woman—a, moment when the little vanities of the housewife were dignified by the benevolence of the woman. But, alas! night is next to day; and not more dismal is the change from light to darkness, than the vanishing of the poor hostess' smiles, when she saw the strongest, skilfullest hand among us laboring in vain to separate the joints of the ancient gobbler, who, though the father of generations, she had undoubtedly brought to a most untimely end. The poor woman, for the first time that day, sat down. All the toils of the day—all the runnings to and fro, were accumulated at this moment. Hope had cheated her into unconsciousness of her burdens, and at
[p. 37]
the touch of disappointment she sunk under them. Now our metaphysical result is, that there are certain powers of the mind, which, brought into action, abridge labor even more than spinning-jennies.
After dinner we fell into an argument on the tendencies of the Catholic religion, to prolong the dominion of absolute governments. F----- earnestly contending against it in spite of his sixteen years in the dungeons of Spielberg, which we might have expected would have prejudiced him in favor of our argument.
Thursday morning.—We sent through a pelting rain, a mile and a half, for a fiddler, ensconced him in the orchestra, lighted up our tin chandelier and began dancing, though we had but one cavalier who did not declare himself hors de combat. Fortunately two wandering stars suddenly rose above the dreary horizon of our young damsels. The one was a young man who introduced himself as Hermann Hinklinkcr, a German student, and his companion, a Count Catchimetchikoff, a Pole. They both spoke English well. The German student was a sort of admirable Crichton. He seemed an universal genius, and whatever he was called upon to do he did marvellously well. His eye was that of an inspired poet, and his countenance, conversation and manners, had the witching charm that belongs to the knight of bower and hall. As if by instinct he selected the lady of our fair company, who has been presented at foreign courts, and might grace an epic poem, and having called in vain on our rustic fiddler for various dances foreign, he gracefully joined a quadrille, a country dance, and Virginia reel, and danced with as much glee as if they were the dances of his own land and fondest associations. His companion, the Polish Count with the unpronounceable and almost unwritable name, was boyish and unpractised, but he had the freedom of a seemingly happy nature, and a certain air of the wellborn and well-nurtured, that was pleasing. At half past nine oar dancers had exhausted their superfluous activity, and we adjourned to the little parlor where our wondrous student sang German, Italian, French, and English with equal facility, and with an expression that waked all the soul within us; and that, perhaps, is the prosaic interpretation of what the poet means by "creating a soul under the ribs of death." The young Polish prince sang an accompaniment, that at least showed long practice, with his more accomplished friend. Our hostess sent us in a refection of cakes and peaches, and we separated at twelve, bidding our strange visitants “good night,” as if they were of us. Who were they? Whence came they? Is it possible that their advent was connected with the disappearance of two of our party, Mrs.----- and Miss -----, who left us after tea, and did not appear again till this morning?
It is still raining, and has rained all night, as it did upon the drowning unbelievers of Noah's time. The wind is still east, and our pictorial party will probably go home again without either seeing Canaan falls, the lakes, or Bash-Pish.
Ten o'clock.—Good, as well as evil, comes unlooked for. The wind has changed—the clouds are breaking away—the carriages are ready—Ho! for Canaan falls! Our friend, R. A----- , has joined us. This is his home, and he has undertaken hospitably to show us the beauties to which he is native, and which he rightly appreciates, and unostentatiously enjoys. The rain has done us nothing but good—it has laid our enemy, the dust, quietly at our feet—washed the trees—greened the fields—and brimmed every little brook, so that this seems the land of fresh and gushing streams.
The elements had ceased their hostility, and air, earth and water, were ministering to our enjoyment, when, lo! on descending a hill, we came upon a stream that had overflowed its banks and flooded the road for a long distance. We stopped lo take counsel of an old resident, who assured us there was no danger, and those among us who were as brave as the Duke of Marlborough—that is, who feared nothing where there was nothing to fear—proceeded, in spite of the outcries of sundry of our juveniles, who were suddenly pervaded with a sense of Falstaff’s alacrity in sinking. After all it was but one of Andrew Marvel's dangers, and only served to add one to the pictures laid up in our memories; for it was a pretty sight to see the omnibus' horses dashing into the water, and to watch their passage, as they were now nearly hidden by the light foliage, that almost embowered the narrow road and now emerged from it. At Canaan falls we rejoined, by appointment, some dear friends who had come from home with us, and who, during the rainy day, had enjoyed a welcome that might have been envied by him, who boasted that his kindest welcome was at an inn. Canaan falls have long been known as furnishing valuable water privileges, and as being the location of profitable furnaces, but being far from the grand routes, they have been little visited by amateurs, and few of this dainty body probably know that there is a fall of sixty feet in the Housatonic. Human beauties have their “handsome days,” and so have the beauties of inanimate nature, if that can be called inanimate that breathes harmony, and speaks to the soul. Never, I am sure, were these falls seen in a more becoming light. The river was filled by the rains of the previous night, and literally verified what was said in another sense, by our good woman of the inn, when she told me “the falls were well worth seeing—there had been a great addition to them.” “What, more water?” “Oh no, more furnaces!” And, in truth, furnaces are not very bad “additions.” They certainly are far less offensive accessories to falls than factories, which are so upright, so freshly painted, and so full of windows. Whether it is that Ketch's marvellous pencil has redeemed a furnace from all utilitarian and anti-picturesque associations, so that you cannot see one without thinking of the young page Fridolin, and his beautiful mistress; or that there is something that harmonizes with trees, rocks, and water, in these buildings, that always look old, brown, dingy, and ominous, with their glowing fires gleaming through their port-holes. Some of our party who had seen Schaffhausen, were struck by a resemblance of these to those celebrated falls, and had the courage to pronounce them little less beautiful. I shall not attempt to describe them. Painting even is an ineffective presentment of a water-fall; and words, without the spell of genius, cannot conjure up to the imagination the motion and force of the river, as it rushes over the precipice—the rocks above, that seem in vain to have tried to repel and obstruct its passage—the pretty islands— the steep banks, with their dark cedars—the rustic bridge below—the long stretch of the river, and the far distant hills that bound the horizon, and all touched
[p. 38]
with a light that would have set an artist or a poet off into ecstasy.
But the majority of our caravan were neither artists nor poets; so after running up and down the bank, to the bottom and the top of the fall, wondering, admiring, and exclaiming as much as could be reasonably expected, we returned to enjoy a very nice lunch, in a degree that could not have been exceeded by poets or artists. En passant, we commend, as in duty bound, the nice inn at Canaan falls to the wayfarer, where he will be sure of finding that rarity, fresh eggs fresh, and cakes and pastry most skilfully compounded.
We had yet a drive of five miles in extent round Furnace lake to Salisbury, and then a tour round Salisbury lakes, so called—par excellence. The views returning, of upland and lowland, were most beautiful. We were driven to the summit of a hill whence we saw all the Salisbury world and the glory thereof. We passed a rill that our rainy day had swollen into what appeared a mountain torrent, and finally passing round the lower margin of Furnace lake, reached our inn at three o'clock. The day was still unclouded, and as the shadows were lengthening, every hour added lo the beauty of the scenery, so that the eye, not satisfied, as it is never satisfied with such seeing, our party, excepting Mrs.----- and myself, set off for the lakes.
Opposite the inn there is a very green field, and this field is traversed by a little stream, that is, I believe, the outlet of the lake on Mount Rhiga; at any rate its birthplace is on that high mountain, and as it flows through this fresh bit of meadow land, it retains its free and joyous mountain character. There is always in the sound of running water a voice of invitation; and Mrs.----- and myself, having no heart to resist such a bidding, passed through an open barn, which afforded us the readiest access to the meadow, and then strolled along the margin of the brook to a clump of sycamores, from whose roots the earth had been so washed away as to afford a good seat, and their clean white stems a far better support than our perpendicular country chairs. The trees along this brook are not the willows and light shrubbery that usually affect our water courses, but groups of noble oaks, elms, maples, and sycamores, (the original growth I believe,) disposed as if they were planted by the most skilful artist—and were they not?
“If this were in England,” said Mrs.-----, reverting to her English associations, “it would make the fortune of our innkeeper. There we have a large class who haunt such places. That barn would be removed, or rather it would never have been placed there, and the little aid that nature needs to give it all the attraction it is capable of, would not have been spared; but in your country the supplies that nature yields to physical wants is all you get from her. There are a few individual exceptions; but for the most part those of your people who can afford the luxury of travelling, throng the watering places; they go in herds, and must eat, drink and live, in crowds. To love and enjoy nature, requires a certain degree and kind of cultivation, which your people have not.”
In spite of the amour-propre, which one instinctively extends so far as to embrace one's own people, I could not but admit that there was much justice in my friend's strictures. The denizens of our cities, who, for the most part, make up that class that can indulge in the luxury of travelling, and summer excursions, do not spend their short holiday in exploring their country and making acquaintance with its lonely solitudes—and why should they? We must be content to let people be happy in their own way. There are no daily papers at Bash-pish or Canaan falls—no prices-current—no reports from the stock market—and the most irresistible French dresses, or (as one of my fashionable friends styles them) even the most romantic French dresses, and the most perfect "loves of capes," would be worse than wasted there. But, as I urged to Mrs.----- , is there not a much larger class in our country, than the privileged aristocracy of any land can furnish, sufficiently educated to relish the beauties of nature? A love of nature, amounting to a passion, is innate with a few—but a very few. With the greater part it needs to be awakened and cultivated. In the eager pursuit of the first necessaries of existence, this love or taste has been neglected among us; but it is precisely one of those pleasures that suits the mass of our people, for it is rational, most moral, and unexpensive. Nature exhibits her pictures without money and without price. Her show-rooms are every where open without respect to persons, seasons, or hours. And are there not at this moment, scattered in our secluded places and retired villages, numbers who quietly and unostentatiously enjoy the festival nature has spread, and who are getting that 'wisdom' which
“Is a pearl with most success
Sought in still water, and beneath clear skies?”
And are there not prisoners pent in our cities, who hunger and thirst after the green meadows and misty mountain tops?
With the shadows, we again all gathered at our head quarters, and passed the evening in representing a secret meeting of the Carbonari. One of our Italian friends, who, for the project cherished in these meetings, had suffered sixteen years in the dungeons of Spielberg, showed us the mode of inaugurating a new member of the society; and different members of our party, being instructed in their official duty, regularly initiated a young black-eyed girl into the secrets of membership.
We went early to bed, to prepare for the fatigues of the next day. Little did we know what preparation was necessary. Pity that one cannot take in an extra quantity of rest, as Dalgetty did of provant!
Friday morning—after being joined by Miss----- and her brother, our Salisbury friend, well fitted to be our guide and companion, and indeed furnished to every good work, we began the ascent of Mount Rhiga, on our way to Bash-pish, which was to be the crowning point of our excursion. The road begins alongside the little brook aforesaid, and continues its delightful companionship for four miles to the summit. There is but just space enough between the brook and the close set trees for a road. The branches of the trees often stretch over and interweave above your head. The flowers of the season, the gentians, asters, and golden rod, were thick set and blooming among the turf, and the long ferns hung over like green plumes. “This,” said Mrs.----- , as she marked the laurels planted all along the roadside, “must be paradise in June; it is just such a drive as our noblemen obtain in their parks
[p. 39]
at almost unlimited expense and trouble." As we wound upward, we had glorious glimpses into the open world we were leaving behind us, of hill-side and valley; but there was one point at which we stopped and remained for some moments in breathless admiration. Here there was a wide, deep and wooded chasm between us and another eminence, that presented a semicircular front like the wall of an amphitheatre—but an amphitheatre built by an Almighty architect. The trees grew over the side of this mountain so close that they looked absolutely packed with a surface resembling a rich turf, and giving the appearance, I have remarked, of a green wall.
The greater portion of our company, the hale and the merciful ones, had alighted from our vehicles to walk up the mountain. A----- , who either perceived that I was lagging, or wishing to provide a picturesque variety, struck a bargain with a butcher's boy, who was wending his way up the mountain with supplies for Rhiga, and having huddled the meal into the back part of the little wagon, he placed me, with my pilgrim's staff, on a board that served for a seat in front, where I figured as a vender of beef and tallow. The Doctor soon overtook us, another type of civilization, with his symbols, a sulkey, and a leathern sack, containing the torments of social existence for those that enjoyed few its benefits. After passing the furnaces of Mount Rhiga, (called Mount Raggy by the natives,) we came upon a lake, four miles in extent, with the Katskills for a background. Oh how beautiful that lake and those blue summits were, when we returned at twilight—mountain, lake, and skies, all glowing with the “last steps of day!”
From Rhiga we drove over a very comfortable mountain road seven miles to Mount Washington, and were again in our own county of Berkshire. By the way I had a little chat with the Doctor, and was congratulating him on his ride, embracing these far stretching and sublime views, when, in reply, directing my observation to a point in the Katskills, he said, "My father was killed there felling a tree, and left me, with several other children, orphans, in a log-hut hard by. I always see the place when I pass this way, and it is a dreary ride to me.” There was much food for thought in this; but turning from the proof that the mind gives its own hue to the outward world, I remembered to have heard that this gentleman and his brother were eminent in their profession, and I thanked Heaven that the stream of life, in our land, runs to prosperity, even though its beginning be in a log-hut on the Katskills.
We stopped at a farm house in the village of Mount Washington, where we deposited our youngest traveller, with her nurse, and three of our little girls, who we thought incompetent to the labor before us—and having secured three riding horses for the least strong among us, the rest proceeded, under the guidance of an old mountaineer, through woodland and ploughed land towards Bash-pish. The distance was not more than two miles and a half; no frightful achievement for the poorest walker among us—but the ground was broken and rugged, and when two miles were accomplished we had to descend a precipitous hill, where there had been a road, now only to be marked by the heaps of stones from which the earth had been swept during the late furious rains. After much fatigue we did get down without breaking our necks or dislocating our bones; but if “faciiis descensus averni,” what the ascent would be we hardly dared to think—and think of any future evil we could not, while we were lured on by the music of the water-fall, which came up from the depths like the song of a siren.
-----
Here ended my journal. We were perfectly exhausted with fatigue when we arrived at our Salisbury inn, at eight in the evening—and the next morning, before starting for home, I had only time to bring up my notes to where I have ended. But what signifies it? I could not have described that most graceful of all the waterfalls I have ever seen—that treasure which Nature seems to have hidden with a mother's love, deep in the bosom of her hills.
We were afterwards told that we did not, after all, see what was grandest—that we should have approached on the other side, where the access was easy, and gone to the rocky breast-work,* at the summit of the hill, whence we should have looked off a sheer precipice of three hundred feet into the ravine through which the water passes away. I believe it, for the fall as we saw it was no more sublime than a child in its wildest frolics, or a fawn gamboling through the glades of its woodland home.
If any of my readers have been good-natured enough to follow me thus far, finding my story without an end, they may deem me guilty of an impertinence in publishing the journal of a home excursion, which has neither a striking point nor a startling incident. But if I should lead any to seek the healthy pleasures within their reach, which will cost them no great expense of time or money, I shall be content.
In spite of the old ballad which gravely tells us that “to travel is great charges,” as you know, in every place, we spent five days, and saw and enjoyed all that I have, perhaps too tediously, detailed, for less than the amount of a week's board at a watering place.
