1
10
75
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c741cdc6bdbc9b7e616932a31ecb3897
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
1840
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.
SKEPTICISM.
_____
"Mother," said little Frank D____, with an unusually anxious expression on his smooth round face, "I wish you would tell me what is the meaning of skeptical. I heard father say last evening, he wished Uncle Henry was not so skeptical; he thought it was a great misfortune. I know skeptic means one who does not believe in the Christian religion; but I know uncle does, so it can't be anything like that: so what does it mean, mother?”
"In the first place, my dear Frank, you are not quite accurate in your definition of a skeptic; you have fallen into a common error. Skepticism merely means doubt, and not actual unbelief. Persons are called skeptics who really disbelieve the Christian religion, and those are often called unbelievers who have not quite arrived at that unhappy point, but are in the distressing state of doubt—skepticism."
"Oh, then, I guess I know what father meant, because Uncle Henry never believes anything. Yesterday, when I told him I had been up every morning this winter before seven, he said, 'Are you sure of that, my boy?' 'Yes, sir,' said I, 'for I always look at the clock the moment I am dressed.' Then he turned right round to father, and asked him how many times he supposed I had been up this winter before eight o'clock; and father told
[p. 92]
him he might rely on my statement, for I was an accurate boy. And then, when Susan came in, he turned right round to her, and asked her if I was an early riser! And so he always does; he asks half a dozen people, and finally don't believe any more than when he began. I think father was quite right; it is a misfortune to be so skeptical."
"It is so, Frank; and I believe it is better to be sometimes deluded, sometimes deceived, and often disappointed, than to be always doubting. Faith in God is the first and greatest blessing and support in life; next to this is faith in man. By this I mean, my dear boy, faith in man's capacity to do and to suffer; reliance on the possible attainments of our fellow-creatures; trust in their truth, goodness, and affection. But, my dear Frank, I'm going on a little ahead of your understanding and years; so I will come back, and tell you there is a kind of skepticism to which young people and children are very much addicted."
"Pray, mother, what is that?" "Do you remember that last fall, when your cousin Anne was staying with us, your father and I tried to convince her that her low spirits, and constant headaches, and cold feet and hands, and constant shivering, were owing to her neglect of exercise?"
"Oh yes, I remember how you used to talk to her, and how she used to sit there in the rocking-chair in the corner with a shawl on, and her feet up on the stove, and never stir out with the rest of the girls."
“No; she said she did not believe in exercise; so she went on all winter till she got a severe ill--
[p. 93]
ness, and that cured her of her skepticism; now she believes, and takes regular exercise, and is perfectly well."
"Well, she got pretty well punished for her skepticism, mother."
"Yes, Frank; and you may rest assured that all such skepticism will be punished sooner or later."
"Do you remember, when John was at home from college how he used to lie on the divan all day and read? He was told over and over again that he was injuring his eyes. He was skeptical, and went on reading in the same way. Now he is obliged to give up study because his eyes are weak."
"Oh, mother, how could he do so?"
"How could he, Frank? I think I know a little boy whom his mother has found nailed down to his Arabian Nights till the daylight was quite gone; and when he was pretty sharply reproved, he would answer, ‘I don't believe it hurts my eyes at all.'"
"Oh, mother, I'll not do so again; I'll not be skeptical."
"How often have your father and I told Lawton West, that, unless he pays more regard to accuracy and truth, we can place no confidence in him? He says that of all things on earth he desires our confidence, and yet he is just as careless of the truth as ever. Is not Lawton skeptical?"
“I don't see that, mother; Lawton keeps on lying for ever; but I don't see how it is because he is skeptical."
"If, Frank, he believed what we say—if he actually realized as we do when we heartily believe
[p. 94]
that we could never place confidence in him, he would make an effort to reform. How do you think it is with Sarah? I tell her over and over again that she makes me most uncomfortable by her disorderly habits. She says, ‘Oh, aunt, I would not make you uncomfortable for the world;' and the next hour her shawl is on the floor, and her bonnet and gloves nowhere to be found. I tell Eliza, that if she eats candies and sweetmeats she will injure her teeth. She says directly she don't believe they hurt the teeth. Miss Smith complained to me the other day that she had a constant headache. I begged her to leave off drinking coffee. 'Oh, she did not believe,' she said, 'that coffee hurt her.' Mrs. Allen told me her little girl was getting very pale and thin. I advised her not to keep her so many hours in school. 'Oh,' she replied, ' I don't believe Mary will ever hurt herself with study.'"
"Seems to me, mother, everybody that you know is skeptical.”
"The truth is, my dear boy, persons are not disposed to believe when their belief must be followed by a change of conduct—by the conquest of an obstinate fault, a bad habit, or a strong appetite. Those are best and happiest who are most ready to believe in those who have more wisdom and experience than themselves, and who will act in conformity to their belief. First faith, and then works, Frank."
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
Skepticism
Subject
The topic of the resource
Skepticism vs. unbelief, faith vs. works.
Description
An account of the resource
A young boy has a conversation with his mother in order to understand the meaning of skepticism.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria [by the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live & Let Live," &c.]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Stories for Young Persons, pp. 91-94.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
New York: Harper & Brothers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1840
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
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Collected in Stories for Young Persons, 1840, pp. 91-94, reprinted 1841, 1842, 1846, 1855, 1860; reprinted 184? By the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live and Let Live," &c. London: W. Smith.
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 1789-1867, and Cairns Collection of American Women Writers. Stories for Young Persons ... New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840. HathiTrust Digital Library https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007092366 Accessed 11 July 2019.
Format
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Document
Language
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English
1840
children
exercise
eyesight
Faith
juvenile literature
Mothers
reading
skepticism
sons
Stories for Young Persons
unbelief
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/cc61624c55eddd94f3626121fa0fb4fb.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=spG3SkESKu94ntwYAE7VrDr4KhykTNuV6-vI0T0uf-s4u5Eb8tnd-U5tl9n9NoYNgG6TUv33abowHuMesBY8JERChWfVYkEMvfmJrt-%7E%7EGf4mmKMBMhqUa3MhixSeQsrUfH0wceVhVs66vs5UTuOOf4GhW5-HcCUj5HFGkgOCcPy8sdbtz8XfrIsa84QGKcX8XggFP5bQkgeyTlmD3m2aeVgwjEj9Ap%7Ey2TgJUVuvWeuiZz-X9cAuUFBBU1a27gc3jtodIopGPfYrf5pe%7Elr5sKHMw%7EyPKUZVrhVxnVv5XGhQ7KAfof1gAgJfT2AgcWetOeCZq0KaJGIENXpSv9wKw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
003098d58ed710e58f117ad2fd5cfae0
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
1840
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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EIGHTEEN HUNDRED THIRTY-EIGHT'S FAREWELL
TO THE GIRLS AT THE L**** SCHOOL.
_______________
"A garland shall be framed
By art and nature's skill,
Of sundry coloured flowers,
In token of good-will—
The blessed crown of glory,
And the hopes which us do fill."
It is not necessary to remind you, my dear girls, of the circumstances under which this “Farewell” was written; but a word to those to whom it might otherwise be incomprehensible. All my young readers know that the time that elapses between being ready for a pleasure and the actual arrival of the pleasure, is tedious, and seems never-ending. To fill up this chasm the Farewell was written. As it is the vocation of an old lady to advise, and (as you think, doubtless) the destiny of school girls to be advised, I ventured to infuse a little of this medicinal quality into my evening's entertainment. The girls gathered round me, and I began the reading with fear and trembling, lest, on this occasion, consecrated to festivity, I should offend some one's self-love, awake some discordant note. Never shall I forget the animation, the sweetness, and, I may add, the gratitude with which my little essay was received. Could there be a stronger proof of the candour and magnanimity of the circle whose merry voices still ring in my ears? If any were wanted, it is afforded in the wish expressed by one and all, that the "Farewell" should be printed in their book.
[40]
It was Newyear's eve, and the girls of a certain school somewhere between Georgia and Maine had put the last stroke and stitch to their gifts for the next day's fête. How many bright thoughts, kind thoughts, and hours of patient labour had been bestowed on them! how many hard-earned and more hardly-husbanded shillings had been expended on them !*[1 ] how many pleasures had been foregone for other's pleasures on that happy fête-day!
The celebration was to be held on the evening of Newyear's day. The beautiful custom of the German evergreen tree, with some little modification (an exotic must undergo some changes in a new soil and climate), has been planted in our home- ground for some four or five years, so that it has fairly taken root, and has its associations and fond memories. The Italians have a superstition that a transplanted tree will not thrive till it has been danced around. This acclimating process has not been neglected with our evergreen.
The girls had planted their tree for 1839. Their preparations, as I have said, were finished. They were assembled round the iron stove. The fire had been replenished for the last time by a certain little vestal, who supplies it as eagerly as any vestal ever fed the sacred fire. The howling winds
[41]
swept over the hills, and the lights were burning dimly, when a singular knocking was heard at the door that opened into the hall. The strokes were three times three, distinctly repeated. Every voice was hushed, every sleepy eye wide opened. Our girls were good and rational, and not more addicted than other girls of the nineteenth century to reading and believing ghost stories; but there was something new and ominous in the sound, and they very naturally hesitated to move, and probably would not have stirred till daylight, if Ariel, the youngest among them, "a dainty spirit," who never hesitated long, had not sprang forward and opened the door.
A woman (an old woman, as it seemed, from her tremulous voice and faltering step) entered. Her person was completely enveloped in a long gray serge cloak, and her head and face hidden by a little black bonnet and an impenetrable veil. Ariel started back. "You wish to see Mrs. ____?” she said.
"No."
"Mr. ____, then?"
"No; my visit is to you, young ladies. Shut the door, my child, and take your station among the rest." The girls were confounded; but, obeying the impulse of their habitual courtesy, several rose at the same moment to offer the stranger a chair. She declined the civility; and, leaning on a staff which she held in her right hand, and by the aid of which she seemed, with much difficulty, to sustain her tottering person, she began: "You see in me, my young friends, the dying year. The time of my departure is at hand. When the clock
[42]
strikes twelve I shall be no more. But I did not come here to sigh over my own mortality, but to prepare you to receive my successors in such a spirit that you will part with them without regret or remorse."
“I have watched over you through our twelve months' acquaintance. The knowledge you have acquired and the good you have done will survive my death. I carry with me the account of these your imperishable riches.
"Some among you have diligently used the opportunities I have afforded you. You have heaped treasures on treasures as the months passed on. There are others who have not seemed to realize that these opportunities were passing by, and that they and I should vanish together. But you have all, I say it with pride and pleasure, profited in some degree by my existence. So much have I become attached to you, that I could not quit the world without bidding you farewell, giving you my dying advice, and telling you a secret."
"A secret? a secret?" exclaimed the girls in a breath; and they all drew nearer to the old lady, who thus proceeded: "Dying people may be sincere without giving offence, and therefore I do not hesitate to tell you that your progress is hindered by certain faults, to which you are yourselves quite blind. These faults operate like weights or clogs, holding you back, and in every way impeding your advancement. It is your blindness to them that I beg you to cure before the coronation of my successor, her majesty Eighteen hundred thirty-nine."
"But how can we," asked little Ariel, " if we are unconscious of our faults? I am sure I can't, for one."
[43]
"I foresaw that answer from you, my Ariel," replied the old lady, in a voice that indicated a smile; "a strange word, that ever-ready can't of yours, for a little girl whose actions all say can. But, to proceed, I have provided against the difficulty you suggest, Ariel. I have brought in this vial a precious extract, which, if you will swallow it, will instantaneously remove the blindness to which I have alluded, and will, besides, have the marvellous effect of inciting you to rid yourselves of your faults, to detach those weights that so embarrass you." She placed a vial on the table. "Now for my secret," she resumed; "I have yet other visits to pay, and no time for delay.
"To-morrow evening (if you have before swallowed my extract), previous to your meeting round the evergreen tree, assemble in the southwest chamber of this mansion. In the centre of the apartment you will see a miraculous shrub, called pro omnibus vera, bearing flowers of all hues and all seasons. On their stems you will perceive to be written the names of the virtues of which each flower is the symbol. Pluck the flower which typifies the virtues most opposed to the fault my extract has revealed to you; place it in your bosom, and from it will distil a juice of such marvellous properties, that it will as surely (though more slowly) remove the fault as my extract will cure your blindness. One thing I have omitted. After you have plucked the flower, look steadfastly at the stem; if buds or blossoms unfold upon it, remember what they typify, and take them at their word. They may praise, but they will not flatter. Farewell, my dear girls," her voice faltered. "You
[44]
have been a garland of sweet, beautiful blossoms around my brow, may my successors hail the fruit. I grieve to say farewell!"
"Farewell!" responded the girls, as if they felt the solemnity of parting, but not the grief; this the young cannot feel at the departure of the old year. The door opened and shut, and the figure vanished for ever. The girls eagerly grasped the viol, and read the label, “Extract of religion, for the conscience.”
"Extract for the conscience !" exclaimed Laura. "I don't need that. I see my own faults plain enough, or weights, as the old lady called them."
"It will be safest, Laura, for each to take her share," said Livia, dryly.
"Pray don't take more than your share, Laura," interposed Leila, "for I shall need all mine."
"I rather guess you will to see your faults, Leila," said Belinda. "We want no extract to see the faults of others, and none of us ever saw yours, unless it be lisping, and some such trifles that it needs no miracle to cure."
"Oh, Belinda, the old lady didn't make any exceptions, and I am sure she was right not to except me: so let me swallow my share and done with it."
"I should like to prove the virtue of good Madam Eighteen hundred thirty-eight's prescription," said Belinda; " anything to help me on; ‘go-ahead’ is my motto, you know;" and Belinda boldly swallowed her portion.
