1
10
75
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fb2de1925882ffc57b9503afdf9c5133
Dublin Core
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Title
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1858
Subject
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Stories published in 1858.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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<p>[Miss Sedgwick]</p>
<p>THE SLAVE AND SLAVE-OWNER.</p>
<p> "I would rather be anything than a slave, — except a slave-owner!" said a wise and good man. The slave-owner inflicts wrongs, — the slave but suffers it. He has friends and champions by thousands. Some men live only to defend and save him. Many are willing to fight for him. Some even to die for him. </p>
<p> The most effective romance of our times has been written for slaves. The genius of more than one of our best poets has been consecrated to them. They divide the hearts and councils of our great nation. They are daily remembered in the prayers of the faithful. They are the most earnest topic of the christian world.</p>
<p> But the slave-owner! who weeps, who prays, who lives, who dies for him! True, he is of the boasted Saxon race, or descended from the brilliant Gaul, or gifted Celt. He is enriched by the transmitted civilization of all ages. He has been nurtured by christian institutions. To him have been opened the fountains of Divine truth. But</p>
<p>[25]</p>
<p>from this elevation he is to be dragged down by the mill-stone of slavery.</p>
<p> If he be a rural landlord, he looks around: upon, his ancestral possessions, and sees the curse of slave-ownership upon them, — he knows the time must come when "the field shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall." To him the onward! tendencies of the age are reversed. His movement is steadily backward.</p>
<p> To the slave are held out the rewards of fortitude, of long suffering, of meekness, of patience in tribulation. What and where are the promises to the slave-owner?</p>
<p> Thousands among them are in a false position. They are the involuntary maintainers of wrong, and transmitters of evil. Hundreds among them have scrupulous consciences and tender feelings. They use power gently. They feed their servants bountifully. They nurse the sick kindly,—and devote weary days to their instruction. But alas! they live under the laws of slave-owners. They are forbidden to teach the slave to read, write, or cipher, to give them the means of independent progress and increasing light. Their teaching; is as bootless as the labor of Sysyphus! most wearisome and disheartening.</p>
<p> The great eras of domestic life, bright to the thoughtless slave, are dark with forecasting shadows to the slave-owner. The mother cannot for-</p>
<p>[26]</p>
<p>get her sorrows, because a man-child is born. If she dare contemplate his future, she sees that the activities of his nature must be repressed, his faculties but half developed, his passions stimulated by irresponsible power, inflamed by temptation, and solicited by convenient opportunity. She knows that his path in life must be more and more entangled as he goes onward, — darker and darker with the ever-deepening misery of this cruel institution.</p>
<p> Is it a “merry marriage-bell' that rings in the ear of a slave-owning mother for the bridal of her daughter? Does not her soul recoil from the possible (probable?) evils before her child; to be placed, perchance, on an isolated plantation, environed by natural enemies to; see, it may be, the brothers and sisters of her own children follow their slave-mother to the field, or severed from her to be sold at the slave-market ?</p>
<p> Compared with these miseries of the slave-owner, what are the toils and stripes of the slave? what his labor without stimulus or requital? what his degradation to a chattel? what the deprivation of security to the ties of kindred, and the annulling of that relation which is their source and chiefest blessing ?</p>
<p> The slave looks forward with ever-growing hope to the struggle that must come. He joyfully "smells the battle afar off." The slave-owner folds his arms, and shuts his eyes in paralyzing</p>
<p>[27]</p>
<p>despair. He hears the fearful threatenings of the gathering storm. He knows it must come, — to him fatally. It is only a question of time!</p>
<p>Who would not " rather be a slave than a slave-owner ? "</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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 Slave and Slave Owner"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Abolitionism, slavery.
Description
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Abolitionist sketch published in a giftbook created for the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society (1858).
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
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<em>Autographs for Freedom,</em> ed. Julia Griffiths.
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John P. Jewett and Company
Date
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1858
Contributor
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D. Gussman
1858
abolitionism
anti-slavery
Autographs for Freedom
Celt
gift book
Julia Griffiths
plantation
Saxon
slave-owners
slavery
slaves
Sysyphus
-
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cb841809eee725c51e7658f858cc61b1
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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1844
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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<p align="center">“New York Fountains and Astor Baths”</p>
<p align="center"> </p>
<p align="center">by Catharine M. Sedgwick</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As I opened my window this morning the air came in freshly, and as sweetly as if it were freighted with the fragrance of all the blossoming orchards on Long Island. I did not resist its invitation, and left my darkened chamber for a morning walk. " God made the country and man made the town," Cowper said in poetic phrase, and thousands have repeated the sentiment in prose and poetry. But is the city all man's journey-work? We leave out of consideration its in-</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[p. 381]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ner world, where, in its most abject conditions, Crabbe and Dickens have found the elements and most abounding sources of poetic creation. But is not the sky, God's noblest architecture, hanging over the thronging homes of the city? Do not the eloquent tides of the ocean twice in twenty-four hours beat against it? And is there no natural beauty in the young trees planted on either side of our streets, whose boughs almost interlace over our heads? There are noble old trees, too, marking the site of some former country-home, now taken into the heart of the city and surrounded with brick and mortar walls; they seem like patriarchs looking complacently on the new homes of their children, and the fresh wreathing of their old boughs in this spring-time is like the clasp and embrace of childhood. Windows are filled with the loveliest flowers of the season, and Nature's hymn is not less sincere nor less touching because it comes from the prisoner-birds that are hung on the outer will. With their music chimes in well the chorus of merry boys' voices, who are letting out the gushing water from an open hydrant. Children, birds and flowers are fresh from the hands of their Maker, and have still the air of Heaven about them. Such thoughts came thronging as I pursued my walk. I felt that God's witnesses were around me, and, undisturbed by the dissonant morning cries, I walked up to Union Square, where the din of the busy city subsides into a distant murmur. The herbage within the railing was freshened by last evening's shower, and the fountain was playing. The smaller fountains were sparkling around it—no, <em>playing</em> too, for this word, which all the world uses, best expresses what seems the sentient joyousness of a fountain.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> If an artist can perceive divine forms in the unwrought marble, a poet should discern a divinity or nymph showering brilliants from her floating tresses invested in this column of water as it springs sixty feet sheer up into the blue atmosphere.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> We are called a boastful people, and it must be confessed that we sometimes deal in superlatives when it would be more true as well as modest to fall a little lower in the scale of comparison, but surely we may hold up our heads beside our fountains. We have seen the renowned fountains of Rome. Those before St. Peter's are exceedingly beautiful from the simplicity and grace of their ornaments, but the small amount of water makes them inexpressive compared with ours. The Fountain Paolina, though its name was designed to illustrate its architect and Pope Paolo V., does them little honor. The effect of the rich volume of water is impaired by the cumbrous ornaments that are placed about it. Art has indeed oftener injured than adorned the abounding fountains of Rome. We can see neither reason nor beauty in water being poured through the mouths of lions and dragons; and an immense labor and expense seems to us wasted on the huge fountain of Trevi, which has been thus pleasantly enough described.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> "The fountain of Trevi has been renowned through the world, and so highly extolled that my expectations were raised to the highest stretch; and great was my disappointment when I was taken into a little, dirty, confined, miserable piazza, nearly filled up with one large palace, beneath which spouted out a variety of tortuous streamlets that are made to gurgle over artificial rocks, and to bathe the bodies of various seahorses, tritons, and other marble monsters, which are sprawling about in it. After some cogitation, you discover they are trying to draw Neptune on, who, though stuck up in a niche of the palace wall as if meant to be stationary, is standing at the same time with his feet on a sort of car, as if intended to be riding over the waters."</p>
<p> </p>
<p> In our fountains we are safe in our simplicity. Nature is made our captive by art, and then left to her own power and inimitable grace. Is not this wisest ? If the art of the old world, aided by the profuse expenditure of papal revenues, has failed to attain its object, we could hardly hope for success.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> We are but beginning to feel the immense benefits to be derived from the introduction of the Croton water. If we have said " something too much" of our canals and unpaid and unfinished railroads, this great work of the Croton aqueduct has been going quietly on, and the people have intelligently given their consent, man by man, to an enormous tax to procure the incalculable good of pure water and plenty of it at every door—yes, plenty for our present handful of three hundred thousand—and plenty, too, for the three millions in perspective.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> So unobtrusively has the work been done, that to many visitors to our city it is first proclaimed by the voice of the fountains.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> Calculations have been made of the economical effect of the water in the promotion of health, and the reduction of insurance against fire. But has any one calculated the refining influence of the power to cover every ragged wall with a grape-vine, and to fill every yard—be it but a space of ten feet square—with flowers. Heat and water are the elements of vegetation. That we have heat enough, and tropical heat, no one will deny that has survived a New York summer; and now we have pure water without measure.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> The lovely fountains seem like a message from the spirit-land. They give a new value to existence in our city, see and hear them when we may; in the brightest of hot noonday, or with the rose and purple of the twilight clouds upon them, or with the rainbow hovering round them—in the moon-beams, or by the pale star-light, or if you but hear their silken rustling in a dreary winter's night, when nothing can be seen but the dimmed lamp-light struggling through the foggy atmosphere. Material results may be estimated, but who that marks the hard faces softening into smiles as they gather round the basins of the fountains, and the clusters of children that linger there, will undertake to calculate the amount of soul they breathe into this dull mass of humanity? Body and spirit, languishing in the fiery summer heat of the city, will be refreshed by these fountains. Old age will have its tranquilizing seats about them, and friends and lovers moonlight strolls within the sound of their music.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> They will inspire ideas of grace and beauty, and prompt longings for higher species of enjoyment than mere animal gratification. A scrubbed little boy brought a parcel to a lady in Union Square the other day. She told him she was sorry she must detain him for half an hour. " Oh, never mind, ma'am," he replied, " I can go in and look at the Fountain!" How many dead and idle half hours may thus have life and enjoyment breathed into them! How many fretted and galled in the harness of dull working-day life may here find refreshment! The gifted and educated have more direct ministrations to their spirits, but the Fountains are ministers to the great mass, whose minds are reached only through their sensations. And, perhaps, as their</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[382]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>dews fall on the cheeks furrowed in Wall Street, the cares accumulated there may press less heavily—and perhaps, too, as their cool airs float around younger and fairer brows, the mass of city frivolities may melt away, and a response come from the living nature, deep buried in the heart, to beautiful external nature.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> No—if man has made our city, God has not abandoned it. We have gained another great source of spiritual refinement in the Greenwood Cemetery. The position of this burial place is well chosen, being separated by water from the city, so that it can never, in any case, endanger its health; while it is near enough to be of easy and pleasant access. We can hardly imagine a mind so dull as not to be excited by a visit to this great cemetery. There is magnificence in its extent. It was a great thought to rescue from our accumulating, thronging, living population, four hundred acres for the repose of the dead. Near as it is to the city, the consecration of nature is yet upon it. Man has not mutilated nor in any way changed the natural form of the ground. There is every variety in its face, hills and wavy eminences, glades, dells, and ravines. There are still lovely woodlands, where the dog-wood blossoms in the springtime over sheets of violets and anemones. There are bits of water that look out upon you like living eyes from the green earth, and deep sunk amidst surrounding hillsides is a little lake—" Sylvan Water." It is fitly set here, still, serene, and shadowy, an image of death, and silently breathing forth in its reflection of the ever-burning light of Heaven, a promise of immortality.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> There are points of view where you perceive your proximity to the city, and this juxtaposition produces the effect of sublimity. There is the "full tide of human existence," and those living throngs whose blood is now hot with projects, pursuits, loves and hates are to be borne, one after another, in solemn procession, hither to await the resurrection and the life. What a comment on their present being!</p>
<p> </p>
<p> The noblest and perhaps the most harmonious feature of this scene, is the far-stretching view of the ocean—the best image of eternity—the sublimest type of His power, whose power is love.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> It is in its scenery that Greenwood Cemetery seems to us far to surpass any thing we have seen at home or abroad. Beside the metropolitan city and its suburbans, (we beg pardon of beautiful, independent Brooklyn) there is the bay, and its accompaniments, islands, fortifications, ships and steamers, the lovely villages of Long Island, that seem sleeping on the lap of their mother earth, while Heaven smiles on them; the fruitful farms and homesteads of the Long Island fanners, images of rural occupation and contentment.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> These multiplied objects are not stretched out before you in one great overwhelming and confusing scene, but are in parts perceived at different points as you emerge from the deeply shaded drive, each view an harmonious picture beautifully set in a leafy framework. Yes! surely this Greenwood Cemetery is an antagonist spirit to our city-world.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> But, to return once more to the fountains. I crossed Union Park this evening in the twilight, and saw a man, as I thought, asleep on one of the benches. As I approached I recognized him. “Are you sleeping here?" I said. He roused, and smiling replied, “Yes—no—yes, I have been in a sleep, or <em>reverie</em>, as my mother calls it, when she has been surprized in her chair, in what the rest of us call rather a profound nap. At any rate, I have been dreaming."</p>
<p> </p>
<p> "Of some Undine?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p> "No, but of some things naturally suggested by the fountain, and naturally enough too, intermingled with previous thoughts. As I passed Mr. Astor's door this morning I saw him getting into his carriage. I looked at the old gentleman, who you know is infirm, and has rather a sad countenance, and I sighed—for truly I do not envy any man his riches—at the thought that his immense wealth could procure for him neither health nor happiness. And now, as I sat dreaming here, I thought some years had passed over my head, and that I was wandering about the city, from which I seemed to have been absent for many years. Suddenly I came upon a pretty range of buildings that were new to me. On a tablet over a door was inscribed, in large golden letters,</p>
<p> </p>
<p align="center"><strong>ASTOR BATHS</strong>,</p>
<p>and underneath,</p>
<p><em>The Lord forgetteth not him who remembereth the Poor</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> "Astor baths!" I exclaimed to a passer by, " what is the meaning of this?"</p>
<p> </p>
<p> "Oh, you are a stranger in the city," he replied. " This building, sir, was erected by our rich fellow citizen, Mr. Astor, soon after the introduction of the Croton water, for the free use of the poor. A very noble charity it is, sir. I live at the next house, and I see sometimes hundreds in a day—certainly hundreds during the hot months—who go in here wearied and exhausted, and come out refreshed and invigorated. Mothers, from close streets, and over-crowded habitations, bring their pale little children here. It would do your heart good to hear their splashings and shoutings."</p>
<p> </p>
<p> " Strange," I said, " that I never heard of this before—I have heard of a library Mr. Astor gave to the city."</p>
<p> </p>
<p> " Yes," replied my informer, " he did that too, and that was a noble benefaction—food and refreshment for the mind. I have heard it was that put him upon thinking of doing some great thing for the poor. He could, you know, without wronging relations, or friends. It would be well if all rich men would think, as the shadows of the grave are falling upon them, that they but hold in trust what God has given them. They say Mr. Astor was a happier man ever after he built these baths, and I should not wonder if it were true. The breath of thanksgiving that rises from the comforted poor should make a healthy atmosphere about their benefactor; and surely when he departed hence, this work followed him to His bar, who saith, ' By their works shall they be judged.'"</p>
<p> </p>
<p> Would it were not a dream!</p>
<p> </p>
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
"New York Fountains and Astor Baths"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Poverty, wealth, and charity in New York City.
Description
An account of the resource
A sketch describing public fountains and art in New York City.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>The Rover: A Weekly Magazine of Tales, Poetry and Engravings, Also Sketches of Travel, History.</em>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
February 7, 1844
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Also printed in <em>Graham's Magazine</em> (March 1844): 123-25.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
charity
Charles Dickens
class
Croton Aqueduct
fountains
George Crabbe
God
Greenwood Cemetery
John Jacob Astor
New York City
public art
The Rover
-
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
1849
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
MUCH has been said for and against the first enkindling of this sentiment in the young bosom. All sixteen is for it, much experience, alas! against it. There is certainly something very enchanting in that first love to which all the freshest visions of youth are ministering and subsidiary—which copies its idol in the pure heaven of its own breast without spot or blemish— which fears no change, nor shadow of change— the love, while hope has never been cheated, expectation disappointed, or faith broken—the love that glows in the fire of its own enthusiasm, and is pure as innocence itself, and radiant with "clouds of glory" from our elder home. Most happy—most blessed are those on whose first love the seal of reality has been set, whose summer has developed and ripened the seed sown in spring tone, and who worship through life, at the altar on which the vestal fire was lighted!
Something of this I said to a friend, who, with an equivocal smile, replied, that she would tell me a true story of the first love of a friend of hers. I record it here, as well as I can remember, in her very words, without exaggeration or change of any kind.
It is only necessary to depart from reality so far as to use assumed names. "I was staying," said my friend, (the relator was an English woman,) "at Avonside, with Lady Anne Harvey, during a vacation at our boarding school. She was an intense sixteen. Lady Anne's education was completely, up to fifteen, the English nursery education. At fifteen she was as ignorant and undeveloped in all that relates to the wonderful relations of man and woman, as the children of your country at five or six. Her dear, kind papa, was the type of all grown up men, and her teasing, tormenting, noisy, but still loving brothers, of the younger portion of that species. Boarding school is a hot bed that develops nature very rapidly and unwholesomely. Lady Anne in the course of a few weeks, was born into a new world there. She read, clandestinely, with the rest of us, the romances—they were mere love stories in those days, or the passionate poetry that was smuggled into the institution—an institution of the severest order—of Madame Racine. Her Latin book would lie shut on her lap, and her glowing cheek rest on her French theme, while she listened to highly colored descriptions of charming young men, or heard related in still more glowing language, the real or fanciful love-passages of her young companions. I was two years older than Lady Anne. But time, in enlarging my horizon, had not chastened my imagination. I conceived a most passionate affection for my charming friend. Feeling very humbly about my own personal charms, my young love's young dreams were for Lady Anne. She was my heroine of romance, and all my romantic lore was lavished upon her; so that precious sentiment which, as I now think, should be developed charily, was nourished into most premature and rank growth.
Sir Guy Harvey's park grounds are some of the oldest in England, with long avenues, loving walks, bosky dells, and sparkling waters. There are points of most beautiful view, and many a painter goes there for sketches of that rich, old rural cultivation, characteristic of our country. Lady Anne, at her father's request, rose one morning to show me the rising sun, from a point of view much celebrated, and which Sir Guy thought unrivalled. A winding path by a crisp little brook, overhung with flowery shrubs led to it. It was at the highest point in the park, and crowned with an oak, as old and more beautiful than the royal oak at Boscobel. Under this oak tree were rustic scats, and a table; and as we approached it, we observed a rustling of the high shrubbery that screened the seat from us. Some one was, evidently, hastily retiring from the place, and when we reached it, there were proofs that a real person, and no ghost, had just preceded us. A pencil was dropped by the bench, and on it lay a highly finished sketch of my friend, as she had sat with me, (I was omitted !) the day before near a lovely rosary, trying her maiden fortune, in the fashion of Margaret, in Faust, by picking off the leaves of a rose. Lady Anne blushed as she perceived the unmistakeable resemblance. "How spirited!" she said. "How expressive! how like !" I said. "But who can have done it?" she asked. "Some poor, old artist," I replied, mischievously, "who has run down from London for a breath of fresh air. I have known a hundred in my father's studio, who could do it;" my little friend looked disappointed, and I added, "perhaps it is a young artist—an amateur—it is charmingly done; but then a mere amateur artist might have done it."
"I think it was an amateur artist," Lady Anne said, simply; "do you think it is right for me to keep it?"
"Certainly, it was designed for you, no doubt; and the designer will be very much disappointed if it do not prove an introductory epistle."
All day we discussed this incident, as girls only can discuss such a trifle. We expected from some one of our many daily visitors, to hear of an artist being in the neighbourhood; but, though we introduced the subject of painting and artist, and every topic connected with them, we obtained no light on our surmises. The next day, on a green bank, by a path we daily frequented, we found another sketch, lying under a stem of lovely roses, of a species that did not grow in Sir Guy's grounds. Here my pretty friend again appeared as she had eat the preceding day, under a tree overhung with flowering vines, while I read to her. The little brook was curling away beyond us, or rather beyond her, for the artist seemed never to take me into his field of vision. Her large black Newfoundland was lying at her feet, and her prettiest of poodles lovingly enfolded in its huge paws. "How very strange!" she exclaimed. "How very pretty!" I said, "but where on the earth, or under the earth, does this conjurer hide himself, that we get not a glance of him, or a suspicion of his presence?"