*It is from this rock, where eagles’ eggs have been found, that the place obtained the name of Eagle's Nest. Bash-pish is the corruption of a name given by some Swiss settler.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Falls of Bash-Pish, or The Eagle's Nest
Subject
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Tourism, nature, the Berkshires, Bash-Pish
Description
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Sedgwick shares the notes of her excursion with a party of friends to see the falls at Bash-pish, and reflects on the benefits of traveling to experience the beauty of nature.
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria.
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Southern Literary Messenger [edited by T. H. White], Jan. 1839, pp. 34-39.
Date
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1839
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L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman
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Document
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"The Falls of Bash-Pish: Or, the Eagle's Nest," By Miss C. M. Sedgwick, New-Yorker, 26 January 1839, pp. 290-93.
"Gerusalemme Liberata"
"Green River"
"Monument Mountain"
1839
Antonio
Barrington
Bash Bish falls
Bash-Pish
Berkshires
Canaan Falls
Carbonari
Catholicism
Clorinda
Connecticut
Eleuterio Felice Foresti
Fridolin of Säckingen
furnaces
German
Housatonic
inns
Italian
Jahconick
journal
Kaatskills
Merchant of Venice
Mount Rhiga
Mount Washington
picturesque
Polish
Portia
Salisbury
Saxon
Schaffhausen
Seged
Shakespeare
Sheffield
Shylock
Southern Literary Messenger
Spielberg fortress
Stockbridge
Torquato Tasso
Touchstone
tourism
travel writing
William Cullen Bryant
-
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7c4762b788d343110df1c5293a51fcd9
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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1839
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Text
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MATTY GORE.
BY MISS C. E. SEDGWICK. [sic]
“Say rather, all his thoughts now flowing clear,
From a clear fountain flowing, he looks round
And seeks for good; and finds the good he seeks.”
[p. 50]
“WHAT ails you, Matty, to sit moping at that window—are you counting the rain-drops that fall on the pavement?
“No, Harry, I was just thinking—that's all.”
“A penny for your thoughts!”
“I was thinking how dismal it is to live in a city! How pleasant it is to hear the soft dropping rain on the grass! and here it is nothing but patter, patter, patter on the dirty pavement; and, as I looked at the lamps that shed such a dim light through the watery air, and at those blank houses opposite with all their windows closed, I remembered how many times I had gone to our east window in the sitting-room at Fairtown, and seen the lights from Mr. Jessup's, and widow Allen's,
[p. 51]
and Deacon Milnor's, and fancied I could see the families, and what they were all about, and it seemed as if I could almost hear their voices. To my eye there is no life in these dwellings—they don't look like homes— nothing is right here; the stars don't look as they did through our clear air, and the thunder don't sound half so good as it did at Fairtown!”
“Why, Matty, you get the blues sitting here alone; if you would go to the theatre with me, and to the public balls, and Miss Wright's lectures, you would find something brighter than starlight, and quite as entertaining as Fairtown thunder.”
“O! Harry, my dear brother, it is your going to such places that makes me more than all wish we were back in Fairtown. I have heard of many young men who were first drawn aside from the narrow path, by going to those public places where so many bad people go. It is not easy for us, while we are young, Harry, to resist temptation, so it is best to fence ourselves about as well as we can.”
“Pray don't preach, Matty.”
“I won't, Harry; don't call it preaching; but do let me speak what is so heavy at my heart. I don't like your going to the theatre, but I would rather you would go there every night, than go to hear infidel lectures.”
“My dear child, you don't know any thing about it; ‘live and let live,’ Matty,—you go your way, and let me go mine.”
[p. 52]
“There is but one way, Harry.”
“That is an old fashioned notion, my dear; in this age of steamboats, and railroads, new ways are opened. Don't look so solemn, Matty, I don't wish to disturb your faith, and so I tell father.”
“O! Harry, that is not what I am afraid of, for I will hold fast that which is good; but disturbed I must be, when I see you and father seeking, as it were, darkness, and avoiding the light that has come into the world. I cannot reason, as the people do who come here and talk with father, and only cloud up the truth; but I feel, and believe.”
Harry, notwithstanding his resolution not to interfere with his sister's faith, could not forbear saying, “A common family division, my dear; 'the men reason— the women believe.”
“No, Harry, that is not fair, for we are required to give a reason for the faith that is in us; therefore faith in man or woman must have reason to support it.”
Matty was interrupted by her father's entrance. He looked displeased. This was unusual; for John Gore, though rough, was not irritable or churlish. He thrust the poker into the grate, and, without seeming to know what he was about, poked out every coal of a light, spring fire; and then turning to Matty he asked, “Are we not going to have tea to-night?”
“I understood you, sir, that you were not coming home to tea.”
[p. 53]
“Well, I suppose I can change my mind.”
“O, yes, sir," said Matty, setting herself eagerly about arranging the tea apparatus.
“And if I may, Miss Martha, it's a privilege I use only on small occasions.” Gore had not called his daughter Martha, half a dozen times in her life. She felt sure she had displeased him, and stopping before him, she said, with all the courage she could summon “Have I offended you, father?”
“Yes--no—make the tea, will you?”
Matty, pale and trembling, went to the little cup board for the tea canister, and her brother left the room whispering, as he went past her, “This storm has blown up from Fairtown, I guess.”
The tea was soon ready, and Matty sat down and poured out cup after cup, which her father swallowed without uttering a word. He rejected the bread and butter which Matty offered, and, in the hope of pleasing him, she set on the table a beefsteak pie. This was an article of food he particularly liked. His wife had excelled in preparing it, and had communicated her skill to Matty. This was the first she had made since their removal from Fairtown.
“Will you take a bit, father?” she asked; “Harry said it tasted just like mother's.”
“No!” he replied, and then added in a softened voice, “not to-night, Matty”—he hemmed and cleared his throat. “Like mother's, is it? your mother never
[p. 54]
disobeyed me. How long, Miss Martha, have you been keeping up a correspondence with Russel Milnor?”
“Simple truth” was Matty's “utmost skill.” “I have had no correspondence with Russel, sir,” she replied, “excepting that he has sent his kind remembrance to me, and I, mine to him.”
“Then this is his first letter, since we left Fairtown, is it?” and he took a letter from his pocket, and threw it across the table.
“It is, sir,” replied Matty, faintly, while her eyes filled and her cheeks glowed with the irrepressible feeling that is awakened in every woman's heart, by the sight of the first love-letter.
“You need not study the outside any longer,” resumed her father, and for the first time Matty raised her eyes, that had been downcast and fixed upon the letter, as he added, “I know every thing that is in it—I don't mean the love and nonsense, but the business part—it came in a letter to me. Why don't you break the seal?”
“I can't, sir,” she answered, and burst into tears. Various feelings struggled in Matty's tender heart. She knew what Russel's letter must contain, the first expression, in words, of a long-cherished affection. She knew that her father had strong prejudices against her lover, and that his prejudices were as rigid as his iron frame. She thought of her mother, and that if she were alive, she would share every feeling with fond
[p. 55]
sympathy; but now, in the trials that awaited her, there was no one to whom to look for sympathy; not even Harry; her dear and only brother, for he too had prejudices against Russel. Matty was of the ivy nature, dependence was habitual to her; but there is no strict analogy between a vegetable and rational existence. The weakest human soul is capable of receiving a divine energy, and if it mount heavenward it needs not to grasp an earthly support. “Hush up your tears, child,” said Gore, “my mind is settled; and you must settle yours, and cry or laugh afterwards, as the case may be. In the first place tell me, how happens it Russel stuck to farming! I thought the Education Society were going to run him over into a minister.”
“Russel was advised to that, sir; but he did not wish to put himself into a dependent situation, and he thought he might serve his Master as acceptably, by being a farmer, as if he were a minister.”
“Cant! but, however, there is some sense in it. There may be now and then an honest professor out of the pulpit; but it's all hypocrisy where there is a bounty paid. It seems Russel has laid up money enough to buy him a farm in Michigan. He has bought it, and now has the modesty to ask my leave to let you go out and help him take care of it. If you go, mark me! you go contrary to my wishes and my judgment; but I don't forbid it. I am not one of their religious folks,
[p. 56]
who think they have a divine right to lord it over the world. I believe that women, though they are far enough from being fit for it, have a right to independence; and, therefore, you are free to go; but if you go, never come back to my house again—never expect any help from me, be the case what it will; for Russel Milnor's wife's husband will be always the man that I can't abide. I don't set up any right over you. I am an enemy to all arbitrary authority—to father-craft, as well as kingcraft and priestcraft.” John was just as honest as others are when, giving way to the impulse of temper and prejudice, they fancy themselves acting in obedience to an established principle.
There had been an old feud between Deacon Milnor and John Gore, which eventuated in a long pending lawsuit. Gore finally gained the suit, and, as is common in country neighbourhoods, the general sympathy was with the losing party, and Gore, alienated from his old friends, transferred his residence from Fairtown to New York, where he still followed successfully the vocation of master-builder. Gore was a strong, though narrow-minded man. He saw clearly, but he looked through a knot-hole. He never had any religious faith, unless the accidental belief of his childhood might be dignified by that name. He had always treated lightly the faith of his wife, a meek
“Traveller between life and death.”
He took pride in differing from the strictly religious
[p. 57]
community in which he lived, and contracted a very common habit of looking at the abuses of religion, at the dishonour which the bigotries, pretensions, and lapses of its false professors cast upon it, while he was deaf and blind to the testimony, on every side, of its true disciples. After he went to town, he fell in with some clamorous skeptics, and had not the ability, or, alas! the inclination to resist their specious arguments. They were, like Gore, uninstructed men, but they could quote the names of Hobbes and Hume, and Gore's vanity pleased itself with the idea that his preconceived opinions were in accordance with these great mens'. Wo to the ignorant, who are not intrenched in the strongest hold of Christianity, a deep, heart-felt conviction of its truth, resulting from an experience of its adaptation to the wants of humanity!
Gore has hinted his theoretical respect for the “rights of women.” He had recently imbibed it from a certain eloquent lecturer, who has done them worse than doubtful service. The truth was, he looked upon the whole sex with a feudal eye; regarding women as liege subjects, if not “born thralls” of their natural lords; and if his new notions forced him to admit that they were possible equals, he had never yet doubted they were actual inferiors. John Gore's theories had made as yet no apparent difference in his mode of life; his industrious habits were fixed, and the external moralities were second nature to him; but that spiritual work of
[p. 58]
subduing the passions, disciplining the temper, and elevating the affections, John had never yet begun.
But while John Gore went on in his old track, the effect of their new associations on his son Harry, was but too obvious. He had cast aside the faith of his boyhood, but he was too much under the dominion of his senses, to adopt practically the theories of virtue inculcated by his new teachers. He had rejected his mother's pious instructions as nursery tales, and in his change of residence he had escaped from the vigilance and restraints of a moral community. He was destined to learn too late, or never to learn, that the only safe liberty for a young person, in the flush of life, is the liberty that follows self-conquest. Harry Gore was just two-and-twenty; handsome, with that frank and gay expression so captivating to young women, and with that manliness, reckless generosity and impulsive ardour, which altogether constitute the “whole-souled” character so attractive to young men. With these characteristics this unfortunate young man was introduced by his father to a society of skeptics; and by his young companions plunged into the second or third-rate dissipation of a great city. The character of his career might be foreseen; its sad particulars time alone could disclose.—But we forget that it is not Harry Gore's story we are writing. We left John Gore producing a miserable perplexity in his daughter's mind, by the annunciation of his
[p. 59]
wishes, his judgment, and his will. She saw that, by the terms of his opposition, she might follow her inclination without violating the letter of filial obedience; but the spirit of all her duties governed Matty Gore; and though we think she erred, she believed that in all circumstances the precept, “honour your parents,” required the surrender of her own wishes to her father's.
Accordingly, when she answered her lover's letter, which she did that sleepless night, while her tears almost blinded her, she made no secret of the state of her affections. She repeated all that had occurred that evening, and concluded by saying, that her duty was implicit submission to her father's wishes.
We have given merely the points of Matty's letter; the essence of such a letter is of too delicate a nature to be imparted.
To these points came, immediately, a reply from Russel Milnor, enclosed in a letter to Gore, in which he communicated the purport of that to his daughter. Russel said that he trusted he should be enabled to submit to a known duty, even though it required such a martyrdom as the relinquishment of Matty; but that his view of the case differed totally from her's. "You were twenty-one, the first day of this present month, Matty," he said, "and at that age the law allows men and women, if ever they were capable, to be capable of judging for themselves. If your father alleged any thing against my character, or any thing in my circum-
[p. 60]
stances, that formed a reasonable barrier to our union, it would be your duty to acquiesce; but where there is no such reason, I cannot think that parents have a right to control their children. They marry for themselves, not for their parents. In the course of nature they must long survive them. It is, then, their own concern, and they ought to act independently, according to their light, that is, according to the dictate of their best judgment, and of tried affection. Parents do not enough respect the rights of their children on this subject. They interfere by their wishes, their biases, and their manoeuvring. It is an inexpressible happiness when parents approve the choice of their children; but no right of theirs to direct or mar this choice. Our affections are amenable to God only, and when He has joined, man should not sunder them. I have not urged my wishes or my love, for beside that you know I should neither expect nor wish it to prevail against your sense of duty; that once settled in your mind, I am sure, wherever the sacrifice may fall, you will act in conformity to it.”
Before this letter arrived a sudden and great change had taken place in John Gore's domestic arrangements. He had placed at the head of his household a very pretty and flippant young woman, some months Matty's junior, whom he called his wife. Matty had painful reason to suspect that this marriage was merely one of those fragile, and evanescent ties substituted for the holy one of God's appointment, and advocated by a few
[p. 61]
of her father's new associates. Emboldened by that courage which religion alone could inspire in a timid girl, who had grown up in habitual awe of her father; she determined to know from himself the truth; and she took the first occasion, when neither the new Mrs. Gore nor Harry were present, to ask her father, "If he wished her to call his wife, mother?” John's eye fell, and a deeper hue dyed his sanguine cheek, as he an- swered; “Yes—no—that is to say, just as you like; a name does not signify.”
“That name seems to me,” replied Matty; “to signify more than all other words;” and while she spoke, the eye that she kept steadfastly fixed on him filled with tears, and his quailed under it; as that of the lower animals is said to do, beneath the intellectual ray of man. “Father,” she continued; “it is best to speak plain my meaning; I cannot profane that word mother. Is this person my mother in the eye of the law?”
“The law has nothing to do with the matter, and the gospel less,” cried Gore, recovering his usual tone. “She is my wife, according to her view, and my view; and if you don't like her for a mother, you need not make one of her; and that's the end on't.”
“O! father, it is not the end,” exclaimed Matty; in the earnestness of her feeling, forgetting her habitual quietness, and falling on her knees at his feet. “It is God's law you are violating; O! pray, pray, do not bring this shame on us all! this dishonour and misery
[p. 62]
on your old age! O! send her away, sir! Those men that come here, and scoff at all that's good and holy, have been a snare to your soul. Send her away, father, and let us go back to Fairtown; or, lay me down there by mother's grave.”
“Hush! Matty, my child; hush!” His voice was softened, and Matty proceeded. “Dear father, God has made misery to follow sin—even in this world—and there is a judgment to come—for the deeds done in the body, we must give account. What signifies all they say! we know, we feel it in ourselves; there is a heaven, and there is a hell.”
While Matty was speaking the last words, the door opened and Mrs. Gore, flushed with exercise, and the pleasurable excitement of a walk with her young gallant, Harry, entered. Harry divined the meaning of the scene and disappeared; and Mrs. Gore, with affected unconcern, echoed in a soft under tone, “Hell! bless my soul, Miss Matty! a big word for a mealy-mouthed young woman.”