Maria humbly said, "I think I feel my weights; but give me the vial; if I can get rid of them, I shall bless the old lady as long as I live."
"There's always something new going on in
[45]
this house !" cried Ariel; "something for all—us —girls to do. I wish the time would come when I shall go home, and have nothing to learn, and no more faults to cure."
"Amen!" cried Belinda, and "amen!" responded all the girls, none louder and none so merrily laughing at her own characteristic exclamations as little Ariel, who ended the joke by swallowing unfalteringly a double portion of the extract.
"You may give me my dose too," said Eloise, advancing timidly and shrinkingly, "though I know perfectly well it won't do me any good."
"And give me mine too," said Sabina, "for we ought all to do what the poor old woman requested."
"Livia," cried Belinda, "why don't you come forward? Come—here's your portion."
Livia approached reluctantly. "I know I need it as much as any of you," she said; "but I hate to take it, it makes me feel so horridly to be convinced of my faults; but it's 'no song, no supper' —no extract, no cure—so I'll take it."
"And so will I," said Julia. "I had as lief try it as not, though I am sure I have no need of it."
All now had honestly taken their portions, and they retired, but not for a long while to sleep. Their emotions and meditations must not be revealed. It is enough to say that those who had swallowed the extract boldly, and those who had taken it timidly, were equally surprised by the discoveries they made. The most humble and fearful had least reason to be shocked. Through the following day they were serious, but tranquil and happy; for, though assured of the
[46]
existence of the evil, they were also assured of the cure.
As evening approached there were whisperings and perturbations among them; but this, as the whole house was in a bustle, passed without observation.
The girls were dressed, the candles lighted, and some fancied they already heard the gingling bells of the sleighs that were to bring the dear friends from S**********. The moment for visiting the mysterious shrub must not be delayed, and with beating hearts the girls met in the passage that led to the southwest apartment. A brilliant light streamed through the crevices of the door. The most timid among them started back, shrinking from what they deemed supernatural. “Why are you afraid?” said Belinda, in a low, firm voice; "the flowers, you know, are the symbols of the virtues; light should come from them."
"Stop one moment, Belinda," cried Leila; "let me go in with you." "And me too, pray," said Livia; and each clung to her as Belinda slowly opened the door.
What a brilliant sight was that now before their eyes! A porcelain vase, as beautiful as Sévres china, stood in the centre of the room, bearing the miraculous shrub, whose branches were all blooming with different flowers, having their own peculiar hues, and sweet as if they were growing in the garden mould, and were wet with the dews of a June morning; from their leaves emanated a light soft as the light of the firefly; and along the stems ran a brilliant spiral flame that emitted no heat. The girls arranged themselves around, silent and almost breathless with admiration.
[47]
The true, fearless, and prompt Belinda was the first to speak. "Pro—omnibus—vera!" she said. "'Truth for all'—and here is truth for me;" and she plucked a fringed gentian.
"Oh, Belinda! that can't be yours," cried Leila. "Why, you know the gentian is the emblem of modesty—it certainly is—because, you know, it lingers behind the other flowers, and opens its eye so timidly."
Belinda shook her head. "I know very well what it means," she said. "Then why take it?" insisted her fond friend. "I am sure no one will dare to say you want modesty."
"No, dear Belinda, indeed you do not," said Livia. "And I don't think you do!" "And I am sure you do not!" reiterated all the girls.
"I am very glad you think so, girls; but I certainly do want deference, which is first cousin to modesty; and here you may see the word written in tiny letters on the stem. The moment I swallowed that infallible extract, I perceived that I had the habit of taking the lead on all occasions, and of too loudly asserting my opinions. Blessed little blue-eyed flower, I thank you! You shall be my flower, the emblem of the grace I need. But what is this?" she exclaimed, as a little stalk shot from the stem of the gentian, and from it unfolded the fragrant blossoms of the white jasmine.
"Oh, it's candour!" cried Leila, clapping her hands. "Do not you remember what the old lady said? ‘Look steadfastly at the stem; if buds or blossoms unfold upon it, remember what they typify, and take them at their word. They may praise,
[48]
but they will not flatter.’ The jasmine praises, but does not flatter you, Belinda; you are candid, and everything that is ' first cousin' to truth."
Little Ariel now sprang forward, her chameleon eyes becoming almost black, and absolutely glowing: "I may as well take my flowers first as last," she said.
"Flowers! Do you take two, Ariel?" asked Laura.
"Yes, I must have a double portion—it's too bad! Here is the violet; disinterestedness you see it means. There is no doubt of the goodness of the extract, girls." The girls might have thought it did not err in Ariel's case, but they did not say so. It is marvellous to see how gentle it makes us to others' faults to have our eyes opened to our own. "I hate to take this," resumed Ariel, breaking off a sprig of lavender, under whose green leaves was written gratitude. "I never suspected I wanted gratitude till I used the old lady's extract; and I do not, only when I am out of patience with my lessons, or break some rule, and throw the blame on Mrs. _____ , who is always so patient and kind; but I hope I shall be cured !"*[2] A sweet smile played over her lips, and forth from the lavender stem sprang the delicious flowers of the trailing arbutus, interspersed with small leaves of live-for-ever.
"You have come off very well, Ariel, after all," said Livia; "you have a double portion of virtues to match your double portion of faults."
[49]
"So I have!" replied Ariel, clapping her hands. "I know the arbutus means resolution, for it flowers amid snows; but what do these pretty little live-for-ever leaves mean?"
"Live-for-ever! Why, is that not another name for truth, Ariel?"
"Ah, Ariel," said Eloise, as she gently broke off her flower (also the arbutus), "the arbutus praises you, but me it admonishes. As soon as I swallowed the extract, I saw that in everything I wanted resolution."
"But see, Eloise," interrupted Belinda, "that mignionette coming out all over the coarse stem of the arbutus. The mignionette, you know, typifies tenderness and refinement: how well it suits you!"
Maria broke off a white rose, that had so perfectly unfolded every one of its pure leaves, that it scarcely needed the word frankness on its stem to interpret its meaning.
"Surely, Maria, that is not your flower!" cried Laura; "well, perhaps you are a little too shy— too reserved; but it is a reserve that springs from modesty."
"My extract did not tell me that, Laura," replied Maria; and, while she spoke, all along the rose's stem unfolded the fragrant flowers of the lily of the valley, emblem of humility.
"You see, girls, I did need the extract as well as the rest of you," said Leila, breaking off a golden amaranth.
"What does it mean?" "what does it mean?" exclaimed the girls in a breath; "I am sure we cannot guess." Leila held up the flower, and they, seeing the word hardiness, exclaimed, "The ex-
[50]
tract is true: Leila is a little over-sensitive—and there, see!" they added, " the flowers of the sensitive plant budding out, which signifies how quick she feels for others; and, bless us! there too is an arbutus: a fit companion for her sensitive flowers; for with you, Leila, feeling and action go together."
"None of you will doubt this belongs to me," said sweet Sabina, with a smile, as she broke off a crocus; "a flower that ventures into the still frosty air should typify the very opposite of ‘chicken-heartedness.’"
"We need no voice from poor dear eighteen hundred thirty-eight," said Livia, "to tell us this is your flower, Sabina; no extract to reveal it. But what is this winding round the stem? How true, too! Honeysuckle, type of lovingness."
Julia now languidly approached to select her flower. It was the beautiful clematis, symbol of elevation. "I knew, before I swallowed the extract," said Julia, "that I am content to be just what I am."
"Strange!" said Livia; "for here are the purple flowers of the bee-larkspur, symbol of diligence; strange, Julia, that you should be like the squirrel in a cage, content always to be at work, and never to go forward."
Two only were now left, and on these two, conspicuous among their companions, all eyes were fixed. Livia made a difficult effort, and broke off a careopsis, which, steadily blossoming as it does through the heats and showers of summer, the cold winds of autumn, and on the frosty borders of winter, is a fit type of imperturbableness. "A pretty
[51]
long word," said Livia, laughing, as she held up the stalk; "but you need not take the trouble to read it, girls; you are all acquainted with my irritableness." Before she had finished speaking the stalk of her careopsis was gemmed with daisies, and wound round and round with the pink convolvulis, types of generosity and affection.
"Never mind, Livia," said Belinda, kissing her, "we do not care for the careopsis; hut we all love the daisies and convolvulis."
A stalk of sweet-peas was the only flower left. Laura broke it off, slightly blushing, and courageously held it up, that all might see the word simplicity. As she did so, the bee-flower opened on the stem, and with it the rosemary, ancient type of that noble virtue, fidelity.
Their task was done, and they were all satisfied. They pressed the flowers to their bosoms, and one and all asked a leaf of Laura's rosemary, to remind them of their duty. Laura needed not to rob her flower of praise (so the girls called them) of a single leaf; for, at the wish expressed, rosemary was added to each bouquet.
"Now," said Livia, " quick, before the bell rings, for the evergreen tree; let us all go down and tell our story to Mrs. _____ , and show our flowers."
"Yes, yes, we will, we will," was the general exclamation; and suddenly appeared in each bouquet, overtopping every flower, the queenly white lily, type of magnanimity.
[Sedgwick’s notes]
* [1] It is the custom at the school to which I allude to allow to each girl, on the 1st of November, a certain sum, to be appropriated to Newyear's gifts. After that time, for every defective lesson, for every failure in the observance of the rules of the school and the social morals of the little community, a penny is forfeited. The young ladies are trusted with the keeping of their own accounts: but sometimes doubtful cases would occur; and I recollect, with much pleasure, to have oftener heard, in a deprecating voice, the appeal, "Must" L. or S. "lose a penny?” than "Must I?"
* [2] And in a rapid process of cure is our little favourite, for that favourite she is we cannot deny. Faults that consort with great energy, and are accompanied with perfect truth, we may confidently hope (if the subject is in good hands) will pass away with the impulsiveness of childhood.
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
Eighteen Hundred Thirty-Eight's Farewell
Subject
The topic of the resource
New Year's eve, girlhood, self-examination, the language of flowers.
Description
An account of the resource
A visit from a mysterious old woman on New Year's eve leads a group of school girls to try a truth serum that enables them to see their faults and virtues on the flowers of a magical bush.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria [by the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live & Let Live," &c.]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, pp. 39-51.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
New York: Harper & Brothers
Date
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1940
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D. Gussman
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Collected in <em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, 1840, 39-51, reprinted 1841, 1842, 1846, 1855, 1860; reprinted 184? By the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live and Let Live," &c. London: W. Smith. <br /><br />Also collected in <em>Pretty Little Stories for Pretty Little People</em> by Miss Sedgwick. London: William McKenny, 1849, pp. 40-55; reprinted 1850. <br /><br />Online in the Cairns Collection of American Women Writers. <em>Stories for Young Persons</em> ... New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840. HathiTrust Digital Library https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007092366 Accessed 22 July 2019.
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Document
Language
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English
"language of flowers"
"pro omnibus vera"
"The Garland of Flora"
1840
affection
candor
candour
chicken-heartedness
Christmas
Christmas tree
conscience
deference
diligence
disinterestedness
elevation
faults
fidelity
flowers
frankness
generosity
ghosts
girlhood
girls
gratitude
hardiness
humility
imperturbableness
irritableness
Juvenile fiction
lovingness
magnanimity
modesty
New Year's Day
New Year's eve
old women
refinement
religion
resolution
school
secrets
simplicity
Stories for Young Persons
tenderness
truth
virtue
-
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9318956458123efb124f4d2a4096f467
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Title
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1840
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THE DEFORMED BOY
“THE great Basil mentions a certain art of drawing many doves by anointing the wings of a few with a fragrant ointment, and so sending them abroad, that by the fragrancy of the ointment they may allure others unto the house whereof they are domestics.”
We would borrow a hint from the artifice of the ingenious bird-catcher, and record, for the benefit of some of our young friends, a few acts of particular goodness that have chanced to fall under our own observation, in the hope that their love of virtue may be augmented by contemplating its lovely aspects and certain results.
The example of gratitude which we are about to record, though it is derived from one of the very limited means and in humble life, will, it is hoped, serve to illustrate the duty so often and so ably enforced by our benevolent philosopher Franklin, the duty of looking upon our fellow-beings as all children of one parent—members of one family; so that, if we receive a favour from one individual which we cannot return, we should bestow it on some other member of the family, and thus, to use the doctor’s own expression, keep it “going round.”
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Much occurs to us to say on the uses and felicity of a grateful temper, but we are so well acquainted with the habits of our young friends, that we know they will skip the general remarks to get at the story, as nimbly as a little squirrel will leap over a heap of rubbish to grasp a single nut. To the story then.
In one of the small cities of Hudson there lived a Mrs. Aikin; a lady eminently blessed with affluence and happiness, and one who gratefully acknowledged the truth “freely ye have received,” and faithfully obeyed the admonition “freely give.”
On a bright but bitter cold morning in January, Mrs. Aikin’s family were assembled in the parlour to breakfast; a fine fire of hickory blazed on the hearth, and seemed to crackle defiance to the terrors of the cold, if indeed there was a crevice through which the cold could enter this snug and nicely calked parlour.
The family had just risen from their morning devotions; the servant was bearing in a tea-tray loaded with the hissing coffee-pot, tempting sausages, and a plate of buckwheat pancakes, when a violent ring at the door, thrice repeated, called everyone’s attention.
“Run, William, and open the door quickly,” said Mrs. Aikin; “I would not keep a dog on the outside of my door this morning.”