It was true, that the labyrinthine walk and dark woodlands of the park afforded abundant hiding places, where one might see unseen. For a whole week, each day, these mysterious sketches appeared, each lovelier than the last, each more stimulating to our curiosity, more flattering to my friend's inexperienced vanity.
From the beginning of our recreation, Lady Anne had been learning the art and mystery of driving; and every day, attended by a groom, we took a delicious drive in her mother's pony phaeton, within the park. On the Sunday following the week of our artistic intercourse with her admirer, she had ordered the groom to open the park gate; and, tempted by the beauty of the coming evening, and more by the free spirit of youth, that ever longs to get beyond bounds, we sallied forth. We did not return till the last ray of the long English twilight was fading away. Lady Anne dreaded her father's disapprobation, (she had nothing from that gentle good man more severe to dread,) and she drove rapidly. There was a steep bank, and a sharp turn near the park gate, for which she was too inexperienced to calculate; and in bringing the horses round too swiftly, she overset the carriage, and we were thrown out, and down the bank. As soon as we could rally, for we were not much hurt, but palsied with terror,—we found ourselves, or rather Lady Anne found herself supported and aided by a young man, who had come, Heaven knows whence, to her rescue. The groom was compelled to give his attention to the horses, and the aid of the stranger was indispensable to support the trembling girl to her home. We were met at the door by the father and mother, already apprised of the accident, and amidst exclamations of, "Are you hurt, my child !"—" Nor you, dear Miss ?"—"Thank God!"—"How could you be so indiscreet, Anne?" They did not forget civilities to our cavalier, who, whatever else he might be, was an unquestionable gentleman. He had lodgings at a few miles distance from Avon-side. "You will doubtless," Sir Guy said to him, "take the trouble to come tomorrow, to enquire after these young ladies, to whom you have done such essential kindness; do us the favor to come over to dinner, we dine at six." The stranger accepted, in a manner that proved him familiar with the offices of good breeding, and with a certain modesty that quite won Sir Guy's heart; for, like most persons well advanced in life, he deemed that the quality wanting in the young men of the day.
Of course, as soon as we retired to our own rooms, Lady Anne and I compared notes. The stranger could be none other, than her artist admirer. There was a glowing expression, a tremulousness of voice, that betrayed an interest beyond that of a stranger; and if other proof were wanting, I had not been too much terrified to observe the paraphernalia of an artist, which he dropped, and left on the bank where we were upset. Lady Anne confessed she felt the throbbings of his heart, when she was obliged to lean against him; and she remarked, that the tone of his voice was musical,—or, certainly the most expressive she ever heard. Her aristocratic prepossessions did not, however, forsake her, even at this romantic beginning of her first romantic adventure. She was quite sure, "he was not merely a professional artist, he was well-born, that was evident in his fine aristocratic features, his deportment, his voice, his turn of expression." “It is quite true," said my friend, continuing her relation, "that our English aristocracy have a cast of feature, rarely found among the lower classes; though quite common with yours, who, however, with their straight noses, and thin lips, have an intensely vulgar expression." I, however, laughed at Lady Anne, and told her that I thought the mind inspired the form, and that beauty and grace were the outward signs of the beauty chartered by Heaven alone.
Basil Astley, that was the name of our hero, made rapid advances in Sir Guy's favor. Sir Guy was himself an amateur artist. He had portfolios filled with sketches made in Italy and Switzerland, when he was a young man; his walls were adorned with pictures from his own designs. The dear, good man's perceptive powers were not sharp, and in the indulgence of his own innocent little egotisms, he never dreamed of the passionate love to which he was unwarily giving such opportunity of nurture and growth. He invited Astley to become his guest. He walked with him over his lovely place, suggested sketches, which were executed immediately and charmingly. He little dreamed of the episodes that were enacting in the bowery park, and during the moonlight evenings, — he was sand-blind, — for never did I see two young creatures more passionately in love than Anne and Astley. It was like nothing but the love of Romeo and Juliet. He was not more than one and twenty,—and she not seventeen, which to our cold northern blood is not more than the fourteenth year of the girl of Verona. She was Astley's idol, and the idol's love matched his idolatry. No woman's instinct could mistake the bliss that shone in the faces of these young people. The mother saw it, and the father was immediately apprised of her discovery. He had looked upon Anne as a child, and she was now caught in toils that no woman's strength is strong enough to break. What was to be done? The affair must be crushed, and at once. Astley was a poor young artist, of obscure birth. Anne boasted a long line of noble ancestry, and had a fortune in her own right. Justly considered, perhaps, these accidental advantages would have been but a fair offset against Astley's high gifts, and by uniting the two young people the social equilibrium would have been restored; but, in my country, society is cast in an inflexible mould. Lady Anne must be mated with her equal in social advantages. She was destined by her father for the son of a neighbor, the friend of his youth—of his life- time. The young man well born, well educated, well principled, and amiable — the beau ideal, or rather the beau actual of discreet papas, was at that present travelling. Sir Guy, as prudent as Brutus, had not even communicated his secret hope and purpose to his wife. Sir Guy was not the cleverest man in the world, but he had good sense, and what is better even than that, a good, most kind, most affectionate heart. The inspiration of such a heart's instincts is far better than the subtlest policy. Sir Guy at once asked a private interview with Astley. He told him that he was aware of the passion into which youth and opportunity had betrayed both him and his child. He did not reproach him, he did not even express a shade of displeasure,—but only sympathy and tenderness. He treated the continuance of their intercourse as simply impossible. He assured Astley that he had never for a moment doubted his honor,—that he was perfectly certain that he would not for the world, after a half hour's cool reflection, take advantage of the romantic fancies of a child. He expressed great regard for Astley, unbounded confidence in his genius, and hope of his future career; advised to his going immediately to Italy, and concluded by saying that, as Astley already knew, he had been enamoured of art in his youth,—that when he was in Italy, he had been struck with the struggles of his countrymen there, and that when he returned, he had set apart a certain sum for their aid and encouragement. That sum, well husbanded, had now become enough to support a young man for four or five years in Rome; and if Astley would go there, and permit Sir Guy to remit it to him from time to time, he would give him the great pleasure of executing a long cherished project.
To so much reason and kindness there was no answer but acquiescence.
Before they separated, Sir Guy said, "It will be a solace to you both, perhaps, to have a parting interview. As you will feel compelled to leave us to-morrow morning, you can have a last moonlight walk in the Park, where the starry influences will be no longer dangerous." A few more words of the kindest interest were spoken, and they parted. Lady Anne was then summoned to her father's presence. He communicated to her, with the utmost delicacy, the discovery of her love. He did not reason about or discuss it, but to her, as he had done to Astley, he spoke of its indulgence as simply impossible. He did not utter a harsh or a grating word, but was all love and tenderness, as if it were an inevitable sickness of a little child that he was treating. He told her, in conclusion, that Astley was to take his departure in the morning for Italy; and that she would meet him in the park for a parting interview, where he would be at nine o'clock, awaiting her and her friend. Anne left her father, weeping, trembling, heart-broken, but with not the smallest notion of resisting his will,—or rather her destiny, which to her it seemed to be. She came to me, and remained in my arms, with throbbing pulses, sighs, drenching tears, and half uttered sentences of submissive wretchedness, till it drew near nine o'clock. We then went to the park together, and by a sure instinct to the favorite haunt of the lovers, a closely sheltered walk. Astley was awaiting us. I left them, remaining near enough to secure to them the propriety of my proximity. Hour after hour they walked or sat together,—sometimes I heard the murmur of their voices, sometimes intermitted sobs. The day was dawning, and I was obliged to tell them so, to dispel the last shadows of their lovely dream. Ah! I never witnessed such a parting. They both seemed rooted to the ground. "Eternity was in their lips and eyes."—I was at last obliged to take Anne away, and to half drag, half carry her, more dead than alive, to her own apartment. Poor Astley was left lying on the ground. I heard dear Sir Guy still pacing his room, as we passed his door.
This all happened fifteen years ago. Last summer I was passing a week with my friend, Lady Anne, now Mrs. Charles Wyndham. A charming little matron she is, after the most approved models, 'fair and fat,' though not yet forty. She has four or five lively children, and is surrounded by the contentments that are in such perfection in affluent country life in England. We were one day at dinner, when her husband, a sensible, good humored man, and a right minded member of parliament, said, " Anne, my love, I saw in the London Times, this morning, the death of Basil Astley."
"Did you, indeed?" she replied, as she would to the announcement of the death of any other man. I involuntarily turned my eyes to read her soul in her face; but there was no writing there— not the movement of a muscle—not the change of a shade in her color. After one minute, she asked, "A little more soup, Charles?"
The "first love" was forgotten.
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Title
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"First Love"
Subject
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Romance, English countryside, courtship
Description
An account of the resource
Story about a young woman's passionate first love, her parents' intervention, and her subsequent happy marriage to another man.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
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<em>Sartain's Union Magazine</em>, Volume IV, No. 2, 81-82.
Date
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1849
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
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Reprinted in <em>The Dewdrop</em>, (Philadelphia, 1852) 43-45.
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
courtship
English countryside
marriage
parents
Romance
Sartain's Union Magazine
-
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90713525d36f984c08777446dfc4aa6e
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
1849
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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One of the brethren from a Shaker settlement in our neighborhood, called on us the other day. I was staying with a friend, in whose atmosphere there is a moral power, analogous to some chemical test, which elicits from every form of humanity whatever of sweet and genial is in it. Our visiter was an old acquaintance, and an old member of his order, having joined it more than forty years ago with his wife and two children. I have known marked individuals among these people, and yet it surprises me when I see an original stamp of character, surviving the extinguishing monotony of life, or rather suspended animation among them. What God has impressed man cannot efface. To a child's eye, each leaf of a tree is like the other; to a philosopher's each has its distinctive mark. Our friend W's individuality might have struck a careless observer. He has nothing of the angular, crusty, silent aspect of most of his yea and nay brethren, who have a perfect conviction that they have dived to the bottom of the well and found the pearl truth, while all the rest of the world look upon them as at the bottom of a well indeed; but without the pearl, and with only so much light as may come in through the little aperture that communicates with the outward world. Neither are quite right; the Shaker has no monopoly of truth or holiness, but we believe he has enough of both to light a dusky path to heaven. Friend W___ is a man of no pretension whatever; but content in conscious mediocrity. We were at dinner when he came in; but friend W is too childlike or too simple, to be disturbed by any observances of conventional politeness. He declined an invitation to dine, saying he had eaten and was not hungry, and seated himself in the corner, after depositing some apples on the table, of rare size and beauty. “I have brought some notions, too," he said, "for you, В___," and he took from his ample pocket his handkerchief in which he had tied up a parcel of sugar plums and peppermints. В____ accepted them most affably, and without any apparent recoiling, shifted them from the old man's handkerchief to an empty plate beside her. "Half of them," he said, "remember, В____ , are for ____ . You both played and sung to me last summer—I don't forget it. She is a likely woman, and makes the music sound almost as good as when I was young." This was enthusiasm in the old Shaker; but to us it sounded strangely, who knew that she who had so kindly condescended to call back brother W’s youth, had held crowds entranced by her genius. Brother W____ is a genial old man, and fifty years of abstinence from the world's pleasures has not made him forget or contemn them. He resembles the jolly friars in conventual life, who never resist, and are therefore allowed to go without bits or reins, and in a very easy harness. There is no galling in restraint where there is no desire for freedom. It is the "immortal longings" that make the friction in life. After dinner, B___ , at brother W's request, sate down to the piano, and played for him the various tunes that were the favorites in rustic inland life forty years ago. First the Highland reel, then "Money Musk." "I remember who I danced that with," he said, " Sophy Drury. The ball was held in the school room at Feeding fields. She is tight built, and cheeks as red as a rose, (past and present were confounded in brother W’s imagination.) I went home with Sophy—it was as light as day, and near upon day—them was pleasant times!" concluded the old man, but without one sigh of regret, and with a gleam of light from his twinkling grey eye. "There have been no such pleasant times since, brother W___, has there?" asked В____ with assumed or real sympathy. "I can't say that, В____ , it has been all along pleasant. I have had what others call crosses, but I don't look at them that way—what's the use, В___?" The old man's philosophy struck me. There was no record of a cross in his round jolly face. "Were you married," I asked, "when you joined the Shakers?" "Oh, yes; I married at twenty— it 's never too soon nor too late to do right, you know, and it was right for me to marry according to the light I had then. May be you think it was a cross to part from my wife—all men do n't take it so—but I own I should; I liked Eunice. She is a peaceable woman, and we lived in unity, but it was rather hard times, and we felt a call to join the brethren, and so we walked out of the world together, and took our two children with us. In the society she was the first woman handy in all cases. "And she is still with you?" "No. Our girl took a notion and went off, and got married, and my wife went after her—that's natural for mothers, you know. I went after Eunice, and tried to persuade her to come back, and she felt
[p. 338]
so; but its hard rooting out mother-love; it's planted deep, and spreads wide; so I left her to nature, and troubled myself no more about it, for what was the use? My son, too, took a liking to a young English girl that was one of our sisters—may be you have seen her?" We had all seen her and admired her fresh English beauty, and deplored her fate." Well, she was a picture, and speaking after the manner of men, as good as she was handsome. They went off together; I could not much blame them, and I took no steps after them—for what was the use? But come, B____ strike up again; play ' Haste to the wedding.' B____ obeyed, and our old friend sang or chanted a low accompaniment; in which the dancing tune, and the shaker nasal chant were ludicrously mingled. B____ played all his favorite airs, and then said, " You do love dancing, brother W___ ?" "Yes, to be sure—' praise him in the cymbals and dances!'"
"Oh, but I mean such dances as we have here. Would not you like, brother W___, to come over and see us dance?"
"Why, may be I should."
"And would not you like to dance with one of our pretty young ladies, brother W____?"
"May be I should;" the old man's face lit up joyously—but he smiled and shook his head, "they would not let me, B____ , they would not let me." Perhaps the old shaker's imagination wandered for a moment from the very straight path of the brotherhood, but it was but a moment. His face reverted to its placid passiveness, and he said," I am perfectly content. I have enough to eat and drink—every thing good after its kind, too— good clothes to wear, a warm bed to sleep in, and just as much work as I like, and no more." "All this and heaven too,"—of which the old man felt perfectly sure, was quite enough to fill the measure of a Shaker's desires.
"Now, B____ ," said he, " you think so much of your dances, I wish you could see one of our young sisters dance, when we go up to Mount Holy. She has the whirling gift; she will spin round like a top, on one foot, for half an hour, all the while seeing visions, and receiving revelations."
This whirling is a recent gift of the Shakers. The few "world's folk" who have been permitted to see its exhibition, compare its subjects to the whirling Dervishes.
"Have you any other new inspiration?” I asked. "Gifts, you mean? Oh, yes; we have visionists. It's a wonderful mystery to me. I never was much for looking into mysteries—they rather scare me!" Naturally enough, poor childlike old man: "What, brother W____ ," I asked," do you mean by a visionist?"
"I can't exactly explain," he replied. "They see things that the natural eye can't see, and hear, and touch, and taste, with inward senses. As for me, I never had any kind of gifts, but a contented mind, and submission to those in authority, and I do n't see at all into this new mystery. It makes me of a tremble when I think of it. I’ll tell you how it acts. Last summer I was among our brethren in York State, and when I was coming away, I went down into the garden to take leave of a young brother there. He asked me if I would carry something for him to Vesta. Vesta is a young sister, famous for her spiritual gifts, whirling, &c."—I could have added, for I had seen Vesta—for other less questionable gifts in the world's estimation—a light graceful figure, graceful even in the shaker straight jacket, and a face like a young Sybil's. "Well,'' continued brother W____, "he put his hand in his pocket, as if to take out something, and then stretching it to me, he said, 'I want you to give this white pear to Vesta.' I felt to take something, though I saw nothing, and a sort of a trickling heat ran through me; and even now, when I think of it, I have the same feeling, fainter, but the same. When I got home I asked Vesta if she knew that young brother. 'Yea,' she said. I put my hand in my pocket and took it out again, to all earthly seeming as empty as it went in, and stretched it out to her. 'Oh, a white pear!' she said. As I hope for salvation, every word that I tell you is true," concluded the old man. It was evident he believed every word of it to be true. The incredulous may imagine that there was some clandestine intercourse between the " young brother" and " young sister," and that simple old brother Wilcox was merely made the medium of a fact or sentiment, symbolised by the white pear. However that may be, it is certain that animal magnetism has penetrated into the cold and dark recesses of the Shakers.
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
"Magnetism Among the Shakers"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Shakers, spiritual practices, magnetism
Description
An account of the resource
A sketch in which the speaker relates a conversation between an older male Shaker and his sister about Shaker beliefs and practices.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Sartain’s Union Magazine</em>, Vol. IV: 337-38.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1849
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
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Also collected in <em>The Literary Gem</em>, Philadelphia: Van Court, 1854, 69-70.
Reprinted in <em>Female Prose Writers of America, </em>[edited by John S. Hart], Philadelphia, E.H. Butler & Co., 1864, 1866.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1849
brothers
magnetism
marriage
Sartain's Union Magazine
Shakers
whirling
-
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
1849
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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"Rural Life"
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>American Metropolitan Magazine, VI, 12-16</em>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
January 1849
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Country
-
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
1834
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
" Is your trunk packed, Ella ? "
" Yes, mamma, — all to putting in my little box of treasures."
" Your treasures ! — What can they be ? "
Ella sat down in her mother's lap, and opening a painted wooden box, said, " In the first place, there are your's and father's profile — there is the guard-chain Sarah made for me — there are the garters Kate knit — there is the hair ring Anne made — and there is the lavendar Mary gave me off her own little bed. This little stone Willie picked up when he saw all the rest giving me something; ' Here, sissy, is my teepsake,' said he : dear Willie! though it be but a common pebble, it will be a precious stone to me. This little mite of a fan, mamma, you remember ?— I made it the week before James died, out of the wing of the last bird he ever shot."
" Yes, I remember," answered her mother, with a sigh.
" And there is a lock of the baby's hair," continued Ella; " forgive me, mother, for stealing it; it was almost hidden by her cap-lace. You will not miss it, and it will be such a comfort to me."
" You are welcome to it, my dear child; it is but a small return for all your patient care of Bessie."
" Oh, mamma, Bessie more than pays me every day. She knows my voice — she smiles whenever I play to her, and yesterday she cried for me."
" I am afraid I shall cry for you too, when you are gone, Ella. I am glad to see your little Bible among your treasures: but what are all these paper marks in it?"
" Those I put in to mark the places where you have marked the verses with your pencil, so that I may turn to them at a minute's warning."
Ella's mother had marked those passages that contain the plainest precepts — precepts that may be applied to the lives of the highest and the humblest -— that appear very simple, but that require such exertion, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, that no life but that of our divine Master ever perfectly fulfilled them.
" I cannot tell you, my dear Ella," said Mrs Mayhew, " how glad I am that you are aware that to this book you must come for counsel and consolation. You say you wish to be able to find particular passages at a minute's warning; you are right—you are going where you may often want a present help in time of trouble."
Ella was soon after this conversation transferred to her new residence, unlike her home in all respects. Her father, Doctor Mayhew, was a physician, with a large family and very moderate income, with which he must support and educate a large family of children. Of course, frugality and industry, those prime virtues, were habitual with them. But their humble fortune did not prevent the Mayhews from associating on an equal footing with the best society in their town and county. Perhaps there may be some of our young city ladies, who are not yet aware that there are families and individuals throughout the country, as intelligent and refined as those in our cities.
Mrs Anderson, the cousin and friend of Ella's mother, — who had invited Ella to pass a year with her, and had generously offered to support her during that time, and furnish her the best instruction in New York, — was a fashionable lady of large fortune, with two grown up daughters, and half a dozen growing up boys and girls.
She announced the expected arrival of Ella to her children. They were at breakfast.
" Dear me! " exclaimed Miss Anderson, "I forgot you had such a cousin as Mrs Mayhew. I make it a rule, as Colonel Crane says, to forget all relations beyond the degree of brother and sister; indeed, the Colonel says, upon his honor, he does not know how many brothers and sisters he has."
"I am glad he is not my brother," said one of the younger children.
" What sort of a person is this Miss Ella Mayhew? " asked Miss Julia Anderson.