Matty rose from her knees, and turned on the woman a look so full of sorrow, so beaming with the elevation of a spirit immeasurably above her, that she shrunk away abashed. Gore was dimly conscious of a feeling akin to that of a bully, when he is detected by a comrade in an act of cowardice; he rose, and blustered round the room, muttering something of “Matty's nonsense and superstition!”
[p. 63]
Poor Matty went to her own little room, and there remained, in tears and prayers, till she was roused by her father's voice calling her. She met him at the head of the stairs. He gave her Russel's letter, saying, “Russel acts above-board; I give him credit for this; it's his mother's blood, not his sneaking father's. I know, mainly, what is in his letter to you, by one he has written to me. He says what I said to you; that you have a right to follow your inclinations. I'll hold no woman in bondage. One thing that I said to you when Russel first proposed, I take back; the rest must stand. Circumstances alter cases; and now, if you marry Russel, you will not act against my wishes; but remember, Matty! no person that bears the name of Milnor shall ever enter my doors, or have a penny of my property. I have chosen my way, you are free to choose your's.”
There are periods when thoughts pass so rapidly, and the affections will work with such energy, that we seem in brief instants to have lived an age. This was such a moment to Matty. While her father was speaking, the prospect he opened before her, of leaving her wretched home, to live with him who would have made any desert home to her, seemed like a gleam of paradise; and then the thought of leaving her father to wear out his last days in sin and certain misery, closed the gate of happiness against her. “If I could but save him,” she said, mentally, “I would relinquish every
[p. 64]
earthly hope; I am weak, but for such a work, there is strength that will be made perfect in my weakness.” When he had finished speaking, she said in a very low but resolute voice; “Father, there is something nearer my heart than Russel; it is that you should do the right thing.”
“Stop there, Matty! you have taken me to task once, and that is once too many. Water won't run up hill; fathers won't be chidden by their children.”
“But once more, father, I beg you to hear me; but once more.”
“No, no!” he cried, but in a gentler voice; for he was softened; who could resist that earnest and most sweet countenance? “No, Matty! I must follow my light.”
“O! father; that light is darkness: hear me, I beseech you, in the name of God.”
“No, no, Matty! you are too superstitious; there is no use.”
“In the name of my mother, then.”
“You look now like her own self—speak—say quick what you have to say.”
“O! think that it is my mother pleading with you; think that you are back in those days when you believed in truth, and followed after good. Forgive me, forgive me, sir, but I must speak. I must pray you to repent and return to Him, who is ever ready to receive those who forsake their sins. Send away this bad woman,
[p. 65]
father! I will stay with you; I will never, never leave you. I will write to Russel that I have solemnly devoted myself to you. I will do every thing to make your home comfortable and cheerful; it will be neither, with this woman. I will watch over Harry, night and day; I will do all, with God's help, that child and sister can do.”
“You have not considered, Matty.”
“I have considered, sir; and resolved.”
“Well, let me go; let me go; I must consider too;” and he turned from his child, and with faltering steps, and a purpose that now faltered for the first time, retraced his way to his little parlour, while Matty returned to her own room, to strengthen her resolution with prayer; and so strengthened was she by this holy office, that she read Russel's letter with calmness, and sat down to write to him all that had occurred, with a conviction that he would acquiesce in the sacrifice they were to make. But her generosity was not to have its reward. If Gore had been left alone to the workings of conscience, and the gracious ministry of his awakened affections, he might have been saved; but his evil genius interposed. The woman who had led him away from domestic purity and peace, came in while his countenance was dark and agitated with the stormy conflict of right and wrong. With the quick instincts of her sex, she perceived the nature of his disturbance, and suspected
[p. 66]
the source of it. Her youth, beauty and art, soon enabled her to regain her ascendancy over the weak old man, who had nothing to oppose to her but the good feelings that his daughter had awakened. Faith and its securities were gone.
In the course of the morning the following brief note was brought to Matty by the servant girl.
“You've been a good child, and serviceable to me, Matty; and I give you the enclosed, (a hundred dollar note.) It is but justice to say I've nothing to complain of from you; but we've come to the parting point, Matty. It is best we should not have any good bye- ing. I am going out for the rest of the day. Pack and direct your things, and I will send them after you. You had best go to your aunt's before night, as I mistrust we should not all sleep well under the same roof.
“Your father, John Gore.”
Poor Matty! this was almost too much for her to bear. Religion even, cannot soothe the anguish that sin inflicts; the sin of those we love. Matty sat for some time stupified; suddenly she was roused by the thought that she might make an appeal to the woman, who seemed to her the personification of evil. She gained admittance to her room. She was dressed gayly, and was arranging some artificial flowers on her hat preparatory to a walk. She was flurried by the sight of the innocent girl; and she said—the most na-
[p. 67]
tural thing to say—looking at Matty's swollen eyes and colourless cheek; “You don't seem well, Miss Matty.”
“O! I am not well—I am sick—sick at heart;” and she was obliged to grasp the bed-post against which she stood for support.
It is useless to enter into the particulars of the conversation that ensued. Every thing that a pure woman and a devoted child could say, Matty urged; every argument of religion, she exhausted in vain.
There is no harder subject to deal with, than a young woman who has thrown down the bulwarks of religion, and defied the usages of society; not blinded and impelled by the impulses of passion, but a voluntary sacrifice to vanity and selfishness. Matty could not awaken her fears, for she felt secure in her young life; and she could not touch her affections, for their fountains were dried away. Wearied and sick at heart, the poor girl returned to her own room.
A less spiritual being would have been satisfied; would have felt that, having done her filial duty, she was free to indulge the yearnings of her heart. But to this good young person it was not so. She did not act simply with reference to quieting her own conscience. She felt that there must be a most bitter infusion in her cup, while the death of the soul was impending over her father and brother. Her letter to her lover was coloured by her sad feelings. She assented to his plans
[p. 68]
and appointed the time for their meeting; and then reverted to her deep anxieties in a prayer, that she might be patient and never without hope, in the greatest of all tribulations.
After leaving her father's house, she saw her brother repeatedly, but all her efforts to influence him were ineffectual. He did not listen seriously to her entreaties; he did not oppose her arguments with reason; but answered her only with bantering and ridicule; fruits of the lightest, the most hopeless soil.
----------
We resume our story at a period rather more than three years subsequent to Matty's separation from her father. He still occupied the comfortable house in Elm street, in which she had left him; but how changed was its interior! The simplicity, neatness, and precision that, under her regime, had seemed the type of her well-ordered mind, had given place to slatternliness, disorder, and finery. A crazy auction pier-table, with tarnished gilding, occupied the place of the spotless waxed mahogany table with falling leaves, a Fairtown friend. The old family Bible had disappeared, and in its stead was a vase of French flowers, with a cracked shade. The new Mrs. Gore had substituted for the honest, old windsor conveniences which she condemned as “too Presbyterian,” defaced and rickety mahogany chairs, that looked as if they had mouldered at a pawnbroker’s. Over the mantel-piece had hung,
[p. 69]
time out of mind, (for it was an heirloom from Matty's maternal ancestors,) the picture of a tree bearing symbolical fruit, each apple labelled with the name of one of the Christian graces. Its perpetual verdure was preserved by an angel who was watering it, while the evil one stood in the background menacing it with a scythe. This picture, which Matty looked upon with almost a Catholic’s love, had been much derided by Gore's new friends; and with a reluctance that he was half ashamed of, he had consented to the substitution of a tarnished chimney mirror.
But John Gore stood at bay, at the next proposed alteration. His fine young lady bought a tawdry French clock, which she insisted would serve for use and ornament too; instead of a faithful old family time-piece.
“The old clock,” urged Gore, “is as true as the sun.”
“That, my dear love, is of no consequence; we have town-clocks all about us that are regulated by the sun. At Fairtown this horrid old thing might have been useful; but in the city, you know, a clock is chiefly for looks.”
“Like every thing else!” muttered John. “They build their houses for looks, and they tumble down over their heads. They buy their furniture for looks; and it warps and snaps, and is good for nothing. They take their wives for looks, and they”-----
[p. 70]
“My dear, darling husband!”
John Gore suppressed the bitter words that were on his lips, but the tender deprecation of his wife had not the accustomed effect. Either his vanity had lost something of its susceptibility, or his lady (we cannot profane the name of wife) had worn out her poor arts of cajoling. He stood for some moments before the fire, silent, with his hands behind him, as was his wont, when a tempest was gathering; and then burst forth, calling his wife by her unchanged name, as he always did when displeased with her. “I warn you, Angeliky Foot”-----
“My dear Mr. Gore, pray say Angelica!”
He merely raised his voice a tone higher, as he resumed. “I warn you, Angeliky Foot, not to sell that clock; it's the only thing nowadays that keeps me peaceable; it was my father's; it marked the prayer-time, and the meal-time, and the play-time; when all I knew was to do my duty. It struck the hour for my marriage; it told the hour of my children's birth. In my Fairtown home, it was true to us, and we were true to that. When my wife died it sounded like a tolling bell. Well it might! well it might! Once, again, it tolled! when Matty passed that threshold! and well it might then too! And now, when all is ajar, and out of time, that still is true. Its old face, as it were, speaks to me; and there are times when its look of quiet, gone-by days, is all that keeps my temper from rising over
[p. 71]
bounds. So I warn you, Angeliky Foot, not to say another word of parting with it.”
Angelica Foot did not at that time; but at prudent intervals and fortunate moments she resumed the topic, and John Gore at last yielded, as many yield, to whom “carrying the day,” seems not worth the trouble of continued resistance. He yielded however only to a compromise. The old clock was removed up stairs, and out of sight, and the “bargain,” of what John descriptively designated as “a bit of French trumpery,” bought.
Not long after this change was made, John came home one day at his usual time. He was as punctual as the old clock, and had been so rigid in the enforcement of this observance upon Miss Angelica Foot, that she, aware of the importance of keeping on his blind side, had taken care that a domestic should supply her short-comings, and have Gore's meals ready for him, when she, on the pretext of a headache, was lying in bed, or strolling in Broadway, or sitting with a sick friend. On such occasions an alibi might have been proved, by such as saw her taking a drive, far out of town, with Harry Gore!
But, on the morning to which we allude, John came home and found his little parlour looking much like a slattern, when the morning light has dawned upon her coarse and dirty finery. Every thing was out of place. The lamps of the preceding night were still dimly burn-
[p. 72]
ing. His eye involuntarily turned towards the clock, to see if he had not mistaken the hour of the day. The pointers as usual were motionless. He muttered a malediction, and proceeded through the unswept entry, down stairs to the little basement room, where he was accustomed to find his meridian meal. There were no signs of it. He went to the kitchen. There was no apparent preparation for dinner. Gore heard voices above, from one of the chambers; he followed the sound and burst most unexpectedly upon his wife, Harry, and two female friends of hers, who had forgotten him and every thing else, in the excitement of preparing for a masquerade ball. In the most innocent circumstances, it is rather provoking to find those whose duty it is to minister to our necessities, occupied with their own pleasures. The masks, ribands, flowers, and finery of all sorts, with which the room was cluttered, operated on Gore's temper as the colour of scarlet does on some enraged animals. His fury broke forth in the most unmeasured expressions. The lady-friends escaped. “What do you here, at this time of day, sir!” he asked, turning fiercely to his son.
“What do I!” he answered, with affected calmness; “why, you know, sir, it's the hour when all regular labourers go home to their meals.”
“Regular! I wonder when you have done an hour's work, regular or irregular. I tell you, sir, what I have told you before; that I'll not have you loitering here
[p. 73]
with Angeliky Foot, when I am out of the house. ‘Children, obey your parents,’ is a law that I'll uphold while I have breath.”
“Ah, father!” replied Harry, uttering a biting truth, in a manner still gay and careless. “Ah, father, quoting Scripture! You can't expect, sir, your son will wear the yoke you have broken, and trampled under foot.” Anxious to be off, before a return blow could be given, he hurried on his surtout while speaking, and in his haste accidentally dropped from it an unsealed letter. The address to himself, caught John Gore's eye. “From Matty!” he exclaimed; “why did you not give me this?”
“I forgot it; it can't be of any consequence; only one of Matty's preachments, I guess.” Harry told the truth; he had forgotten it. The poor young man had rejected the high motives to virtue, and its sanctions; and in his present downward course of life, his affections were perishing for lack of nourishment.
The sight of a letter from Matty in the midst of all this discomfort and discord, went to John Gore's heart. He put on his spectacles to read it, but they were soon blurred, and he was obliged to take them off again, and again, to clear them before he could proceed. We must premise that Matty, scrupulous in the performance of her duties, had written to her father at regular intervals since their separation, without receiving or hoping for a return.
[p. 74]
"Fairmount, Michigan,20th June, 183-
“My Ever Dear Father.—I think so much of you that I must believe you have not quite forgotten me. O! what a good gift is memory! (“to the good it may be,” thought Gore;) how it peoples the wilderness with dear recollected forms! how it brings to life again the long past pleasures of childhood! the time that was, before any trouble or change had come! How it carries me back to those pleasant Saturday evenings, when every thing, having been done decently and in order, for in every thing mother went after Scripture rule, (Gore looked round on the litter of gauzes and tinsel, and heaved a deep sigh,) Harry and I sat down on our little benches beside her, and learned our Bible lesson for Sunday. They were always got before the clock struck eight; the dear old clock that told the coming on of happy mornings, and peaceful nights. I wonder if it keeps good time yet?
“But, dear father, I sat down, not to write of the past, but to tell you of our present condition; which, thanks to the Giver of all good, has much improved since my last. The failure of crops the first season was a disappointment, and the loss of stock occasioned by low and insufficient feed fell heavy upon us; but we did not murmur. I have one sorrow at heart, that always makes worldly troubles seem light; (“Matty's religion is no sham,” thought Gore;) and Russel says he has received too much good at the hand of the Lord, to mur-
[p.75]
mur at a little evil. Last year we should have done finely, but for Russel's long sickness; but that is past now, and we trust it has done a good work for us, in making us more fully realize the worth of that hope which sustained us, when the world seemed vanishing from us. Now every thing prospers around us. I can almost see the wheat and corn grow; for in this rich soil it does not take the whole summer, as it does at the east, to come to perfection. It seems as if the Al- mighty had made gardens in this wilderness; and, dear father, I often think that if you and Harry could stand in the door of our little loghouse here at Fairmount, and look over the prairie; all that part of it which is still untouched by the hand of man, that the sight of it would draw you near to Him who created it. Those who live in cities, where nothing but man's hand is seen, may forget God, especially if there be temptation about them, to lure the eye and enchant the ear; as in poor Harry's case; but here, father, with this vastness around us; this stillness—with nothing for the eye to see but the beautiful earth God has created, and the Heavens that declare his glory, His presence is felt, and the heart goes out to Him, as naturally as a little child to its parent. O! that you and Harry were here! My little Sybil is now twenty months old. I hardly ever speak her name without thinking of you, for you were the only person I ever heard call mother by that
[p. 76]
name; and I am sure, father, I seldom think of you without a prayer in my heart to God for your best good. (“Religion does make children faithful!” thought Gore.) Sybil already speaks quite plain; and in her morning and evening duty she is taught always to remember you, father! I have a little brother for her, just six months old. I should have given him your name, if I had thought it would be pleasing to you, to have your name joined with his father's. Please tell my brother, with my love, that I call him Harry. (An involuntary prayer escaped from John's lips, “The Lord make him another kind of a man!”) O, father! what a different feeling I have had for my parents since my children were born! Short-sighted creatures are we indeed, that we must stand just in the places of others, before we can see and feel as they do! Such are now my feelings, that I think, nay, I am sure, I would give up my life freely to have you brought to the faith and love of the gospel; and what is life to that eternal happiness which awaits the humblest followers of Jesus?