William obeyed and immediately returned, followed by a little fellow who ran, or, rather, waddled in after him. The child had short legs, a body disproportionately large, and a hump on his back. His head, though rather overgrown, was well formed, his hair light and curling, his skin very fair
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his eyes a deep clear blue, and his whole expression that of infantine sweetness and innocence. Such a head and face surmounting a deformed body looked somewhat like a beautiful fruit on a gnarled stalk. The boy seemed almost stiffened with the cold; but, regardless of himself, and apparently impelled by instinct, he ran up to Mrs. Aikin, and, grasping her gown, he said, with a voice so tremulous as to be almost inaudible, “Oh, ma’am, do come and see what ails mother!”
“Why, who is your mother, child? And who are you?” asked Mrs. Aikin.
“Oh, do come and see ma’am—now—quick. I am afraid mother will burn the house up, for she is lighting the fire with all our clothes; she does not act like mother; do—do come and see what ails her.”
Little Lucy Aikin, a rosy-cheeked, kind-hearted little girl, was at first impatient at the delay of her breakfast; but she soon forgot herself, and, apparently with the expectation of comforting the child, took a sausage, and, wrapping it nicely in a buckwheat cake, she offered it to him.
“No, no,” said he, bursting into cries that expressed impatience and grief, “no, I am not hungry. I was hungry last night, and we were all hungry. Mother said so; and she began to cry, but she isn’t crying now!”
“There is something very urgent in this case,” said Mrs. Aikin, turning to her husband. “Let William serve you and the children, and I will go with the child.”
Mr. Aikin assented, for he perceived the boy’s distress was deep and unaffected—how should it be
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otherwise! he was not, apparently, more than five or six years old.
Mrs. Aikin threw on her cloak, and, taking the child’s hand, he led her through a lane, which, running by the corner of her house, formed the communication between the street she lived upon and a street in the rear of that, where there were several one-story houses, or rather hovels, which had been erected as temporary habitations for the poorest class of people. Into one of the most wretched of these Mrs. Aikin followed her little conductor, and there she beheld a spectacle of misery that sufficiently explained the poor child’s distress. His mother sat on the hearth, with a pale, half-famished-looking infant in her arms, crying piteously, and seeking nourishment at her breast, where, alas! there was none. She was deliberately tearing up cotton frock, and throwing it, piece by piece, on the few embers that lay in the fireplace.
She rose on seeing Mrs. Aikin, as if from habitual good manners; and after looking round for a chair, she smiled and said, “Oh! I remember, they took my chairs; but pray be seated, ma’am. I have been trying,” she continued, “to kindle a fire to warm my baby and me; but my stuff is so light it goes out directly, and we don’t seem to get warm, ma’am.”
Mrs. Aikin perceived at a single glance at the poor woman’s burning cheeks and parched lips, that she was in the delirium of a fever. She approached her, and offered to take the child.
“Oh no,” she said, “not my baby; you know, when they took all the rest, they promised not to take my baby.”
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“But let me try to quiet her for you.”
“No, I thank you ma’am; she is only fretting for her breakfast.” She put the infant again to her breast; the child seized it with the eagerness of starvation, and then redoubled its cries.
“I make but a poor nurse,” said the mother, smiling faintly; “I think it does not agree with me to live without food. Do you think that can be reason my baby does not thrive, ma’am?’ and she raised her eyes to Mrs. Aikin, as if appealing for her opinion. The tears of compassion were streaming down Mrs. Aikin’s cheeks, and the poor woman, apparently from pure sympathy, burst into loud sobs. The little boy threw himself on a bed in a corner of the room, and, burying his head in the bedclothes, tried thus to suppress his cries.
Mrs. Aikin, aware that the wants of these sufferers would not justify a moment’s delay of the succor they needed, called the boy to her, and despatched him to her husband with a note, which she hastily wrote with a pencil on the back of a letter. While he was gone she had leisure to observe the extreme wretchedness of the apartment, in which there was not an article of furniture save a straw bed and its scanty covering. There were shreds of the garments strewed about the floor, the “light stuff” the poor crazed woman had been burning to warm her infant.
“Have you been long sick, my friend?” she asked, with the faint hope of obtaining a rational answer.
“Sick! Sick!” replied the mother; “yes, a good while—I have been sick a trifle—the intermittent and the typhus—but I believe I am getting the better of it all, for yesterday I felt quite hungry.”
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“And did you take anything?” asked Mrs. Aikin.
“Oh yes,” she answered, drawing near to Mrs. Aikin, and whispering with an air of great self-complacency, “I did indeed take something—all I had in the house-an excellent thing to blunt the edge of one’s appetite—laudanum—you know ma’am, it is doctor’s stuff and the doctors know how to cure an appetite.”
“God help you, poor woman!” exclaimed Mrs. Aikin.
“God help me!” reiterated the poor creature, with a piercing cry; “there is no help for me;” and she sunk on the side of the bed and wept freely. Mrs. Aikin was sensible that in this returning consciousness of her miseries there was a dawning of reason; she knew that her tears were a natural expression of feeling, and would afford her the quickest relief; and she permitted them to flow on without interrupting her.
In the mean time Mr. Aikin arrived, accompanied by a woman-servant laden with necessaries and refreshments, and a boy with a barrow of wood; a fire was kindled; nourishment was provided for the baby, and food offered to the deformed boy, who, now that he saw a relief at hand for his mother, ate ravenously. Cordials were administered to the mother; a physician was summoned, and a nurse provided for her; and, in short, everything was done that could be done, where there was benevolence to devise and ability to execute.
The lapse of a few days found Mrs. Shepard (for that was the poor woman’s name) quite recovered from the delirium into which she had been
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driven by sickness and extreme misery. She related to her benefactress the few particulars of her melancholy history. It was not an uncommon one, and we shall not detail it at length, for we would not cloud the cheerful faces of our young readers with unnecessary sadness.
Mrs. Shepard was the daughter of a respectable farmer; the youngest of a numerous family. She was married when very young to one of those miserable beings who are always meeting with disappointments and bad luck, those sure plagues of the idle and shiftless. Her husband had health, a good trade, and abundance of friends; but, as the proverb says, “Who can help those who won’t help themselves?” Shepard changed one branch of business for another; he moved from place to place, but he never left behind him the faults that caused the failure of all his enterprises.
He went in the beaten track from idleness to intemperance and to bad company; and finally, lost to all sense of duty, he abandoned his wife and little ones in a strange place, after a sheriff had stripped his wretched dwelling of the little wreck of furniture he possessed.
But Mrs. Shepard was not left to perish. In her greatest extremity, when there seemed no help, and sickness and the sight of her starving children had driven her to distraction, Heaven directed to her relief a kind and efficient friend. Mrs. Aikin’s discretion and good sense equaled her benevolence. She thought that as God is his kind providence had seen fit to exempt her from the sore evils of life, she was bound to testify her gratitude by doing all in her power to mitigate the sufferings of others.
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She remembered that our Saviour was familiar with our sorrows and acquainted with our griefs; and as it was not with her passing desire, but the rule of her life, to imitate him, she did not content herself with sending a servant with an inquiry or a gift to the poor, or with subscribing to charitable societies, but she visited the sick and the afflicted, and listened patiently to their very long, and often, to her as well as to others, very tiresome stories. She would enter with benevolent sympathy into the history of their cares and wants, and would even forget she had nerves while she gave her ear to the details of a loathsome sickness; in short, she never forgot the common people who have minds and hearts, and that often a more essential charity is done by fainting an influence over them than can be effected by pecuniary relief. We entreat our young friends to believe that, they will have treasures of kindness to impart far more valuable than Aladdin’s lamp. Fortunatus’ cap, or any gift of fay or fairy.
But we are digressing from our story—not uselessly, however, if we are strengthened the love of goodness in the breast of a single reader. Mrs. Aikin visited her humble friend every day till she was restored to comfortable health. It was then necessary that some means should be adopted for her permanent relief. She could be received with her children into the almshouse, but she preferred making any struggle to being dependant on public charity; “for that,” she said to Mrs. Aikin, “was what nobody took pleasure in giving, and no one was thankful for receiving.”
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After many consultations with her benefactress it was determined that she should hire a small cheap apartment, and take in sewing. Mrs. Aikin promised her constant aid, and performed more than she promised; and Mr. Aikin, who was one the aldermen of the city, obtained for her a small weekly stipend from the corporation, who find this a much better mode of aiding the industrious poor than removing them from the excitements and pleasures of their own homes to public institutions.
Mrs. Shepard’s health was infirm, and her means were scanty, but she was so diligent and economical that she maintained her children with decency.
With the present she was not only contented, but grateful; the past she had borne with fortitude and patience. “Many a time,” she said to Mrs. Aikin, “when I have been reduced almost to despair, those words, ‘Put thy trust in the Lord, he will never leave nor forsake thee,’ have come to my remembrance, and I have taken courage and gone on again. When Richard, my poor little crooked boy, was born, I had two children older than he: they were both sick with the whooping-cough; the baby, that is, Dick, took it; I was myself in a weakly way; we had none of us the necessary medicines nor food; both my boys died; my poor baby was neglected; he mastered the whooping-cough, and fell into the rickets, which ended in making him the little misshapen thing you see. But it seems as if God had tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, for a better, or, in the main a happier child there never was than Dicky.”
The good mother was not blinded, as fond moth-
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ers sometimes are, by partiality to unfortunate children; for Richard, or Dicky as he was familiarly, or rather Ducky as he was most commonly called, in an allusion to his short legs, Ducky was a perfect philosopher. Not a single crook of his little body had twisted his temper, or given one wrong turn to his disposition.
How much of his philosophy he owed to the faithful care of his mother, we leave to be estimated by those of our young readers who are so blessed as to possess parents who are continually watching over their morals and happiness. Mrs. Shepard was a poor woman, but she had received a good common education, the birthright alike of rich and poor in New-England, where she was brought up. She seldom found time to read a book herself; but devoted mothers can do that for their children which they cannot do for themselves; and Mrs. Shepard found, or made time to teach Richard to read before he could walk.
She would tie her baby into a chair beside her while she was washing, or ironing, or mending, and, at the same time, teach Dicky to repeat hymns and stories in verse which she had learned in her childhood. It was really a pleasing, and, at the same time, an affecting sight to see the little fellow, deprived as he was of the of the active pleasures usual at his age, sitting curled up on his chair, with his head unnaturally drawn down on his bosom, fix his bright, eager eye on his mother, repeat the words after her without missing a syllable, and chuckle with delight when he had mastered a couplet. Oh! who, when they see calamities thus mitigated, can help recalling that sentiment of
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Scripture, “He remembereth our infirmities and pititeth us, even as a father pitieth his children.”
But how did Dicky escape the fretfulness of temper which so often attend deformity? Surely not by learning hymns. No; though this occupation lightened many an hour, we cannot attribute such power to it. He had naturally a sweet and cheerful temper, but this would probably have given place to the irritability that so often attends and aggravates disease and privation but for the unceasing watchfulness and patience of his mother. If he ever got into a pet (as what child does not sometimes?), her rebuke was mildly spoken; and if the pet amounted to a passion, it was soon subdued by her firm, tranquil manner. The sound of her low gentle, and tender voice operated like oil thrown on the stormy waves, which is said to smooth their surface wherever it touches them.
Mrs. Aikin suggested to Richard’s mother that she might give him a useful occupation by teaching him to knit. She immediately improved the hint; Dick was delighted with his new employment, and soon became such a master of the knitting-needle that he might have rivalled almost any old woman in the country. He was sitting one day on his mother’s door-step, protected from the sun by the shadow of a fine elm-tree, finishing a pair of suspenders which Mrs. Aiken had bespoken for her son, when a company of boys came marching in military procession up the street.
The young soldiers were equipped with wooden muskets; their hats were garnished with cocks’ tails for plumes; half a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs tied together, decked with white paper stars and
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attached to a stick, formed their flag, their ”star-spangled banner,” and was as proudly carried by its bearer as more magnificent colours have been; a tin-kettle served for “a spirit-stirring drum,” and a “shrill fife” was blown by a sturdy little fellow, whose lungs seemed as inexhaustible as the windbags of old Æolus.
When they arrived opposite to Mrs. Shepard’s door, a proposal was made to halt under the elm-tree till their captain, Frank Hardy, should join them. “And, in the mean time, gentlemen,” called out mischievous little urchin in the rear, “let us give a salute to Miss Ducky Shepard, knitter to the light-infantry.”
“Hurrah for Miss Ducky!” shouted the boys, and the soldiers lowered their muskets, the standard-bearer waved his colours, and the little drummer beat a flourish. Dicky had at first entered into the sport, but now his countenance fell, he resumed his knitting which he had laid down, but his eyes were blurred with tears, his hands trembled, and his stitches dropped.
“Ah!” cried out the lieutenant, Miss Ducky don’t like your salute; never mind, Dick, Miss Ducky you shall be no longer. Gentlemen, fellow-soldiers, all who are for electing Miss Ducky captain, pro tem. will please hold up their right hands.” Fifty right hands were instantly elevated,” and another shout of “Hurrah for Captain Dick!” made the welkin ring.
As soon as the sounds had ceased, “Advance, Corporal Seation,” said the lieutenant, “and help me escort the captain to the head of his company.” The two boys took the unresisting child in their
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arms and placed him at the head of their corps. “Turn out your toes captain,” said the lieutenant, touching Dicky’s short bow legs with his musket; “there, gentlemen, is a fine leg for a march!”
“Hold up your head, captain,” said the corporal; “there’s a captain to scare the enemy!” But poor little Dick could not hold up his head, and the tears that he had manfully repressed now gushed from his eyes and rolled down to his bosom.