" A North American savage, as Colonel Crane says, you may be sure," replied her elder sister.
" Pardon me, Miss Anderson," said her mother, who found she must be the champion, as well as the patroness of her young friend — " Ella Mayhew is a clever, quiet little girl, not quite thirteen, who will in no way interfere with you. She is going to school, and will get her lessons in the nursery."
" Poor Ella Mayhew! " thought James Anderson, a good-natured boy, who had often attempted getting his lessons in the nursery.
"But why," pursued Miss Anderson, "does she not stay at home and go to school ? I thought New England was one great school, and all the men and women there school-masters, and school-mistresses."
" She is coming here to acquire some accomplishments she cannot get in the country."
" Absurd, mamma! What does a country doctor's daughter want of accomplishments?"
" She wants the means of assisting her parents in the education of their family, which she can get by qualifying herself to teach the expensive branches, called accomplishments."
" Oh ! then she is to be a regular schoolma'am apprentice, is
she?—I request, children," the young lady added, turning to the youngest persons at table, " that you don't call this Miss Ella cousin. She’ll be sure to begin with cousining you; for that is country fashion ; — and, mamma, I hope you mean Ella shall eat in the nursery — it is always disagreeable having these equivocal characters at the table."
" I shall do no such thing, Mary. I have not asked Ella here to mortify, or degrade her."
Miss Anderson would have replied, but they were interrupted by a ring at the door, a bustle in the entry — the door of the breakfast room was opened, and Ella appeared. Nothing can be much more appalling than the transfer from a retired, simple country home to a magnificent town-house — from familiar objects and loving looks, to strangeness, indifference, coldness — it may be, scorn.
Mrs. Anderson received Ella kindly. Her elder daughters merely bowed when she was presented to them. The children stared. James, and only James, advanced and greeted her cordially as " Cousin Ella." The tone would have fallen like music on Ella's heart, had she not followed the involuntary direction of James's eye, as he pronounced her name, and seen a very significant and a very disagreeable twist of Miss Anderson's mouth. After she had taken her breakfast, Ella was conducted by her aunt to the nursery, and told that a cot-bed should be placed there for her. — " You are used to children, Ella," she said, "and I hope, therefore, mine will not disturb you."
" Oh, no, ma'am," said Ella, hardly knowing what she said; for she perceived by the expressive countenance of “Mammy," the mistress of the nursery, that she was looked upon as a very unwelcome interloper in her premises. The nursery looked dreary to her, and her thoughts were in her own little quiet room at home.
Ella soon found that she was not only to sleep in the nursery, but to live there. For the first two days she took her work-box, or her book, and seated herself in the drawing-room, imagining that, like her mother's social, cheerful parlor, it was the family resort. The first day her cousins were " not at home," and they passed the morning, from ten to three, alone. The second morning, company was ushered in. The ladies received them, but took no notice of Ella, who sat by the window, plying her needle, and keeping her eye modestly fixed on her work. Once the ladies followed some particular friends into the entry. One lingered behind the rest, and Ella heard her ask in a tone, so loud that it was evident she did not care whether she were heard or not, " What, in the name of wonder, is that little sempstress perched up in your drawing-room for? "
Ella did not hear the reply ; but it was followed by a loud laugh. Her cousins retired to their own apartment. A servant soon after came in, and with a grin, asked " if Miss would please to go and sit in the nursery ? " adding, " Miss Julia bids me tell you, Miss, nobody comes in the drawing-room as is not called for." Poor Ella, stung by the insult, and mortified that she had even involuntarily intruded, retired to the nursery. But there, was no rest for her. Mammy was engaged in some deeply interesting chat with a visiter, and she said, rather pettishly, " I wish you would not come in here just now, Miss."
"Where shall I go?" asked Ella with a tremulous voice.
Mammy, who was really not an ill-natured woman, though she was fidgetty, and did not like to be interfered with, was struck with Ella's gentleness and her faltering tone ; and rising, she opened a door into a dressing-room. — " There," said she, " Miss Ella, is a nice, quiet place, that you may have almost any time to yourself."
"Oh, thank you—thank you," said Ella; and as soon as she was alone, she sat down, and overcome with homesickness, and a sense of loneliness, she wept bitterly for a few moments. Then suddenly wiping away her tears, she took her little Bible from its hiding-place in her basket, and opened it at one of her mother's marks. Her eyes fell on these words: " In whatsoever state you are, learn therewith to be content."— " The very words for me," thought she — and she kissed them, and kissed the delicate trace of her mother's pencil beside them. " It will be pretty hard work to be contented in this house," thought Ella; " but I can try. — Mamma has often told me one of the surest ways of driving away disagreeable thoughts was to keep busy, and to be doing for others, and not for yourself." So opening the door into the nursery, she said, " I don't mean to interrupt you, Mrs Hardy, but I heard you say you had two aprons to finish for the little girls today. If you will give me one of them, I will do it for you."
" That's real thoughtful, Miss Ella," replied Mammy, bustling about to get the work. " Do, Josephine, be still! Sam, put down that whip! Oh dear, I wish I ever could have a quiet minute! "
" Let the children come in with me," said Ella; " I can tell them a story while I am sewing. I often do so to our children at home." The children were immediately tranquillized and happy. Mammy enjoyed her comfortable hour's talk with her friend; and Ella was happiest of all; for the light she shed upon others was reflected upon herself. Some young persons in Ella's condition would have shed thousands of tears, and would have written home letters filled with grievances.
Instead of this, Ella concluded a letter, that night, to her mother, which she had chiefly filled with an account of her journey, thus : 'Aunt received me very kindly. They were at breakfast when I arrived; and as aunt did not expect me till the next day, they all appeared surprised. James shook hands with me, as if we had been old friends; he has just sent me up a delightful new book; is not this very kind of him? the children already begin to love me. I thought Mrs Hardy, aunt's nurse, rather a hard-favored cross concern at first; but she takes pains to make me as comfortable as possible. This is very important to me, as I sleep in the nursery. She has just emptied one of her drawers for my accommodation. I shall, as you charged me, dear mamma, do my best to give her, and all the family, as little trouble as possible."
Our readers will perceive there were no false statements in Ella's letter; only a suppression of whatever might give her mother pain, and a careful communication of every circumstance that could give her pleasure. If my young readers should be pleased with Ella's disinterestedness, we hope that, in similar circumstances, they will imitate her.
The little dressing-room, which Mrs Hardy had given Ella leave to occupy, communicated with the nursery by a door, the upper part of which, being glazed, lighted the small apartment.
Ella, on the morning after her expulsion from the drawing-room, was seated in her quiet asylum, when she heard her aunt and her daughter Caroline enter the nursery. There was a pane of the window broken. This compelled Ella to hear whatever was said.
" Mamma," asked Caroline, who was a year older than Ella, " what school is Ella to attend?"
" Madame C.'s, of course."
" Oh, mamma, you do not mean so," exclaimed Caroline.
" And oh, mamma, do let her go with us! " exclaimed the two
younger girls in a breath.
" Why not mean so, Miss Caroline? "
" Because it would be so ridiculous to send her to such a school as Madame C.'s."
"And why?"
" Because it would."
" Admirable reason; have you no better ? "
Caroline pouted and looked sulky: and then muttered something of having heard her mother say a hundred times that she liked Madame C.'s school, because there were none but genteel children there.
Truth compels us to pause for a moment to confess (and we are sorry for it,) that Mrs Anderson had the weakness of anxiously desiring to see her elder daughter distinguished in fashionable society; and of keeping the younger ones within the magic circle of what are called the genteel. And when her children often heard her say, " What a mixed party Mrs ___ had! "— " Why should you call on Miss___ , or Miss____, nobody visits them," — or "Children, do not ask those girls here; their parents are not in good society." When they heard her make those restrictions, instead of saying, " Miss ____ is a well-bred, charming girl ; I wish you would make her acquaintance" — or, if those children are, as you say, very intelligent and well behaved, I should like you to ask them here," — is it strange they should early get false ideas? and that these ideas should become principles of action?
I return to the conversation which poor Ella, much to her discomfort, was obliged to hear.
" Certainly you have heard me say so, Caroline; but there is no reason why Ella should not be genteel. As your cousin and friend, she will be on an equal footing with the other girls."
" That's the worst of it; if I could just say Ella was a country girl, that you had taken up out of charity, I should not mind it; but I am sure it will come out she is my cousin; and then the girls will laugh at me."
" I cannot help that; it is very important that Ella should have the best instruction. I have engaged a place for her at Madame C.'s ; so you must make the best of it."
Caroline actually burst into tears. At this moment Ella moved towards the door of the dressing-room. Her cheeks were flushed with pride and indignation. " I will ask to be sent home," she thought; " I will not stay here, to endure such mortifications! " She paused — the thought of her parents, and of their disappointment if she should lose the opportunity of improvement from which they had expected so much, arrested her. Then her heart yearned for her home, where she loved and was beloved. She thought of the humiliation she had endured, in one way and another, ever since she crossed Mrs Anderson's threshold ; and her hand was again on the door. " But Mrs Anderson has been very kind to me; to her, at least, I should be grateful; " and once more she slipped into her seat, and taking up her Bible, opened to the words, " Be patient in tribulation." There was her mother's mark against the passage; and it seemed to Ella that her mother had pointed her to the words. A tear fell on them. She wiped it off, and meekly raising her eyes to heaven, her heart replied, " I will try to be patient."
Perhaps some of my readers will think that Ella gave too big a name to her little trials. They were the severest she had ever felt. A hill appears as high to a child, as the Alps to a man. The next morning came, and Ella was to enter the school.
" I never can walk up Broadway beside that plaid cloak and dowdy hood," said Caroline Anderson to her sister.
"Never mind, Cary," said her sister; "it's useless speaking to mamma about it; for do you know she says she wishes she could persuade you to wear anything so suitable for the purpose, as Ella's school rigging. C'est un horreur! I pity you, my child, but you can easily cut her, as soon as you get into the street."
" After today, I can and will; but now she does not know the way to Madame C.'s."
" Oh, trust to' her finding it. She 's ' an exceeding clever little person,' as Col. Crane says." Caroline left her sister and joined Ella, whose sweet and somewhat sad countenance awakened her better feelings. " It would be cruel to leave her to go alone," thought Caroline.
Few girls of thirteen, (we hope none) have their hearts so hardened by worldliness that they can be cruel. Caroline roused her courage to what seemed to her a pitch of great generosity; and resolved that for this morning, at least, she would not flinch from the "plaid cloak and dowdy hood;" so she and Ella proceeded side by side up Broadway. Caroline found Ella very agreeable, and in the feeling that she had a delightful companion, had actually forgotten the cloak and hood, when she saw approaching her, though still at some distance, the very Col. Crane so often quoted by her sister. Now this Col. Crane belonged to a species, unknown, we trust, to our simple young readers. He was a travelled gentleman; and it would seem had gone about the world for no better purpose than to bring the coxcombries of other countries into his own. He declared that "existence without silver forks would be a burden to him;" and that "to eat an egg out of a glass instead of the shell was 'decidedly sauvage.' "And there were certain young ladies who listened to these sage aphorisms of the Colonel, and regulated their conduct by them. Caroline so often heard him quoted by her sisters, that, without knowing why exactly, he was the last person in the world whose eye she would have chosen to have encountered, while she was in company with the plaid cloak and hood. Therefore the moment she saw him, she muttered something of an errand for her sister; and turning into a cross street, she disappeared, leaving poor Ella at an utter loss whether to proceed, or turn back. The conversation she had overheard recurred to her ;and she very naturally concluded that Caroline had left her to avoid introducing her into the school. Ella felt the unkindness keenly; but she remembered that she had resolved to be patient. "I will not return," she thought; " it will only be giving Mrs Anderson trouble, and making her angry with Caroline; everybody must know where Madame C.'s school is ; and I can find out by inquiring. It will, to be sure, be forlorn enough going alone the first day; but then it will soon be over; and there will not be another first day." Certainly everybody in the city of New York did not know where even Madame C.'s celebrated school was; but fortunately Ella went into a French shop to inquire, and was very politely directed by a young woman, who was in the habit of serving Madame C. She found the house without further trouble; entered it, and hung up the offending cloak and hood in an ante-room filled with the young ladies' outer garments. What different feelings from Caroline's were called forth in her bosom by the sight of that hood! It was the last article her mother had made for her; and as she hung it on the nail, it seemed to speak to her of her mother, and of the dear familiar things at home. She was alone in the room, and she kissed it, brushed away a tear, and proceeded, with all the courage she could muster, to the school-room door. She opened it; and it must be confessed, that for one short moment she was appalled by the sight of two very large apartments communicating by open folding-doors, and filled with well dressed young ladies, arranged according to their ages and different pursuits. Some at a table with an Italian master; others at their desks with their drawing master; others who were awaiting their teachers, fixed their eyes on Ella. Madame C., a middle aged lady, with a countenance worn by care, but intelligent and benevolent, sat at the upper end of a long table; and fortunately at this moment her eye meeting Ella's, she beckoned to her. Ella, from being the eldest of her family, had been accustomed to act independently, much more than most young ladies of her age; and she now advanced and introduced herself with so much modesty and propriety, and communicated her parents' wishes in relation to her studies with so much clearness, that Madame C. was quite charmed with her. Assigning Ella a desk, and introducing her in the kindest manner to her teacher of music, she relieved her at once of half her uncomfortable feeling of strangeness. Of half, I say; for I believe to most girls the first day at school, is more or less a day of little miseries.
The young ladies, who are established at the school, get together in coteries or tete-d-tetes, and discuss the parentage, residence, appearance, and dress of the new comer; casting the while sidelong, inquiring, it may be quizzical glances at her, of which her burning cheeks betray that she is painfully conscious. I have often seen, and I have felt what I describe; and I have wondered that girls reared in civilized society, in well bred families, and girls with kind hearts, too, should receive a poor stranger cast among them, with almost as much inhumanity, as if they were Cornwall wreckers.
This purgatory, that every new scholar passes through, was made more painful to Ella by Caroline's carefully keeping aloof from her. Besides Caroline's false and foolish fear to explain to her fashionable friends her relationship to a raw country girl, she felt secretly ashamed of having deserted Ella in the street. The only certain relief in such a case, is to make what amends can be made for the fault; but Caroline had not magnanimity for this; and all the morning she kept close to her desk; avoided seeming to hear the remarks that were made about the stranger; and only now and then cast a stolen glance towards her.
The hour of recreation arrived; and the young ladies rushed from their tasks to the yard which was fitted up for calisthenic exercises. Some ran to the balancing boards; some jumped into the swings, and the air was filled with the loud laugh and the merry shout. All joined, I say, — but I should have said all but but poor Ella, — who sat alone in the porch, looking on, not ill-naturedly, but with a sad feeling of loneliness. At last one of the young ladies, if not more kind hearted, far more thoughtful than the rest, broke away from her companions, and with a sweet voice, that went to Ella's heart, and which she never forgot, was begging her to join in their sports, when they were startled by a sudden noise and a piercing shriek. Caroline had fallen from a wooden horse, and striking a glass, that had carelessly been left standing on the ground, received a deep cut on the cheek. She was stunned, and the blood gushed from the wound. The girls were terrified; no one knew what to do; no one but Ella; who was instantly at Caroline's side, raised her head and carefully closing the gaping wound, bound her handkerchief tight around it, saying while doing it in a low calm tone, " Caroline ! Caroline ! don't be frightened, Caroline!" In a few moments, Madame C. and a physician were on the ground. The physician, with Ella's aid, carried Caroline in, and laid her on the sofa; and after examining the wound said it must be immediately sewed up to prevent an ugly scar.
Caroline consented to the operation; for though she dreaded the Doctor's needle, she dreaded an ugly scar more. Madame C. was nervous at the sight of blood; and Ella, who had no inconvenient nerves, and who never seemed to remember herself when anything was to be done for another, held Caroline's head, and gently encouraged and soothed her, while the Doctor was performing the operation. That done, " I will hurry home and tell your mother all about you," said Ella; " and she will send the carriage for you."
" Oh no — no, Ella ! do not leave me — ask Madame to send a servant to tell mamma."
" I am afraid your mother will be very much alarmed, if we send a servant."
" But she will soon know just how it is." Ella still hesitated. "Well, go yourself, Ella ; but do come back in the carriage for me. — How she does think of everybody but herself," thought Caroline, as Ella tying on her cloak and hood, hastened away. Quiet was deemed best for Caroline; and she was left alone for the hour that intervened before the coach arrived with Ella. It was a blessed hour to Caroline. Her heart was softened, and the incidents of the morning impressed a lesson there, that was never effaced.
Not long after this she took up Ella's little Bible, and opening to the passage (one of the marked passages)
"Do good to those who despitefully use you," she wrote with her pencil on the margin, " Illustrations of Scripture — Ella Mayhew's first day at school." She showed what she had written to Ella. It was the first time she had ever alluded to her own contemptible conduct on that first day; for Caroline, like many others, had found it easier to repent a fault than to say she repented it. Ella took up her India rubber and effaced what Caroline had written ; then affectionately kissing her, she said, "All that I desire to remember of that first day, Cary, is, that it was the first day we began to love one another."
Now, my reader, whoever you may be, I fear you are thinking "there is nothing after all in this long story worth telling." Certainly it contains no striking incidents; but it may serve to show you that our happiness depends chiefly on the state of our own hearts; and farther, that in most circumstances we may improve the virtue, and consequently the happiness, of those around us. Do you think you would have been happy in Ella's condition? Would you not have thought, " I cannot, and will not, and ought not, to bear the insults and slights of these proud, rich people! Or, if you had borne them, would you not have suffered many an hour of homesickness and tears?—Would you not, — sure of their sympathy and love, — have poured out your heart in some letter to your father or mother ?— Not so Ella. Her trials did not end with her first day at school; for she was surrounded by the self-indulgent and selfish, but they became from week to week less and less. God had given her a very sweet temper, and a happy disposition. Her mind was enlightened and fortified by Christian principles. She was the eldest of a large family at home; she was in the habit of exertion for others, and of sacrificing her own inclinations; so that it was easy for her to bear and forbear. But after all, what seemed to me to help Ella along in her difficult position, more than anything else, was a way she had of finding some good point in every one; and by always addressing herself to good feelings instead of bad, she was sure to bring the best into exercise. Evil she sometimes met, but she overcame evil with good. She lost no opportunity of doing kindness; and this in so unostentatious and natural a way, that she did not seem herself to be aware she was doing a favor. Before she returned home, she was a favorite with every member of Mrs Anderson's family. " I never thought," said Miss Anderson, " that I should like Ella Mayhew so much; but, as Col. Crane says, ' she is a charming little person.' " Miss Julia, who, as it may be remembered, requested that Ella would not sit in the drawing-room — Miss Julia gave a musical soiree in honor of Ella's birthnight. — The boys said "who will mend our gloves?—who will sew up our balls ? — who will fix our kites ? — who can we always tease, and she never will be angry with us, when Ella is gone?" " Angry !" exclaimed one of the children ; " Ella is just like the angels; for mamma says they are never angry." " Oh, Miss Ella, come back to us," said Mammy ; " the luckiest day that ever happened to us was that which brought you among us ! " " Mamma," said Caroline, " do let me go home with Ella and pass the summer. If you will, I will try to be like her." —I venture, in conclusion, to borrow a sentence which contains the whole meaning of my story. " It is happy for us, when a being of noble sentiments, and beneficent life, enters our circle, becomes an object of interest to us, and by affectionate intercourse takes a strong hold on our hearts."
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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"Ella"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Children's fiction, Christian behavior, class difference.
Description
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A modest young woman from the country comes to live with her city cousins, and uses Biblical and parental precepts to adjust and thrive.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
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<em>Juvenile Miscellany</em>, 3rd Series, V4, (edited by Mrs. D. L. [Lydia Maria] Child), Boston: Allen and Ticknor, 11-35.
Date
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March and April, 1834.
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
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Also collected in <em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, 95-112, 1840.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
bible
children
Christianity
class
Country
education
Juvenile fiction
Juvenile Miscellany
New York City
virtue
-
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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1829
Subject
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Stories published in 1829.
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Text
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In the January number of the Miscellany, we promised to show how far little Mary Smith merited her royal title. We did not mean to imply that Queens were better—they are often not half as good as their subjects; but as no one is born to a title in our Republican country, it is supposed to be a badge of merit.