“But, dear father! I would not weary you. Pray do not get so tired of my letters that you will not read them; and pray let me beg you, once more, if any great good or great sorrow comes upon you, to let some word of it be sent to your ever affectionate and dutiful daughter, MATTY.”
[p. 77]
“Good! good! will any good ever come to me?” thought Gore, in the bitterness of his heart; and then a prayer—an aspiration should we not rather call it—rose from the depths of his soul. “O ! my child, my child! would that I were altogether such as you are!” This was the first gleam of light.
Time went on; and Gore's out-of-door life presented its accustomed aspect. His habits of industry were now almost his sole comfort. He was a skilled artisan, and in the busy and flourishing city of New York, his art found ample employment and large reward. His earnings were consumed by his idle son and exacting lady. Gore was generous in his nature, and parted with his money without a regret; but frugal in his own habits, and rational in his views of the uses of money, it irritated him to see it wasted, and worse than wasted. He became reserved in his supplies, and finally, a terrible suspicion having taken possession of his mind, he drove his son from his house, and reminded Angelica Foot that she was but a tenant at will; and that the light bond that united them could be broken at his pleasure. “At my pleasure, too,” thought Angelica. A few evenings after, Gore was on some business in a distant part of the city; he met two persons, veiled and muffled, who struck him, as he passed them, as resembling Harry and Angelica Foot. He stood still to observe them: then followed them a few steps; and then, cursing his own folly, and resolving that if he returned
[p. 78]
and found her gone, he would bar his doors forever against her; he resumed his homeward way. She was not in his house. “She will return to me, to-morrow,” he said, “as she has done before, and tell me she has been watching with her sick cousin; but I know now, what I then suspected! This surely is from the hand of God; it is fitting I should be punished by the child I led astray.”
It was a proof that Gore's conscience was awakened, that he turned from upbraiding others to a crushing consciousness of his own sins. Tears gushed from his eyes; his limbs seemed sinking under him; and he leaned against the mantel-piece for support, when a letter sealed with black, in Matty's hand, caught his eye. A longer interval than usual had passed since he had heard from her. He seized it eagerly.
It was of a date two years later than the one we have already transcribed. It had been written at intervals, “in affliction and anguish of heart; and,” as the blistered paper witnessed, “with many tears.” It began,
“MY EVER DEAR FATHER.—My last letter to you was written as soon as I could hold a pen, after the birth of my second son, my little Russel. Since then I have not written to you, because I have many misgivings that you have more than trouble enough of your own; and 1 know further, by what I feel, that there is that in a parent's heart which cannot be torn out of it; and that
[p. 79]
however contrary appearances may be, my sorrows would weigh upon you; though my sorrows are, I fear, far lighter than your own.” (“God knows they are, whatever they may be,” murmured Gore.) “After Russel's birth I fell into a low fever, which is apt to set in on such occasions, and after I got a little better of that, the doctor said I was threatened with a decline; and recommended a journey; and my dear husband, who has always set my health and comfort before every earthly possession, got a trusty woman to take care of our children, and took me down to Buffalo, by the lake, to return by land. The journey was greatly blessed to me, and every thing went as we desired, till, on our way home, we were overtaken by heavy rains, and delayed two weeks. A fatal delay for us. When we arrived at home, we found that the woman left in charge of our children, not being able to overstay the time she had engaged for, had gone and left our little family in the care of a young girl. In consequence of her ignorance and neglect, poor little Harry had taken cold, and was dreadfully ill with an inflammatory rheumatism, and my poor baby seemed pining away. It had pleased God to restore my strength, and I entered upon the care of my children with resolution and hope.
“The low lands were overflowed by the freshet, and the crops much injured. They required my husband's immediate care. He overworked himself, and his fatigue and the stagnant water in the coves brought on a
[p. 80]
terrible fever. Six weeks have passed since he took to his bed. The fever is broken; but, O! my dear father, he seems sinking away, and I look for the worst; humbly trusting that God will enable me to bear what he sees fit to lay on me.”
-----
“Ten days have passed, my dear father; God has been merciful to little Harry. He is on his feet again, though still pale and feeble. My dear husband is no better. O ! my heart and strength fail me, when I think of what is coming. When Russel sees me drooping, he says, with a sweet smile, ‘stay your heart on God, Matty;’ and I do. O, father! how can those bear life whose hearts are not so stayed?
“My baby revived after we got home, and seemed to be thriving again; and was a great comfort to his father. When the little creature was sleeping, his father would have the cradle beside his bed. It seemed as if there was something in the sight of such sweet innocence, composing to the spirit. Last week the little fellow had a bad turn again, and two days ago, when he was evidently dying, my husband would have me sit with him, by his bedside. Together we watched his last breathings. O! my dear father, I thought then—I think now —that if you had lost one of us in infancy, you would never have doubted there was another world. The smile of my boy as his closing eye met mine for the last time, might convert a soul to faith in Jesus; for it
[p. 81]
was a speaking confirmation of His words, ‘of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ In that sweet smile there was love that cannot die; light beaming from immortality. We buried him the next day. The doctor was the only friend with us. He dug the grave under an oak tree, a few yards from our bed-room window. My husband selected the spot. He can see it, when he is raised on his bed. It is a trial, father, to a mother, to lay her child out of her arms into the cold earth; but there is in it no bitterness—no fear—no doubt. Believe me, dear father, for while I say it—I am sorely pressed upon —any thing may be borne, but sin and separation from God.”
(The letter dropped from Gore's hands; “That cannot!” he exclaimed; and in the anguish of his heart he cried aloud.)
-----
“Ten days have passed since my baby's death. My husband is sinking fast. The doctor told us yesterday, that our separation might take place at any moment. When he went out, Russel said, ‘This is much hardest for you, Matty. Rest on God's promises. He has never been known to forsake the widow and fatherless that put their trust in Him; we cannot be separated long; we know that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. I asked him if he had any directions to give about the children. ‘None,’ he said, ‘none; you will bring them
[p. 82]
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I have no anxieties for them, Matty; I have for you; but I am trying to cast off this care.’ He has given me his advice as to all earthly matters; he seems to have forgot nothing.”
-----
“It is over. He died at sunrise this morning; he sat up, supported by the doctor; his last look was on that little green mound under the oak tree, and then at me. I had been alone with him all night. Never, father, did I witness such faith; such peace; such joy; and, I may add, such thought for others. Surely he had drank deep of his Saviour's spirit. Before the children were put to sleep last night, he would have them come and kneel down at the bedside, while he prayed with us for the last time. Father, he remembered you and Harry! 0! how he prayed that you might be brought to believe in Jesus; ‘the resurrection and the life.’ Father, you will! you will! I am too weak to write more, his words are all written on my heart.
‘We buried him yesterday. Kind friends came to help us. There was no clergyman; but we had prayers and hymns, and a fitting service; and we laid him there beside the baby, where they will rest together, till this mortal puts on immortality. O! father, what a frightful, fathomless abyss, must the grave be to an unbeliever!”
[p. 83]
“Ten days have passed; my strength is a little recruited. Every thing has been done as my husband wished. You know many things have gone against us in a worldly way, since we have been here. I have sold all the personal property except the bed, and a little silver, and other valuables bought with the hundred dollars you gave me, and paid our debt to the doctor, and all other debts. I have fifty dollars over, for my journey to Fairtown. My husband wished me to return there, as I can do nothing here. The land may be something for the children hereafter. I begin my journey to-morrow. The lateness of the season makes it imprudent to delay. I intend taking the steamboat at Detroit. Farewell, dear father, may God have mercy on us all!”
“Amen !—amen!” cried Gore, clasping his hands, while tears poured like rain down his cheeks. It was a sleepless but a blessed night to him. Silence and solitude are powerful enforcements of conscience. Gore had never felt the influence of religion. In his youth he lived more even than most young persons, in the outward world. He judged of causes by their effects. He compared Matty's course to his own, and to Harry's. In the midst of disappointments and grievous afflictions, she dwelt in the light of another world; she was borne up by an immortal principle; the fire did not consume her, nor the floods overwhelm her. What was
[p. 84]
Harry's condition; what his own, at this moment! Like Mackenzie's philosopher, Gore wished he had never doubted; but, unlike him, he doubted no longer. For the first time since he had come to man's estate, he, that night, bent his knees to his Creator!
The next morning, before going out to his affairs; he dismissed Angelica's servant, and determined to lock his door, to prevent that bad woman access to his house. He had received the night before two thousand dollars, in payment of a debt, too late to deposit it in the bank; his first errand out was to go there with it. On opening the desk where he had put the money, he found that it was gone. The desk had been opened by a false key. The loss of the money was no insignificant matter to Gore, but every other feeling was swallowed up in the horror of the belief that Harry was a participator in the robbery. He resolved at once, to keep it secret; he told it only to one friend. A secret should have but one keeper.
We return to Matty, who was driven, with her two children, in a wagon to Detroit. She passed the night there, before embarking in the steamboat, and was compelled to sleep in a room filled with emigrants; the women of half a dozen families, Scotch, Irish, and German. When she went to bed, she put her pocket, containing her pocket-book, with her little store of bank notes, under her pillow. Worn out with fatigue, and the watchful nights of many weeks, she slept soundly.
[p. 85]
In the morning the pocket-book was gone! Matty, unconscious of her loss, paid her bill from a purse in the pocket of her dress where she had a small sum for present use. Her box, containing her bed, &c, had been left on the wharf with the steamboat baggage; and Matty, knowing little of the ill chances of a traveller, had no further anxiety but to get herself and her children on board. As soon as they had put off, and her weak head, which had reeled with the confusion of the embarkation, had recovered a degree of steadiness, she went to look after her baggage. A trunk, containing her own and her children's apparel was forthcoming, but the box was left behind.
“This is a heavy loss to you, ma'am,” said a good-natured man, who had assisted her search. “Yes,” said Matty, with a melancholy smile which the man seemed truly to interpret; for he added; “but, Lord bless me, ma'am, I think you have met with greater.”
“I guess she has,” said little Sybil; “for she has lost father and the baby, and we are all alone!”
“Well, well!” said the man, brushing away a tear; “the greater burden makes the lesser one feel light— that's a comfort, anyhow.”
Poor Matty was destined to farther experience of the truth of her comforter's philosophy. It was not long before the crier called out to the passengers from Detroit, to “come to the Captain's office, and pay their passages!” Matty waited till the press was over, and
[p. 86]
then went forward. The captain told her the amount, and, taking her little boy in his arms, was addressing a kind word to him, when he perceived the mother turn suddenly very pale.
“My pocket-book is gone,” she said; “I have not a dollar left! What is to become of us?” Her sense of their utter destitution overcame her, and she covered her face with her hands, and sank down on a bench. The children crept into her lap, and put their arms around her. Sybil whispered, “Why, mother! Mother, you always say God will take care of us? Won’t he now, mother?”
The captain fixed his eye steadfastly on the poor mother. He was accustomed to every mode of imposition and evasion, but this was truth; he felt assured, and it went to his heart, as warm and generous as any man’s; and, despite his hackneyed life, untouched by cupidity, and incapable of selfish suspicion. His attention was for a moment called off by some applicants at the office; and when it again reverted to Matty, she had wiped away her tears, and said calmly, “You must excuse me, sir; I have been through great fatigue and trouble lately;” her voice faltered, and little Sybil interposed. “She means father and baby are dead, sir.” “I see plainly,” resumed Matty, “there is but one thing to be done; I must be set on shore at the first landing place.”
“Where were you bound, ma’am?” asked the cap-
[p. 87]
tain in a voice that indicated sympathy and respect. Matty told him. He inquired, “if she expected to find friends there.”
“It is my native place, sir,” she replied; loath to enter into further particulars.
“Then,” said the captain, “we must get you there as fast as steamers and canal-boats can take you. You are in no state to be put ashore, my friend, and left to shift for yourself.” He called to the chambermaid. “Give this lady No. 15,” he said, “and a settee, and see that she has every attention and comfort.” Then taking Sybil in his arms, and kissing her, he said; “God does take care of good little children, my dear.”
“And so do good men, too!” replied the child, returning his caress. The mother smiled through her tears. It was a smile full of sweetness, peace, and gratitude. She could not speak. The captain understood her. He replaced Sybil in her arms, and turned away. Matty retired to her berth; and there her full heart found utterance without the aid of voice.
Subsequently it occurred to her, that the contents of her box, if recovered, might afford a compensation to the captain, and she told him so. “There is not much of value in the box,” she said, “excepting a bed, but it is a very good one.”
“I do not doubt it,” he replied; “or that I shall recover it; but I shall sleep all the better on my own bed, for thinking you have got yours in safety. Say no
[p. 88]
more about it, Mrs. Milnor; it is not every trip, up or down the lake, I have a chance of doing a good turn to a person I respect so much as I do you.”
When they arrived at Buffalo, the captain himself attended her to the canal-boat, and got an assurance from its commander that Mrs. Milnor should be forwarded free of expense to Albany; and then giving her a basket, well packed with an ample store of good provisions, he took a kind leave. Subsequently the box, directed and forwarded by the captain, came safely into Matty's possession.
These particulars of the captain's humanity, we should fear, might prove tiresome if they were fictitious; but being true to the letter, we would do our part towards cherishing their memory, as one of the moral treasures of our race.
It was not from this benevolent captain alone that Matty experienced kindness. Wherever she needed it, it was extended to her. She arrived safely at Schenectady. Being much exhausted, she asked leave to remain for an hour in the canal-packet, after the passengers had left it. New arrangements were now to be made. She was to change her mode of travelling, and she dreaded going among the throng, and begging a passage in a rail-road car.
Her delicacy shrunk from this prolonged dependence, and she was half inclined to stop where she was, and seek employment. But her strength was inadequate to
[p. 89]
labour, “and surely,” she thought; “experience should teach me faith in my fellow-beings, and trust in Him who hath helped me thus far!” She resolved to proceed; when a person, who, like her, was lingering in the packet, asked her if she would like to look at a “New York paper?”
“Thank you—no!” said Matty; who had no very keen appetite for newspapers.
“But there is something quite awful and interesting there,” pursued the person, pointing to a heading,
“Farther Disclosures.”
Matty took it languidly; but so she did not read, what follows. “A second examination took place yesterday, of Angelica, alias Nancy Foot. She declared that she had not had any special altercation with Gore on the fatal night; nor since the previous morning, when the robbery first got wind. He had shared the money with her, believing it was, as she assured him, her savings from various largesses. It seems that the unfortunate youth, though deeply depraved, was struck with horror at the imputation of having robbed his own father. He said to Nancy, when he heard the police were in search of him, ‘It was well there was no hell hereafter; there was enough of it here!’ It seems more than probable, that his disbelief in a final retribution, concurring with his present degradation and alarm, impelled him to the horrible act of suicide.”
Matty read no farther; the paper dropped from her
[p. 90]
hands; she fainted and fell on the floor! The person who gave her the paper had left the cabin. “O! mother has died too!” screamed Sybil, and the little boy cried piteously. At this moment an old man entered the cabin door, and when Matty opened her eyes she found herself in her father's arms.