At this critical moment there was a sudden movement in the ranks. “What is all this? said the real captain, Frank Hardy, springing on his lieutenant and corporal, and laying them on their marrow-bones. “Coward’s play, boys -- coward’s play; here, Dick, my little man, take my hand; brush away your tears, and I’ll see you righted.” Dick grasped the friendly hand that was extended to him, and Frank, after replacing him on the doorstep, instituted an inquiry into this cruel sport.
The eyes of the company were now turned to their popular commander, and all were preparing to trim their vessels whichever way he should cause the tide to set. He soon satisfied himself that the offence demanded an exemplary punishment; and, ordering his company to form into a hollow square, he made them a speech, full of eloquence and feeling, on the merits of Dicky and their own demerit, or, rather, the demerit of their ringleaders, for he skillfully contrived to make them the scapegoats, and to bind the offences of all the culprits on their backs. After the speech he proposed that the lieutenant and corporal should be degraded from their high command to the private ranks, and should be sentenced to pay a fine to Dicky of six cents each.
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The sentence was passed by acclamation; the captain saw the decision enforced. The money which had been carefully husbanded for a treat after the day’s drill, was sullenly delivered into the commander’s hand, and reluctantly received from him by Dicky; reluctantly, for out little simple friend did not quite comprehend how “might made right;” and his feelings had been too deeply wounded to admit of consolation in this form. He was, however, in a degree comforted by the interposition of Captain Frank in his behalf; he felt that it conferred consequence on him, for Frank Hardy was a universal favourite among the boys; stout and active, good-humoured and kind-hearted, he was the champion of all the oppressed, and the corrector of all the wrongs in his neighborhood.
When the company marched away, poor Richard’s sorrows broke out afresh, and, running to his mother’s room, he threw the knitting on the floor, and said, in a voice half suppressed with sobs, “I never will touch that work again.”
“Why, what is the matter with you Dicky?” asked his mother; “I never saw you in such a flurry.”
Richard recounted, as well as he was able, the story of his wrong, and Mrs. Shepard listened with all a mother’s patience; and, when he concluded, she tried in vain to remove the impression from his mind that it was his “girl’s-work” that had been the cause of his mortification. “Hurrah for Miss Ducky, knitter to the light-infantry,” still sounded his ears, and drowned every argument she could urge. Shame, that most unpleasant feeling, was ever after most indissolubly associated
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with his work. The most obedient of all good boys, he would resume his knitting in compliance with his mother’s commands, but he never took it up voluntarily--never again relished it. Thus was this poor little fellow deprived of an innocent and useful pastime by a company of unfeeling boys. Perhaps we ought rather to say inconsiderate, for young people are more apt to be thoughtless than cruel; and we believe that those who laughed loudest and longest at Dicky’s drool little figure, would have wept with the ingenuous sorrow of childhood if they could have known the pang their laugh inflicted.
Our young readers may have heard of the philosopher’s stone; there is an art that far exceeds the power ascribed to that gem of the alchemist: the art by which a good person extracts instruction from every event, however adverse, is certainly superior to that which transmutes base metal into gold.
The incident we have related made Mrs. Shepard fully aware of Richard’s susceptibility to the mortifications to which his deformity rendered him liable, and henceforward she constantly endeavoured to arm him with fortitude. It is unnecessary to recount all she said and did to accomplish this purpose. Perhaps it would not make much figure in print, for Mrs. Shepard was so quiet and simple in her way, that one would as soon expect (provided there was neither experience nor knowledge on the subject) a tree to grow from an acorn an any great effect to proceed from her efforts. She had good materials to work on, docile disposition and sweet temper; and so completely successful
[24]
was she, that Richard, as he grew older, bore all sorts of jibes and jokes without wincing, His sweet, enduring temper disarmed mischief of its sting, and converted ridicule into respect. At the Lancaster school, where he was monitor of a class composed of boys of every disposition, some much older, and all a head taller than himself, he was treated with as much deference as if he had been six feet high, and had had the limbs of Apollo.
Since the memorable day of the training, he had maintained a constant friendly intercourse with his champion, Frank Hardy. Dick would do anything on earth to serve Frank, and Frank was sword and shield to Dick. But, notwithstanding this strict alliance between them, they were in some respects widely different. Unfortunately, those good principles had not been instilled into Frank that prompted Richard to do right, as well from duty as from impulse. Frank’s mother was a widow, and he was her only child; and she indulged him excessively, or restrained him unreasonably, according to the humour she happened to be in, without any regard to the right of the case or his ultimate good.
Frank was what everybody calls a warm, good-hearted fellow with a bright, sunny face, and a merry disposition, that won his way to all hearts. He loved pleasure extravagantly, as was natural, for he was on all occasions contriver of the sport and master of the revels. On one fourth of July, he had planned a sailing excursion to a village in the vicinity. Each member of the party was to contribute half a dollar to the expenses, and poor Frank was in utter consternation when, on apply-
[25]
ing to his mother, in the confident expectation of obtaining the money, she denied it to him. He entreated and expostulated, but all in vain; she was out of humour, and if she had been a Midas she would not have given him the half dollar. Frank left her disappointed and mortified; he knew that his companions were awaiting him, and, ashamed to meet them and explain the cause of his inability to meet them and explain the cause of his inability to join them, he went in quest of Dick to bear his errand to them. He found him at a huckster’s shop, where he was in the habit of going in his leisure time, and making himself useful by performing small services.
Richard was alone in the shop, busily arranging some fruits which were to be placed in the window as specimens. “Oh!” he exclaimed, on seeing Frank, “what a royal day you have got for your sail.
“A royal day, indeed,” replied Frank, looking up wistfully to the bright, cloudless sky.
“You had better make haste, Frank, for the boys will be waiting for you. Jim Allen and Harry Upham went along half an hour ago. Jim bought twelve oranges of Mr. George, and Mr. George lent Harry his flute; two merrier fellows I never saw; and they told me, if I saw you, to hurry you on.”
“I am not going at all, Dick.”
“Not going at all!” exclaimed Richard, struck by the words and by the sorrowful tone in which they were uttered. “Are you sick, Frank?” he asked, looking with great concern in his friend’s face.
“No, not sick,” replied Frank, and half ashamed
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that he had betrayed so much feeling on the subject, he averted his eye, and it fell on a newly-coined, glittering half dollar which was lying on the counter. “Oh if that half dollar were mine,” was his first, and, certainly, most natural thought. He turned again to the door--all the military of the town were out in honour of the day--drums were beating merrily, colours flying, and everybody, old and young, seemed to be animated with the spirit of the day. Frank looked down the street; he saw two or three of his young associates running towards the river. He again turned his eye to the tempting half dollar. Richard’s back was towards him--temptation pressed--opportunity favoured; one moment more of reflection, and he would have resisted, but he did not allow himself that moment; he grasped the half dollar, and, when Richard again turned, he was gone.
Richard wondered a little at the singular manner of his friend; but he was too intent on the task of his friend; but he was too intent on the task that had been assigned him to think much of it, till, his work being finished, he looked for the money, which had been left on the counter, in payment for a brush he had sold in the absence of George Sutton, the clerk, who had gone on an errand to the next street.
The poor child was trembling with the discovery of the loss when the clerk came in. “So, Dicky,” he said, “you have made a sale in my absence. I met Mrs. Lincoln’s servant with the brush. Where is the money, Dick?” he continued, unlocking the money-drawer, and standing ready to put in the half dollar.
“I have not got the money, Mr. George,” Richard replied, with a trembling voice.
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“Not got it!” exclaimed Sutton; and a suspicion darted across his mind which he could not bear to harbour for a moment. “Not got it!” he repeated. “What does this mean, Dick; where is it?”
“I cannot tell,” said Richard, faltering so much that the words were scarcely articulate.
George Sutton sprang over the counter; took the poor child, who now shook like an aspen leaf, by the arm, and, looking steadily in his face, which blushed crimsons, he exclaimed, “What can have tempted you to steal that money?”
Richard started back --his face became pale as death--his little crooked form was drawn up to an expression of dignity, for it expressed truth and innocence. “Steal! Mr. George,” he said, and he now spoke with a firm voice; “you know I would not steal one penny for the whole world.”
“I don’t think you would, Dick- I can’t think you would,” replied George, touched by the child’s appeal, and more than half convinced by his fair, direct look. “I have always found you honest, boy, and true as the sun. But where is the money? Has any one been in the shop since the man bought the brush?”
Richard’s countenance again fell- again his voice faltered. “Oh do not ask me; I cannot tell you, Mr. George,” he said.
“But you must tell me, Dick, or you must never come into the shop again.”
“Then I never will come into it again,” replied Richard, “for I never will tell;” and, bursting into tears, he ran out of the shop, leaving the clerk utterly at a loss what construction to put on his conduct.
[28]
George Sutton, though not the proprietor of the shop, was the sole manager of its concerns. His master was engaged in another branch of business; and, knowing his clerk to be perfectly trustworthy, he confided the affairs of the shop entirely to him. Thus trusted, young Sutton felt the obligation to be very exact in the performance of his duties. His first determination was to expose the affair to his principal; but he had one of the kindest hearts in the world; he really loved poor little Dicky; and, believing him innocent, he could not bear to expose him to the bad opinion of a stranger; he therefore paid the half dollar out of his own pocket, and said not a word to anybody on the subject.
Richard returned home with his heart full. He passed without notice all the gay parade of “Independence” -- and there was enough of it to satisfy patriots and charm boys -- and entered his mother’s humble dwelling; and there he would probably have yielded to the inquiries she would naturally have made into the cause of the disturbance--for what boy of nine years could withstand the sympathy of a tender mother--but Mrs. Shepard was in no state to observe his agitation. She had been seized that morning with pains and agues, which were, as she well knew, the prelude to violent sickness.
Richard was instantly despatched for a physician, who came, but could not avert a terrible fever, which raged for four weeks, and then left this afflicted woman in a hopeless consumption.
Mrs. Aikin had removed the previous spring to the country; but, before her departure, she had ta-
[29]
ken care to recommend Mrs. Shepard to some of her friends, who were humane and active in their charities, and Mrs. Shepard’s wants were soon known and relieved, as far as benevolence could relieve them. Mrs. Aikin was informed of her humble friend’s situation, and she wrote her a kind letter, enclosing some money, and telling her to spare herself all anxiety about her little girl, for she would take her into her own family, and provide for her so long as she should want a home. Thus relieved from solicitude concerning her youngest child, all Mrs. Shepard’s anxiety centred in Richard. He was too young to be apprenticed to a trade and there was no person whom Mrs. Shepard had the right or the courage to ask to provide for him in the mean time.
Our young readers are, we trust, quite inexperienced in the sorrows of life: when they learn them, as learn them they must, may they have that spirit in which they can be borne--even the sorest of them--poverty, sickness, and death.
Better than many a long sermon on resignation and trust in the goodness of God--far better would it be if we could present to the mind’s eye the humble apartment of this Christian woman, when, conscious of the fast approach of death, and that this was perhaps her last opportunity of prayer with her children, she had, in the energy of her feeling, raised her weak and wasted form from the pillows which supported her. Richard and little Mary knelt by her bedside; she held their hands in hers; her raised eye gleamed brightly, for
“The immortal ray
is seen more clearly through the shrine’s decay;”
[30]
and, making a last effort, she uttered in a low but perfectly distinct voice, “My father in heaven, to thee I commit these little ones.” She paused, and closed her eyes--once more she opened them, smiled on her children with an expression of ineffable peace, and murmured in a low whisper, “God will provide;” her face was then slightly convulsed, she let go of their hands, and sunk back on the pillow.
The physician had stood unobserved in the door way; he now moved towards the bed, and exclaimed involuntarily, “She is gone!” Poor little Richard had never seen death before, but he knew what it all meant; he locked his arms around his mother’s neck, and sobbed out, “Mother--mother--mother!” till he could speak no longer; and his little sister, crying because her brother cried, repeated again and again, “Mother will speak to you when she wakes up, Dicky-- do stop crying.”
But we must pass over this scene and the two sad days that followed. The little girl was removed to the house of a friend of Mrs. Aikin, and was sent to that lady by the first conveyance that offered; and, without Richard’s knowledge, arrangements had been made for his being transferred to the almshouse immediately after the funeral.
There were but few persons who followed the remains of Mrs. Shepard to the grave; but if the hearts of those few had been laid open; it would have been seen that there was more honour paid to her humble, unquestionable virtue (if human esteem confers honour), than is rendered by many a sweeping procession, that attracts the eyes of multitudes with its unseemly parade. Among these
[31]
few followers was Frank Hardy; since the 4th of July he had never spoken with his little friend. He had some times seen him in the street; but conscience, that most uncomfortable companion to the guilty, conscience had led him to avoid Richard. Hardy had accidentally heard of Mrs. Shepard’s death, and his good feeling prevailing over every other, he went to the funeral and returned from the grave to the house, anxious to know how Richard was to be provided for. The physician and the clergyman also went home with the child; and, after consoling them as well as they are able, they told him that he was to go to the almshouse for the present.
“To the almshouse!” he exclaimed. “Oh, don’t take me to the almshouse.”
“But where will you go, Dicky?” asked the doctor.
“I have nowhere to go,” replied the child; “I will stay here; I an’t afraid to stay alone in mother’s room.”
“You cannot stay here, my poor boy; this room is not yours, you know; what objection have you to the almshouse?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I hate the almshouse. Everybody hates the almshouse;” and the poor little fellow turned from his friends, laid his head on his mother’s pillow, and wept bitterly. Frank Hardy stood aside, listening with concern to every word that was uttered; he now drew near to Richard and whispered “Why don’t you go, Dicky, and speak to Mr. George Sutton? He was always a friend to you.”
“He is not my friend now,” replied Richard, in
[32]
a voice which, though scarcely audible, reached Frank’s heart.