We left Mary's father on the eve of sailing for Europe. About a year after his departure, Mrs. Smith, who was living in her economical cottage in Brookline, received a visit from Mrs. Gray, a lady who had been her neighbor in Boston, and who had a beautiful country seat in Brookline. She brought with her, her daughter Helen, a girl about a year older than Mary. She was dressed very beautifully in a French Frock, sent to her, with many other presents, by her aunt, who resided in Paris.
Mary Smith was a very polite little girl—she had true politeness; the only politeness of any value. She attended to others from a real desire to make them happy. While her mother was talking with Mrs. Gray, she asked Helen if she would like to go out and see the pigeons
.
"No I thank you," said Helen.
"Perhaps you do not like pigeons," said Mary modestly; "will you go and see ray Bantam chickens? They are perfectly white and the cunningest things you ever saw. Will you go?"
"No I thank you."
"What is Miss Mary saying to you?" asked Helen's mother.
Helen ran to her and whispered loud enough to be heard, "She wants me to go out and see her pigeons; and I am afraid that I shall soil my frock and not be fit for the party."
"Oh, go my dear," said her mother, "if Miss Mary wishes it." Helen went; but not in a humour to be pleased with any thing. -As they went out, Mary took a basket from a shelf on the piazza, and when they were in the yard she said, "Now Helen, I will show you something;" and she took a handful of oats from her basket and strewed them on the ground, and whistled for her pigeons. They came from all points of the compass; from the roof of the house and the eves of the barn. As they descended, their beautiful throats glittered in the sun; and as they lighted they folded their wings to their graceful bodies.
"Oh are they not sweet creatures?" exclaimed Mary.
"Why, they are nothing but common pigeons; are they?" said Helen.
“I suppose they are called common pigeons," replied Mary.
"Then, my dear child, you can't expect we to admire them; we have so many kinds of uncommon ones."
"But do yours come like these, when you call them 1—Our Nancy says I put her in mind of Eve in Paradise calling down her birds."
"I wish Nancy could see ours once; to be sure they don't come down like yours, because papa keeps them confined, for fear we shall lose them. Some of them are beautiful ring-doves, and one kind we call blood pigeons, because they have a bright red stain on their white bosoms, and look as if they had just had a knife plunged into them."
"They must be very curious," said Mary. "I wish I had some like them."
"Oh my dear child," replied Helen, "I don't think it is very probable you can get them. Papa sent a great way for ours, and he says they cost quite a sum of money; but come Mary, if you have any thing more to show, you must make haste, for I would not be late at Anne Rush's for any thing. It is her birth day; and we expect a most elegant time."
Mary turned away from her pigeons without giving them her usual parting look of admiration, and passed by the coop where her bantam chickens were, without pointing them out to Helen. She did not know exactly why, but she did not want to show them, after what Helen had said about the pigeons.
"Would you like to see my little garden, Helen?" she asked.
"Yes—if you will make haste."
Mary led the way to the gate as quick as she could, and as soon as they entered, Helen laughed and said, " Why, what a little bit of a place."
"It is quite big enough for mother and I, and little Ben Lacy to take care of," said Mary, in a tone of slight displeasure: for she could not bear to have her garden, which was her pride and her delight, spoken of with contempt.
"You need not be angry Mary," said Helen; "come let us see what is in your garden."
"You do see, Helen, almost all I have—asters, and mary-golds, and cockscombs, and this pretty crimson dalia."
"Are these all?" asked Helen, scarcely looking at them.
"Almost all I have now; you know Helen, it is the fall of the year—and we cannot have such a very great variety of autumnal flowers; mother says so."
" Oh my dear child, you are very much mistaken—our green house is full of flowers now ; geraniums, and myrtles, and jessamines, and heliotropes, and three kinds of passion flowers, one perfumed—of course, you know, seeing so many at home, I cannot think much of these, which one sees in every garden patch by the road side. Oh, this cockscomb is decent!"—and she pulled off a very fine one; the finest in the garden.
Mary's heart beat hard when she saw Helen snap off the stalk: but she did not speak.
"I have nothing more to show you, Helen," she said, "but one tube-rose," and she turned round a high seringa bush, on the other side of which was the tube-rose.
"Oh yes," exclaimed Helen, “here is something really worth showing;" and as she said this, she plucked, without the slightest hesitation, from a fine grape vine, its only bunch of grapes.
Mary jumped up as if she had been shot; then walked away; and then as suddenly returned. She tried hard to help it, but in spite of her efforts the tears were running down her cheeks.
"Do pray take your grapes, Miss Mary," said Helen, bridling up.—" I had no idea a bunch of grapes was such a mighty affair—how should I, when we have bushels and bushels in our grapery."
"It is not for the grapes I care," said Mary, "but"—
"But what, child?"
"I had rather not tell you, if you please, Helen," replied Mary with a dignity that would have become a true Queen; "but I hope you will excuse my appearing rude to you."
Helen at this moment perceived that in her haste to devour the grapes, she had permitted the juice to run down on her precious frock. She was vexed with herself, and vexed with Mary; and she threw down the grapes, and trampled on them.
She was relieved from her awkward and disgraceful position by a call from the coachman, who told her that her mother was already in the carriage awaiting her. She ran off without bidding Mary good by.
Mary did not follow her; she stood bending over her grapes till she heard another carriage drive up to the door, and saw her aunt Ray, and her cousins, Julia and Mary, alight from it.
The girls ran to her, and embraced her most affectionately.
"Come back in the garden with us, Mary," they both said in a breath, and both exclaimed, as they entered, "How sweet pretty your flowers look! Oh Mary, mother is in such a hurry, we must tell you right off what we came for. Mother wants you to come and live with us this winter, and go to dancing-school with us. Oh how delightful it will be! We are to have cotillion parties ; and father says he will take us all to the theatre to see Aladdin, and we are all to spend Thanksgiving at uncle Henry's— but what is the matter, Mary? You do not seem at all pleased."
"Because you know, girls, I cannot go and leave mother."
"Ah, but that is the best of it—your mother is going too—mamma has come to persuade her."
"Oh that will be delightful," said Mary; and she forgot her grapes and her cockscomb, and every trouble on earth, and ran with her cousins to the house.
There they found their mothers so earnestly engaged in conversation, that they did not venture to interrupt them, but returned to the garden, and staid merrily talking till the girls went away. Their last parting words were, "We shall soon be together, and for the whole winter."
As the carriage drove away, Mary sprang up the door steps—ran into the parlor, and jumping into her mother's lap, she threw her arms around her neck, exclaiming, “Oh, how glad I am we are going to stay at Aunt Ray's."
"We are not going there, my dear Mary."
"Not going mother?" exclaimed Mary with a look and tone of dismay—"did not aunt Ray ask us?”
"Yes, she did ask us very kindly."
"And you are not going; and all the dismal winter I must stay here, where there is nothing pleasant."
"Nothing pleasant! my child, you forget your garden."
"In winter, mother, that is nothing; and beside, Helen Gray does not think it is pretty at all, now.
"And your Bantams, Mary, and your pet pigeons—have you forgotten them?"
"Why, they are nothing but common pigeons, mother; Helen says so. But why don't you go to aunt Ray's."
"I have good reasons my child, for not going; but you could not perfectly understand them if I were to tell them. You are a little unreasonable just now; but I trust you will soon be as happy as ever."
"No, mother—no! I never shall be happy again here. Julia and Mary are going to have pleasures all winter; and Helen Gray is living away in all her grandeur. Oh, I wish we were rich again, and had our carriage, and could ride away from this desert place."
Mrs. Smith was distressed at seeing Mary, usually as happy as a lamb frisking on the grass, so discontented and repining.
"My dear child," she said,” I am mortified to hear you express such wrong feelings and foolish wishes; and you really think riches would make us happier than we are?”
"I am sure of it; for then we should not have to live in the country."
"You said yesterday, Mary, you could live any where with me."
Mary coloured a little, but quickly replied, "So I could, mother; but that does not make it out that it is not far pleasanter to live in one place than another." Mary saw her mother looked very grave; and she thought of another reason, which she felt very sure her mother could not answer. "If we were rich, mother, we should have something to give away; but now, what good can we do?"
Mrs. Smith did not reply to her question, but she said, “Mary, something has curdled your sweet disposition to-day. Your head is full of wrong thoughts and false notions. But every body has them, old and young. Some are cured in one way, some in another; and some are never cured at all. I will not talk any more with you now. Get your hat, and we'll take a walk."
The result of this walk will be seen from Mary's letter to her brother.
"To his Majesty, King William; or what is far better, to my own dear brother, Will."
"I have a great deal to say to you, and cannot wait till you get home, though it will be so soon. Soon mother calls it; but to me it seems a great while.
"I have counted the time every way, and ciphered it into hours, minutes and seconds, but I can't shorten it—21 days, 504 hours, 30240 minutes, 1814400 seconds. Only think what a horrible number of seconds! Mother tells me that some great man says, 'an hour may be tedious; but cannot be long.' 1 guess if he had spent an hour waiting for his only darling brother, it would have seemed both tedious and long too. But then we can't expect great folks can know how little ones feel. "Now, William, as we agreed to tell one another every thing that happened, I am going to tell you how badly I behaved the other day; and the good way mother took to drive away all my cross, wrong feelings. Don't you wonder if there are any real children that talk so wise and so good, and always do just the right thing, if it be ever so difficult, as children do in books ? I guess there are no such children in the world; though they really seem alive in some of the books I have read. How I do run on without coming to my story; but some how or other, when I am writing to you, William, I think of so much to say, that I wish I had a pen that would write two lines at once—something like an old woman's tongue, I have heard of, that was fastened in the middle and talked at both ends. But to begin with my story. A certain young lady came here yesterday, I will only write her initials—H. G. She was dressed as fine as a toy shop doll. Mother says Mrs. Grey is almost the only mother in Boston that dresses her children fine. I think it is very silly of her. I will tell you one thing, William, that I have found out—and that is, that there are several grown up people very silly. Well, I wished to please H. and I offered to show her whatever we had that was pretty. In the first place, I called the pigeons; they never looked more beautiful—the sun shone on their necks and they glittered, and looked as if they had been dipped in a rainbow; but Miss H. did not admire them in the least; but tried to make me sick of them. I did not show her my little Bantams, for I knew she would scorn them too; but I led her to the garden, for I thought she could not possibly help admiring that. But no—my lady walked straight along the alley, as if she had neither nose nor eyes, though the flowers were on each side like a rich fringe—till she came near to my most beautiful cockscomb. It was the one you sowed the seeds of, the very last thing you did before you went away, after we carried your trunk to the gate, and while you was waiting for the stagecoach—you remember it. As we were both stooping over the flower bed, you dropped a tear on it. I thought of what Mr. Brown said in his sermon,' that tears often produced good fruits,' and if they did fruits, I did not see why they should not flowers ; so I took particular care of this one cockscomb, and watered it, and grubbed about it every day ; and to be sure it was the most superb one I ever saw— twice, yes, five times as big as our rooster's, that was frozen last winter.* By the way, I have made the funniest little fur-cap for my bantam cockscomb against next winter. Well, Miss H. marched up to this cockscomb, and snapped it off, as if it had been any common thing. I liked to have screamed out; but I kept my lips fast together, and we turned round the seringa and came full in view of my grape vine. Now you know this is my pet and darling, above every thing else. I never look at it without thinking how kind it was of Mr. Perkins to give us such a valuable vine, three years old! And what a tug you had of it bringing it home with all the soil about it; and how you taught me to take care of it, and told me Mr. Perkins said girls and ladies might take the whole care of grape vines, if they would. I never let any body touch it but myself. Every day I bid it good morning with my little trowel, and good night with my watering-pot; *and I have tied it up, and taken out all the false wood. It put out four bunches in the spring; but they all died away but one, and that was a grand one. I looked at it twenty times a day: it grew larger and larger, and the grapes seemed almost crowding one another off the stem, and they had turned purple, and were darker and brighter every day, and mother, and I, and Ben Lacy, all thought they would be just perfectly ripe when you came home. How do you think I felt then, William, when Helen Grey—I must write her name full out this time—jumped forward, and before I could speak, tore off the stem, and began to devour the grapes? I cried, I must own it. I could not possibly help it; and then she was affronted, and threw them down, and trod on them. As I told mother, it was a dreadful sight to see my beautiful grapes all covered with dirt, and trampled on! Mother says, after all, it is one of the lesser miseries of life. If that is the case, don't you hope we shall never have any of the greater, William 1 "As good luck would have it, H.'s mother called her, and they went away; and in their place came our dear Aunt, and Julia and Mary? as rich as Miss H.; but oh how different!— Aunt came to ask mother and I to pass the winter with her, but mother did not consent; and I was so disappointed, and had been so plagued with Helen, that I was cross as a cat, or, as mother says, unreasonable. I fretted about living at Brookline, and about being poor ; and what is worse, William—I will tell you all, for that is the bargain—I tried to excuse myself by turning it off upon our having so little to give away. Now that was not what made me feel so bad— it was not the real truth—and that was what mother cared most about; for you know she hates above all things to have us pretend to be better than we are. However, she did not scold me—that she never does—she did not talk to me either, then; but asked me to go and walk with her. We went down the green lane. It was just at evening, and you know ‘how sweet the hedge smells then—and there was an uncommon number of birds, and especially one bob o'lincoln, singing deliciously, what mother calls their evening hymn; but I don't think it sounds at all like a hymn. I began to think to myself that the country was a pretty decent place after all. Pretty soon we came in sight of Mrs. Warner's house. I must stop and tell you a little about her. She is a very poor woman; but not so very, very poor as some others, because she has a house, and a little land and a cow. Her husband died last spring, and left her with five children and his old bed-ridden mother to take care of. I said five, but I forgot the one in New York, who, she has lately heard, has the consumption. He is a very good young man, and used to help his mother a great deal; but now he has not even money enough to get home. As soon as mother turned towards the house—" There," said I, " if we were only as rich as we used to be, you could have brought Mrs. Warner money enough to send for her son." “Yes, Mary," she said,” but if we do all we can for the poor, we shall not so much regret what we cannot do. I spoke to Mrs. Grey about poor Mrs. Warner— she gives away a great deal of money, and I do not doubt she has stopped and left her something." By this time we got to the house and went in. Mrs. Warner did not appear at all, as she usually does: instead of stepping about quick, and smiling, and speaking pleasantly, she just bowed her head, and after she had set out the chairs for us, she went into the other room; to wipe the tears out of her eyes, I rather think, by their looks when she came back. Old Mrs. Warner, her mother in law, seemed really cross for the first time in her life, though when mother asked her how she was, she answered just the same she always does. 'Thank 'e, ma'am, little better than I was yesterday; but not quite so well as the day before.' I took up the baby and began to play with it; and then the old woman began to talk. You must know William, she is a queer old woman: she talks in such an old fashioned way, and never stops; and her teeth are all gone, and her nose and chin almost meet, and her head shakes all the time. But I will give you a specimen: I shan't put any commas and periods to the sentences, because she has neither pauses nor stops. 'I hope Miss Smith,' she began, ' you and Mary wont surmise we ant glad to see you because we seem so frusticated (frustered) I am sure you are both as pleasant to our sight as light to the eyes; butmy darter and I are as it were upset by a visit from Miss Grey and her gal an airy little piece she is (mother says she meant full of airs) she walked into the room here as if she had been coming into a kanel (kennel) and stood in the middle of the floor and held up her frock as if she were in a muddy road, to be sure Miss Warner had just been mopping and when the baby went up to look at her fine bag she cried out ' hands off hands off and when poor Jemmy come in all covered with mud from being knocked down by a big dog in the road her mother there that Miss Grey gave him ninepence and told him to buy some water to wash his face— Jemmy took the ninepence and chucked it out of the window and if it had been a goold guinea much as we want money I would have been glad to see him do the same when his mother was reflected on for occrdoingness is Miss Warner's besetment—(mother says that she meant that her daughter was too nice) and Ma'am knows the house and the children are always kept like silver—and I too—the Lord reward her—a poor bedridden old soul as I am and not her own mother—I hope ma'am wont be affronted for when I boil over I cant help the words coming out—Miss Grey may be ma'ams friend as she called herself but they are as different as black and white—she gave us money to be sure but that was nothing but an aggravation—she asked me if I had been confined to my bed long, and I told her ten years and I was nothing but an atomy (an anatomy) and I was going to show her my arm— and she said ' keep it under the blanket good woman it makes me sick at my stomach—many is the time ma'am has looked at it and rubbed it too with her soft hand, and I guess her stomach is full as weak as Miss Grey's ; but I can tell her her difficulty lies in her heart and not in her stomach—sick at her stomach indeed ! what does she expect to do when its the Lord's pleasure to send sickness to her and hers—and when I told her I had terrible turns of lethercdge (lethargy) her gal laughed out— but the crowner of all was she came up to the bed and said ' Goody do stop talking one minute, and let me see if your nose and chin really meet'—Does ma'am think money could pay for such insults? To be sure she gave my darter ten dollars and she wants it bad enough to getjpoor John home—but its the hardest piece of humiliation we ever experienced yet to take it from her—I tell you what it is Mary Smith that does ithe poor most good—a kind word kindly spoken—when your mother comes here and sits down by my bed and convarses with me about my difficulties and talks to my darter and the young ones jist like a book only more understandingly (intelligibly) and when you come down and read to me you read full equal to a church minister—and teach Jemmy and Sally their hymns and writing—that's what feels good to us—it seems as if you thought we had the same natur and I guess that is what Miss Grey never thought of—and if she were to make me a present of the bank of England I should not feel thankful for it."
"I have given you a pretty large sample of the poor woman's talk, but I had no idea how much paper it would fill. The hardest hearted thing of all was, Mrs. Grey's telling Mrs. Warner she ought to send her mother to the alms-house; and when Mrs. Warner told her she did not feel as if she could ever do that—' oh' says she, ' when poverty comes into the door, you should let your feelings fly up the chimney !' Mrs. Warner said, ' my feelings are my greatest comfort ma'am.' Mother says she believes this is true; for there was never any body who had better feelings.
“My letter is so very long I am afraid you will be tired; and I will only just tell you what mother said coming home, because I think it will do me good and may do you good too. I wish I could put mother's sweet voice into my letter; but you will remember well enough how it sounds.
" My dear child,' she said, ' old Mrs. Warner has answered the question you asked me before we came out: ' Mother, what good can we do, when we have nothing to give away?' It would be a grief indeed, Mary, if in losing our fortune we had lost the power of doing good. But you see there are charities the poor value more than the gift of money. In all our intercourse with the poor we should never forget they have, as old Mrs. Warner said, the same nature we have; the same faculties and affections; that the accidents of life, far more than our own merits, have placed them in one station, and us in another: that though they may have uncultivated minds in awkward bodies, yet those minds are immortal, like our own; those bodies, like ours, destined to suffer and perish. That the only difference our Creator and Judge will mark between us, will be the degrees of goodness; and when you think of Mrs. Grey, seeking her own pleasure, frivolous and selfish; and Mrs. Warner, humble and patient, and devoting her life to others, you will perceive the justice of the reverse in another world, of the condition in this. 'The high shall be cast down and the humble exalted.' Sympathy, Mary, is the key that unlocks all hearts. By sympathy I mean the feeling you have when you dismiss all thoughts of yourself, and enter into the feelings of another. It is my sympathy and yours, with this poor family that has won their hearts. I listen to all the old woman's tedious complaints. I enter into her daughter's sorrows and apprehensions and disappointments: and you my dear child, are patient in instructing the children: you show that you have their improvement at heart, because no weather keeps you at home, when the time comes for giving them their lessons. You do not carry them money; but you seldom So without a little basket of strawberries, or of some other fruit, or a bunch of flowers; and they see you take pleasure in their pleasure. 'Now Mary' you know it is not my habit to praise ourselves—I think it far better to go to others for examples of virtue when I am instructing you : but now I thought the best way to tell you what ' good we can do,' was to fix your mind on the good, the old woman says we have done.
“One thing, my child, let me caution you against. It is a vulgar notion that all rich people are selfish and cold hearted. I know many, many rich people who bestow their gifts so freely and so tenderly, that we may say they are ' like apples of silver in baskets of gold :' that is, that the manner and feeling with which they are given, are still more beautiful and valuable than the gift.'