----------
John Gore has returned to his old home in Fairtown. The waxed table, the old clock, and the Bible are in their accustomed places. But the Bible no longer seems to Gore a mere piece of furniture. He reads it daily, and with the earnest and humble mind befitting him who knows he reads the oracles of the living God. He has but one sorrow, yet that admits no cure; and he never speaks of it. He lives in close friendship with the Milnors, “not having yet forgiven them,” he says, with a smile; “but having been forgiven by them!”
Matty now only shows she has suffered by her ready and deep sympathy with all who suffer. Her losses on earth are her treasures in heaven. She is the solace of her old father; the guide and delight of her loving and good children; the example of all worth in her humble neighbourhood; and though “poor, she maketh many rich.”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Matty Gore
Subject
The topic of the resource
Christian faith and the misfortunes that result from neglect of religion.
Description
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A young woman's Christian faith sustains her through life's trials, while her father's and brother's lack of faith and duty lead to unhappiness and tragedy.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [Miss C. E. Sedgwick]
Source
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The Religious Souvenir, edited by Lydia Howard Sigourney, pp. 50-90.
Publisher
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New York: Scofield & Voorhies
Date
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1840 [pub. 1839]
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D. Gussman
Relation
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Annual reissued as The Religious Souvenir. Hartford, Conn.: S. Andrus and Son, 1846.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
"Despondency Corrected"
1839
1840
bible
brothers
Buffalo
conversion
correspondence
daughters
Death
duty
Faith
farming
fathers
filial obedience
forgiveness
Frances Wright
frontier
God
housekeeping
illness
independence
lectures
letters
living in sin
Lydia Howard Sigourney
marriage
New York City
newspapers
parenthood
railroad
religion
robbery
suicide
The Religious Souvenir
William Wordsworth
women's rights
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Title
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1839
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Second Thoughts Best.
By Miss Sedgwick.
“Grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair.” –Measure for Measure
It is a common saying, that no individual profits by another’s experience,—there are few, we believe, that profit by their own; few to whom may not be justly applied that striking saying of Coleridge that “experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which only illuminate the way that is passed.” But, of all the scholars I have ever known in this ever-open school of experience, my friend, Mrs. Dunbar, is the most unteachable. With a fair portion of intellect, with a quick observation, and fifty years’ acquaintance with the world, she is as trustful, as credulous, and as hopeful, as, when a child, she believed the rainbow was a rope, of substantial, woven light, with a golden cup at the end of it; that there was a real man standing in the moon, and that the sky would, one of these bright days, fall,
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and we should catch larks. Being of a benevolent and equable temperament, her credulity has the most happy manifestations. Her faith in her fellow-creatures is implicit, and her confidence in the happiness of the future unwavering; so that, however dark and heavy the clouds may be at any given moment, she believes they are on the point of breaking away.
I have known but a single exception to the general and pleasant current of my friend’s life. One anxiety and disappointment crossed her, which even her blessed alchymy could not gild or transmute. Her husband lost all his fortune; this was not the cross. Mrs. Dunbar said, she saw no reason why they should not take their turn on Fortune’s wheel; she did not doubt they should come up again, and, if they did not, why, her own private fortune was enough to secure them from dependence and want. Her husband had none of her philosophy, or, rather, happy temperament;—philosophy gets too much credit. He had an ambitious spirit, and his ambition had taken a direction very common in our cities; an aspiration after commercial reputation, and the wealth and magnificence that follow it. Mr. Dunbar had mounted to the very top rung of the ladder, when, alas, it fell! and his possessions and hopes were
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prostrated. A fever seized him in the severest hour of disappointment, and the moral and physical pressure killed him. But this was not the cross. Mrs. Dunbar loved and honored her husband, without having any particular sympathy with him. He imparted none of his projects to her, and neither interfered with nor participated her quiet, every-day pursuits and pleasures; so that no harmonious partnership could be dissolved with less shock to the survivor. Mrs. Dunbar, beside the common-place solaces, on such occasions, such as, “We must all die,” “Heaven’s time is the best time,” had a particular and reasonable consolation in being relieved from the sight of unhappiness that she could not remove or mitigate. This was not selfishness, but the necessity of her nature, which resembled those plants that cannot live unless they have sunshine, and plenty of it.
Mrs. Dunbar had one son, Fletcher, a youth of rare promise, who was just seventeen at his father’s death. He most happily combined the character of his parents,—the aspiring and firm qualities of his father, and the bright spirit of his mother. His education had been most judiciously directed by his father; and his mother, without any system or plan whatever, had, by the sponta-
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neous action of her own character, most happily moulded his affections. At seventeen, Fletcher Dunbar seemed to me the perfection of a youth; with a boyish freshness and playfulness, and a manly grace, generosity, and courtesy. Much more attention than is usual in our country had been given to the adornments of education; but his father, who had all respect to the solid and practical, had taken care that the weightier matters were not sacrificed; and he had a prompt reward. So capable and worthy of trust was Fletcher at his father’s death, that the mercantile house in which he was clerk offered him, on advantageous terms, an agency for six years, in France and England. Mrs. Dunbar consented to his departure. But this parting of the widow from her only son, her only child, and such a child, was not the cross. “There was nothing like throwing a young man, who had his fortune to carve, on his own responsibilities,” she justly said. “Fletcher would get good, and not evil, wherever he went. She should hear from him by every packet, and six years would soon fly away.” And they did, and this brings me to the story of that drop, that diffused its bitterness through the cup of my friend till now had preserved sweet and sparkling.
The six years were gone; six years they had
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been to Fletcher, of health, prosperity, and virtue. I need say nothing more for a young man, who had been exposed to the temptations of London and Paris. The happy day and evening of his arrival had passed away. Uncles, aunts, and friends had thronged to welcome him, and gone to their homes, and Mrs. Dunbar was left alone with Fletcher and Ellen Fitzhugh.
I have said, that Mrs. Dunbar had but one child; but, if it be possible for the bonds of adoption to be as strong as those of nature, Mrs. Dunbar loved Ellen as well as if she had been born to her. This instance was enough to prove, that there may be the happiness of a maternal affection without the instincts of nature, or the feeling of property in the object, which more selfish natures than my friend’s require. Ellen was the child of a very dear friend of Mrs. Dunbar, who, from a goodly portion of nine daughters, surrendered this, the fairest and best, to what she then deemed a happier destiny than she could in any other way secure for her.
I do not believe Mrs. Dunbar could have told which she loved the best, Ellen Fitzhugh or her son; in truth, they were so blended in her mind that they made but one idea. When she saw Ellen, Fletcher was in her imagination; when she
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thought of Fletcher, Ellen was the present visible type through which her thoughts and affections went out to him.
Now he had returned; they were under the same roof;—Fletcher was three and twenty, with a handsome fortune to begin the world with; and Ellen was just eighteen, with
“a countenance, in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”
Never was there a fitter original for this beautiful description of the poet, than Ellen Fitzhugh; and could there be any thing more natural that Mrs. Dunbar’s firm belief, that Fletcher would set right about weaving into an imperishable fabric of golden threads she had been spinning for him?
The first evening had passed away; the old family domestics had received from Fletcher’s hand some gift “far fetched,” and enriched with the odor of kind remembrance; and Mrs. Dunbar and the young couple lingered over the decaying embers, to talk over the thousand particulars that are omitted in the most minute correspond-
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ence. “Pray tell me, Fletcher,” asked Mrs. Dunbar, “who was that Bessie Elmore you spoke of so frequently in your last letters?”
“Bessie Elmore! Heaven bless her! She was the daughter of a lady who was excessively kind to me the last time I was in London. She bore a striking resemblance to Ellen, so I called her cousin,—a pretty title to shelter a flirtation;—I should inevitably have lost my heart, but for the presumption of asking her to give up her country.”
“Was she very like Ellen?”
“Excessively; her laugh, too, always recalled Ellen’s. She was a charming little creature!”
Ellen blushed slightly, and Mrs. Dunbar’s happy countenance smiled all over as she said, “Ellen is very English in her looks.”
“Yes, aunt, a ‘rosy, sturdy little person,’ as English Smith used to call me.”
“Not too sturdy, Ellen,” said Fletcher, “and not too little,—just as high as our hearts, mother, is she not?”
“She has always just filled mine,” replied the delighted mother, who had already jumped to the conclusion that the affair was as good as settled, and the wedding, and the happy years to follow, floated in rich visions before her. She ventured on one question she was anxious to have
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settled. “You have no occasion to go abroad again, Fletcher?”
“None. A happy home, in my own country, has long been my ‘castle in the air,’ and now, thank Heaven, I can give it a terrestrial foundation.”
“Ellen is not the person to relish this ‘taking for granted,’” thought Mrs. Dunbar; Fletcher should be more reserved.
Fletcher soon turned the current of her apprehensions. “Pray,” he asked, “what is the reason, Ellen, that you and my mother have so seldom mentioned Matilda Preston in your letters of late?”
“We have seen much less of her than usual the winter past. Matilda cannot
‘To a party give up what was meant for mankind.’
I suppose you know she has been a ‘bright and particular star’ this winter,—a belle?”
“Has she? I am sorry for it!”
“So is not Matilda. She enjoys her undisputed reign. She has, to those she chooses to please, captivating manners, and you know she is talented. The beaux, of a score of years standing, declare there has been nothing like her in their time. She is beset with admirers and lover. She says she is obliged, when she goes
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to a ball, to keep an ivory tablet under her belt, with a list of her partners. Some wag pasted up on Carroll Place, where the Prestons live, ‘Apollo’s Court,’ on account of the perpetual serenades there. Poor Rupert Selden told me, he has thrown away half a year’s commissions on bouquets and serenades to her, which, in his own romantic phrase, had ‘ended in smoke.’ She is said to be engaged.”
“Engaged!” Fletcher bit his nails for two or three minutes in deep abstraction, and then added, “To whom is she engaged?”
“Pray don’t look so distressed, cousin; I only reported it as an on dit,—I forgot your flame for Matilda.”
“Pshaw, Ellen! but who is the person?”
“The preeminent person at the present moment is Ned Garston.”
“Ned Garston! a monkey, --impossible!”
“Oh, he is much improved by foreign travel, and, if still a monkey, a romantic monkey, a monkey en beau. He has put himself into the hands of some Parisian master of the science of transforming the deformed, and has come forth the tableau vivant, copied after a famous picture of some Troubadour in the Louvre.”
“What do you mean, Ellen?”
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“I mean, that Ned Garston’s very pretty, black hair hangs in hyacinthine curls over the collar of his coat,—that he wears tresses, like a girl’s, on each side of his face, and mustachios and whiskers that would befit a grand Sultan. The girls call him ‘the Sublime Porte.’”
“And is it possible that Matilda Preston, that gifted, beautiful creature, is going to throw herself away upon this Jackanapes?”
“How wildly you talk, Fletcher!” interposed his mother, “you have not seen Matilda Preston since she was a mere child.”
“But a rare child, my dear mother; Matilda Preston, at thirteen, was a fit model for sculpture and painting. She moved like a goddess, and her faculties were worthy such a form. Lord bless me, what a sacrifice!—is it a sacrifice to Mammon, Ellen?”
“Do not insist that the sacrifice is certain,”—
“I have no doubt it is his fortune,” said Mrs. Dunbar, for the first time, I believe, in her life, turning a scale against an absent person that might have been struck in her favor, “that is to say, fortune and style. Garston has the most showy equipage in the city, and his family, you know, are all in the first fashion.”
“The fashion would have more influence with
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Matilda than fortune, I suspect. You know, aunt, she refused Stanhope Gilmore, who is very rich, and very clever into the bargain.”
“But you remember, Ellen, she told us her father would never have consented to her marrying a loco-foco.”
“Loco-foco! what the mischief is that, mother?”
“Why——the lowest of people—an agrarian, you know—a Tory.”
“What does my mother mean, Ellen? I never heard such a confusing combination of terms.”
“You surely know what we mean by Whigs and Tories?”
“Not I.”
“Do you never read our newspapers?”
“Very seldom,—never the party papers. An American abroad is ashamed of the petty wrangling, virulence, and vulgarity of our political papers. We care only for the honor and prosperity of the country at large. We love our countrymen, by whatever name they are called, and it makes us heart-sick to take up one of our popular journals and see it proclaimed, that ‘a crisis is at hand!’—that ‘the country is on the brink of ruin!’—that ‘the constitution is in jeopardy!’ and can only be saved by a doubtful ma-
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jority, rallying with all their strength against a corrupt faction, about to prostrate the liberties of the country! The only way to keep your temper is never to look into a newspaper. But, pray, can you tell me what are these loco-foco Tories?”
Poor Mrs. Dunbar never disturbed the serene heaven of her mind with politics. She received a very vague impression from the persons she associated with, and in accordance with this impression, she now replied, “I don’t know precisely,—I remember my father talking about the Tories in Revolutionary days being the enemies of their country, and I suppose it is just the same now.”
Mrs. Dunbar answered in good faith. The changes of the last sixty years, the new formations, and the remodellings; the old parties with new names, and the new parties with old names, still existed in her mind as the ideas had originally entered it, as banded Whigs and Tories. Fletcher laughed at her reply and said, “I see, my dear mother, you are just where I left you. The loco-focos, I take it for granted, Ellen, are the administration party.”
“Yes.”
“And Stanhope Gilmore, sprung from the most aristocratic family in the State, is a loco-foco?
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and Matilda Preston’s father, of a purely democratic origin belongs to the aristocratic party?”
“Just so.”
“Well, thank Heaven, our party associations may make a great uproar, but they can never have the element of danger while they are so unstable and accidental!”
A ring at the door, and the entrance of a note “To Miss Fitzhugh,” cut the thread of Fletcher’s generalizations. He cast his eye on the note, and exclaimed, “That I am sure is from Matilda Preston, though I have not seen her writing for six years. If there is nothing private in it will you allow me to look at it, Ellen?”
“Certainly, there is nothing private, only such a strange proposition!”
“Read it aloud, please, Fletcher,” said Mrs. Dunbar; and Fletcher read as follows:
“Dearest Ellen,
“You are engaged to go to Mrs. Reeves’s costume-ball to morrow evening. Some tiresome people have been persuading me to appear as Rebecca. Now I am well aware, that, in the article of beauty, I am not fitted to impersonate the lovely Jewess, but I am half inclined to try it, because I can so well arrange a dress for the
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character. Mamma has a remnant of a last century’s dress, a bright yellow India silk, embroidered with silver, that, with my ostrich feather and agrafe, will do admirably for the turban. I do not quite comprehend Rebecca’s simarre, but I think the bodice of my brocade will do as substitute.
“My note was interrupted by a visit from Madame Salasuar. She offers me her diamonds,—à bas pride, I’ll wear them. They are essential to give the Eastern character of magnificence. Then, you know my ‘sable tresses,’ my ‘aquiline nose,’ my ‘dark complexion,’ and my ‘Oriental eyes,’ as De Ville will call them, will all work in as accessories, to give a vraisemblance to the tableau vivant.
“Now, my sweetest Ellen, I cannot appear as the Jewess, unless you accompany me as the Lady Rowena. Pray,—pray do not refuse me, why should you?
“Perhaps you think ‘l’obscurité convient aux femmes’; — my dear, it will come soon enough when there are kitchens and nurseries for us to supervise,—let us buzz a little while in the sunshine first.