“What makes you think so, Dick?” asked Frank, so agitated that he hardly knew what he said. Richard raised his head from the pillow, and fixed his eye on Frank. “Frank,” he said, “Mr. George thinks that it was I that stole the half dollar from him last Independence.”
These few words revealed the whole state of case to Frank. He perceived that Richard had been suspected, and had voluntarily, magnanimously borne suspicion rather than betray him; his tenderest feelings had been awakened by the desolate condition of the afflicted child; and he now looked at him a sentiment of awe, for his little crooked body really seemed to him to contain a celestial spirit. “Oh, Dicky! You have been too good to me,” he exclaimed; and, unable to endure or repress his feelings, he ran out of the house.
The gentlemen told Richard that they could wait no longer for him, and he prepared to accompany them; but when he looked round upon his home for the last time, it seemed as if his heart would burst. If our young friends will consider what it is they love in their homes, they will not wonder at Richard’s grief. It surely is not a great house nor fine furniture; but it is the voice of kindness, and the unwearying, unchanging love of parents; the sports and caresses of brothers and sisters, and all the endearments that make a happy home a picture of Heaven. The doctor soothed, the clergyman wiped Richard’s eyes; and at last, succeeding in quieting him,
[33]
they led him between them to the almshouse, and, after many kind expressions of good-will, they left him there. The poor child slunk away into the corner of the large desolate apartment into which he had been conducted; he looked around upon the sullen, discontented faces of the strange throng that filled it, each taking his or her evening meal at a solitary board; he thought of the nice little cherry table at which he had been accustomed to participate the simple meal with his mother and sister, their hearts filled with thankfulness and cheerfulness, and their faces lit up with smiles. He did not, perhaps, institute precisely the comparison we have made, but it was the change--the change--that struck upon his heart. “I can’t--I won’t stay here,” he said to himself; “I had rather starve in the street than stay here.” Some supper was offered to him, but he declined it; and a little time after he stole unobserved into the passage, groped his way into the yard, run into the street, and was out of sight long before he was missed.
He knew not whither to bend his steps; scarcely knew where he was, till, looking up, he perceived that he was close to George Sutton’s shop; the recollection of the young man’s former kindness darted a ray of hope upon his darkened mind. It was perhaps more his pressing need of pity than any defined expectation of relief that made him ascend the steps; but there his heart failed him, and he sat down. He was wearied and exhausted; it was a frosty night early in November, and he was shivering with the cold. He felt utterly forsaken. He looked up to Heaven; the moon
[34]
was shining brightly; he thought of his mother; he remembered that he had seen her, when in the deepest distress, kneel down and pray to God, and rise up again comforted. He recollected her last words, “God will provide;” and he repeated the Lord’s prayer. He who feedeth the young ravens when they cry unto him, heard and answered the helpless child. Richard had scarcely said “Amen” when he was startled by the opening of the shop-door, and, rising on his feet, he saw Frank Hardy coming out of the shop.
“Oh Dicky, is that you?” he exclaimed. “Come in, come in; I have told everything to Mr. George, and he likes you better than ever, now; and I am sure,” he added, putting his arm around Richard’s neck, “I am sure I love you better than all the world besides.”
Richard was astounded; he knew not what to say, but he followed Frank into the shop. “Is that you, my good boy Dicky?” exclaimed George Sutton at the first glimpse of him; and, grasping his hand, he said,” you are an honest boy and a noble boy, Dick, and I always believed you were, in spite of appearances; but now Frank has made all clear, and, if he had known everything, he would have done you justice long before this, Dicky: reparation wipes out offences, and I’m sure you will forgive and forget all, especially when you see how Frank repents the past; bitterer tears has he shed than any that have dropped from your eyes, my poor boy.”
“That I have, indeed,” said Frank; “and, till this evening, I have never had one such real happy hour since Independence as I had before; but
[35]
I’m sure, Dicky, I never had a thought of the trouble I had brought you into. I have read on many a tombstone ‘an honest man’s the noblest work of God;’ but, for my part, I think an honest boy and such a little boy as you, Dick, that will bear to be suspected rather than expose a friend, is something nobler still.”
How long Frank would have run on thus, we know not, for happiness is very talkative; but he was interrupted by Richard. The sudden change from the outcast feeling with which he had sat on the door-step, from the solitude and the stillness of the night, to the lighted shop, friendly voices, and cheerful looks, overpowered him with a confused sense of happiness; he burst into tears; “I don’t know what it is makes me cry now,” said he, “for I feel very glad.”
“You have been tried too much to-day, Dicky,” replied George Sutton. “Sit here by the fire with Frank, while I go and bring you some supper; and then you shall go to bed, in the little back room, and in the morning we will see what can be done. I am not afraid,” he continued, as he opened the shop-door, “for all that has come and gone, to leave you and Frank in the shop together.”
When his kind friend returned, Richard ate his supper heartily; and when he snugged down in bed alongside of George Sutton, he thought again of his mother’s last words, and fell asleep repeating to himself “God will provide.”
_____
[36]
Eighteen months subsequent to the events we have related, Mrs. Aikin paid a visit to the place of her former residence. One of her first inquiries was for Richard Shepard. She was informed that she might hear of him at the store of George Sutton. She immediately went there, and found Mr. Sutton established in a well-furnished store of his own. As soon as she had introduced herself and made known her errand, Sutton called “Dicky;” and Richard came waddling into the shop as fast as his little legs could bring him, and delighted beyond expression at the sound of Mrs. Aikin’s voice. His eyes glistened, and his face brightened and smiled all over. After she had made many inquiries of him, had drawn from him a particular account of his mother’s last hours, and had told him that, with Mr. Sutton’s permission, she should take him into the country to pass a little time with his sister, she dismissed him.
When he was gone she inquired of Mr. Sutton if he continued as good a child as he had been.
“As good, ma’am? There can be no better; he is worth his weight in gold to me. He understands the shop business almost as well as I do myself; and he is so good-natured and obliging, and has such pleasant ways, and is, withal, such a droll-looking little chap, that he brings many a customer to the store.”
Mrs. Aikin thought, as she looked in Sutton’s honest, frank, and benevolent face, that he did not stand much in need of aid to attract good-will to the shop. “I understand,” she said “ of Richard’s account of himself, that he has been with you ever since his mother’s death. I do not quite see
[37]
how you could provide for him all that time; for I think you did not begin for yourself till last Spring.”
“I did not, ma’am; and I found it difficult to save enough out of my small wages to pay the boy’s board, though I got him boarded for a trifle. But I did make it out, without any miracle; it was only working a little harder and faring a little harder, and you know that is nothing, ma’am, after it is past.”
“But how,” asked Mrs. Aikin, “could you, in such circumstances, think of assuming such an expense?”
Sutton seemed for a moment greatly embarrassed by this question. He blushed deeply, and his eyes filled with tears. “I could not help it, ma’am,” he replied; “when I was five years old, my parents died, and left me, as I may say, on the street. Some kind people took me in, brought me up, and provided for me; and when this poor little motherless child came to me, I seemed to hear a voice saying, ‘Remember what was done for thee; go thou and do likewise.’”
_____
This is the real instance of that efficient gratitude which makes a favour “go round,” alluded to in the beginning of our story. It is neither exaggerated nor embellished by fiction; and we hope we have not misjudged in deeming it a fact worthy of being rescued from the oblivion that is too apt to pass upon the good as upon the bad actions of men.
One word more, and this humble tale is finish--
[38]
ed. Frank Hardy reaped all the benefit that is to be derived from virtuous associates. The friendly counsel of Sutton induced him to fix himself in a regular employment, and his subsequent upright conduct fully expiated his single offence. He never ceased to feel and manifest affection and gratitude to Richard; and he has been heard to say, that he was sure, if Solomon had known Dicky, he would have pronounced that, instead of four, “there be five things upon the earth which are little, but they are exceeding wise.”
We scarcely need add, that Richard was allowed the gratification of a visit to his sister; but our readers may have some pleasure in being told, that when the brother and sister again parted, Mrs. Aikin presented each of them a breastpin containing their mother’s hair, and on their reverses was inscribed, “God will provide.”
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
The Deformed Boy
Subject
The topic of the resource
Charity, virtue, and honesty.
Description
An account of the resource
A poor young boy, whose legs have been affected by rickets, attracts the attention and charity of kind friends due to his good humor and virtue.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria [by the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live & Let Live," &c.]
Source
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<em>Stories for Young Persons,</em> pp. 9-38.
Publisher
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New York: Harper & Brothers
Date
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1840
Contributor
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Angie Lydon, Michael Nicosa, Cyntheara Tham, L. Damon Bach, D. Gussman
Relation
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Originally published as <em>The Deformed Boy. </em>By the author of "Redwood," &c. Brookfield: E. and G. Merriam Printers, 1826. <br />Reprinted as <em>The Deformed Boy.</em> By the author of "Redwood." Springfield: Merriam, Little & Co, 1831.<br />Collected in Stories for Young Persons, 1840, 9-38, reprinted 1841, 1842, 1846, 1855, 1860; reprinted 184? By the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live and Let Live," &c. London: W. Smith.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1840
4th of July
abandonment
Aeolus
Aladdin's lamp
almshouse
Apollo
benevolence
Benjamin Franklin
boyhood
charity
Christianity
Consumption
Cotton Mather
deathbed
deformity
fairy
Fortunatus' cap
funeral
gender roles
girls-work
God
gratitude
H. Gally Knight
Honesty
Independence Day
intemperance
juvenile literature
knitting
laudanum
literacy
Magnalia Christi Americana
marriage
Midas
Mothers
orphans
Ovid
philosopher's stone
poverty
prayer
Proverbs 30:24
Psalm 103
public assistance
public education
rickets
self reliance
sewing
shame
shopkeeper
sons
star-spangled banner
Stories for Young Persons
tears
virtue
widows
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/b72eec741252b21c161f0b0094837cb0.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=N1po7ChRSM4ZdOcxknm7ma3z9dwt51lls8vO9omtDUWM0p9me%7ESDEcnKOIC-F3vMcotRSUnEJxwe-1lGigKH5kzEhzBMjdPGj9ezNV4HVdMTF1NADDFoI5lqGwikHuaW07XCjM3%7ERsrtLow0FNEEpQtoO3WBie64%7ENUiFLXI4siXgBlQyzi6tP6sEfU2dTZ4ihPBkIwbMMW95ZBSDWm3c9vAsWiEt4xVv9DquSZjmZ5uCDTo8TUPpjZyQb3EKbc6t98GnqbVSog1g1FIl%7EaODCy1vWy27lWa1W2xYuHSaF7hCNWWF0JJtOqQ0QlkBWMlQDPsyM3pn3OdcC-o65sbFQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5f1b1d8b1ddde5de35e83b921acc61bd
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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1826
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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MODERN CHIVALRY.
_____
BY THE AUTHOR OF REDWOOD.
_____
“But when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or the body---and when the hour of death comes, that comes to high and low---Oh, my leddy, then it is’na what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune for others, that we think on maist pleasantly.”---Heart of Midlothian.
_____
THE assertion that a tale is founded on fact, is a pious fraud of story tellers, too stale to impose on any but the very young, or very credulous. We hope therefore, not to be suspected of resorting to an expedient that would expose our poverty without relieving it, when we declare that the leading incidents of the following tale are true—that they form, in that district of country where some of the circumstances transpired, a favourite and well authenticated tradition—and that our hero boasts with well-earned self-complacency, that there is no name better known than his from ‘Cape May to the Head of Elk.’ That name, however honourable as it is, must be suppressed, and we here honestly beg the possessor’s pardon for compelling him, for the first time in his life, to figure under false colours.
[6]
In the year 1768, an American vessel lying in the Thames and bound to Oxford, a small sea-port on the eastern shore of Maryland, was hailed by a boat containing a youth, who, on presenting himself to the captain, stated that he had a fancy for a sailor’s life, and offered his services for two years, on the simple condition of kind treatment. The captain, though himself a coarse illiterate man, perceived in the air and language of the lad indications of good breeding, and deeming him some disobedient child, or possibly a runaway apprentice, declined receiving him. But William Herion, as he called himself, was so earnest in his solicitations, and engaging in his manners, and the captain, withal, in pressing need of a cabin-boy, that he waved his scruples, quieted his conscience with the old opiate that it was best not to be more nice than wise, and without inquiring too curiously into the boy’s right of self-disposal, drew up some indentures, by which he entitled himself to two years’ service.
The boy was observed for the first day to wear a troubled countenance. His eye glanced around with incessant restlessness, as if in eager search of some expected object. While the ship glided down the Thames, he gazed on the shore as if he looked for some signal on which his life depended, and when she passed Gravesend, the last point of embarkation, he wept convulsively. The captain believed him to be dis-
[7]
turbed with remorse of conscience; the sailors, that these heart-breakings were lingerings for his native land, and all hinted their rude consolations. Soothed by their friendly efforts, or by his own reflections, or perhaps following the current of youth that naturally flows to happiness, William soon became tranquil, and sometimes even gay. He kept, as the sailors said, on the fair weather side of the captain, a testy, self-willed old man, who loved but three things in the world—his song, his glass, and his own way.
All that had been fabled of the power of music over stones and brutes, was surpassed by the effect of the lad’s melting voice on the icy heart of the captain, whom frty years of absolute power had rendered as despotic as a Turkish Pacha. When their old commander blew his stiffest gale, as the sailors were wont to term his blustering passions, Will could, they said, sing him into a calm. Will of course became a doting piece to the whole ship’s company. They said he was a trim built lad, too neat and delicate a piece of workmanship for the stormy sea. They laughed at his slender fingers, fitter to manage threads than ropes, passed many jokes upon his soft blue eyes and fair round cheeks, and in their rough language expressed Sir Toby’s prayer, that “Jupiter in his next commodity of hair, would send the boy a beard.” In the main Will bore their jokes without flinching, and returned them with even measure; but sometimes when they verged to rudeness, his rising blush or a tear
[8]
stealing from his downcast eye, expressed an instinctive and unsullied modesty, whose appeal touched the best feelings of these coarse men.