"Dear William, I made a great many mistakes in writing down what mother said; but she corrected them for me; and the rest of my letter I have written without being helped at all. I hate to be helped; don't you?
“Mother has not yet told me why she does not go to aunt Ray's to spend the winter: but now my bad feelings have cleared off, I am sure she does right; and besides, as the old ladies say, I don't think it would be at all suitable to leave my family, (pigeons and bantams,) in the winter: and mother and I have a great many plans of reading and studying, and making new-year's gifts. But hush; I must not let out that secret. Writing to you, William, is just like opening the door of a bird-cage; everything that is in my heart flies out.
"21 days, 504 hours, 30240 minutes, 1814400 seconds, and then dear Will, you will return to your affectionate sister MARY.
"Postscript. Mother says you must not skip her little bit of a sermon when you read the letter; but I am not afraid—you are never tired of what mother says.—M. S.
"N. B. A pretty long letter, I think, for a girl not eight years old!—M. S,"
*Our young town readers may not know that the fowls are very apt to have their combs frozen in extreme cold weather.
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
"Mary Smith"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Children's Fiction, Class Difference, Letter Writing, Republicanism
Description
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A young girl from a modest family is hurt by another young girl from a wealthy family.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Stockbridge, S.
Source
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Juvenile Miscellany V2 (edited by Mrs. LM [Lydia Maria] Child) Boston: p. 110-134
Publisher
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Allen and Ticknor
Date
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May 1829
Contributor
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J. Robinson
Relation
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Sequel to “The Good Son” in Juvenile Miscellany (Jan. 1829): 217-29
Language
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English
Type
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Document
Consumption
Country
Fall
Juvenile Miscellany
Nature
New York
religion
tears
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/c3619ab5c6d083d844f9cfb5d511cee1.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=n-gWJ%7Efh1dqa2t1B1McGnF5di9marouzjVIg%7El6EaEv4j5xeZT3diGI0oCe1bXw%7E0LNAGfFitL-u%7E3hBKDm-daRfaNBdpt3iBqH-c2hC0FJUibPCPmW8ZqI4LohJeh9-XvDIIZur6m7hyhcqE9OjyQ200mna852MSky8mzaWDW1%7E5Dytv0qAbbviN1N8xCnunkxpTI4zrO3EGvXUMPdPw-ixE84ZgnOhyNR-JZMGjuiMRAU3viPXYNr7aCKZ09-Fu-tPbGrYYBetDOxq7opkkWOX5uDUAqsRc3P3aUcy-pwBPwLgYvAzCnbIcvopje3jDshV0TeE0j5yx3gOHJQDfQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
2eb4747c0f824047c88bda15a9386674
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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1850
Subject
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Stories published in 1850.
Document
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Text
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Miss C.M. Sedgwick
“Might versus Right”
"There is no wealth but the labour of man" -- or woman.
ANNE CLEVELAND was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. She had a good New England school education, and was well bred and well taught at home in the virtues and manners that constitute domestic social life. Her father died a year before her marriage. He left a will dividing his property equally between his son and daughter, giving to the son the homestead with all its accumulated rural riches and to the daughter the largest share of the personal property, amounting to six or seven thousand dollars. This little fortune, the earnings of a life of labour and frugality, became at Anne's marriage the property of her husband. She had no longer any right to control it; to keep, or expend it. It would seem, to the perceptions of common sense and common justice, that the property of a woman received from her father should be hers, and should be so appropriated as to secure her independence, and to maintain and educate her children. But the laws of a barbarous age decided otherwise, and it is found very hard to right a wrong deeply fixed in the usages of society, and long-transmitted habit.* [i] Anne Cleveland married John Warren. He was the youngest child, daintily bred by his parents, and let off from all heavy work and difficult tasks, by his good-natured elder brothers. Anne's judgment was perhaps warped by his agreeableness, and an exterior with a little less of the rustic, and a little more of the gentleman than belonged to her other admirers; for many admirers had Anne Cleveland attracted by her charming countenance, her virtues, her sweet manners, to say nothing of the "plenty that feeds the lover's fire."
This plenty, obtained with Anne's hand, was soon vested in a stock of goods, and Warren opened a dry-goods shop in a small town in the vicinity of Boston. He had not thought of his qualifications for merchandise, but only of escaping from distasteful farming, and frugal life. He went on tolerably for five or six years, living genteelly and recklessly; expecting that next year's gains would bring round the excess of this year's expenses.
When sixteen years of their married life had passed, they were living in a single room in the most crowded street of Roxbury, Massachusetts. Mrs. Warren's inheritance had long been gone from them, every penny of it. The lives of three children had been sacrificed to unhealthy locations, and to the overtasked and wasted strength of their mother. Three survived—a girl fifteen years old, whom the mother by incredible exertions was educating to be a teacher, a boy of twelve, who was still living at home, and a delicate, pale, little struggler for life, Jessie, a girl of three years. Mrs. Warren was much changed in these sixteen years. Her round, blooming cheek was pale and sunken. Her dark, abundant chestnut hair had become thin and gray. Her sweet, dovelike eye, overtaxed by use and watching, was faded, and her whole person shrunken. Yet she had gained the great victory. The buoyancy of youth had given place to a most gentle submission and resignation, and the light of hope to a most sweet patience.
This blessed patience, and even a certain degree of cheerfulness was visible, as she sat one July evening, sewing by the light of a single lamp, while her boy was getting his Latin lesson beside her, and at intervals threading her needle.
"Dear mother," he said, "I will always thread your needles if you will not wear those horrid spectacles; they make you look a hundred years old, besides hiding your sweet eyes."
"Ah, George, all children hate their mother's spectacles, I believe. They do not like to see those they love getting old; but you must make up your mind to it. I cannot leave off work, and I cannot see in the evening without them."
George picked up the lamp-wick and then said, “There is no use—the oil is bad. I wish we had some of the lights that are burning away for nothing in rich men's houses."
"Covet not your neighbour's goods, my son."
"Covet! I don't covet, mother, I only wish. It makes me feel so, mother, to see you working your eyes out. Why do you work so late, mother? You work later and later, and that shoe-binding, you say, is so trying to your eyes."
"I have good reason for doing extra work now, George; I have kept up without debt, and
[76]
have now fifty-five dollars due to me at Mr. Doyle's."
"Then you have a good right to stop your work, mother," said George, affectionately, taking the shoe from her, "and if you won't, I shall make you."
"No; give it to me, George. I must have sixty dollars, and then I shall treat myself to rest and recreation too. Anne must have some new clothes, or she cannot remain in the Rev. Mr. Howe's family, and you know what privileges she has there, and what a struggle I had to get the place for her. In one year more, Mr. Howe says she will be qualified to be head teacher in a school, or governess in a private family. By-and-by, George, my children will take off my spectacles indeed, and give my eyes and heart too rest."
"I hope so, mother, I hope so," and resolves and joyous visions for a moment checked George's utterance. But he returned to the subject. "Sixty dollars, mother! Anne surely can't want sixty dollars!"
"Oh no, I can make her quite comfortable with fifteen, or twenty at the utmost, and the rest I want to take poor little Jessie to the shore; the doctor has advised me to make some change for her. Last week he said if anything would do her good it was sea-bathing."
“If anything, mother!—Is Jessie so ill?"
"She is very ill, George. She seems to be going just in the way my other little girls went. Have you not observed that every day she gets weaker and paler?"
"No, mother, but now I remember that she fell down twice to-day, when I was walking up the street just a little way with her, and I brought her home in my arms." George went to the crib where the child was sleeping unquietly, kissed her, stroked her attenuated arms, and kissed over and over again her almost transparent little hands, and bending over her, whispered, "Pettest of pets!"—then returning to his mother's side, his eyes brimming with tears, he said, "Oh, mother, Jessie must not die!—Do not wait to make up the sixty dollars. I will give up my school, and go into the cord and tassel factory. They give boys high wages there."
"No, my son, we must pursue a steady plan. All that is gained will be lost if you are interrupted now; no, at the end of the week I shall have made up the sum, and then, without the fear of running in debt, I shall set out with my light little burden, and return with it heavier I trust,—but much less a burden."
"Oh! dear mother, if you only had some of that money that father says he lost in business." George paused thoughtfully for a few moments, and then added, "How did my father ever get any money, mother?—Was his father rich?"
"No, my son, but my father was—at least what is called very rich,—for a farmer."
"Then it was yours after all. Surely my father would not take it from you; he is not such a man—at least he was not always," added the boy, blushing with a painful consciousness.
"Your father took it, used it, and lost it, my son; but you must not blame him,—the money was his according to law."
"What! your money his?—I don't understand that, mother. I don't see how money can belong to a person that does not earn it, nor inherit it, nor have it given to him. Oh, I suppose you did give it to him, mother?"
"No; the law gave it to him."
"It's a mean, dishonest law, then,—a law fit to have been made by pickpockets. Who made such a law ?—when was it made, mother?"
"Oh! a long while ago."
"Why don't they alter it, now they know better?"
"They probably think it is better as it is. Men are bound to support their families, and they are supposed to be more capable of earning property than women, and of taking care of it."
"Well, I suppose some men are much more capable of earning and keeping property than some other men, but for that, all the property is not given to them. And certainly some women are every way more capable than some men. What would we have done, mother, but for what you have earned and saved? And if you had kept your own property how comfortable and happy you might have been, instead of having half your heart in the grave of my poor little sister, and the other half contriving how to take care of the rest of us."
"I have but done my duty, dear, and you must look on the best side, George;" and the mother was proceeding to show that best side, when she was interrupted by the entrance of her husband, whose loud voice and thickened utterance indicated that he was in his usual state of partial inebriation. He was accompanied by a Mr. Hutton, one of his early friends, who, for the sake of Mrs. Warren, still endured her husband's society. George's colour rose at the sight of his father, and a mist came before his eyes. His mother perceived this, and saying "Good-night, my son," she pushed an unlighted lamp towards him. He lighted it, and after pausing a moment at Jessie's crib, and drawing a deep sigh, he withdrew to an adjoining closet bed-room.
"Well, Madam Warren," said her husband, in a loud, husky voice, "have not you a bit of pie, or crumb of cake to give us?—Hutton and
[77]
I have walked out from Boston, and are sharp set."
"I am sorry then I have nothing to offer you."
"Oh! women always say there is nothing: I guess I can find something!" said Warren, setting open her cupboard-doors, but discovering nothing but very clean shelves, and a few cups, plates, etc.
After muttering his disappointment, he perceived in a corner a black bottle, and taking out the cork, "By Jove!" he said, "here's a bottle of wine!—this is luck!— We've no wine-glasses, but we'll drink Mrs. Warren's health in the tumblers!—they'll do! —Pleasant provisions you keep, Mrs. Warren! A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband —hey, Hutton?"
"Oh, put up the wine, Warren," said Hutton, "I shan't taste a drop of it!"
"I shall, then. Here's a health to you, wife and friend!" and he tossed off a glass of it.
Mrs. Warren rose, and putting her hand on the bottle, said mildly, "You must not drink this, John. The doctor ordered wine-whey for Jessie, and I have bought it for that."
"Never mind;" and wresting the bottle from her hand, Warren set it down violently on the table, and lighting a cigar sat down beside it. Mrs. Warren was so accustomed to his coarseness and selfish indulgence, that this caused little sensation, and she returned quietly to her sewing.
Hutton did not so easily digest the matter. He sat down by the table, and after biting his nails for a few moments, he said, "Warren, why do you go to that Roger Smith's? —If you must haunt a grocery, go elsewhere;—he is a rascal!"
"A rascal!—I find him a very liberal fellow."
"Liberal! yes,—running up accounts with the husband for the wife to pay. Did you hear how he served poor Mrs. Farren, the best wife —always excepting yours—in Roxbury?"
"No:—you know I hate gossip."
"Well, this is too true and too sad a story to be called gossip. That poor woman had laid up a pretty little sum of money. She was obliged to hide it to keep it from her good-for-nothing husband. He got wind of it some way or other, and turned over her trunks and drawers till he found it. He then carried it to Roger Smith and paid his drinking account with it, and then, boasting how he got the money, began a new score! Hear me out. The next day poor Mrs. Farren went penniless to Smith's to buy a loaf of bread for her children's breakfast. The scoundrel refused it!"*[ii]
"That was rather tough, I own,—but then what business had she to hide the money? She knew it was his, not hers, by the law of the land."
"By the law of the land it may be, but not by the law of God; and there is neither truth, honour, nor manhood in a husband who will avail himself of such a law, to take away the rightful property of his wife."
"Tut-tut! what nonsense you talk, Hutton! A married woman can't have any rightful property. Her husband is bound to protect and support her, and that is quite enough for her."
"And if he does not?"
"Why he is compelled to—the law compels him." At this moment the door of the little bed-room to which George had gone was set ajar.
"The law abounds in fictions," rejoined Hutton. "Does the law compel him ?—You and I know some wives who have supported their families—including their lordly husbands—for years"—-Warren filled another bumper of wine and drank it off—"and yet the money they earn is not their own, and is at all times subject to the husband's rapacity. There is no end to the wrong done by men who fancy that old and barbarous laws give them rights that no human authority can give. I knew a gentleman, so called, who married a charming woman; she had a fortune of forty thousand dollars; he, not a penny. He was rather a good fellow, but idle. He lived on his wife's fortune, never earned or acquired in any way a shilling, and when he died he bequeathed his wife's property to her while she remained unmarried, but he made some other disposition of it if she married again!* [iii] This was strictly legal, Warren,—good old Norman law for it, no doubt; but I call it as impudent a piece of projected robbery as ever was done on a highway."
"Nonsense! when he married, the property, if it was personal, and passed into his hands, became his of course. There may be a hard case now and then, but women don't know how to take care of property, and it's best they shouldn't have it."
"I deny that. They take better care of property than men. They do not expose it to so many hazards. They rarely jeopard their children's happiness by a foolish second marriage, as men continually do. I have heard a man, older and wiser than either you or I, say that he has never known a woman left a widow who, if she had but a roof over her head, did not support her children. No, Warren, it does not become us to talk about women not being trusted with property because they don't know how to take care of it. At any rate, it is rather an Irish way of teaching them to deprive them of it. 'My girls are all boys,' as they say, Warren. When they marry, if their wives have property, it shall be secured to them, or I'll no longer own them for sons of mine."
[78]
"But, Hutton, would you have a division of interests in a family?—You must, if you have a division of property."
"I know no division so bad as that which gives all the rights to one side, and all the wrongs to the other. This argument of yours, that women are not qualified to take care of property, is a very common and a specious one. But cannot women with large fortunes pay for wise counsel and faithful agency? It is that large class of poor women who work for small wages, whose wants demand the rectification of the laws. When they are permitted to control their earnings, their management is, for the most part, discreet and efficient. If common justice should be done to women, and the laws be repealed that annul their right to their own property, it would soon become a part of their education to learn to take care of it. Why, in France, where married women possess and control their own property, they conduct a vast amount of mercantile business. They are principals and book-keepers in large commercial establishments. In Germany, a woman is regarded as an equal partner with her husband, it being there admitted that she does half the business of the partnership in performing those duties that naturally fall to her sex. She is the possessor of half the property he acquires; that half he cannot dispose of, nor can he apply it to the payment of his debts: it is absolutely hers. And it is acknowledged, that in no country are there more domestic, devoted, and care-taking wives, than in Germany."
"Fol-de-rol, Hutton! don't talk to me of German wives and French women. I should like to know where there are finer women, and better wives than here in our own Yankee-land, where, according to your doctrine, they are so oppressed and defrauded—Mrs. Warren for example."
"And it is because we have such women as Mrs. Warren, that I think it fitting we should prove our appreciation of them by restoring to them their rights; making them as independent as we ourselves are."
"Not quite, Hutton, not quite: it does not do to have two commanders to the ship."
"No, but I have heard seamen say, that if the mate is the better man the command is very apt, when a storm rises, to fall into his hands; and in the storms of life women show how capable they are. When I see how strong they are in their calmness and patience, my blood boils that they should be so shackled and made the victims of the vices, the follies, or the misfortunes of their husbands."
Hutton paused. Warren was becoming sobered under the influence of arguments that came home to him. He made no reply, but thrummed vehemently with his fingers on the table. "Matters, however," resumed Hutton, "are righting. Little Rhode Island was, I believe, the first champion among the states against this Goliath of old abuses.* [iv] I read the debates of their legislature at the time; they were full of sense and wit, with some touches of the pathetic," he added, turning to Mrs. Warren; who ever and anon, by a smile, or a nod, or a gentle "I think you are right, Mr. Hutton," had manifested her attention to the conversation. "I remember," continued Mr. Hutton, "a lawyer describing the ruthless seizure, for the husband's debts, of silver teaspoons cherished as a wedding-gift, and the gold beads transmitted through a long maternal line. And there was a funny story told of an Irish woman, to illustrate a wife's voluntary devotion: a woman who turned out a pig to save her husband from jail, saying, 'A poor husband is better than none; he's a hand, if no head; he can draw the water and lug the wood!' Indeed, some of us, Warren, are only fit to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to our good wives."
"Speak for yourself, Hutton, speak for yourself."
"I have acted for myself," replied Hutton, with perfect good temper. "I secured before my marriage, to my wife's separate use, her own property, and I have since made over to her half of what I have acquired. I do not say this boastingly; the first act was simply honest, and if some-grains of generosity entered into the second, it was but a small testimony to the excellent woman who has made my home happy; a wife and mother, Mrs. Warren, can make a home a sort of Paradise regained."
The sense of what, in spite of his excellent wife, he had made his home, stung Warren through all the indurations of long years of wrong-doing. He arose, thrust back his chair, clasped his hands over his bald head, and groaned aloud.
"His conscience is awakened," thought Hutton; "now is the time;" and rising, he laid his hand gently on Warren's shoulder. "My friend," he said, "look at your wife. See how, without intermission, she toils for you. For years, Warren, she has earned the bread for your family—she educates your children. You see what can be done even by a woman's unproductive labour. Doyle told me yesterday, he owed your wife more than fifty dollars on account; and all for this stitching early and late. Be a man, Warren,—put your shoulder to the wheel. Her strength is failing. For-
[79]
swear drinking—take the pledge. In God's name do anything that will help you in the course of duty to your family. Life is short, my friend.—God help you, good night!"
Warren felt humbled by his friend's admonition. But it takes far more virtue than he possessed to endure humiliation, and turn it to account; so instead of cherishing the holy monitor that had entered his bosom, he rushed out of the house, and did not return to it till he could scarcely find his way to the bed he dishonoured by his brutal intoxication.
During the rest of the week he was more surly and more uncomfortable than usual. He, two or three times, hinted to his wife that he was in pressing need of a small sum of money—that forty or fifty dollars would relieve him—that he could do nothing till he was relieved—that if he were, and his mind at ease, he would turn over a new leaf. On Friday morning he suddenly came into the house, and said that he had an employment he liked offered to him, that if he could have his mind at ease he would accept it. But he owed one fifty dollars, for which he was dunned every time he went up the street. His wife understood perfectly in what direction this discourse pointed. She had understood his hints before as an indirect demand for the fifty dollars due from Mr. Doyle. But she had devoted this fifty dollars to the prosperity of one child, and the life of another. "I am perfectly sure that if I could get rid of this one little debt I should be a new man," he continued. "But I can't undertake any business with this constant torment hanging over me. Hutton told me I must decide to-day. He got the offer of the place for me."
"Then, John, ask the loan of fifty dollars from him. I know he will lend it to you."
"Ah! you hear me, do you? I thought you were deaf. No, I can't demean myself to Hutton. I won't—that's flat. If my wife can't lend me—yes, I say lend—I give in to Hutton's notions, though I don't believe a word in them, so far as to say lend—if you can't lend me, madam, your fifty dollars, I won't humble myself to strangers for it."
"John," said his wife calmly, "I have fifty dollars and more; to-morrow it will be sixty dollars, due to me. I have, as you know, worked early and late to earn it—I have, in my mind, devoted it to the good of our children. Hear now poor little Jessie moaning. See, she can hardly sit in her chair. Her life—the doctor says so—depends upon a change of air, and this money from Mr. Doyle is to pay the expense of our journey to my brother's. You have the right to it—but I am sure, John, you will not take it—and I cannot give it to you."
Warren said nothing, and his wife ventured to ask "Who is this hard creditor?"
"Roger Smith—curse him!"