“Do you know a possible Ivanhoe among the invited? I do not. My acquaintances are all
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party-going, unknightly gentry enough. Garston proposes to appear as Brian de Bois-Guilbert!!! The perverse winds and waves! if they had but sent us Fletcher Dunbar!” (Here the reader blushed, smiled, and hesitated. “Read on, my son,” said his mother impatiently, and on he stammered.) “A Palmer’s dress, in which you know Ivanhoe first appears, would have been just the thing for Fletcher’s advent from foreign land, though the uprooted oak, the device of his shield at the tourney, and the motto, Desdichado, (Disinherited,)” would have ill fitted dear Mrs. Dunbar’s heir-apparent. It is so intolerably provoking that he has not arrived, when he is probably within two days’ sail of us. He is so clever and with such a born-hero look! Perhaps, after all, he might be cross and refuse; so let us be philosophers, and do as well as we can without him. You, dearest Ellen, will not refuse me? You will be the ‘Queen of Love and Beauty’; I only the poor Jewess, who, you remember, the Prior of Jorvaulx swore was far inferior to the lovely Saxon Rowena.”
“Is Matilda Preston out of her head?” exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar. “A fitting character for you, truly, Ellen, that pompous, cold, disagreea-
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ble, insipid Rowena. Don’t think of it, my dear child.”
“I shall not think of it for other reasons, aunt. I cannot conceive of any thing more absurd than for me to personate a beauty,—a tall beauty, too! born ‘to the exercise of habitual superiority, and the reception of general homage.’”
“I see no objection in that, my dear child. There are not half a dozen readers of Ivanhoe, who remember whether Rowena was tall or short; and as to beauty, that is, as to what is really engaging and captivating, I am sure”——
“Pray, dear aunt,”——
“The servant is waiting for an answer,” said Mrs. Dunbar’s maid.
“He shall have it instantly,” replied Ellen, taking up her pen.
“Stop one moment, my dear cousin,” said Fletcher, laying his hand on hers; “if it is not too disagreeable to you, say Yes. I should particularly like surprising Matilda, and joining you at this ball in the way she proposes. I do not see, that, in merely dressing in costume for Rowena, and calling yourself that name, you arrogate yourself beauty, and queenship, and all that. Where you make one of a group, the resemblance is a matter of inferior consequence.
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Matilda’s Jewess will be so striking, that she will shelter all our imperfections.”
Ellen still hesitated, and looked perplexed, and Fletcher added, “I see it annoys you, — it is a sacrifice of your prepossessions, — write the note as you at first intended.”
The word sacrifice seemed to Ellen to set her reluctance in a ridiculous light, and she felt ashamed of having hesitated, at this moment of Fletcher’s return, to acceded to a request that involved pleasure to him. “I will write it as I should have intended, if I had not been more thoughtful of myself then of others’ pleasure. You must make up your mind, aunt, to my doing the Lady Rowena too much honor! Shall I tell Matilda I can find an Ivanhoe, and that we will meet her at Mrs. Reeve’s at ten?
“Thank you, Ellen, — yes, — but pray don’t give a hint of my arrival; let us see, what was the Palmer’s dress, — do you remember, mother?”
Mrs. Dunbar did not; but, believing and hoping in her heart it would be something so unsuitable as to induce Fletcher to abandon the project, she eagerly sought the first volume of Ivanhoe on the book-shelf, and gave it to him. Fletcher opened at the entrance of the Palmer into Roth-
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erwood. “ ‘A mantle of coarse, black serge,’” he read aloud, “admirable! that is easily got up, and can be easily thrown aside. ‘Coarse sandals bound with thongs on his bare feet.’ By your leave, Sir Palmer, I shall not meddle with those. ‘A broad and shadowy hat, with cockle-shells stitched on its brim.’ Excellent! ‘A long staff shod with iron, to the upper end of which was attached a branch of palm.’ As we are not to tramp to Holy Land, we will omit the shoeing. The branch of palm is the grand point. That can be got from my old friend Thorburn.”
“And what is Ellen’s dress to be?” asked Mrs. Dunbar, — “I hope that will not be forgotten.”
“My dear mother, forgive me, —Ellen was busy with her note, —finished and sent is it! –you always execute while others are planning, Ellen. Ah, here is the description; ‘Hair betwixt brown and flaxen,’ — yours has a touch of the auburn, — the Saxon red.”
“Red!” interposed Mrs. Dunbar, “Ellen’s hair red! It has a true golden tinge.”
“Red gold, mother.”
“At any rate, Fletcher, it is not red, flaxen, or brown; I might have remembered Rowena’s hair was flaxen, — everything about her was unmeaning.”
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“ ‘Her hair,’ ” proceeded Fletcher, “ ‘was braided with gems.’ ”
“Le Fleur will manage all that,” said Mrs. Dunbar, “with my set of pearl.” She began to feel a little womanly interest in the getting up of the dress.
“‘A golden chain,’ ” proceeded Fletcher, “‘to which was attached a small reliquary of the same metal hung round her neck.’ That, my dear cousin, you must allow me to manage, that is, if a cross will do in place of a reliquary, and, as they are both symbols of the same religion, I do not see why it will not.” He unlocked a very beautiful dressing-case, which he now told Ellen he had brought for her, and took from it a rich gold chain, with an exquisitely wrought cross attached to it. “I brought this prophetically,” he said, clasping it round Ellen’s neck.
“Would the chain, and not the cross, had been prophetic!” thought Mrs. Dunbar, and she heaved a deep sigh.
“The memory of affection is always prophetic, Fletcher,” said Ellen; “it links the memory of past to future kindness.”
“What, my dear?” asked Mrs. Dunbar; “I don’t clearly understand you.”
The chain and the cross were too suggestive
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to Ellen’s mind to admit of any very clear explanation. Fletcher’s quick eye perceived her embarrassment, and imputing it to the awkwardness that very commonly attends receiving a gift, he went on with the book. “ ‘Her dress was an under gown and kirtle of pale green silk.’ ”
“Your new gown is the very thing, Ellen,” interrupted Mrs. Dunbar; “how fortunate! green, your own color.”
“Ellen’s color the emblem of desertion! mother?”
“No, no indeed, Fletcher; no one who has ever loved Ellen could forsake her.”
Fletcher, all unconscious of the feeling that was bubbling up from his mother’s heart, coolly proceeded in his trying process. “Here is a stumbling-block! ‘The Lady Rowena wore a long, loose crimson robe, manufactured of the finest wool, which reached to the ground.’ ”
“A stumbling-block? By no means, Fletcher; Amande can convert my India shawl into such a robe without the least injury to it, and I’ll answer for it the Lady Rowena’s mantle was dowlas to that. Is there any thing else?”
“ ‘A veil of silk interwoven with gold.’ ”
“My Brussels lace will be just the thing; it is magnificent, and will shelter without concealing.”
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At another time Ellen’s right joyous spirit would have found merriment enough in the project of arraying her little, unobtrusive person in a crimson robe, flowing to the ground, and at the simplicity of good Mrs. Dunbar, in supposing she could carry off any thing “magnificent.” She had another kind of veil to wear, for the first time in her life, to conceal her feelings, and to assume cheerfulness she did not feel.
Mrs. Dunbar retired for the night. Ellen, after despatching some trifling home affairs, was following her, when Fletcher, who had been leaning abstractedly on his elbow, said, “Ellen, do not go; I have something to say to you.” Ellen turned with a beating and foreboding heart. “Tell me, Ellen, honestly, is it your belief that Matilda Preston is engaged to Garston?”
“I do not believe she is.”
“Why are you in such haste? Sit down, — there, thank you; but do not look as if I had murder to confess, — I have only to tell you the weakness and the strength of my heart. You know, my dear Ellen, — cousin, — sister, I should rather call you, for, without any tie of blood, no sister was ever dearer, there is no one but you to whom I can communicate my feelings, projects, and hopes, —from whom I can take coun-
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sel. To begin, then when I left America you and Matilda Preston were very intimate. I do not find you so much so now; what is the cause of this alienation?”
“There is no alienation, Fletcher; we are intimate still.”
“Affectionately intimate?”
“Matilda is very kind, — very affectionate to me.”
“And you not so to her? I am sure you never repelled affection with coldness. There must be some reason for this. My mother, too, seems to have a prejudice against Matilda; pray be frank with me, Ellen.”
Frankness was Ellen’s nature. She was one of the few beings in this world, who are thoroughly and habitually, by nature and by grace, true. For the first time a cloud had passed over her clear spirit. She began to speak, faltered, began again, and finally said; “It may be more mine than Matilda’s fault, that we are less intimate than formerly. Our circumstances, our tastes are different. I think Matilda is much what she was when you left us, — that is, — that is, allowing for the difference between a school-girl and a belle, Fletcher.”
“A belle! — how I hate the term. But how
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could it be otherwise in a city atmosphere, with Matilda’s beauty, talents, and accomplishments? I see she is not quite to your taste, Ellen; I am sorry for it, but this is better than I feared. Now for my confession is brief. When I left you, I was a reserved boy. Neither you, nor my mother, probably, ever suspected my predilection, but for two years I had been desperately in love with Matilda Preston. I believed she loved me. We exchanged many a love-token, many a promise. It is true she was a mere child, I a mere boy; but there are such childish loves on record, Ellen. The germ of the fruit is in the unfolding bud. It may, after all, have been, on her part, a littler innocent foolery, forgotten long ago; but, if so, I was coxcomb enough to take it all in dead earnest. Through my six years of absence I have cherished, lived upon, these remembrances. All my projects, all my successes have blended with the thought of Matilda; and, blessed by Heaven in my enterprises, I have now come home determined to throw myself at her feet, if I find her what memory and a lover’s faith have painted her.” Fletcher fixed his eye on Ellen. Hers fell. “Will you not, — can you not, Ellen, give me a ‘God speed’?”
The flush on Ellen’s cheek faded to a deadly
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paleness. After a moment’s hesitation, she summoned her resolution; and, raising her eye to meet Fletcher’s, replied, with a tolerably steady voice, “do not ask a ‘God speed’ of me now Fletcher; — wait till you have seen Matilda, and studied her character, as you to study that on which the happiness of your life is to depend; and then, if your ripened judgment confirms your youthful preference, you shall have my” — “God speed,” she would have said but her honest tongue refused to utter the word to which her heart did not answer, and adding, “my earnest wishes, — my prayers,” she burst into irrepressible tears, and, horror-struck at what she feared was a betrayal of her true feelings she fled, without even a “good night,” to her own apartment.
The truth did once flash across Fletcher’s mind. “It is a phenomenon to see Ellen in tears, save at some touching tale or known grief,” he thought; “Ellen, with her ever bright buoyant spirit, — her ‘obedient passions, will resigned.’ Has my dear, imprudent mother, with her equal fondness for us both, been kindling a spark of tenderness in Ellen’s heart?” The thought was no sooner conceived than rejected. There was no latent vanity in Fletcher’s mind to please itself with cherishing it. It was happily improbable,
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and it soon gave place to thick-coming and most pleasant fancies. But one cloud hovered over them, — Mrs. Dunbar’s and Ellen’s all too evident distrust of Matilda. “I will ‘study her character,’ and abide by the decision of my ‘ripened judgment,’ ” resolved Fletcher. Alas for the judgment of a young man of three and twenty as to talented beauty of nineteen with the desperate make-weight against it of a long-cherished love!
When love takes possession of a mind perfectly sane in other respects, it acts like a monomania. This one idea has on independent existences, a complete ascendency, and absolute rule. The faculties of perception, comparison, judgment, have no power to modify, — the will no control over it. An angel, surely, should keep
“Strict change and watch, that —
No evil thing approach or enter in”
the paradise of the affections.
The trials of the evening were not over for Ellen. It was her invariable custom to undress in Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment, and to have a little gossip over the interests of the closing day, and the anticipations of the leaf of life next to be turned, before they parted for the night. This is the
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hour, that, of all others, unlocks the treasures of the heart. Memory pours out her hoarded stores and young hope shows, by her magic lantern, her visions of the future.
Ellen had often sat with her loving friend over the dying embers, reading and re-reading the passages in Fletcher’s letters, where he dwelt on the fond remembrance of home. Every mention of Ellen, and the letters abounded with them, his mother repeated and repeated, and always with an emphasis and smile, that sometimes made Ellen’s blood tingle to her fingers’ ends. And yet, simple as a child, the good woman never dreamed that she was communicating her faith and hopes, and awakening feelings never to sleep again. This she knew, as a matter of principle and discretion, would not be right; and, while she never said to Ellen, in so many words, “My heart is set on your marrying Fletcher, and I am sure his is, even more than mine,” she did not suspect she was conveying this meaning in every look, word, and motion. And even now, when the pillars of her “castle in the air,” were tumbling about her head, she had no apprehension that Ellen would be crushed by them. They were to meet now for the first time, with the most painful feeling to loving and trusting friends, that
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their hearts must be hidden with impenetrable screens; but, such was the transparency of dear Mrs. Dunbar’s heart, that, put what she would before it, the disguise melted away is the clear light, — to tell the truth, Ellen’s was little better; her safety was in the dim sight of the eye to be eluded.
She washed away her tears, called up all the resolution she could master, and repaired to Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment, whom she hoped she might find by this time in bed, and get off with her “good-night kiss”; but, instead of this, she was pacing up and down the room, not a pin removed.
“Dear aunt, not in bed yet?”
“No, my dear child, — I did not feel like sleeping the first night, you know, of Fletcher’s being here; — it’s natural to have a good many wakeful thoughts of past times, and so forth.” While saying this she had turned her back, and was busying herself at the bureau, the tone of her voice, and the frequent use of her handkerchief, conveying the state of her feelings as precisely to Ellen, as her streaming eyes would, had she shown them.
“Now you are at the bureau, aunt, please to take out your crimson shawl,” said Ellen, luckily hitting on an external object to engage their
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attention. Mrs. Dunbar fumbled at the drawers long enough to give herself time to clear her voice and dry her eyes, and then, throwing the shawl in to Ellen’s lap, she said, “You are welcome to that, and every thing else I have in the world, God knows, my dear child; but I don’t wish you to go to Mrs. Reave’s to-morrow evening, — I don’t think you will enjoy yourself.”
“It’s no very rare thing, at a party, not to enjoy one’s self, aunt. I shall certainly have the pleasure of obliging Fletcher.”
“That’s true, Ellen; — but then it was not like him to ask you, when he saw it was so disagreeable to you. I don’t see why he should set his heart upon this foolish Ivanhoeing.”
“But you see why he does, aunt.” Ellen spoke with a smile, melancholy, in spite of her efforts.
“Yes, I do, I do!” cried Mrs. Dunbar, her tears gushing forth afresh; “I see that Fletcher has the most unexpected, incomprehensible, unreasonable, unfortunate, strange, dreadful, wonderful, and amazing interest in Matilda Preston. I had never so much as thought of it, — it’s insanity, Ellen, — he is as blind as a beetle.”
“It is a blindness, aunt, that is not likely to be cured by the presence of Matilda Preston.”
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“That’s just what I feel, Ellen. Men are always carried away with beauty. I thought Fletcher was an exception; but he is not, or he would tell the gold from the glittering.”
“But, aunt, you do Matilda and Fletcher injustice. She has fine qualities; and, if what you now expect should happen, you will look on Matilda with very different eyes.”