The ship made a prosperous voyage, and in due time arrived off the American coast. It is a common custom with sailors to greet the first sight of land with a sacrifice to Bacchus. The natural and legalized revel was as extravagant on this, as it usually is on similar occasions. The captain with unwonted good humour, dealt out the liquor most liberally to the crew, and bade William sing them his best songs. Will obeyed, and song after song, and glass after glass carried them, as they said, far above high water mark. Their language and manners became intolerable to William, and he endeavoured to steal away with the intention of hiding himself in the cabin, till the revel was over. One of the sailors suspecting his design, caught him rudely and swore he would detain him in his arms. William struggled, freed himself, and darted down the companion way, the men following and shouting.
The captain stood at the entrance of the cabin door. William sunk down at his feet terrified and exhausted, and screaming “protect me—oh! For the love of heaven, protect me.”
The captain demanded the occasion of the uproar, and ordered the men to stand back. They, however, stimulated to reckless courage, and in sight of the land and independence, no longer feared his authority, and
[9]
they swore that they would not be balked of their frolic. Poor Will, already feeling their hands upon him, clung in terror to the captain, and one fear overcoming another, confessed that his masculine dress was a disguise, and wringing his hands with shame and anguish, supplicated protection as a helpless girl.
The sailors touched with remorse and pity, retreated; but the brutal captain spurned the trembling supplicant with his foot, swearing a round oath that it was the first time he had been imposed on, and it should be the last. Unfortunately the old man, priding himself on his sagacity, was as confident of his own infallibility as the most devoted Catholic is of the Pope’s. This was his last voyage, and after playing Sir Oracle, for forty years—to have been palpably deceived—incontrovertibly outwitted by a girl of fifteen, was a mortification that his vanity could not brook. He swore he would have his revenge, and most strictly did he perform his vow. He possessed a plantation in the vicinity of Oxford; thither he conveyed the unhappy girl, and degraded her to the rank of a common servant, among the negro slaves in his kitchen.
The captain’s wrath was magnified, by the stranger’s persisting in refusing to disclose the motive of her deception, to reveal her family, or even to tell her name. Her new acquaintance were at a loss what to call her, till the captain’s daughter, who had been
[10]
on a visit to Philadelphia, and seen the Winter’s Tale performed there, bestowed on her the pretty appellative of Hermione’s lost child, Perdita.
The captain, a common case, was the severest sufferer by his own passions. His wife complained that his “venture,” as she provokingly styled poor Perdita, was a useless burden on her household—“a fine lady born and bred, like feathers, and flowers, and French goods, pretty to look at, but fit for no use in the world.” The captain’s daughters partly instigated by compassion, and partly by the striking contrast between the delicate graces of the stranger and their own buxom beauty, incessantly teased their father to send her back to her own country; and neighbours and acquaintances were forever letting fall some observation on the beauty of the girl, or some allusion to her story, that was a spark of fire to the captain’s gunpowder temper.
Weeks and months rolled heavily on without a dawn of hope to poor Perdita. She was too young and inexperienced herself, to contrive any mode of relief, and no one was likely to undertake voluntarily the difficult enterprise of rescuing her from her thraldom. Her condition was thus forlorn, when her story came to the ears of Frank Stuart, a gallant young sailor on board the Hazard, a vessel lying in the stream off Oxford, and on the eve of sailing for Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Frank stood deservedly high in the confidence of his commander, and on
[11]
Sunday, the day preceding that appointed for the departure of the ship, he obtained leave to go on shore. His youthful imagination was excited by the story of the oppressed stranger, and he strolled along the beach in the direction of her master’s plantation, in the hope of gratifying his curiosity by a glimpse of her. As he approached the house, he perceived that the front blinds were closed, and inferring thence that the family were absent, he ventured within the bounds of the plantation, and saw at no great distance from him a young female sitting on a bench beneath a tree. She leaned her head against its trunk, with an air of dejectedness and abstraction, that encouraged the young man to hope he had already attained his object. As he approached nearer, the girl started from her musings and would have retreated to the house, but suddenly inspired by her beauty and youth with a resolution to devote himself to her service, he besought her to stop for one instant and listen to him. She turned and gazed at him as if she would have perused his heart. Frankness and truth were written on his face by the finger of heaven. She could not fear any impertinence from him, and farther assured by his respectful manner, when he added, “I have something particular to say to you—but we must luff and bear away, for we are in too plain sight of the look out there,” and he pointed to the house—she smiled and followed him to a more secluded part of the grounds. As soon as he was sure
[12]
of being beyond observation, “Do you wish,” he asked with professional directness, “to return to old England?”
She could not speak, but she clasped her hands, and the tears gushed like an open fountain from her eyes—“you need not say any more—you need not say any more,” he exclaimed, for he felt every tear to be a word spoken to his heart—“If you will trust me,” he continued, “I swear, and so God help me as I speak the truth, I will treat you as if you were my sister. Our ship sails to-morrow morning at day light, make a tight bundle of your rigging, and meet me at twelve o’clock to-night at the gate of the plantation. Will you trust me?”
“Heaven has sent you to me,” replied the poor girl, her face brightening with hope, “and I will not fear to trust you.”
They then separated—Perdita to make her few preparations, and Frank to contrive the means of executing his romantic enterprise.
Precisely at the appointed hour the parties met at the place of rendezvous. Perdita was better furnished for her voyage than could have been anticipated, from the durance she had suffered. A short notice and a scant wardrobe, were never known to oppose an obstacle to a heroine’s compassing sea and land; but as we have dispensed with the facilities of fiction, we are bound to account for Perdita’s being in possession of the necessaries of life, and it is due to the
[13]
captain’s daughter to state, that her feminine sympathy had moved her from time to time to grant generous supplies to Perdita, which our heroine did not fail to acknowledge on going away, by a letter enclosing a valuable ring.
A few whispered sentences of caution, assurance and gratitude, were reciprocated by Frank and Perdita, as they bent their hasty steps to the landing-place where he had left his boat; and when he had handed her into it, and pushed from the shore on to his own element, he felt the value of the trust which this beautiful young creature had reposed to him. Never in the days of knightly deeds was there a sentiment of purer chivalry, than that which inspired the determined resolution and romantic devotion of the young sailor. He was scarcely twenty, the age of fearless project, and self-confidence. How soon is the one checked by disappointments—the other humbled by experience of the infirmity of human virtue!
Stuart had not confided his designs to any of his shipmates. He was therefore obliged warily to approach the ship, and to get on board with the least possible noise. He had just time to secrete Perdita amidst bales of tobacco, in the darkest place in the hold of the vessel, when a call of “all hands on deck,” summoned him to duty. He was foremost at his post, and all was stir and bustle to get the vessel under way. The sails were hoisted—the anchor
[14]
weighed, and all in readiness, when a signal was heard from the shore, and presently a boat filled with men seen approaching. The men probed to be Perdita’s master, a sheriff, and his attendants. They produced a warrant empowering them to search the vessel. The old captain affirmed that the girl had been seen on the preceding day, talking with a young spark, who was known to have come on shore from the Hazard. In his fury he foamed at the mouth, swore he would have the runaway dead or alive, and that her aider and abettor should be given over to condign punishment. The master of the Hazard declared, that if any of his men were found guilty, he would resign them to the dealings of land law, and to prove if there was a plot, he was quite innocent, but he not only freely abandoned his vessel to the search, but himself was most diligent in the inquest. The men were called up, confronted and examined; not one appeared more cool and unconcerned than Frank Stuart, and after every inquiry, after ransacking as they believed, in every possible place of concealment, the pursuers were compelled to withdraw, baffled and disappointed.
The vessel proceeded on her voyage.—Frank requested the captain’s permission to swing a hammock alongside his birth, on the pretence that the birth was rendered damp and unwholesome by a leak in the deck above it. The reasonable petition was of course granted, and when night had closed watch-
[15]
ful eyes, and dropped her friendly veil, so essential to the clandestine enterprises of the most ingenious, Frank rescued Perdita from a position, in which she had suffered not only the inconveniences, but the terrors of an African slave; and wrapping her in his own dreadnought, and drawing his watchcap over her bright luxuriant hair, he conducted her past the open door of the captain’s state-room, and past his sleeping companions, to his own birth; then whispering to her, “that she was safe as a ship in harbour,” he gave her some bread and a glass of wine, for which he had bartered his allowance of spirits, and laid himself down in his own hammock, to the companionship of such thoughts as are ministering angels about the pillow of the virtuous.
The following day a storm arose—a storm still remembered, as the most terrible and disastrous that ever occurred in Chesapeake Bay. There were several passengers of consequence on board the Hazard, among others two deacons who were going to the mother country to receive orders—for then, we of the colonies, who have since taken all rights into our own hands, dared not exercise the rights God had given us, without the assent of the Lords Bishops. Night came on, the storm increased, and then, when the ship was in extremity, when death howled in every blast, when “the timid shrieked and the brave stood still”—then was the unwearied activity, the exhaustless invention, and the unconquerable re-
[16]
solution of Frank Stuart, the last human support and help of the unhappy crew. The master of the Hazard was advanced in life, and unnerved by the usual feebleness and timidity of age. He had but just enough presence of mind left, to estimate the masterly conduct of young Stuart, and he abandoned the command of the vessel to him, and retired to what is too often only a last resource—to prayers with the churchmen.
Once or twice Stuart disappeared from the deck, ran to whisper a word of encouragement to his trembling charge, and then returned with renewed vigour to his duty. Owing, under Providence, to his exertions, the Hazard rode out a storm which filled the seaman’s annals with many a tale of terror. Gratitude is too apt to rest in second causes, in the visible means of deliverance, and perhaps an undue portion was now felt towards the intrepid youth. The passengers lavished their favours on him—they supplied his meals with the most delicate wines and fruits, and the choicest viands from their own stores; he, with the superstition characteristic of his profession, firmly believed that heaven had sent the storm to unlock their hearts to him, and thus afford him the means of furnishing Perdita with dainties suited to her delicate appetite, so that she fared, as he afterwards boasted, like the daughter of a king in her father’s palace.
Stuart was kept in a state of perpetual alarm by the mate of the vessel. He knew that this fellow, one
[17]
of those imbeciles that bend like a reed before a strong blast, had been hostile to him ever since the storm, when the accidental superiority of his station had been compelled to bow to Frank’s superior genius. He was aware that the mate had, by malicious insinuations, estranged the captain from him, and he was but too certain that he should have nothing to hope, if his secret were discovered by this base man. Perhaps this apprehension gave him an air of unwonted constraint in the presence of his enemy; certain it is, the mate’s eye often rested on him with an expression of eager watchfulness and suspicion, and Stuart, perceiving it, would contract his brow and compress his lips, in a way that betrayed how hard he strove with his rising passion. The difficulty of concealment was daily increasing, as one after another of his messmates, either from some inevitable accident, or from a communication becoming necessary on his part, obtained possession of his secret. But his ascendency over them was complete, and by threats or persuasions, he induced them all to promise inviolable secrecy. There is an authority in a determined spirit, to which men naturally do homage. It is heaven’s own charter of a power, to which none can refuse submission.
Frank never permitted his comrades to approach Perdita, or to speak a word to her; but in the depths of the night, when the mate’s and the old captain’s senses were locked in sleep, he would bring her forth
[18]
to breathe the fresh air. Seated on the gunwale, she would bestow on him the only reward in her gift—the treasures of her sweet voice; and Frank said the winds sat still in the sails to listen. There were times when not a human sound was heard in the ship, when these two beings, borne gently on by the tides in mid ocean, felt as if they were alone in the universe.
It was at such times that Frank felt an irrepressible curiosity to know something more of the mysterious history of Perdita, whose destiny heaven, he believed, had committed to his honour; and once he ventured to introduce the topic nearest his heart, by saying, “you bade me call you Perdita, but I do not like the name; it puts me too much in mind of those rodomontade novels, that turn the girls’ heads and set them asailing, as it were, without chart or compass, in quest of unknown worlds”—He hesitated; it was evident he had betaken himself to a figure, to avoid an explicit declaration of his wishes—after a moment’s pause he added—“it suits me best to be plain-spoken—it is not the name that I object to so much, but—but, hang it—I think you know Frank Stuart now, well enough to trust him with your real name.”
The unhappy girl cast down her eyes, and said “that Perdita suited her better than any other name.”
“Then you will not trust me?”
“Say not so, my noble, generous friend,” she ex-
[19]
claimed—“trust you!—have I not trusted you!—you know that I would trust you with any thing that was my own—but my name—my father’s name, I have forfeited by my folly.”
“Oh no—that you shall not say—a brave ship is not run down with a light breeze, and a single folly of a young girl cannot sink a good name—a folly!” he continued, thus indirectly pushing inquiries, “if it is a folly, it’s a common one—there’s many a stouter heart than your’s, that’s tried to face a gale of love, and been obliged to bear about and scud before the wind.”
“Who told you?—how did you discover?” demanded Perdita in a hurried, alarmed manner.
Frank’s generous temper disdained to surprise the unwary girl into confidence, and he immediately surrendered the advantage he had gained. “Nobody has told me,” he said—“I have discovered nothing—I only guessed, as the yankees say—now wipe away your tears—the sea wants no more salt water, and believe me Frank Stuart has not such a woman’s spirit in him, that he cannot rest content without knowing a secret.”