"I thought so—he cares not how many families he ruins, how many hearts he breaks, if he can make a little money by it! As fast as I can earn the money I will pay it, John, if you will have no more accounts with this man. Go and tell him so—and oh, John—for your own salvation, for my sake, for your children's, for God's sake, go no more near that bad man. Enter on this new path that is open to you."
"I will, Anne—I will, if I can get the fifty dollars—I can do nothing without it." And without waiting for further expostulation, or answer of any kind, Warren rushed out of the house.
His wife was left in perplexity—in the saddest of all perplexities,—uncertainty as to her duty. If her husband had told the truth, this might be a turning point in his life. Mr. Hutton had offered him a place on certain conditions, which he professed himself ready to accept. Warren might be restored to temperance and industry—if he had told the truth!
"But my child! my child!" cried the poor mother, taking little Jessie into her lap and giving way to an unwonted burst of tears. "And yet have I a right to put her life against his salvation? possible salvation? Oh heavenly Father enlighten—direct me!"
After awhile she became quite calm, the little girl fell asleep stroking away her mother's tears, and Mrs. Warren laid her in her crib, and then bent over and kissed her, saying, "It will be all gain and not loss to you, Jessie—it's a hard life— very hard!" Mrs. Warren had come to the conclusion to give the money to her husband, helped to this, as good people often are, by the very difficulty and bitterness of the duty turning the scale.
One thing remained to be done. Mortifying as it was to impart to any one her distrust of her husband, she determined to ascertain the truth of his statement before she voluntarily parted with her precious little sum of money. She accordingly went herself to Mr. Hutton's.
"My good friend," he said, "your husband has deceived you. I did tell him, last week, that if he would remain sober for one month, I would find a place for him. You know what a beginning he has made this week. Not a day of it but I have seen him at Roger Smith's. But, take courage, my friend—you have good children. God spare them to reward you for your devotion to them." Mrs. Warren turned away, I believe, with a lightened heart, for her husband had worn out her affection for him, and she now saw her way clear to pursue her project for little Jessie.
She did not see her husband till late
[80]
that night, and then he was in his customary condition.
The next morning, at breakfast, he launched forth in invectives against Hutton, and his newfangled notions, on which he freely bestowed his favourite epithets. When he went out, banging the door after him, "It is too bad!" said George. "If I get into the legislature when I am a man, I'll do what I can to give these old laws a smoking."
"Oh hush, my son," said his mother; "I trust they will be righted long before that time; till they are, we must suffer and do as best we can. I feel as if I could bear anything just now,—I am all ready for our start; we are to be at the boat at one, and I am going now to settle accounts with Mr. Doyle. Write a letter to Anne while I am gone to the shop, and tell her I enclose twenty dollars in it. The doctor says Jessie is a little better to-day. Providence smiles on us, my son,—the weather is lovely."
The world without and within was all smiling to the happy mother. She went with a light step and light heart to Mr. Doyle's. He was alone in his counting-room, where he received her kindly, for Mr. Doyle is one of the few men who put a heart of humanity into all his business relations.
"You are always punctual, Mrs. Warren," he said; "you have finished your last lot of shoes."
"Yes, sir, and if convenient, I should like to settle my account with you."
"Certainly, there is a small balance due to you."
"Small, Mr. Doyle! to me it seems very large. You who have to do with hundreds and thousands can scarcely conceive what fifty is to me, nor what good I expect it to do me." Mr. Doyle's countenance clouded, but Mrs. Warren not perceiving this went on. "My youngest child has been sick all summer, and nothing, the doctor says so, and I am sure of it, could do her any good while she is in the bad air in ____ Street. But I shall have her on the sea-shore by Tuesday morning; and owing to the captain's goodness, who gives George a free passage, he is going down to his uncle's with me. But excuse me, Mr. Doyle; I am so happy, I know you will feel with me."
"I do with you, and for you, Mrs. Warren, and it grieves me to tell you that your husband came here last night and asked for your dues, and I not suspecting that he came unknown to you, paid him fifty-five dollars, so that there is but five dollars coming to you."
The sudden change from light to darkness was too much for poor Mrs. Warren. The flush of sweet hopes vanished from her face. She became fearfully pale, and sank back into a chair. She did not faint, she did not weep, she did not speak.
Tears gushed from Mr. Doyle's eyes. He thrust his hand into his money-drawer, and eagerly counting out sixty dollars, he put the money into Mrs. Warren's hand. She looked up, scarcely comprehending what he was doing. "It is yours, ma'am," he said; "accept it—no, take it as your due. It is your due. I could not swallow down the kind words you spoke, when you said you knew I would feel for you, if I did not do this. A plague on the laws that give a husband the right to take his wife's earnings, I say. No, no! don't thank me— don't say a word—you have no time to lose; get to the boat with your children as quick as you can, and I will take your thanks out in pleasant thoughts of all you are enjoying."
Mrs. Warren did not speak—she could not; but the tears now flowed plentifully, and they were like the rain in sunshine, when every drop is bright as a jewel.
N. B. We have simply recorded a recent fact in the life of a tradesman. Whether his name be Doyle, or whether he is a shoemaker, does not matter. If in the odd chances of life this page should meet his eye, his modesty will pardon the publicity given to his beneficence, in consideration of the value of so rare an example.
While human nature is vilified in such fictions as Vanity Fair, we are anxious to present the antidote of real goodness which comes within our knowledge by personal observation, or unquestionable report.
___________________________________
Sedgwick’s notes:
* [i]Much has been said and is saying about the rights of women. If the right to their own property, by inheritance, or by their own labour (the first of social rights), and the right of the mother to the custody of her children (the first of nature's rights), were secured to them, the rest might be left to the accidents of character and conduct.
* [ii] Fact
* [iii] Fact
* [iv] Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, and now New York, have repaired the law in relation to the property of married women. We devoutly hope that Massachusetts will not much longer suffer the blot of this old abuse to remain on her escutcheon.
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
"Might Versus Right"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Married women's property rights; temperance.
Description
An account of the resource
A young woman from a wealthy family marries and her husband legally gains rights to all of her property. The husband's poor business management and drinking cause him to lose the money, and the wife must work to support the family. When the husband claims his wife's wages without her knowledge, a sympathetic employer makes a kind gesture.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
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Sartain’s Union Magazine [edited by Caroline M. Kirkland], Vol. VI., 75-80.
Publisher
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Philadelphia: John Sartain & Co.
Date
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January - June 1850
Contributor
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J. Robinson; D. Gussman
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Louisiana
marriage
married women's property acts
Massachusetts
Missouri
Motherhood
New York
New York Married Women's Property Act 1848
Sartain's Union Magazine
temperance
temperance pledge
Tennessee
women's rights
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/16ce29c58ebf4a7a454b607474f0bada.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=oyvIA8353rtGvJ1YcwQV-feu1Pns9ciugQV1xUYNht768pTMx4pwYIIzyC3ed5ieuEhxUrMNmAUkVgGWgKmc3LDQUtRwgUlWcpCFZnuwzWM8Ue4oM9iVN2W6JVP03B9oGH%7EW4wt3zyawCLYQWWYmyYq1iDfqtYuqLqymCmYbKv2jp6%7EJioGs4c5yEy%7EtSorC6NlIp6-OELKy2UCPEIRBQEFk3K8wJarKSn-mrr3a49be2IMdc8MM3rCGQWZd9Vu5tHrd7Dx9Fyj7gk9ac%7EJR1R0gErRvL9fEdjO%7EhvszXaQ4V4NbSl5ULOh9rGmv3qc2hYodiFfVK9k4FPt86ZQW1A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
d081a5a0ae4a2185d059030b940d23be
Dublin Core
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Title
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1846
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1846.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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“The Patch-Work Quilt”
BY MISS C.M. SEDGWICK
THE Germans are the best economists in all the small details of life. They have the true husbandry of social means. Their faculties as well as their outer world are under the dominion of a wise economy. They carry it into the work of their imaginations. An every-day household circumstance, a piece of relic furniture or a common domestic event will supply them warp and woof for a complicated fabric, which they adorn with quaint or, it may be, brilliant fancies. In their illustrations of homely domestic life, they have the great advantage of awakening general sympathy and appealing to universal experience. Rare events and great deeds are for the few, while all share in the family history—the daily bread of life. The furniture and utensils of our childhood's home are idealized by affection and consecrated in after life. Poetry may chance to be written about them, but if it be not, they are poetry to us. They have life and a living agency. In the German fable "needles and pins come out of the tailor's shed and lose themselves in the dark, and the shovel and the broom stand upon the step and quarrel and fight." Our fancies are more subdued, but still old household things are instinct with our early lives. They embody hopes and memories long ago faded; laughs that rang out in merrier days, forgotten like the thrush's song, or the Summer's rose. What woman but can recall some bundle-drawer, or piece-bag, into which, as a girl, she was permitted to dive when a new doll was to be dressed, to explore its rolls of chintz and silk, and to gather up bits of fringe and fragments of lace, muslin and embroidery: and in long after years when the chapter of life is nearly read out, when the eye is dim and the hand tremulous, a fragment of these stuffs, made to perish in the using, which, nevertheless, have survived the frames fearfully and wonderfully made, meets the eye and unseals the fountains of emotion. A piece of puttied china will recall the family gathering and the festive dinner, and the whole array of the pantry to which the hungry school-child was admitted for the bit of pudding that thoughtful kindness had set aside.
I went, a few mornings since, to see an old family servant who had passed her childhood and youth in the service of my parents. M__, 'Little Lil' as she was called, and is even now, though a bulky old woman, was not born to serve, but to enjoy. She is the very incarnation of hilarity. She has floated down the current of life without dread, anxiety, or regret. Not 'sans reproche,' for Lilly lives in a strict community, and her morals are not of the sternest, but feeling no responsibility (that she evidently looks upon as the exclusive privilege of "white folks") she has escaped anxiety and remorse. She is the most vivacious of that race whom God seems to have endowed with cheerfulness, as a divine armor against the evils of man's infliction. Lil, at three score and ten, has a face as smiling as a child's— not a mark of time or sorrow upon it. One of the boasted Saxon race, one of our New England matrons, who had met with a tithe of the dark events of Lilly's life would never smile again. She lives in a wretched hut where food and clothing seem to come to her by happy chances. She is the survivor of nearly all her cotemporaries; she has buried parents, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and has lost some half dozen husbands, by death or desertion, yet, I doubt not, she would dance like a girl of eighteen to a merry measure. She is as earnest and indefatigable as she ever was in all good natured gossiping, and if, by any chance, she sheds a tear, it is like the rain when the sun shines—a smile chases it. She loves her old friends, but when they drop off she turns to new ones. Like most of the colored people she is fond of merry-making and all social cheerfulness—all gatherings of human beings together, except in churches or at funerals. Solemnity is night and darkness to Lilly. She likes the excitement of a camp-meeting, but she likes it not for its religious purposes, but for any little chance crum of folly or absurdity that may be dropped there. She can even tolerate a funeral if there is a gleam of fun upon it. I once saw her at one where her side glances and stolen gesticulations were subjects for Wilkie, or Mount, the true painter of our home humorous scenes. The chief mourner, being of our Saxon race, Lilly pointed out to me as the white widow. The ceremony was marshaled by a servant of a militia colonel, and the procession of wretched one-horse vehicles, equestrians mounted on broken-down hacks, and pedestrians scrambling after, ranged with as much show of ceremony as a
[p. 124]
Roman ovation. Our master of ceremonies—being mounted on a black steed of " the colonel's"—calling out, as if he were commanding forces at a battle of Waterloo, now " to the right! " and now " to the left!" and now " close your ranks, gentlemen and ladies ! "—himself, sometimes a hundred yards in advance of the procession, and then curveting and galloping among the old women and children to their infinite dismay. "It is as good as 'lection-day,'" said Lilly, aside, to me.
Though Lilly is a precious element in our country contentments, I rarely visit her. She saves her friends the trouble of looking after her, by dropping in once or twice a week, with an ample basket on her arm, which goes much heavier than it comes, for Lilly is in good fellowship with the servants, and she pays the heads of the house in sunshine (the best of coins) for all she gets. She is to the kitchen what the newspaper is to the parlor, and better, inasmuch as the spoken is better than the written word.
I met Lilly outside her door, and without her wonted smile, and on my asking her why she had been absent for a week, she answered:
"Why, Miss__, don't you know Hector is dying!" Hector was a' fiddler by profession, and was dying, as most of our colored people do, of a galloping consumption. After adding a few particulars of his illness, Lilly led the way in and I followed. Her little room, its rafters blackened with smoke, was darker than usual, being filled with men, women and little children of her own color. Any occasion, it matters not much what, calls these social people together. A mess was boiling over the fire for their future cheer, the only future they look to, and the dying man was very gently sinking away. He was bolstered with pillows on a chair, and he kindly nodded to me as his friends, with their customary civility, fell back to give me a view of him. He beckoned to Lilly and said something to her, but so faintly that I did not hear him. She gave me a significant glance, and going to the other side of the room took Hector's fiddle from the case in which it was hanging and brought it to him. He dimly smiled and took the bow—he could not hold the fiddle—Lilly held it for him. He essayed a last tune, and, the ruling passion strong in death, attempted a lively one, but he was too far gone: the notes were few and solemn—the bow fell from his hand and he breathed his last. There was one moment of death-stillness, then Lilly taking up the instrument as reverently as if it contained a living spirit, replaced it in its case and, brushing away a tear, said:
"I wish you all to take notice that Hector said to me last night, ' Lilly,' says he,' do you keep my violin as long as you live'—and I will, and let the select men and Deacon Bates talk!"
She then went into her bed-room, beckoning to me to follow her. She selected in a hurried and troubled manner the articles necessary to the last offices for Hector, and having given them to his friends in the next room, she said to me:
"This is the worst of taking boarders, having them die, and seeing to things. It’s a chore I don't like, but then I ought not to complain, for Hector was lively as long as he lived. It’s only a week ago he played for our folks to dance, and come what would, there was always a pleasant tone in Hector's fiddle! We shall be lonesome now. He's gone—he drew company as the sun draws water, and shone on them when they came. It was always bright where Hector was!"
"Has he saved anything," I asked her," to pay the expenses of his sickness?"
"Saved, Miss! Fiddlers never save—they enjoy themselves—and what's the use of saving? What would he be the better for it now if he had gold in his trunk and two full suits? He was welcome every where, and the best was set before him. Nobody grudged Hector, and why should they? He paid in fiddling; he was the best fiddler that ever walked the country, and if he had laid up clothes, as some foolish folks do, what good would they do him now! A very little serves now, you see, and while he wanted it he had enough. Major Smith gave him that military coat he died in. The collar was silk velvet and the old epaulette kept bright to the last. That red and yellow plaid handkerchief round his neck was given to him by a New York lady at the Pittsfield Hotel. Old Aunt Esther wanted me to take them off from him this morning. She said they did not seem suitable for a dying man to die in. ' Pooh!' says I, ' what's that to Hector? He likes to look lively as long as he lives.' 'Lilly,' she whined out, ' it will be a solemn change to his winding-sheet!' ' Never mind, Aunt Esther,' says I,' he won't see that, and you can enjoy it as much as you please.' You are thinking I am wicked, Miss, but white folks does enjoy such things! I heard old Aunt Esther say to Miss Babcock the other day:— 'Sally,' says she, 'you and I have enjoyed a great many sicknesses and a great many deaths together,' says she."
The difference in the spirit of the two races as elucidated by Lilly is certainly striking. Those who look farthest back and forward may be most exalted in the intellectual scale, but there is a blessed compensation for a lower graduation, in the buoyant, cheerful, enjoying spirit, that gilds the dark cloud, makes pleasant waters to spring from rocks, and plucks away flowers from thorns.
It was evident that Lilly was ingeniously prolonging our conversation to escape from the solemnities of death in the next room, and I smiled at
[p. 125]
the eagerness she betrayed when having, as I fancied, listened, to the last thing she could have to say, she cut short my leave-taking by "Oh ! Miss, don't you want to see that quilt I
told you about, that's made of pieces of all our folks' gowns ?" "Our folks" is, you know, Lilly's designation for my own family, of which she was a member for the first thirty years of her life. I did wish to see the quilt. It was one of those memorials that in a German household would have been held a sacred history. Lilly produced it from among a store of quilts which she has been her whole life amassing, not as property—no saint or hermit was ever freer from the desire of accumulation than Lilly. Diogenes himself had not a truer contempt for it. Her instincts are limited to the present. She has not the power of forecast. She is grateful to any one who will give her a present pleasurable sensation, but she would not thank her best friend for an ample annuity to become due a year hence. The quilts are not in her eye property. They are not the means of warmth and comfort—they are never used as such—they are story-books—family legends—illustrated traditions. Lilly reverses the French maxim," I'l n'ya a run de beau que utile;" with her there is nothing useful but the beauty that touches the spring of her imagination. The Italians have a saying that a transplanted tree will not take root till it has been danced around. The merry gathering that forms the quilt perpetuates its pleasant associations to Lilly. The quilt in question is what is called a beggar's patch-work, formed of hexagonal bits of calico and silk. Being originally made of unwashed materials and wisely kept for show, it has preserved its original gloss. Yes, these base, perishable materials have remained unchanged, when those of whose garments they were the fragments, have long ago, played out their parts in life, and are now clothed in the white robes of the saints. In these little bits of silk and cotton is stored the memory of many a tear or smile.
"There, Miss__," said Lilly, "there is a bit of your mother's wedding-gown, worn long before you were born, of course, or I either, as to that matter; but 1 have heard my mother say there was not such another this side of Boston.
"Woman, or gown, Lilly!"
"Either, Miss__, either, but I mean gown. Gowns was gowns then, that could stand alone. It was a merry time they had, ma'am." Thus, Lilly, always calls her beloved mistress. "Ma'am's grandmother, old as the hills, she came over from Hampshire, came to the wedding—riding all the way on a pillion behind her grandson—a deal pleasanter that, than railway-ing. That is a bit of the old lady's chintz. Mother has told me how straight she stood in it, and how she curtsied to show your mother and Miss Susan—Kin—Ken— Kemp—Oh, I forget her name. The young folks learned manners in her day. The old lady did not live to mount her pillion again. She died soon after the wedding and was buried here, and her tombstone is one of the oldest in the burying ground. It does not stand as straight as the old lady did. Is not that square pretty? pink shot on white. That was a bit of Miss Susan's dress. She came all the way from New York to be your mother's bride's-maid. She was the beauty of the city, and gay as a bird, or butterfly. She sang, and danced and frolicked, but for all that, she gained the old lady's heart and her son's too. Your uncle, he was a young minister then—a missionary to the Stockbridge Indians. They were here yet, and he had them all dressed up in the fine scarlet and purple broadcloths Queen Anne sent them, to show off to Miss Susan. But the old lady was the master hand, she did the courting, and one bright day she had two horses brought for them to ride together. She had given him a hint to tell his love-tale, as they rode up the hill and through the woods by the green pond. But when the horses came, the one for the minister was prancing and gay, and when he would have mounted he could not or dared not. So Miss Susan, a little fear-naught she was, ordered the saddles changed, and rode away laughing and cheering, and he, poor creature, after her. But they were not to hitch their horses together, for us often as he began to hem and ha, and stammer and so on, Miss Susan's horse would get the deuce into him, and off he would go, and at last it got through poor Mr. John's hair, that for love of his kin, she did not want to say him no and she could not say yes. Now, Miss__, can't you see her in that silk square! so rosy and so lively! "
I wiped away a tear that Lilly's bright vision had called forth. I saw this "Miss Susan" a few weeks since, now, herself, a granddame past ninety and blind! But that precious oil of a glad disposition that burned SO brightly in her youth still burns cheerily on; and though the fire of her earlier days be somewhat diminished, she is still the central light of her home circle.