“Never, Ellen, never in the world, —she will always seem to stand between men and —I mean, — I mean, — I can’t tell you, Ellen, what I mean. But this I will say, come what will, no one can ever take your place to me, —you are the child of my heart, — you have grown up at my side — I can never love another daughter; — whomever you marry, Ellen, wherever you go, your home shall be my home.”
“No, no, aunt,” said Ellen, hiding her tearful face on the bosom of her faithful friend, “I shall never marry, — never.” And before Mrs. Dunbar could reply, she gave her good-night kiss and left the room.
“Is it possible she could have understood me?” exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar. After a little reflection she quieted her apprehensions with the thought that she had a hundred times before spoken just as plainly, and Ellen had not suspected what she meant. She was like the child, who, shutting his own eyes, fancies no one can see him.
When Ellen left Mrs. Dunbar’s room, she went mechanically down stairs to perform her last household duty, which was to see that the doors were secured. On the floor, at the street-door, she perceived a note; and, on taking it up, saw it was addressed to a Miss Little, Miss Preston’s dress-maker, who lived opposite the Dunbars’ dress-maker, who lived opposite the Dunbars’. It had been accidentally dropped by Miss Preston’s careless servant. It was unsealed, and Ellen, taking it for granted it related to something about the costume for the Reeves party, and that it might be important to have no delay in getting it into the hands of the artiste, rang the bell for the servant, intending to send it, though the hour was unseasonable. Diana, Mrs. Dunbar’s crippled old cook, called out from the kitchen stairs to Miss Ellen, that “Daniel had just gone up to bed.” Daniel, like his pagan mate, Diana, had lived out, and overstayed his lease of threescore and ten with kind Mrs. Dunbar; and Ellen, hesitating to call him down, ventured to open the note, to see if it were a matter of any importance. It contained only the following three lines:
“Pray, Miss Littell, if you have any dealings
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with Mrs. D.’s family, do not mention that you informed me of the arrival of her son.
“M. P —.”
“I thought so!” exclaimed Ellen, involuntarily. “What is it, Ellen? What did you think?”
asked Fletcher, who, unheard by her, had just come into the open door for something he had left behind.
“Oh, nothing, — nothing at all,” said she. He playfully attempted to wrest the note from her hand, till, seeing she anxiously retained it, he desisted, and she returned to her own apartment, where she breathed freely for the first time for many hours, and where she spent a long, sleepless night in expelling from her mind her shattered hopes, and forming her plans for the future.
“Ought I not,” she said, in her self-examination, “to have obeyed the first impulse of my heart, and when Fletcher appealed to me, to have told him frankly my opinion of Matilda.” After much meditation the response of her conscience was a full acquittal. She had done all that the circumstances of the case and her relations to the parties allowed, in withholding her ‘God speed’ till Fletcher’s ripened judgment should authorize his decision. She reflected, that Matilda’s char-
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acter had seemed to her to have the same radical faults six years before, that it had now, and that, in spite of them, Fletcher loved her then. Perhaps she judged those faults too strictly. Perhaps her judgment was tinged by her self-love; for she was conscious, that, in the points so offensive to her, she was constitutionally the opposite of Matilda Preston. She looked again at Matilda’s discrepant notes of that evening, and charitably allowed, that she had at first felt too much displeasure at what struck her as absolutely false, but what, after all, might be an innocent stratagem to get up a dramatic scene, and perhaps to shelter emotions at a first meeting with Fletcher. “But oh, Matilda, why always a stratagem? Why never let the appearance answer to the reality? Why never trust yourself to simple truth?” Because Matilda was afraid, that truth would not serve her so well as she could manage for herself. We have no doubt our friends, the Phrenologists, would, with a very fair intellectual development, have found a great predominance of the organs of self-esteem, love of approbation, and cautiousness on Matilda’s head. She had an intense love of admiration, not merely of her personal charms, for her preëminent beauty was settled by universal suffrage, and she
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had no anxiety about it; but she would be thought, in all the circle of her acquaintance, to be the most capable of disinterested friendship and of self-sacrificing love; her tastes were in favor of all the virtues, — she really wished to be amiable and excellent; but the virtues have their price, and they will not abate one jot or tittle; — that price is self-abasement, self-forgetfulness, and generosity. “Hard it is to climb their steeps;” and they can only be achieved by painful and persevering efforts. At the first real trial appearances vanish like vapor, — there is no cheating in the long run in the matter of goodness.
With all Matilda’s fine taste, with her susceptibility to opinion, and her eager desire of praise, she was no favorite. Her intense selfishness would penetrate all disguises, — her consciousness of herself was always apparent, — there was never a spontaneous action, word, or look. In all this she was the very opposite of Ellen, who, most strictly watchful of the inner world, let the outer take care of itself. This gave a freedom and simplicity to her manners, and a straightforwardness to all her dealings, that inspired confidence. Matilda, in the midst of her most brilliant career, had, whenever silent, an expres-
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sion of care and dissatisfaction, — a rigidity and contraction of the upper lip, (often criticized as the only imperfection of her beauty,) that betrayed the puerile anxieties in which she was involved, the web she was perpetually weaving or raveling. There is no such tell-tale as the human countenance, or rather, we should say (with more reverence) God has set his seal of truth upon it, and no artifice has ever yet obscured the Divine impression. Ellen Fitzhugh’s lovely face was the mirror of truth, cheerfulness, and affection.
“There is no use,” thought Ellen, as she pursued the meditations in which we left her, “in trying to conceal my feelings, — I cannot, — I never did in my life, — I must just set to work and overcome them. Dear Mrs. Dunbar, all those sweet fancies that you and I have been so busily weaving, the last six years, must be sacrificed at once and for ever; and I must just learn to think of Fletcher, as I did when a little girl,— as a dear, kind brother; — that should be, — it
shall be, enough.” This resolution was made with many showers of tears, and sanctified with many prayers, ejaculated from the depths of her heart; and, once made, she set about, with most characteristic promptness, contriving the means for carrying it into execution.
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“In the first place,” thought she, “I must have something extraordinary to occupy me, or I shall be constantly, and oh how painfully, watching Fletcher’s every look and action; in spite of myself, I shall be hoping and fearing. This must not be, for I know how it must all end! It occurred to her, that it was nearly as important to divert Mrs. Dunbar’s attention as her own, and a lucky thought came into her head. Mrs. Dunbar’s physician had been urging her, for some weeks, to have a little wen removed, that was growing in a dangerous neighbourhood to her eye. Mrs. Dunbar was timid and procrastinating; but, with Fletcher’s aid, Ellen felt sure of persuading her this was the very best time for the operation. Then she determined at once to put in execution a project she had conceived, of teaching a poor, young blind girl, a pensioner of Mrs. Dunbar’s, music. Ellen was an accomplished musician; and she certainly was not over sanguine in believing, that the prospect of qualifying a drooping, dependent creature to earn an independent existence, would make sunshine for some hours of every day.
With these, and other similar plans in her head, which were necessarily deferred till after the Reeves ball, Ellen appeared the next morn-
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ing with a light and strong heart, and a correspondent face, voice, and manner. Oh, if rightly put to the test, what unthought of powers there are in those who every day yield themselves the passive victims to uncontrollable circumstances;
“powers
That touch each other to the quick, in modes
Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive,
No soul to dream of.”
Ellen talked over with Fletcher, with real interest and unaffected cheerfulness, the arrangements for the evening. If she had put into action all of Talleyrand’s diplomacy, she could not so thoroughly have convinced him, that his surmise of the preceding evening was unwarranted. Half of Mrs. Dunbar’s griefs were removed by the conviction, that her favorite did not share them!
We could fill a volume with the details of the ball, and the circumstances of the following six weeks, and all the developments of character and feeling which came from them; but we must cut down our history to the dimensions of its Procrustes’ bed. We must say for our favorite Ellen, that, bating a few inches of stature, she did honor to the character she reluctantly assumed. Her usually sparkling eyes were languid from the sleeplessness of the preceding night, and
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her color, which, in heated rooms, was apt to be uncomfortably high, was abated and fluctuating, and her dress, so happily arranged and judiciously modified, that the Saxon beauty, for once, fairly divided the suffrages with the brilliant Rebecca. But with the mere externals ended all resemblance to the truth of the characters. The Palmer, the Christian devotee, had nor eye, nor ear, but for the proscribed Jewess; and Rebecca was all delight at finding, beneath the broad brim of cockle-shells, and the Slavonian, the contour and air of a very elegant young man, who, she felt assured, had returned no less her ardent lover than the boy she had parted with six years before. She managed her prepared surprise so awkwardly, that Ellen wondered at Fletcher’s blindness. He was indeed blind! As to poor Garston, he was so enchanted with himself in the Templar’s costume, that he never once dreamed how near he was to a more portentous overthrow than that of his prototype on the field of Ashby de la Zouch.
We must pass over the next six weeks with merely saying, that Ellen executed her plans, — that Mrs. Dunbar found, in the complete success of a dreaded operation, a very considerable counteraction to what she still maintained was by far
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the greatest grief of her life. But it was plain, that even in no selfish grief could her benevolent feelings be merged. She was exceedingly excited with Ellen’s marvellous success with her musical pupil, and she had the most eager pleasure, every day, in the result of a subscription Ellen had set on foot for the yet unpublished book of a poor author, or, rather, a very poor man, and good author. We must confess, that Ellen had her hours of conflict, agitation, and despondency, when life was a burden; but even then, though the eclipse seemed total to her, she saw light beyond the shadow. Is there ever total darkness to the good?
Fletcher made her his confidante. This was a pretty severe trial; but she tried to feel, and did feel, in some measure, the sympathy he expected; and she was prepared by degrees for the final communication, that he and Matilda had plighted faith. In spite of her resolutions and efforts she turned excessively pale, and tried in vain to command her voice to speak; but this did not surprise Fletcher. All deep emotions are serious. He had never himself been more so than at this moment of the attainment of the dearest, the long-cherished wish of his heart. One hour before he had felt a pang that he in vain tried to
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forget, when, while their mutual vows were still warm on their lips, Matilda had left him in haste, lest she should not be the first at the opening of a newly-arrived case of French millinery! He painfully contrasted this with Ellen’s emotion, — with his own; and a thought arose through the mists of his mind, repressed as soon as perceived, that there were more points of sympathy between him and Ellen Fitzhugh, than he had found with Matilda.
As to poor Mrs. Dunbar, whom Ellen trusted she had quite prepared for the crisis, she took to her bed, upon the first intimation of it, with a head-ache that lasted, unintermitted, as never had head-ache, or heart-ache, with her before, for three days. In vain Matilda came to ask her blessing. Mrs. Dunbar was unaffectedly too ill to receive her. “With God’s help and time,” said the good lady to Ellen, “I will do my duty to Fletcher’s wife; but as to seeing Matilda Preston now, that‘s quite impossible, — and as to ever loving her as a child, as I do you, my own dear Ellen, that‘s not to be looked for.—’ The wind bloweth where it listeth.’” Mrs. Dunbar was no philosopher; — her instincts alone had led her to the discovery of the great truth, that our volitions have no power over our affections.
Ellen, now that all was decided, kept her eye
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resolutely on the bright side. “I am very sorry, aunt,” she said, “you did not feel equal to seeing Matilda this morning; I have seen her more brilliant, but never one half so interesting. Love has given an exaltation to all her feelings, — has breathed a soul into her face. There was a gentleness and a deference in her manners to Fletcher, that is quite new to her. She feels his superiority, and it may work wonders on her character.”
“Do you think so, Ellen?—well,—for Fletcher’s sake, — God bless him! — I’ll hope for the best. I am not an observing person, Ellen; but I have often remarked, that love, like showers from Heaven, is reviving to the thinnest soil, and every thing is fresh, and sweet, and beautiful for a little while; but the flowers soon fade, — the grass withers, — nature will take a natural course.”
“But, aunt,” replied Ellen, with a smile, “may not grace subdue nature?”
“No, my dear, no; it may help nature on in its own way, but not change it. I am sure I have tried my best for the last six weeks to put down nature; but it is too strong for me, Ellen.” Mrs. Dunbar wiped away a flood of tears, and then went on. “Ellen, I have been thinking this was a good time, while we are all
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so wretched,—I mean, while I am,—to speak to Fletcher about looking over that private desk of his father’s. Will you take it to him, dear? You know I have never looked into it. Before strangers come into the family, it is best to have papers that concern no one but us, disposed of. You need not say that to Fletcher; but I can trust you, dearest child, to say nothing to him that appears unfriendly to Matilda; — just give him the desk and key.”
Ellen did so; and, at the first leisure moment, Fletcher sat down to its examination. He found nothing of particular interest till he came to a file of letters, marked, “Correspondence with Selden Fitzhugh.” Before transcribing the only two letters of interest to the reader, it is necessary to premise, that the elder Dunbar and Fitzhugh had been intimate from their childhood, and that, after their marriage, the closest friendship united their families. A letter from Fletcher’s father to his friend, which seemed to have been written soon after his failure, ran thus:
“Dear Fitzhugh,
“My ruin is total. The labors, the enterprises, the successes of twenty years, are wrecked, — nothing remains. I am the victim, in part, of the
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folly of others, in part, I confess it with shame, of my own grasping. I had competence, I desired riches, and thus it has ended. But the worst is to come, my dear friend. I have made shipwreck of your little fortune, as well as of my own hopes. I have been obliged to give up all my property to satisfy my indorsers, according to the received notion, that debts to them are debts of honor, and I have not wherewith to pay a penny of the thirty thousand dollars you trusted to me without bond, mortgage, or security of any sort. This is the requital of your generous, but too rash friendship!
“Fitzhugh, I am a heart-broken man. My hope and energy are gone. If it were not so, I might promise you a day of restitution, —I should expect it myself; but all before me is dark and dreary. Even now I feel as if a fever were drying up the fountains of life. Forgive me, — pity me, my dear friend; I curse my own folly. You will not curse me, but, believe me, I would coin my heart’s blood to make you restitution.
“Your miserable friend,
“F. Dunbar.”
The following answer to Mr. Dunbar’s letter
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was dated at Mr. Fitzhugh’s country residence; and written a week later than his.
“Dear Dunbar,
“I am truly sorry for your misfortunes; but, my dear fellow, take heart of grace. If you have made a total shipwreck, as you say, why so has many a good fellow before you. The storm will pass, — you can fit out again; only don’t carry quite so much sail, and take out a clearance for some other port than El Dorado. As to my money, believe me, on my honor, after the first surprise and shock were over, the loss has not given me a moment’s uneasiness. I would not have put the money at risk for myself, or you, if I had not secured an adequate provision for my good wife, and eight dear little girls, and Ellen into the bargain, if ever she comes home to us. Our wants are moderate, and our supplies sufficient; and, believe me, a few thousand dollars to be added to the inheritance of each of my girls would not make one of our bright hours brighter. They will never hear of the loss, for I have taken care they should not count upon money that I had subjected to the chances of mercantile life. I have been thus particular to tranquillize you, my dear friend. If finally you
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retrieve your circumstances, you will pay the debt, and all will be well; — and, if you never pay it, — why it will be just as well.
“Ever faithfully yours,
“SELDEN FITZHUGH.”
“God bless and reward you, noble, dear friend,” was an indorsement on the back of this letter, dated two days before Mr. Dunbar’s death, and written by himself, evidently with a weak and tremulous hand.
Fletcher had read and re-read the letters, and had sat for an half hour meditating on their contents, when Matilda, who had called, on an appointment with Ellen, opened the door, and, seeing him deep in occupation, was retreating, when he said, “Pray come in, Matilda, you are the person I most wished to see.”