In spite of Frank’s manly resolution, he did afterwards repeatedly intimate the longings of his curiosity, but they were always met with such unaffected distress on the part of Perdita, that he said he had not the heart to press them.
As the termination of the voyage approached,
[20]
Stuart became more intensely anxious lest his secret should be discovered. Stuart became more intensely anxious lest his secret should be discovered. The mildest consequence would be, that he should forfeit his wages. That he cared not for¬—like Goldsmith’s poor soldier, he could lie on a bare board, and thank God he was so well off. “While he had youth and health,” he said, “and there was a ship afloat on the wide sea, he was provided for.” But his companions who had been true to him might forfeit their pay; for, by their fidelity to him, they had in some measure become his accessaries. But he found consolation even under this apprehension; “the honest lads,” he said, “would soon make a full purse empty, but the memory of a good action was a treasure gold could not buy—a treasure that would stick by them forever—a treasure for the port of heaven.” There was, however, one apprehended evil, for which his philosophy offered no antidote.
He was sure the captain would deem it his duty, or make it his will, (even Frank’s slight knowledge of human nature told him that will and duty were too often convertible terms,) to return the fugitive to her soi-disant master in Maryland. Nothing could exceed the vigilance with which he watched every movement and turn that threatened a detection, or the ingenuity with which he evaded every circumstance that tended to it—but alas! the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.
One night when it was blowing a gale, a particular
[21]
rope was wanted, which the mate remembered to have stowed away in the steerage. Frank eagerly offered to search for it, but the mate was certain that no one but himself could find it, and taking a lantern he went in quest of it. Frank followed him with fear and trembling. He has since been in many a desperate sea-fight, but he declares he never felt so much like a coward as at that moment. The mate’s irritable humour had been somewhat stirred by Frank’s persisting in his offer, to go for the rope, and when he turned and saw him at his heels, he asked him angrily, “what he was dogging him for?” “The ship rolls so heavily,” replied Frank in a subdued tone, “that I thought you might want me to hold the lantern for you.” Frank’s unwonted meekness quite conciliated the mate, and though he rejoined, “I think I have been used to the rolling of a ship a little longer than you, young man,” he spoke good-naturedly, and Frank ventured to proceed.
Most fortunately, as Frank thought, the mate directed his steps to the side of the ship opposite Perdita, but making a little circuit in his return, he passed between Frank’s hammock and Perdita’s birth. At this moment the poor lad’s heart, as he afterwards averred, stopped beating. The ship rolled on that side, and the mate catching hold of the birth to save himself from falling, exclaimed, “In heaven’s name what lazy devil is here, when every hand is wanted on deck;” and raising his lantern to identify
[22]
the supposed delinquent sailor, he discovered the beautiful girl. For a moment he was dumb with amazement, but soon recalling the search at Oxford, the whole truth flashed upon him: he turned to Frank, and shaking his fist in his face, “Ah, this is you, Stuart!” he said, and enforced his gesture with a horrible oath.
“Yes,” retorted Frank, now standing boldly forth, “it is me, thank God”—and then drawing a curtain that he had arranged before Perdita’s birth, he bade her fear nothing.
“Oh Frank,” she exclaimed, “I cannot fear where you are.” This involuntary expression of confidence went to her protector’s heart. There is no man so dead to sentiment, as not to be touched by the trust of woman, especially if she be young and beautiful. Frank was at the age when sentiment is absolute, and he was resolved to secure his treasure at every hazard. Perdita’s declaration, while it stimulated his zeal, awakened the mean jealousies of the mate.
“And so my pretty miss,” he said, “you fear nothing where this fellow is—I can tell you, for all that he may boast, and you may believe, he is neither master nor mate yet, and please the Lord I’ll prove as much to him this very night.”
“And how will you prove it?” asked Stuart, in a voice which, though as calm as he could make it, resembled the low growl of a bull dog before he springs on his victim.
[23]
“I’ll prove it, my lad, by telling the whole story of your smuggled goods to the captain. A pretty piece of work this, to be carried on under the nose of your officers. It’s no better than a mutiny, for I’ll warrant it the whole ship’s crew are leagued with you.”
Stuart reined in his passions, and condescended to expostulate. He represented to the mate that he could gain nothing by giving information to the captain. He described with his simple eloquence, the oppression the poor girl had already suffered; the cruelty of disappointing her present hopes, just as they were on the point of being realized, for the ship was not more than twenty-four hours sail from Cowes; he appealed to his compassion, his generosity, his manliness, but in vain, he found no accessible point. The mean pride of having discovered the secret, and the pleasure of humbling Stuart, mastered every good feeling of the mate, if indeed he possessed any, and he turned away, saying with a sort of chuckling exultation, “that he should go and do his duty.”
“Stop,” cried Frank, grasping his arm with a gripe that threatened to crush it. “Stop and hear me—I swear by him that made me, if you dare so much as to hint by word, look or movement, the secret you have discovered here, you shall not cumber the earth another day—day—said I—no, not an hour—I’ll send you to the devil as swift as a canon ball ever went to the mark—Look,” he continued, tearing away the
[24]
curtain he had just drawn before Perdita—“could any thing short of the malice of Satan himself contrive to harm such helpless innocence as that—do you hear me”—he added in a voice that outroared the storm—“in God’s name look at me, and see I am in earnest.”
The mate had no doubt to satisfy, he trembled like an aspen leaf—in vain he essayed to raise his eyes, the passion that glanced in Frank’s face, and dilated his whole figure, affected the trembling wretch like a stroke of the sun. He reeled in Frank’s iron grasp, his abject fear changed Stuart’s wrath to contempt, and giving him an impulse that sent him quite out of the door, he returned to sooth Perdita with the assurance that they had nothing to fear from the “cowardly dog.” She was confounded with terror, but much more frightened by the vehemence of Stuart’s passion than by the threats of the mate. She had always seen her protector move like an unobstructed stream along its course, in calm and silent power. Now he was the torrent, that no human force could control or direct.
She saw before her calamities far worse than any she had endured. She believed that the mate, as soon as he was recovered from his paroxysm of terror, would communicate his discovery. She apprehended the most fatal issue from Frank’s threats and determined resolution, and the possibility that his generous zeal for her might involve him in crime, was intolerable to her. Such thoughts do not become less
[25]
terrible by solitary meditation—in the solemnity of night and amidst the howlings of a storm. Every blast spoke reproach and warning to Perdita, and tortured by those harpies remorse and fear, she took a sudden resolution to reveal herself to the captain, feeling at the moment that if she warded off evil from her protector, she could patiently abide the worst consequences to herself. She sprang from her birth as if afraid of being checked by a second thought, and rushed from the steerage to the cabin. All was perfect stillness there—the passengers had retired to their beds. The captain was sitting by the table, he had been reading, but his book had fallen to the floor, his head had sunk on his breast, and he was in a profound sleep. The light shone full on his weather-beaten face—on large uncouth features—on lines deepened to furrows—and muscles stiffened by time. Never was there an aspect more discouraging to one who needed mercy, and poor Perdita stood trembling before him and close to him, and dared not, could not speak. She heard a footstep approaching, still her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. Then she heard her name pronounced in a low whisper at the cabin door, and turning, she saw Stuart there beckoning most earnestly to her. She shook her head, signed to him to withdraw, and laid her hand on the captain’s shoulder. There was but one way to thwart her intentions, and Frank’s was not a hesi-
[26]
tating spirit, he sprang forward, caught her in his arms, and before the old man had rubbed his eyes fairly open, Perdita was again safe in the steerage.
Stuart’s threats produced the intended effect on the mate; he was completely intimidated. He scarcely ventured out of Frank’s sight lest he should incur his dangerous suspicions, and the next day the vessel, accelerated by the gale of the preceding evening, arrived at Cowes. The captain and mate immediately landed, and Stuart no longer embarrassed by their presence, was able to take the necessary measures for Perdita. She assured him that if once conveyed to the main land, to Portsmouth or Southampton, she could herself take the coach for London, and there, she said, happiness or misery awaited her, which her noble protector could neither promote or avert.
A wherry was procured. Before Perdita was transferred to it, she took leave of all the sailors, shook hands with each of them, and expressed to them individually, her gratitude and good wishes. Her words conveyed nothing but a sense of obligation, but there was something of condescension in her manner, and much of the grace of high station that contrasted strikingly with the abased, fearful, and shrinking air of the girl who had, till then, only been seen gliding like a spectre along the deck, attended by Stuart, and veiled by the shadows of night. As the wherry parted from the ship, she bowed her head
[27]
and waved her handkerchief to Frank’s shipmates, and they returned her salutation with three loud cheers.
Stuart attended her to an inn at Portsmouth, engaged for her a seat in the London coach, and then followed her to a private apartment which he had secured, to bid her farewell.
Perdita, from the moment she had felt her emancipation from a degrading condition, and the joy of setting her foot again on her native land, had manifested perhaps, an undue elation of sprits, an elation so opposite to Frank’s feelings, that to him it was a grating discord; but when she saw him for the last time, every other emotion gave place to unfeigned sorrow and inexpressive gratitude.
Stuart laid a purse on the table beside her. “My shipmates” he said, “receive their wages to-morrow, so they have been right glad to make their pockets clear of the little trash that was in them, which may be of service to you, though it is of no use to them.”
“Oh Frank!” she exclaimed, “if I should ever have any thing in my gift—if I could but reward you for all you have done for me!”
All the blood in Frank’s heart rushed to his face, and he said in a voice almost inarticulate with offended pride, “there are services that money cannot buy, and thank God, there are feelings in a poor man’s breast worth more than all the gold in the king’s coffers.”
“Oh what have I said,” exclaimed Perdita, “I
[28]
would rather die—rather return to the depth of misery from which you rescued me—yes, ten times told, than to speak one word that should offend you—you to whom I owe every thing—my life—and more than life. I did not say—I did not think, that money could reward you.”
“Do not speak that word again,” said Frank, half ashamed of his pride, and half glorying in it. “Reward! I want none but your safety and the blessed memory of having done my duty. Money—ho! I care no more for it, than for the dust I tread upon.”
“I know it—I am sure of it,” cried Perdita, humbled for the moment by a sense of an elevation of soul in Frank, that exalted him far above any accidents of birth or education. “Frank, you are rich in every thing that is good and noble—and what am I, to talk of reward—poor—poor in every thing but gratitude to you, Frank—I am not poor in that—you must not then despise me, and you will not forget me—and you will keep this ring for my sake.”
Frank took the ring, and the lily hand she extended to him—his tears fell fast upon it—he struggled for a moment with his feelings, then dashed away his tears, and half-articulating “God bless you!” he hurried out the apartment. Thus separating himself from the beautiful young creature, for whom he had performed a most difficult service with religious fidelity; and of whose name even, he was forever to remain in ignorance.
[29]
The enterprising talent of Stuart ensured its appropriate reward. In one year from the memorable voyage above related, he commanded a vessel; and on the breaking out of the revolutionary war, he devoted himself to his country’s cause, with the fervent zeal with characterized and consecrated that cause—which made the common interest a matter of feeling—a family affair to each individual.
Stuart commanded an armed merchantman, and disputes with the noted Paul Jones the honour of having first struck down the British flag. However this may be, he was distinguished for his skill and intrepidity—and, above all, (and this distinction endures when the most brilliant achievements have become insignificant,) for his humanity to those whom the fortune of war cast in his power.
While on a cruise off the West Indies, Stuart intercepted an enemy’s ship bound to Antigua. His adversary was far superior to him in men and guns, but as it did not comport with Stuart’s bold spirit to make any very nice calculations of an enemy’s superiority, he prepared without hesitation for action. The contest was a very severe one, and the victory long doubtful; but at last the British captain struck his colours. Though we certainly are disposed to render all honour to the skill of our hero, yet we dare not claim for him the whole merit of his success, but rather solve the mystery of victory at such odds, by quoting the expression of a patriotic English boy,
[30]
who said on a similar occasion—“Ah, but the Americans would not have beaten, if the Lord had not been on their side.”
After the fight the English commander requested an interview with captain Stuart; he informed him that the wife and mother of the governor of Antigua were on board his vessel, and that they were almost distracted with terror; he entreated therefore that they might be received with the humanity which their sex demanded, and the deference always due to high station. Stuart replied, “that as to high station, he held that all God’s creatures, who feared their Creator and did their duty, were on a dead level—and as to the duties of humanity, he trusted no American captain need go further than his own heart, for instructions how to perform them.” The British captain was ignorant of the spirit of the times, and auguring nothing favourable from Stuart’s republican reply, returned with a heavy heart to the ladies to conduct them on board the captor’s ship. The elder lady the mother, was a woman of rank, with all the pride and prejudice of high birth. The Americans she deemed all of that then much despised order—the common people; rebels and robbers were the best names she bestowed on them, and in the honesty of her ignorance she sincerely believed that she had fallen into the hands of pirates. The younger lady, though deeply affected by their disastrous situation, endeavoured to calm her mother’s apprehensions, and assured her that
[31]
she had heard there were men of distinguished humanity among the American sailors. The old lady shook her head incredulously. “Oh heaven help us,” she groaned, “what can we expect from such horrid fellows, when they know they have lady Strangford and the right honourable Mrs. Liston in their power—and your beauty, Selina! your beauty child! it is a fatal treasure to fall among thieves with—depend on’t— arrange your veil so that it will hang in thick folds over your face—I will draw my hood close.” The precaution on her part seemed quite superfluous, but the young lady obscured some of heaven’s cunningest workmanship with her impervious veil.