"That's a piece of ma'am's dressing-gown," resumed Lilly, "that your father brought her from Philadelphia. It was handsome enough to wear to meeting, but ma'am always took most pains to look well at home. Your father's eyes was her looking-glass. She had it on when the little girl you were named for died. I can see her now as she bent down over the dead child, and I heard her soft voice saying 'The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be his name.' I had heard the minister preach from that text a thousand times, but it seemed to me then that I heard those words for the first time, as they rose
[p. 126]
out of her heart. She was bending over—that was the way she always took trouble—rising up against it only makes the blow the harder you know. They named you after her, but I minded it was long and long before ma'am called your name. It was Russy, or Rosy, or any thing but that name. "All the children had frocks like that," she continued, pointing to a pink and green plaid; "I can see them all now. One running out to feed the chickens, another bringing in eggs, one dressing dolls, and little Harley telling how many lions and tigers he had killed. Oh, dear, dear! Miss__, can it be they have all grown up, men and women, and are dead, gone forever! But that," she added, turning instinctively from these sad thoughts, "that is a bit of the gown your cousin Olive wore when the French Doctor came to court her, and slipped into the saddle-room to put on his nankins. Ben, unknowingly locked the door, and when the poor little fellow was let out he was as blue as indigo, and his teeth chattered so that Miss Olive could not tell whether he talked French or English."
"He got his answer in the shortest of all English words, did he not, Lilly?"
"Why, yes, he was French," reason enough, Lilly would have thought, had he issued from a Parisian dressing-room instead of a country saddle-house. " Miss Olive was odd," continued Lilly. "She kept 'on saying, no, no, to every one that came. I used to say, it’s just like winding a tangled skein, Miss Olive; if you begin with putting through your thread, so you will do to the 'end. But that Miss Olive did not mean, for she vowed if she lived to turn the old maid's corner she would kill herself. She did for all go fairly round it, and married a widower at last, who was looking out, as he said, for a permanent housekeeper. Even ma'am could not help smiling when she heard that. There's a season for all things," wisely added Lilly, though she had herself, tried the conjugal experiment at all seasons. Lilly now came down to the epoch of my own memories, and visions of the past crowded upon me. My school days, our breakfasts and dinners, our meetings and partings at the old home, our merry-makings and our tragedies, my school-mates, the partners of my life, the partners of my hoped-for immortality, all were brought forth into actual presence and glowing life by these little talismans! My blinding tears fell thick and heavy over them. Lilly dashed off the great drops that came in spite of her, and rolling up the quilt thrust it back into the old cupboard, muttering something about there being no use in crying. We parted without exchanging another word.
As I retraced my way to the village I marked the changes since this patchwork history was constructed. The Indians that figured in Queen Anne's broadcloths have been driven from their loved homes here farther and farther into the shadowy West and are melted away. The wooded sides of our mountains have been cleared to feed yonder smoking furnace. Those huge fabrics for our friend H.'s chemical experiments indicate discoveries in science that have changed the aspect of the world. The whistle reached my ear from the engine plying over the very track where our good old granddame found but a bridle-path. The meadows enriched by the overflowings of the river, and ploughed by the sun-beams remain, much as they were, when the Indians planted their corn here; but the white man has let the sun in upon the hill-side, has made his plantations and his drainings. Churches have been built and decayed and built again. The Bishop visits his Diocesan where 'Miss Susan's' missionary lover preached in an Indian dialect, and Puritanism holds kindly fellowship with the church. Houses have decayed and new ones have been built over the old hearthstone. New friends almost as good as the old have come among us. Families have multiplied, and sent forth members to join the grand procession towards the Oregon, and at this very moment the bell is ringing for a meeting of the town to extend the limits of our burying-ground, it being full!
All these changes, and the patch-work-quilt remains in its first gloss!
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 Patch-Work Quilt"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Servants and family history
Description
An account of the resource
An elderly Black woman's story of a patchwork quilt that was sewn during the thirty years she worked in the home of a White family.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
Source
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The Columbian Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine [edited by John Inman and Robert A. West] p. 123-26.
Publisher
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Columbian Magazine
Date
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March 1846
Contributor
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J. Robinson
Relation
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Also collected in:
Sedgwick, Catharine M. "The Patch Work Quilt." Love of Quilts: A Treasury of Classic Quilting Stories. Ed. Margaret Aldrich. Minneapolis: Voyageur, 2004. 24-33. Google Books. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
1846
Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
Consumption
Death
Germans
God
Indians
marriage
missionaries
Patch-work
quilts
Race
Relics
Saxon
servant
Stockbridge
Waterloo
West
-
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Title
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1850
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1850.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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"He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it"
There are incidents and combinations of circumstances in domestic life which, if faithfully recorded when they occur, would give to a succeeding age a more definite idea, a more lively impression of the spirit of bygone days than can be got from volumes of subsequent history. History, of necessity, deals mainly with public events and marked characters, exceptional from the mass of their contemporaries. We may compare its records to a map of Switzerland which gives you its stupendous mountains, its lakes, and rivers in dots and lines; while the domestic story is like a picture of Lauterbrunnen, with its characteristic narrow valley, its wonderful fall of the Staubach, its overhanging and converging cliffs, its Jungfrau in the background, and a single cottage, with its appurtenances of domestic utensils and commodities, telling the story of family life.
It is the conviction of the worth of such records that induces me to write the following story, some hints of which are taken from the archives of a Congregational church, which archives consist of a faithful record kept by its excellent minister for the space of fifty years. Some particulars are gathered from the generation that preceded me, persons not related by ties of blood to the parties, but connected with them by the vivid sympathies of village life. Other aid has been received from more apocryphal sources.
The names, alas! are now only on the rudely sculptured monuments of the burying-ground. We shall not take the liberty of using them. We shall for once designate the lower valley of the Housatonic by its euphonious Indian name Owasonook, instead of that given to it by the first Puritan settlers, who, in their designation, branded the virgin valley with a memorial of the "bank-note world," the old world of stocks and brokers.
This village of Owasonook has been favoured from the beginning. Missionaries were sent from Scotland to its aboriginal people. There, on the ample green where a village church now stands, and where generations are now laid in holy rest, Brainard expounded his doctrines, and there the excellent Sergeant ministered to his Indian congregation in their goodly show of broadcloth mantles, the gift of Queen Anne.
At the date of our humble story, Brainard had passed on to wilder tribes, Sergeant was gathered to his fathers, and a young man by the name of Stephen West, sound and zealous in doctrine, of good parts, and most gracious heart, was ordained over the small congregation of all the white people who then dwelt in the valley. There were then no dissenters from the established doctrine and independent government of the Puritan Church. The Baptists were unknown in New England. Methodism had not begun. Catholicism was held to be that faith over which the woman who sat on the seven hills reigned, and Episcopacy was in little better odour. The fathers of those days had no prophetic vision of the infinite diversity of shades of colour into which their religion was to be distributed among their descendants, from the deep dye of Papistry, to the faint outside shade, the evanescent and almost imperceptible hue of transcendentalism.
"Belief, not practice, was then prized at highest rate." Among the sturdiest in belief, the least scrupulous in practice, was Deacon Nathan Bay. I remember him well in his old age; that tall brawny figure, with broad and stooping shoulders, and short neck; that high intellectual brow, all written over with lines of calculation and craft; the cold gray eye, with bushy black brows that overhung them like thatch. His eyebrows were then still untouched by time. His hair was sabled and combed on each side of his face with a Pharisaical sleekness, that did not harmonize with his general air of cherished and allowed potentiality. His skin was as dark as a Spaniard's, his cheeks ploughed in deep furrows, his nose aquiline and rather handsome, his mouth sharklike. I believe he thus vividly lives in my imagination because, in my timid childhood, I have many a time felt my eyes spellbound to him, while he appeared to me the impersonation of the Schedoni of Mrs. Radcliffe's most terrible novel. I recoiled from him then—I have since had a sterner horror of him.
There was a little ewe-lamb dwelt under the rooftree of Deacon Bay, a fur-off orphan relative of his wife, who having a sufficient inheritance to indemnify the Deacon for all expenses on her account, he complied with his wife's wishes, and became her guardian and nominal protector. Jessie Blair was the child of godly parents; and the Deacon said he should have done the same by Jessie if she had been poor, for 'professora' should see to it, and fulfil the prophecy, that the seed of the righteous should never be seen begging their bread. The Deacon was scriptural in another point; no one harboured under his roof ever ate the bread of idleness. Jessie, who came there a petted (not spoiled) child, had her playful spirit soon sobered by the uniform routine of domestic toil. There is nothing duller, more soulless, than the daily recurrence and satisfaction of the lowest wants of our being. The pleasant lights of rural life were excluded from the Deacon's household, or rather converted to a dreary shadow, by the medium through which they passed. If he did not, like one of his contemporaries, marshal his children on Monday morning, and do up the week's whipping by an exactly equal and thorough application of the birch,* he kept down the spirit of his household more effectually by its mournful monotony. The Deacon's helpmate was a wife after the feudal pattern, of unquestioning conformity, and serflike obedience. The only indication that she was not merged in her husband—a drop of water lost in his ocean,—was a phraseology indicative of his distinct existence; as "the Deacon judges," and "the Deacon concludes." If her opinion were asked in divinity or ethics, her common reply was, "I don't know the Deacon's opinion, but I think as he thinks." This exemplary subject had one son of a former marriage, Isaac Remington. Isaac was a harmless young man of two or three and twenty. As far as quiet subserviency to the Deacon was concerned, he never escaped from his minority. He lives in tradition only as a still, steady, sleek youth, with a nose like the tower of Lebanon. Thus associated, the only fitting sustenance of poor Jessie's childhood was companionship with the chickens she fed, and the kittens that played in spite of the Deacon; and an occasional romp in the playtime at the village school.
Time went on, and in its progress unfolded manifold charms and graces in Jessie, so that when she reached the age of fifteen, when the half-open flower discloses its possible beauty, every eye turned admiringly and kindly on her.
There occurred about this time in the church, a revival of religion. Jessie, naturally enough, recoiled from religion as exhibited in the Deacon's family. Its cold formulas froze her spirit, but it as naturally melted in an atmosphere where she felt the influence of sympathy. Her gentle pastor received her confessions of her past opposition to the divine character with a joyful recognition of her perceptions of truth, and received her profession of submission and faith with tears of joy. Alas for poor Jessie! this faith and submission, so surely rewarded by their divine object, were destined to be cruelly tested by human tyranny.
Isaac was a subject of the same ' awakening" that brought Jessie into the fold, though there was never a term that seemed less applicable than this to Isaac. There was no vitality in the man—nothing to kindle, nothing to rouse, nothing to 'awake.' He passed through the examination to which young converts are subjected, he answered as others did, and was received to the communion of the church.
Not long after this there was a sort of curtain conversation between the Deacon and his wife to the following effect.
"Beauty is a temptation," observed the Deacon. This was a self-evident truth, and seemed a very inconsequential remark, but the good dame apparently did not think so. She looked up from her knitting with more expression than usual; there was meaning in her face; perhaps she anticipated something in the nature of a confession, for a hypocrite is not nearly so much a saint to his wife as a man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre. "It is best to clip the chicken's wings," continued the Deacon, "if you mean to keep the hen within bounds."
"Ah, ah, indeed!" said his wife with a tone of pleased comprehension, " the speckled hen's last brood got into the garden, and picked the seeds out of Jessie's flower-bed."
There was the dimmest smile at the corners of the Deacon's mouth. He proceeded: "It was a remarkable Providence that bound Jessie up in the same bundle with Isaac."
"There's many others in the same bundle," replied his literal wife; "there is scarce a lad in town that has not come in."
"True, it was a goodly harvest. But some stout shocks were not gathered in. There's Archy Henry among the reprobate—just such a spark as is like to catch a young girl's eye— a handsome build, and well-favoured, ruddy— plenty of brown hair — curling. I marked him at Colonel Davis's funeral singing out of the same psalm-book with Jessie. They both held on to the book, hands close together, and cheeks too near neighbours."
"Deacon, Jessie is but a child."
"In her sixteenth, wife—fast coming out of childhood. Notions grow apace at that age. 'Fast bind, fast find.' Would not you like Jessie for a daughter-in-law?"
"Why, if everything is suitable, and Isaac is of a coming disposition towards her—and she is willing—one of these days maybe I should."
The Deacon was of a temper to decree events, and let suitabilities take care of themselves.
"Willing!" he exclaimed, "what has a girl of fifteen to do but obey the will of her elders? I rather think you will find it 'suitable,' when I tell you that after deducting a reasonable sum for the cost of Jessie's board and education," (the actual outlay for her education had been two pounds, one shilling, and threepence) "she has one hundred pounds at interest."
"Dear me! a pretty fortune, Deacon!"
"Well, it is personal property, and will become Isaac's on the day they are married. Wait for Isaac's coming disposition!—Isaac is a dolt—saving your presence, ma'am. He says he 'never so much as thought on't,' the ninny !' But he won't object if father, mother, and Jessie consent.'"
To the astonishment of the congregation, a publishment of" intention of marriage between Isaac Remington and Jessie Blair," appeared on the church-door the next Sabbath. The tears that poor Jessie shed and the reluctance she felt were hidden in the secrecy of her own bosom and the privacy of her dreary home. She never doubted the duty of implicit obedience—she had no friend to authorize the rebellion of her own instincts. She did not suspect that her kind pastor had remonstrated with the Deacon on his consenting to the marriage of a child, too young to know her own mind; and in three weeks she received from him the marriage charge and benediction.
The union proved like many others, not unhappy, but a total waste. The seeds of virtue, of happiness, of progress in Jessie's character were like the seeds in the bosom of the earth, there to lie undeveloped and inactive to an unknown future—in this world it might be—it might be in another.
After six years of wedded life Isaac Remington died, and left Jessie a widow, just past her majority, with a boy five years old, with, as she believed, a property that, to her modest wants, was independence, and with the rational expectation of her son's succession to the Deacon's property. It was not then so much the custom as now for persons to endow charitable societies, and as the Deacon had no near relatives of his own, it was believed that he would transmit his hoarded gains to the heir of his wife.
The beautiful little widow naturally became at Isaac's death an object of close observation. The Deacon hardly waited for the funeral offices to be over, when he proposed that, as it was difficult for a young widow to be a widow indeed, Jessie should relinquish her independent home, and return to his watch and care. This she declined doing. She lived on a small farm on the borders of a lovely lake a little north of the village of Owasonook. Without probably being able to define why, she enjoyed the companionship of Nature, and grew to love as friends—as vital friends the forms of beauty around her. She declined the Deacon's proposition ;—he urged; she was resolute, and, to her amazement, he was gentle to her. He persisted, but with mildness. He often visited her. He always found it convenient, whenever he was in her neighbourhood, to drop in and ask how she was getting on, and often, to her astonishment, he brought her roses from the bushes she had planted at his door, or bunches of pinks from her bed in his garden, such pears as his crabbed trees bore, and early apples for her little Raphe.
"It's something new, your liking flowers, is it not, sir?" said Jessie to him, as she extended her hand to receive a nosegay he had brought to her. "Maybe so," he replied, detaining her hand for a moment, and pressing it, "but I love everything you love, Jessie." "Tones of voice express the affections," says Swedenborg. True, and bad as well as good ones. There was something in the tone, the manner, the look of Deacon Bay that was like a flash of lightning to a traveller in a dark night. To Jessie they revealed a danger and a terror that she had never dreamed of. The sagacious man read her face; he changed his manners, resumed his sanctimonious aspect and conversation, but still continued to urge Mrs. Remington's removal from the farm.
Jessie had been a widow rather more than a year and a day, when the Deacon, on entering the pathway that led to her dwelling, saw her with her little boy and Archy Henry going down the declivity behind her house to the lake. The just risen full moon lit up the western shore, so that the wave that rippled on the brink was like a silver rim to the lake. Bay followed the happy little company stealthily, like an unclean beast (as he was), watching his prey, and creeping behind a clump of young hemlocks, be continued to watch them there, as full of evil purpose as the evil spirit in Paradise. A paradise of beauty and innocence it was to this happy young pair.
The boat was so placed that it could not be reached dryshod. Henry swung the boy upon his shoulder and carried him to it; and after a little playful resistance on Jessie's part, he caught her in his arms, and placed her beside her boy. He then took off his overcoat, and put it under and around her feet, with perhaps not quite the grace of Raleigh, but with as respectful chivalry as the young courtier manifested to his royal mistress. The little boat was then pushed from its mooring, and was so gently rowed away, that it was long before the voices from it, in tones of tenderness and happiness, passed beyond Bay's hearing. His senses seemed endowed with preternatural acuteness to torment him. He went away brooding on ripening plans of mischief.
The next day he came again to the farm to remonstrate with Mrs. Remington on the bad economy of remaining there, when she might live free of cost in his house.
"I never did, sir, live in that way with you," she said, with a spirit that provoked the Deacon to reply.
"You have some one to back you, Jessie, or you would not dare to speak to me in this wise, and to hold out against the will of your elder, and your spiritual father as it were."
She blushed slightly, but she replied undaunted. "I am not alone, sir. I have that dear child, who will one day be a man—and, I trust, a staff for his mother to lean on."
"Well done! well done! But you had best consider what you are to lean on in the mean time." And then softening his tone to affected kindness, he added, "Perhaps you don't know that this place was bought with my partner's money, which might have been her son Isaac's, if he had survived her. You understand, Jessie? The deed was made out to me. The property is legally mine; she, you understand, being nobody—dead as it were—in the eye of the law; and though I mean it shall come into your boy's hands one day or other, in the mean time, and, following the golden rule, I shall take care of it, as if it were to all intents mine. I might make a pretty penny now, if I would," he added, with an indescribable expression of triumph and cupidity proper to his face. "This orchard and upland pasture, together with the joining tillage land, would make a master farm."
"What joining tillage land?" asked Jessie Remington eagerly.
"Why Archy Henry's farm," he answered, fixing his freezing eyes upon her; "I thought everybody knew that farm was mortgaged to me for more than it is worth—perhaps you did not?"
Poor Jessie! a fly caught in a spider's web was a faint type of her conscious misery and helplessness—the spider a fainter symbol of the gloating tyrant who now enjoyed his triumph over her. She sickened and turned away. But in another minute thoughts rose that overcame the fear of poverty, and she said courageously, "You can take possession here, sir, as soon as you please. I shall go at once."
"And come to my house, dearie?"
"No—no sir, never!"
"But you will, sweetheart," he said coaxingly, and drew her to him (she was standing near him), and would have kissed her, but instinctively she struck him on Ms face, and sprang from him, and her brave little boy catching his mother's feeling, without understanding it, hurled the wooden stool on which he had been sitting at the Deacon's head. The blow blinded and confused him for a moment. But when he rallied, he turned on mother and child such a look of black vengeance, that both instinctively shrank from him, and the mother, dragging the boy with her, escaped to an inner room, and bolted the door.
Wrath mastered every other passion in Bay's breast for the time.
"Unbolt your door," he cried. There was no reply. The poor mother and child were cowering together like frightened doves. "Hear me, you must," he continued. "You cannot help yourself—a pretty widow you—a hopeful professor! I have found out your plans—I have mine too, and we will see which is the strongest. Marry Archy Henry, and you will be ruined in this world—ruined in the next. Look for excommunication now, and poverty for ever. I saw you, you that could not so much as let me touch the ends of your dainty fingers, I saw you in Archy Henry's arms! Good-bye, Widow Remington"—he walked to the outer door, then returned, and added, "If you blab of what has taken place here to-day, no one will believe you—no one—and for every word you speak, I'll take revenge on Archy Henry— remember that! remember that!"
As the sound of his footsteps died away, Jessie Remington yielded to a burst of grief and despair. "Oh, don't cry, mother, dear mother," said her little boy, clasping his arms round her neck, "he is a bad man—I hate him —I always did hate him. When he first came in to-day, when you were up stairs, he asked me if Archy Henry was here last Saturday night. I would not tell him. I wish Archy would come every Saturday night, and every other night, and he, never—never!"
The mother fondly kissed the child, and I doubt not breathed a fervent Amen! Amen!
She revolved her miserable case. She now understood why Archy, who, she well knew had loved her from her childhood, long before that time when the Deacon had marked his I holding her hymn-book, had not yet since her freedom said one word of marriage, or by words declared his love to her. It needed no declaration. The current of his life, through all her married days, had flowed on without one beam of joy or hope. From the day of Remington's departure he had been a changed man; the cloud had passed from his brow, the gravity from his lips, and he had manifested, in every fitting way but by words, his reverence and tenderness for her.
"Matters have come to a crisis," was the result of her long reflection; "we must clearly understand each other, the sooner, the better."
The following evening Raphe's wish was fulfilled as it was most like to be, and Archy Henry came in, merely to bring a glass in which Jessie had sent some jelly to his invalid sister. "Why do you look so sad?" he asked Jessie, struck with her paleness and dejection.