“That, I trust, is not very singular! But what is the matter, Fletcher? Are you making your will?”
“I am thinking over the disposition of my worldly effects,” he replied, with a very faint smile. “Will you read these letters, Matilda?”
“Yes; but, for Heaven’s sake, don’t look of solemn; I should think they were from the dead to the living.”
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“They are,—read them, and tell me what you think of them.”
Matilda read his father’s, while Fletcher perused her countenance with a far deeper interest than she evinced. “I see nothing very particular in this,” she said. “Your poor father seems to have taken his failure sadly to heart. I never heard before that Mr. Fitzhugh lost by him. But the Fitzhughs are very well off for the country, and I suppose it did not matter much. Ellen was probably adopted by your mother as an offset.”
“No; my mother never knew any thing of the business.”
“No! Oh, I forgot,—Ellen has lived here all her life. But why are you so sad, dear Fletcher,—there is no use in fretting over past troubles?”
“You have read but one of the letters, Matilda,” said Fletcher, coldly, without noticing her last reply!
“So I see; but I was thinking so much more of you than of the letters!” She read Mr. Fitzhugh’s. Fletcher’s eye was riveted to her face; there was no change of color, no moistening of the eye, the return messages of a kindred spirit to a generous action. “How well he took it!”
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she said in her ordinary tone of voice. “I have often hear your mother say, that Ellen was just like her father, making the best of everything,— ‘from evil still educing good.’” Matilda saw that Fletcher expected something more from her; but what, exactly, she could not divine. “Mr. Fitzhugh’s letter must have been a balm to your father’s wounded spirit, just as that sad time,” she added, and paused again. A servant entered and filled the awkward interval with some good reason why Miss Ellen would not keep her appointment.
“I am not sorry,” said Matilda, when the door closed, “for now, dear Fletcher, you will go with me.”
“No, Matilda, I cannot.”
“But you will,” she urged, laying her hand persuasively on his shoulder, and with a look that would have seemed to defy denial. “Come, come away, Fletcher, from these musty papers,—you will be devoured with blue devils; come, I must go, and I will not go without you.”
“You must excuse me.”
“You are unkind, Fletcher,” said Matilda, and her starting tears showed that she could feel keenly. Her pride would not brook any further entreaty, and she abruptly left the room, not doubting, however, that she should be intercepted, or
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immediately followed by her penitent lover. But she reached her own home unmolested, and retired to her own apartment, hurt and offended, and resolved, when Fletcher should come to his senses, to be unrelenting. There was ring after ring at the street-door, and visiter after visiter was announced; but the only one she cared for came not, and to every one else she was denied. At last the servant brought a note from Fletcher. “There must be something more than one note,” thought Matilda, as she broke it open. The current of her feelings was somewhat changed as she read what follows:
“My Dearest Matilda,
“Forgive me, I pray you. I have seemed unreasonable and sullen to you, and I have done you in my heart more wrong than I have expressed. That heart is wholly yours, and no feeling it harbors shall ever be hidden from you. The truth was, that I expected the letters would have called forth more feeling than they did. I ought to have rejected (and have since), that our feelings depend much on our humors,—that your mind was preoccupied,—and that, having no particular interest in the parties, you could not participate the strong and painful sympathy
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that then thrilled every nerve in my frame. I was wrong, and again, on my knees, I beg you to forgive me! I have bound myself to tell the whole truth; and must confess, that I expected still more,— that I expected you would anticipate the conclusions which of course were instinctive with me; but I should have remembered, my dear Matilda, that women, having no business habits or notions, the duty devolving on me at this moment would not have occurred to you. That duty plainly is, to pay my father’s debt to the Fitzhughs. There is no legal obligation, but a moral obligation, and an added debt of gratitude, that no human law could make more binding, or could invalidate. If I had a family dependent on me, there might be a question; but, situated as I am, there can be none. The debt, with its accumulation of interest, will swallow up nine tenths of the property I have acquired; but, with the remnant, with rare experience for three and twenty, with business talents, and a fair reputation, I shall soon go forward again. That event, which is to be the crowning joy of my life, must be deferred for two years. This is no small trial of my philosophy,—of my religion (for I will use the right word); but, with this bright reward ever in view, no labors, no difficulties will daunt my
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spirit. Dearest, dearest Matilda, forgive me for having for a moment doubted you. It was the first time. I believe, as I believe in all truth, it will be the last.”
The following brief note, in pencil, was returned by the servant:
“Come see me at nine, this evening. I shall be alone and disengaged then, and not till then. In the mean time, make no disclosures of your inventions to your mother, to Ellen, or to any one.”
The interval was one of reposeful confidence to Fletcher, and of that celestial joy that springs from an ability, and an immovable resolution, to perform a right action at a great personal sacrifice. We claim for him no great merit in yielding the money. Any right-minded young man full of health and hope, and conscious capacity, might have done this without a pang; but Fletcher was a passionate lover, and he had to encounter the miserable uncertainties of a hope deferred.
Let us see how the interval was passed by Matilda. After much agitating self-deliberation,
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she called her mother to her counsel. Mrs. Preston was the prototype of her daughter, save that what was but in the gristle with the daughter, had hardened into bone with the mother, and save that Matilda, from having had an education very much superior to Mrs. Preston’s, had certain standards and theories of virtue in her mind’s eye, that had never entered the mother’s field of vision. Matilda, too, from having been all her short life in fashionable society, did not estimate it as so high a rate as her mother, who has paid for every inch of ground she had gained there.
Matilda related her last interview with Fletcher, and showed his note. “Do you believe,” said Mrs. Preston, after reading it, “that Fletcher Dunbar will be so absurd as to adhere to this plan?”
“I am sure he will. He is perfectly inflexible when he makes up his mind to what he thinks a duty, however ridiculous it may appear to others.”
“Of course, my dear, you are absolved from your engagement.”
“If I choose to be.”
“If I choose! My dear Matilda, you know how much it was against my wishes that you should form this engagement,—that you should
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give up the most brilliant match in the city for what, at the very best, would be merely a genteel establishment. But the idea of your going into the shade at once, giving up everything, and living, perhaps, at lodgings, or setting up your housekeeping with two servants that you must look after all day, and spend your evenings making your husband’s shirts, by a single astral lamp, ride in an omnibus (you might ride in that splendid carriage), and treat yourself, perhaps, to one silk gown a year,—and all for what? To humor the notions of a young man, who is in no respect superior to Garston, except that he is rather taller, and has a straighter nose, and darker, larger eyes, not much larger either!”
Mrs. Preston had struck a wrong note. Matilda shrunk back from the path her other was opening, as the images of her two lovers passed before her.
“Oh, mamma,” she exclaimed, “there is a horrid difference between them; and if I only could persuade Fletcher to abandon this notion”—
“Well, my dear, in my opinion, if he loves you, he will;— if he does not, why then you lose nothing and gain everything. Luckily your engagement is a secret, as yet, and you have
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taken no irretrievable step. Garston was here this morning,—a look could bring him back to you.”
“But, mamma, to give up what I have been so long dreaming of?” “Yes, and whatever young girl dreams of, and wakes up betimes to pretty dull realities. How should you like, for instance, to wash the breakfast things, and stir up a pudding,—to wash and dress your children, and make a bowl of gruel for your dear mamma-in-law?”
“Oh detestable!” Matilda pondered for a few moments, and then said, “I really think, if Fletcher loves me, he will sacrifice his feelings to me. I am sure he owes it to me, after the sacrifice I made to him;—I have certainly proved myself disinterested, but I do not like to be treated as if I could be set aside, and wait for the working of any fancy that comes up. I will tell him so,—I am resolved. He must take the responsibility of deciding it.”
The evening came, and, when the clock struck nine, Fletcher entered Miss Preston’s drawing room, his fine countenance beaming with the serenity and trustfulness of his heart; but Matilda’s first look sent a thrill through it, that was like the snapping of the chords of a musical instrument at the moment it is felt to be in perfect
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tune. She advanced towards him, and gave him her hand as usual, and she smiled; but it was a mere muscular movement, the expression was anything but a smile. Her beautiful face had all the rigidity that a fixed and painful purpose could give to it; but it was a purpose that depended on a contingent, and to that contingent the smile and the responding pressure of her hand were addressed.
Her eyes were red and swollen, and, for the first time, her dress was not elaborately arranged.
She spoke first, “You do not love me, Fletcher!”
“Not love you, Matilda! God only knows how tenderly I love you.”
“No, Fletcher, you do not love me,—the truth has broken upon me with irresistible proof.”
“What do you mean, Matilda? What have you heard? Surely it is not—it cannot be”—
“It is, Fletcher. Your note has nullified our engagement. I have judged you by my own heart. I have questioned, examined that, and I am sure that no fancied duty,—no absolute duty could have forced me,—much less persuaded me at its first intimidation, to expose the happiness that was just within our grasp to the hazards of time.”
Fletcher poured out protestations and prayers,
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and concluded with assuring Matilda, that, “if she would share with him, at the present moment, his acted fortune, if she would at once risk the uncertainties that he must encounter, he should be a happier and prouder man than all the wealth in the world could make him.”
Matilda burst into tears. “It is not right,—it is not generous,” she said, “to put what you consider a test to me. It is none. You must acquit me of any groveling care for money. You have but to look six weeks backward to remember, that the first fortune in the city was waiting my acceptance, and fashion, and brilliant family connexions. I sacrificed all, without a shadow of regret, to you, and now I am thought very lightly of in comparison with a fancied duty.”
“A fancied duty? Good Heaven!”
“A real duty, then; but so questionable, that nine men out of ten would pronounce it no duty at all. It is not the money. I care as little for that as you can; but it is the terrible truth you have forced on me,—you do not love me.”
“Matilda, you wrong yourself,—you wrong me.”
“Prove it to me then, Fletcher. Let our relations be what they were yesterday,—burn those letters, and forget them.”
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“Never!” cried Fletcher, indignantly, “so help me God,—never.”
“Then the tie that bound us is sundered,—our engagement is dissolved.”
“Amen!” said Fletcher, and he rushed from the house,—his mind confused and maddened with broken hopes, disappointed affection, and dissolving delusions.
There is one painful but sure cure for love. The slow-coming, resisted, but irresistible conviction of the unworthiness of the person beloved.
* * * * *
A little more than two years had passed away, when one bright morning, at the hour of ceremonies visiting, a superb carriage, looking more like a ducal equipage than one befitting a wealthy citizen of a republic, drew up a Mrs. Dunbar’s door. The gilded harness was emblazoned with heraldic devices, and a coat of arms was embroidered in gold on the hammer-cloth, and painted on the pannels. The coachman and footman in fresh and tasteful liveries, were in the dickey, and the proprietor of the equipage (in appearance a very inferior part of it) was seated on the box with a friend. Within the
[256]
coach was a lady, magnificently dressed in the latest fashion. She seemed
“A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;”
but she had thwarted the plan,—she had extinguished the “angel light,” — she had herself closed the gates of Paradise, and voluntarily circumscribed her vision to this world. She had foregone the higher element for which she was destined; but the wings she had folded for ever betrayed by their fluttering her disquietude with the way she had chosen. The face that, turned heavenward would have reflected Heaven, was fixed earthward, and the dark spirits of Discontent and Disappointment brooded over it.
There is a baser traffic going on in this world of ours, than that which the poet has immortalized in his history of Faust, carried on under the forms of law, and with the holy seal and superscription of marriage.
The lady alighted from the coach and was on the door-step awaiting her husband. He did not move, the footman had rung the bell, and Mrs. Dunbar’s servant stood awaiting the entrée.
“Are you not going in with me, Ned?” she asked.
“Not I,—I hate bridal visits.”
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“Oh, come with me, I entreat you,” she said, earnestly.
“It’s a bore! I can’t. Bob and I will drive round the square, and take you up as we return.”
The lady looked vexed and embarrassed; but there seemed no alternative.
“Is there much company in the drawing-room, Daniel?” she asked.
“None, ma’am. Miss Ellen, that is, Mrs. Dunbar, the bride,—Miss Ellen that was,—don’t see company in a regular way, as it were.”
“No? I heard she did. I’ll leave my card now.”
While she was taking it from her card-case the door opened, and Fletcher Dunbar, with a manner the most frank and unembarrassed, advanced, and offered her his hand. “Pray, Mrs. Garston,” he said, “do not turn us off with a card; we are at home, and, like all happy people, most happy to hear congratulations.”
Matilda Garston had not been under Mrs. Dunbar’s roof since the memorable morning, when she found Fletcher at his father’s desk. How changed was life now to all parties! Fletcher had awakened from the dream of boyhood to a reality of trustful love, to which his “ripened judgement” had set its seal.
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Ellen, who had resigned her hope of reigning in Fletcher’s heart, was not its elected and enthroned queen. She looked like the embodied spirit of home, and domestic love and happiness. The two young women contrasted like the types of spiritual and material world.
Our good friend, Mrs. Dunbar, was at the acme of felicity. It would have been in vain for her to try to express the overflowing of her heart, and try she did not. It sparkled and ran over like a brimming glass of champagne.
“I am truly glad to see you here again, Matilda,—Mrs. Garston, I mean,” she said; “I really am, my dear. And now we have met, old friends together, I will tell you, that I never had one hard thought, no, not one, at your breaking off with Fletcher. It was providential all round. Fine pictures should have fine frames;—you, my dear, just fit the one you are set in, and our little Ellen was made to be worn, like a miniature, close to the heart. I used to be a believer in first love, now I think ‘second thoughts best.’ ”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Second Thoughts Best
Subject
The topic of the resource
Courtship, marriage, love, duty.
Description
An account of the resource
An engagement is jeopardized by the couple's conflicting values and attitudes towards love and duty.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich, pp. 201-258.
Publisher
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Boston: Otis, Broaders, & Company
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1840 [pub. 1839]
Contributor
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L. Damon-Bach with Asa Anderson, Deanna Depaz, Megan Hennessey, Emily Moss, Kevin White, and Dr. Jenifer Elmore with Adriana Duebel, Ariana Fernandez, Lauren Sumner, and Julianna Weiss
Relation
A related resource
Volume reissued as The Moss Rose, New York: 1846; and as The Honeysuckle, New York: 1848. Story reprinted in New-Yorker (31 August and 14 September 1839, pp: 386 and 406, and in The Rural Repository, 28 September 1839, pp 57-60 and 12 October 1839, pp. 65-69.
Format
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Document
Language
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English
"Address to Kilchurn Castle Upon Loch Awe"
"Faust"
"Principles and Prudence in Politics: The Friend"
"She Was a Phantom of Delight"
"The Seasons: A Hymn"
1839
1840
2 Corinthians 1:22
All's Well That Ends Well
Apollo
Ashby de la Zouch
bankruptcy
belle
Charles Maurice de Tallyrand
courtship
Death
Democrat
duty
El Dorado
engagement
Ephesians 1:13
factionalism
Isaiah 40:8
Ivanhoe
James Thomson (1700-1748)
Jewess
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
John 3:8
John Milton
letters
loco-foco
Louvre
Love
Mammon
marriage
Measure for Measure
Oliver Goldsmith
Paradise Lost
party politics
phrenology
Procrustes bed
Samuel G. Goodrich
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Shakespeare
Sir Walter Scott
speculation
sultan
tableau vivant
The Token
Tories
Whigs
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William Wordsworth