"I have heard ill news," she replied, "and you, Archy, must tell me if it be wholly true. Is your farm mortgaged to Deacon Bay?"
"Yes."
"Should I be the last to know it, Archy?"
There was an undisguised tenderness in her voice and lovely face which overcame the resolution Henry had maintained, and mutual confessions and disclosures followed. They were like travellers on a perilous road, on whom the day dawns and the sun rises. The road may be more obstructed and perilous before than behind, but their hearts are strong and at peace. What obstructions, what perils can , appeal the spirits of young lovers in the first moments of avowed mutual love? A spell of enchantment is over their world—a spell of faith, hope, and joy.
When they descended from these sunny heights to the discussion of temporal affairs, it appeared that Archy's father, embarrassed by sickness and other misfortunes, had left his farm to his son encumbered by a mortgage to Deacon Bay—that the son had supported his aged mother, and met the many wants of a bedridden sister, and year after year paid the interest of the mortgage.
"More," he said, "till the last year I did not care to do, but since—since Raphe lost his father, I have been a stronger man—I have done two days' work in one, and now I see through the woods, and if I am but reasonably blessed for the three coming years, I shall be independent of the world and the Deacon, please God."
"Archy!"
"I do not speak profanely, Jessie—my heart is dancing, and I can't stand for p's and q's. As to this farm belonging to the Bays, I don't believe a word on't, nor do I care one stiver about it. I prefer that you should give me nothing that ever had any connexion with Bay or his household, but the name you bear, and the sooner you give that up to me the better. Oh, excuse me, I forgot little Raphe. You know I love him—I see nothing but you in him." Jessie did not resent this. She had no affectation of any sort, and certainly no pretension to sensitiveness on the score of her late husband; but Jessie was considerate in her love, and she meant not to increase Archy's heavy burdens, but patiently to wait till he had cleared off the mortgage. The point, however, was no farther mooted that evening. Our lovers were not "gravelled for lack of matter."
Mrs. Remington did not communicate the Deacon's injuries or threats. She had the grace of discretion, which all women (or all men) have not, and she had a certain feeling of obligation to him as deacon and church member, of which even his unworthiness had not divested her.
She addressed a letter to him, asking what property her late husband left, and how it was conditioned.
The following is a copy of his answer.
"WIDOW REMINGTON:—Received yours duly. In reply. Your husband held no property in his own name, his father having willed his whole estate, real and personal, to his worthy wife, now my companion. With the personal I purchased the farm on which you live. The deed, as you are apprised, stands in my name. The property will probably go to your son at my decease. You were possessed of one hundred pounds at the time of your marriage; sixty thereof was expended in apparel and in household furniture—twenty drawn by the late Isaac for housekeeping, and spent as you best know how—the remaining twenty I have paid out for the doctor's bill, Isaac's coffin, shroud, and grave-digging. My accounts are ready for exhibition to the Probate Court when called for.
"Yours to command.
"NATHAN BAY."
Enclosed in this paper was a document of a very different complexion, almost too base to be presented to our readers It concluded with "burn this."
"Burn it 1 indeed I will!" exclaimed Jessie, and, her face and neck mantling with indignation, she threw it into the fire. She kept the indignity to herself, and communicated to Henry only the business letter.
He was indignant at its style; believed there had been fraud, but he perceived it was covered up by legal forms, and he let the whole thing go—he was too happy to care. "I see the man's drift," he said. "He means to bring you back to his own house a dependent. He thinks if he can get possession of your child, j he holds you by the heartstrings. The boy J will have his spirit broken as your—his father j had—you will be oppressed—I shall be tortured —it is not right—it is no way suitable—there is but one course—thank God!" "Dear Archy!"
"Why should not I thank God, Jessie? You must consent to the publishment going up next Sunday."
"Not till I have consulted some one—remember, Archy, I am a church member—you are not. Let me speak to Mr. West."
"No—no—no. He is scrupulous. I am not a member—on your account I wish I were."
"Oh! on your own account, Archy!"
Archy assented. But when he learned that Mrs. Remington thought it more than probable that when the church were apprised of her intention of marrying out of their pale, she should be subjected to discipline, and delay would ensue, he proposed that they should forego the publication, and take advantage of their proximity to the state of New York, where the ceremony could be legally performed without the embarrassing prelude of a publication. This proposition she resisted. She felt in all simplicity of heart a reverence for the authorities of the church. To her it was the type of God's power and justice, and she trembled at the thought of incurring its displeasure. But her lover pleaded, her heart urged, and above all, the horror of being again brought into proximity to Bay terrified her, and she at last consented. The next day she, her little boy, and Archy Henry, drove over to a magistrate's on the border of New York, and the marriage ceremony was there duly performed. Thus the lamb was secured into the fold at the moment the wolf was sure of his prey. The Deacon's rage had none of the ordinary manifestations. To his good, unsuspecting pastor and to the church, he appeared the disappointed father, sorrowing after a godly sort.
A meeting of the church was immediately called. But before they met the pastor visited the offending member. He tried in vain to assume the tone of stern rebuke. His gentle heart failed him. Tears actually' streamed from his eyes as he told poor Jessie that her violation of the laws of God and the known rules of the church, to which she had promised submission when she took the solemn vows of membership, rendered her liable to the censure of the church, and excommunication from it.
She made no excuse—she offered no palliation—she said she was conscious she had done wrong.
"Would she," he asked, "confess in the middle aisle of the meeting-house, before the congregation of the people, that she had sinned, and gone in opposition to God's law, and the law of his holy church, in marrying an unsanctified man, one who lived in daily violation of God's law?"
"Oh no, sir, I cannot say that—that is not my view of my husband—he is not a member —that I am sure I grieve for, but he is better, sir, than some that are."
"That is not to the purpose, child; will you make the confession?"
"I cannot say, sir, that I am sorry to have Archy Henry for my partner for life; but for the manner of my marriage I am sorry, and I am willing humbly to confess it."
"That is not enough ;—solemn charges are before the church."
"What are they, sir?"
"That you received visits from your spark on Saturday nights."
"I did, sir, and I am not ashamed to own it."
"But, surely you know that Saturday night is held to be, and undoubtedly is, holy time."*
"Yes, sir, I know that Saturday night is a portion of the Sabbath, when we should not think our own thoughts. But, sir, I can truly say there was nothing dishonourable in the sight of man, or unholy in the sight of the Lord, that passed between Archy and me. Is this all?"
"No: it is said your husband habitually breaks the third commandment."
"But not blasphemously; thoughtlessly he does, but he knows it grieves me, and I think he will not again."
The good Doctor said there were other charges which had been confided to him, but as he trusted they would not be presented at the church meeting, he should not trouble her with them. He notified her that a meeting was appointed on a certain day near at hand, and he told her that she was expected to be present.
Poor Jessie! Her soul was disquieted—she reproached herself with not having walked worthy of her profession. The displeasure of the church was to her the sure sign of the displeasure of her Divine Master, and not all the arguments, the soothing, and the love of her husband could comfort her. She had two powerful reasons for making no disclosures in relation to the Deacon. She feared exciting the indignation of her husband, which once thoroughly provoked against the man he already doubted and disliked, could not be allayed; and she felt a religious reluctance to throw on the church the scandal of the Deacon's gross conduct. She would not involve the good in the scoffs the bad deserved.
The church met according to appointment. Mrs. Henry was present. Her youth and her docility conciliated many kind hearts in her favour. Her beauty, perhaps, told with some, —a beauty so softened and shaded by modesty, that not the oldest and most rigid thought it a duty to rebuke their instincts in its favour. Deacon Bay was present. He affected to take small part in the case, but he now and then craftily threw in an evil word that he meant to be lead in a wavering scale.
The meeting was divided. Some were for restoring her to full communion on her making the partial public profession she proffered. To this merciful party the pastor inclined. Deacon Bay and his few adherents were for immediate excommunication. Unanimity being unattainable, the meeting adjourned. While the clouds thus darkened over poor Mrs. Henry, she received a notice from Deacon Bay that she must remove from her present dwelling-house, and Henry was warned that the mortgage on his farm was about to be foreclosed, and that he must prepare to surrender it.
Temporal and spiritual ruin were raining down on the young couple, and to poor Mrs. Henry's susceptible conscience and excited imagination they came in the form of judgments for the violation of her church covenant. At this day. when old prestiges have melted away, it is as difficult to sympathize with Mrs. Henry as it would be to feel any serious concern for a child terrified at a shadow on his nursery wall. To her the trouble was a terrible reality. She was certainly more remarkable for tenderness of conscience than strength of mind. The austerest judgment of her brethren of the church was ratified by her own convictions. She seems, in concealing the wrongs of old Bay, to have forgotten the palliation they afforded her. She dared not take counsel or consolation from her husband. He was not a church-member, and therefore not qualified to give it. Still, as her truth was inflexible, she could not say she repented her marriage, and that she could not, to her diseased mind, was a sign of her reprobate state. Her health failed; she sunk into deep dejection; and when Deacon Bay came to notify her of another church meeting on her account, and said to her with a malignity worthy an inquisitor racking his victim, "God has put forth his hand against you"—" He has —he has!" she said,—hypocrisy had achieved its triumph over a pure and susceptible nature.
The pastor seems to have felt the deepest tenderness for the poor bewildered lamb of his flock. He sent his wife to bring her in his own chaise to the church-meeting.
Just before she entered Mrs. Henry's gate, she saw Archy Henry driving out of it with a load of furniture. Deacon Bay was at the moment passing in his wagon. Henry, irritated and confused, did not drive accurately, and his heavy wagon hit the Deacon's in a manner just gently to tip it over, and give the Deacon a somerset. They were both moving slowly at the time, and no great harm was done. The Deacon was exasperated, and no doubt secretly vowed vengeance, and thought with diabolical satisfaction that when Henry arrived at his home with his wife's chattels, he would find a lawyer taking possession of the premises in his, the Deacon's, name.
There was a full meeting of the church—not a member absent. Intimation of the pastor's state of mind were given in the opening prayer. He prayed that though their erring sister passed through the fire, it might not consume her, and through deep waters, they might not overwhelm her.
In the conclusion of his prefatory address to the meeting he said, "It was safer to imitate the Divine Being in mercy than in judgment."
"Who shall presume to stay his judgments?" said the lugubrious Deacon; "' whom the Lord smiteth is smitten.'"
And poor little Mrs. Henry seemed to verify his words.
Attenuated, pale, and trembling, she sat beside the dignified and erect figure of the pastor's wife, looking like a condemned and self-condemned culprit, who would fain call upon the rocks and mountains to hide her.
As a minister of the everlasting Gospel, and a member of the Congregational Church of New England, Stephen West, our revered pastor, had the most unqualified reverence for its institutions, and no monk of the thirteenth century was more unquestionably submissive to the rules and requirements of his order. But within this stern, artificial form beat a heart as true to the instincts and offices of love as is the needle to its pole.
"Brethren and sisters," resumed the pastor, "it is known to you that there has not been that unanimity in the case before you that usually attends our deliberations. The division has been perhaps more in feeling than opinion. It is natural," he said, his voice trembling, and the tears of his ever-ready sympathy flowing down his checks, "to feel for one in evident and deep distress of mind, and who, though as far as yet appeareth, she hath not sufficient grace to make the required concessions, hath not resisted the rebukes of conscience. And as her fault has not been of an aggravated nature, but such as one still young was greatly liable to, we may consider how far, without sacrificing duty, we may concede to our distressed sister. She is not, as you see, in a state of bodily health to be much questioned. I have had repeated interviews with her, and her request to me this morning was to state to you that she remains at the same point where you last left her,—she humbly asks the pardon of the ohurch for her violation of her church covenant, in having married in a manner contrary to their known rules. But truth obliges her to say that she does not and cannot repent of the choice she has made. The case is wholly before you. Any of the brethren who have remarks to make will please make them now, and will, I trust, feel called on to deal kindly as well as truly with our much-afflicted sister."
There was a murmuring of voices among the women, voices touched with sympathy; the pastor's wife was seen to pass her arm around Mrs. Henry, and draw her closer to her, and the hardest countenances of the brethren were softened. Bay looked around him, and beginning to feel that he had been playing a losing game, he made a bold and desperate move.
He rose, and after some stammering and hemming, he said," That as this was like to be the final discussion of the case of the backslidden member, he felt himself called on to state some aggravating circumstances which ho had withheld as long as there was any hope of bringing said member to a full confession of her wrongdoing. He felt it to be duty to tell the brethren and the sisters that said offender had not rushed upon the 'thick bosses' without warning, advice, and offer of needful help and support in her widowhood."
Till this moment Mrs. Henry's eyes had been downcast and her cheek blanched. Suddenly her colour rose, and an unwonted fire lit up her mild hazel eye, as she raised and fixed it on the Deacon. This was noticed by her friends, and it was also observed that his eye did not meet hers.
"My relation to her first husband," he continued, " made me her suitable guardian; I knew that her youth, widowhood, and comeliness exposed her to many temptations; I felt for her temporal necessities, and I offered her and her fatherless child a home in my house. This she rejected in a manner to make me surmise there was some covered sin, and when, after ascertaining the same, I went to deal with her as directed in Matthew, 18th chapter, 15th verse, and on, she, urged by her bad conscience, and doubtless tempted and incited thereto by Satan, struck me on the face."
"Deacon Bay!" exclaimed Mrs. Henry, involuntarily rising.
"Sit down, my child," said the Moderator, but in a tone too gentle for reproof, and she sat down overwhelmed with confusion. "Her child," continued the Deacon, "prompted, and seemingly justified by evil example, took up the three-legged oaken stool on which he was seated, and threw it at my head with such force, that I verily believe he was aided by the Evil One—ever ready to serve bad ends. So forceful was the blow, which, but for a just Providence, might have ended my life,—that I still carry the scar," he concluded, lifting the long sleek black locks from his swarthy brow, and showing a deep scar frightfully near to his temple. All eyes turned from him to Mrs. Henry, who was still steadily looking in her accuser's face.
At this moment there was a loud knocking at the door, and before it could be answered Archy Henry entered, his cheek and eye glowing with angry fires. There was a general sensation and movement through the assembly. Without heeding it, he strode to his wife's side. She laid her hand on his arm, and cast an imploring look on him.
"Don't be scared—don't be anxious," he whispered; "I know what I am about."
"This is an intrusion—very unsuitable, Mr. Archibald Henry," said the Moderator; "quite contrary to the rules of our church-meetings."
"I know it, sir," he answered, making a half and hurried reverence to the pastor, "but when a man's house is on fire he can't mind rules and regulations. I have promised to cherish and protect this woman, and I will, so help me God!"
"Is there no force here to put out this profane fellow?" asked Deacon Bay.
"No, none," replied Henry, "I'll trouble no one to answer that question but myself. I am nailed here, and you are nailed there, till my business is done. Do you know this handwriting ?" he continued, taking from his pocket a crumpled and weather-stained paper, and holding up the written side to the Deacon.
The Deacon was driven by surprise and dismay from every subterfuge. His bile rose, and his colour darkened to a mahogany hue. He made no answer.
"Do you know it?" reiterated Henry.
No reply.
"Perhaps you do, sir," he continued, approaching the desk, and holding it before the pastor, who at once bowed assent, "and you, sir, and you?" he added, showing it to the associate deacons. "Let me say one word, and then I will trouble you to hear me read it. I found this paper on removing a hencoop which had protected it from the weather. How it came there I know not, but I leave it to any member of this meeting to say if it has not been providentially preserved."
The paper in Henry's hand was that note from Bay to Jessie, which was taken by the draught up the chimney, when Mrs. Henry believed she had committed it to the flames. After whirling in the air it fell in an angle of the fence. A hencoop was accidentally set upon it. There it was destined to lie, as safely as if it were filed away in a pigeon-hole, till, in the general upturning of the moving, it came into the right hands. That this was really providential, it takes no great amount of faith to believe.
"This note," continued Henry, "was written by that man who stands there—that Deacon Nathan Bay. With permission, I will read it. It appears to have been enclosed in a business letter and begins thus:—
"This note is for more interesting matters. You were harsh yesterday, Jessie, but if you will come home, I will forgive and forget. It was not well to return a blow for a kiss—when one smiteth on the right cheek—you understand."
At this startling refutation of the Deacon's calumny, uttered not fifteen minutes before, a low sound arose more resembling a hiss than any ever before heard in a meeting of that solemn nature. Henry smiled bitterly, and proceeded.
"'You saw, Jessie, how bad example is followed. As crows the old, so crows the young. My head yet aches with the blow of that joint-stool. Your boy will be a limb, if he is not soon brought under nurture. Come back then, Jessie. The old woman is as good as nobody. You shall be true mistress of the house, possessor of heart and estate, and in due time, you and your boy heirs of all I possess. Isn't this better than marrying a penniless spark, beggaring your little chap, and drudging through your lifetime for a mother-in-law, and her bedridden gal? Burn this.'
"When this precious note was written," continued Henry, " Mrs. Remington was living on a farm which by some sort of legal huggermugger Nathan Bay claims as his. By like crafty measures he has spun his web round all the other property belonging to this little woman and her late husband. He threatened to turn her and her boy homeless and penniless upon the world. And when ho added insult to these injuries, she had no alternative but to marry a poor fellow whose father had been cheated out of house and home by this same Deacon Nathan Bay—church-member"—
"Stop, stop, Archy Henry!" cried the pastor, rising and striking his cane on the ground vehemently, "this is out of place—unseemly— it must go no farther"—
"Unseemly! Sir, should a villain be treated as one of the elect? Be patient with me one moment, sir—I do not—truly I do not mean any disrespect to you, or to any good person in this meeting; but, sir, is it not in place, and my bounden duty to rescue my wife, who has been driven to the edge of insanity by this wolf in sheep's clothing—Deacon Nathan Bay?" Henry paused for a moment. His indignation was felt to be righteous, and he was suffered to proceed. "For weeks that should have been the happiest of our lives, she has been bowed down, sorrowing and self-condemned— for what? for marrying me—not a church member to be sure—as Deacon Nathan Bay is —but an honest man, and one that hates a scoundrel—for marrying a poor fellow without a penny, with an afflicted mother and sister to be trusted to her care. If the manner seems to you hasty and indecorous, this document," he held up the Deacon's note, "informs you that she was driven by insult and fear to forego the usual forms and ceremonies. If she has violated the letter of your laws, who has better kept their spirit? Not by word or look has she betrayed, even to me, the insults and wrongs of this Deacon Nathan Bay. She has taken meekly, and as if she deserved them, reproof and exhortation—she has borne patiently the persecution, the malice, and the fiendish revenge of this man, who dares to hold up his head here as her accuser and judge. I don't know about your rules here, but I am sure she is, and will remain in good standing and full membership with the church above. I am sure there is not one of you, but in his own home and in his own heart thinks the better, and not the worse of her now under dealing, for the whole transaction on which you are deciding. Sir," he concluded, looking round, and marking, with evident satisfaction, the convinced and acquiescing expression on the faces of the church-members, "I do not now fear to leave our cause with you."
The church-meeting before separating passed a vote of oblivion and restoration to full membership in favour of Mrs. Jessie Henry.
The Deacon's case was deferred to future consideration. He subsequently passed through a course of discipline, professed and confessed all that could be required, and was restored to nominal membership, but stripped of the honours of his office, and deprived for ever, as hypocrites are, by the universal law of God, of the faith of all good men and true.
His ejection of Henry from his paternal property was prevented by a sagacious lawyer, who detected excessive charges in the Deacon's accounts, and fraudulent advantages taken by him. The Deacon, not daring to expose the facts to litigation, was glad to make concessions which rendered it easy for Henry to redeem the property. His little wife restored to tranquility, to self-esteem, and to her good standing in the church, realized a happiness rarely enjoyed in the married state.
Sedgwick's notes:
* The Doctor's own words—still on his records.
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
"Owasonook"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Deception, Marital Property
Description
An account of the resource
A widower is deceived by a Deacon into believing she has been left nothing. When she marries a man outside of the church she is threatened with excommunication.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Sartain’s Union Magazine [edited by Caroline M. Korkland] NY. Vol. VI: p. 399-407
Publisher
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Sartain's Magazine
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
June 1850
Contributor
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J. Robinson
Language
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English
Type
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Document
Ann Radcliffe
bible
marriage
New York
Queen Anne
religion
Sartain's Union Magazine