The servants were ordered to deliver the ladies baggage to the American captain, with a request that some necessaries might be reserved. Stuart answered that he interfered with no private property, and that all the baggage of the ladies remained at their disposal.
Lady Strangford was somewhat reassured by this generosity, and attended by her captain and followed by her daughter and servants, she proceeded to Stuart’s ship. Stuart advanced to meet them and offered her his hand—she proudly declined it and passed silently on. A gust of wind blew back her hood—“Faith!” exclaimed one of the sailor who observed the scrupulosity with which she replaced it, “the old lady had best show her face, for I’m sure we’ll all give a good birth to such an iron-bound coast as that.” But as the same breeze blew aside the young lady’s
[32]
veil, there was a general murmur of admiration. She had at the moment graciously accepted the tender of Stuart’s hand, in the hope of counteracting the impression of her mother’s rudeness, and when her veil was removed he had a full view of her face; conscious that many were gazing on her, she blushed deeply, and hastily readjusted it without raising her eyes. Stuart dropped her hand—smothered an exclamation, and retreated a few paces, leaving her to follow her mother alone.
One of his officers observing his emotion, said, “How is this captain? you don’t wink at a broadside, and yet you start at one flash from a lady’s bright face.”
“I got a scratch on my right arm in the engagement,” returned Stuart, evading the raillery, “and the lady’s touch gave me a pang.”
He then retired to his state-room, and wrote the following note, which he directed to be delivered to the young lady. “Captain Stuart’s compliments to the ladies under his protection—he incloses a ring once bestowed upon him in acknowledgment of honourable conduct, as a pledge to them that the hand that has worn such a badge shall never be sullied by a bad deed. Captain Stuart will proceed immediately to Antigua, conveying the ladies with the least possible delay to their destined port.” Such a communication to prisoners of war, might naturally excite emotion in a generous bosom, but it did not account for the ex-
[33]
cess of it manifested by the young lady. She became pale and faint, and when her mother, alarmed at such a demonstration of feeling, took up the note, she caught it from her, and then, after a second thought, relinquished it to her.
“I see nothing in this Selina,” said the old lady, after perusing and reperusing it, “to throw you into such a flurry, but you are young, and are thinking no doubt of getting home to your husband and children, young people’s feelings, are, like soft wax, easily melted.”
“There is a warmth in some kindness,” rejoined the daughter earnestly, “that ought to melt the hardest substance.”
“Really, I do not see any thing so very striking in this man’s civility. It would be, of course you know in the British navy; politeness, and all that sort of thing being inborn in an Englishman, but it may be, indeed I fancy it is, quite unheard of in an American.”
“Shall I write our acknowledgments, madam, to captain Stuart?” asked the young lady with evident solicitude to drop the conversation.
“Certainly—certainly, my dear Selina, always be ceremoniously polite with your inferiors.”
“Madam, I think this noble captain,” she would have added, “has no superiors,” but afraid of further discussion, she concluded her sentence with the tame addition, “richly deserves our thanks.”
She then wrote the following note. “Mrs. Liston,
[34]
in behalf of her mother in law lady Strangford, and on her own part, offers her warmest thanks to captain Stuart—the ladies esteem it heaven’s peculiar mercy that captain Stuart is their captor. They have already had such experience of his magnanimity, as to render them perfectly tranquil in reposing their safety and happiness on his honour.” The ring, without any allusion to it, was reinclosed.
When captain Stuart had perused the note, he inquired if the lady had not requested to speak with him. He was answered that so far from intimating such a wish, she had said to her mother that she should remain in her state-room, till she was summoned to leave captain Stuart’s vessel. The captain looked extremely chagrined, he knit his brows, and bit his lips, and gave his orders hastily, with the usual sea expletives appended to them—“a sure sign,” his men said, “that something went wrong with their captain,” but these signs of repressed emotion were all the expression he allowed to his offended pride, or perhaps his better feelings. The Ladies were scrupulously served, and every deferential attention paid to them that lady Strangford would have anticipated in the best disciplined ship in his majesty’s service.
A few days’ sail brought the schooner to the port of Antigua. She entered the harbour under a flag of truce, and remained there just time enough for the disembarkation of the ladies and their suite. During this ceremony the captain remained in his birth, under
[35]
pretext of a violent head-ache; but it was observed that they were no sooner fairly off than he was on the deck again, moving about with an activity and even impetuosity that seemed quite incompatible with a debilitating malady.
Captain Stuart continued for some months a fortunate cruise about the West India islands. His was not the prudent maxim that “discretion is the better part of valour,” but when valour would have been bootless he knew how to employ the alternative, and his little schooner was celebrated as the most desperate fighter and the swiftest sailor in those seas, and her captain became so formidable, that the English admiral off that station gave orders that the schooner should be followed and destroyed at all hazards.
Soon after this he was pursued by a ship of the line and compelled to take refuge in the harbour of St. Kitts, a French, and of course a friendly port to the American flag. Here he anchored his vessel, and deeming himself perfectly secure, and wearied with hard duty, he retired to his birth after setting a watch, and dismissing his crew to repose. In the middle of the night he was alarmed by an attack from the pursuing frigate, which had contrived to elude the vigilance of the fort that guarded the entrance of the harbour, and was already in such a position in relation to him as to cut off every possibility of escape. His spirit, far from quailing, was exasperated by the surprise. He fought as the most courageous animals
[36]
fight at bay. To increase the horror of his situation, the commander of the fort, from some fatal mistake, opened a fire upon him. He was boarded on all sides by boats manned with eighty-four men. We are too ignorant of such matters, and too peaceably inclined to give any interest to the particulars of a sea-fight. Suffice it to say, that our hero did not surrender till he was himself disabled by wounds, his little band cut down, and his schooner a wreck. When the British commander ascertained the actual force with which he had contended, his pride was stung with the consciousness that a victory so dearly bought, had all of defeat but the disgraceful name; and, incapable of that sympathy which a magnanimous spirit always feels with a noble captive, he arraigned captain Stuart before him as a criminal, and demanded of him how he dared against the law of nations, to defend an indefensible vessel.
“Did you think,” retorted Stuart with cold contempt, “that I had gunpowder and would not burn it? do you talk to me of the law of the nations! I fight after the law of nature, that teaches me to spend the last kernel of powder and the last drop of blood, in my country’s service.” His conqueror’s temper heated before, was inflamed by Stuart’s reply. He ordered him to be manacled and put into close confinement. This conduct may appear extraordinary in the commander of a British frigate, but the English, in their contest with the colonies were not always
[37]
governed by those generous principles, by which they have themselves so much alleviated the miseries of war. A defeated American was treated as a lawful enemy, or a rebel, as suited the individual temper of the conqueror.
The frigate was so much injured in the fight as to render a refit necessary, and her commander sailed with his prize for Antigua.
Stuart well knew that his fidelity to his country, rendered him obnoxious to the severest judgment from the admiralty court, and though he might plead the services he had rendered the ladies of the governor’s family in mitigation of his sentence, he proudly resolved never to advert to favours, which he had reason to believe had been lightly estimated.
Spirits most magnanimous in prosperity are often most lofty in adversity. Frank Stuart, mutilated by wounds, dejected by the fatal calamities of his faithful crew, irritated by the indignities heaped on him by his unworthy captor, and stung by secret thoughts of some real or fancied injury—chafed and overburdened with many griefs, received, and sullenly obeyed a summons to the presence of the governor. It cannot be denied, that reluctantly as he appeared before the governor, he surveyed him at his introduction with a look of keen curiosity. He was not surprised to see a man rather past his prime, though not yet declined into the vale of years. With generous allow-
[38]
ance for the effect of a tropical climate, he might not have been more than forty-five. His physiognomy was agreeable, and his deportment gentlemanly. He received captain Stuart with far more courtesy than was often vouchsafed from an officer of the crown, to one who fought under the rebel banner, and remarking that he looked pale and sick, he begged him to be seated.
Stuart declined the civility, and continued resting on a crutch, which a severe wound in his leg rendered necessary.
“You are the commander of the schooner Betsy?” said the governor.
“What’s left of him,” returned Stuart.
“You appear to be severely wounded,” continued the governor.
“Hacked to pieces,” rejoined Stuart, in a manner suited to the brevity of his reply.
“Your name, I believe, is Frank Stuart?”
“I have no reason to deny the name, thank God.”
“And, thank God, I have reason to bless and honour it,” exclaimed the governor, advancing and grasping Frank’s hand heartily. “What metal did you deem me of, my noble friend, that I should forget such favours as you conferred on me, in the persons of my wife and mother.”
“I have known greater favours than those forgotten,” said Frank, and the sudden illumination of his
[39]
pale face, showed how deeply he felt what he uttered.
“Say you so!” exclaimed the governor with good humoured warmth; “well, but that I am too poor to pay my own debts to you, I should count it a pleasure to assume those of all my species—but heaven grant, my friend, that you do not allude to my wife and mother. I blamed them much for not bringing you on shore with them—but my mother is somewhat over punctilious, and my wife, poor soul! her nerves were so shattered by that sea-fight, that she is but now herself again. On my word, so far from wanting gratitude to you, she never hears an allusion to you without tears, the language women deal in when words are too cold for them. But come,” concluded the governor, for he found that all his efforts did but add to Stuart’s evident distress, “come, follow me to the drawing-room, the ladies will themselves convince you, how impatient they have been to welcome you.”
“Are they apprised,” asked Stuart, still hesitating and holding back, “whom they are to see?”
“That are they—my mother is as much delighted as if his majesty were in waiting, and my wife is weeping with joy.”
“Perhaps,” said Stuart, still hesitating, “she would rather not see me now.”
“Nonsense, my good friend, come along. It is not for a brave fellow like you to shrink from a few friendly tears from a woman’s eye.”
[40]
Nothing more could be urged, and Stuart followed governor Liston to the presence of the ladies. Lady Strangford rose and offered him her hand with the most condescending kindness. Mrs. Liston rose too, but did not advance till her husband said, “come Selina, speak your welcome to our benefactor—he may misinterpret this expression of your feelings.”
“Oh no,” she said, now advancing eagerly, and fixing her eye on Stuart, while her cheeks, neck, and brow were suffused with crimson, “Oh no, Captain Stuart knows how deeply I must feel benefits, which none but he that bestowed them could forget or undervalue.”
“It was a rule my mother taught me,” replied Frank with bluntness, softened however by a sudden gleam of pleasure, “that givers should not have better memories than receivers.” There was a meaning in his honest phrase hidden from two of his auditors, but quite intelligible to her for whom it was designed, and to our readers, who have doubtless already anticipated that the honourable Mrs. Liston was none other than the fugitive Perdita. A sudden change of colour showed that she felt acutely Stuart’s keen though veiled reproach.
“A benefit,” she replied, still speaking in a double sense, “such as I have received from you, Captain Stuart, may be too deeply felt to be acknowledged by words—now heaven has given us the opportunity of deeds, and you shall find that my grati-
[41]
tude is only inferior to your merit.” Stuart was more accustomed to embody his feelings in action than speech, and he remained silent. He felt as if he were the sport of a dream, when he looked on the transformed Perdita. He knew not why, but invested as she now was, with all the power of wealth and the elegance of fashion, he felt not half the awe of her, as when in her helplessness and dependence, “he had fenced her rounde with many a spelle,” wrought by youthful and chivalric feeling.
He perceived, in spite of Mrs. Liston’s efforts, that his presence was embarrassing to her, and he would have taken leave, but the governor insisted peremptorily on his remaining to dine with him. Then saying that he had indispensable business to transact, and must be absent for a half hour, he would, he said, “leave the ladies to the free expression of their feelings.”
When he was gone, Mrs. Liston said to her mother, “I do not think your little favourite, Francis, is quite well to-day—will you have the goodness to look in upon him and give nurse some advice.” The old lady went without reluctance, as most people do to give advice, and Mrs. Liston turned to Stuart, and said, “I gave my boy your name, with a prayer that God would give him your spirit. Do not, oh do not think me,” she continued, her lip quivering with emotion, “the ungrateful wretch I have appeared. I am condemned to silence by the pride of another.
[42]
My heart rebels, but I am bound to keep that a secret, which my feelings prompt me to publish to the world.” Stuart would have spoken, but she anticipated him: “Listen to me without interruption,” she said, “my story is my only apology, and I have but brief space to tell it in. It was love, as you once guessed, that led me to that mad voyage to America. I had a silly passion for a young Virginian, who had been sent to England for his education—he was nineteen, I fifteen, when we promised to meet on board the ship which conveyed me to America. His purpose, but not his concert with me was discovered, and he was detained in England. You know all the events of my enterprise. I left a letter for my father, informing him that I had determined to abandon England, but I gave him not the slightest clue to my real designs. I was an only, and as you will readily believe, a spoiled child. My mother was not living, and my father hoping that I should soon return, and wishing to veil my folly, gave out that he has sent me to a boarding-school on the continent, and himself retired to Switzerland. When I arrived in London, I obtained his address and followed him. He immediately received me to apparent favour, but never restored me to his confidence. His heart was hardened by my childish folly, and though I recounted to him all my sufferings, I never drew a tear from him; but when I spoke of you, and dwelt on the particulars of your goodness to me, his eye would moisten, and he would exclaim,
[43]
‘God bless the lad.’ I must be brief,” she continued, casting her eye apprehensively at the door; “Mr. Liston came with his mother to Geneva, where we resided; he addressed me—my father favoured his suit, and though he is, as you perceive, much older than myself, I consented to marry him, but not, as I told my father, till I had unfolded my history to him. My father was incensed at what he called my folly—he treated me harshly—I was subdued, and our contest ended in my solemnly swearing never to divulge the secret, on the preservation of which he fancied the honour of his proud name to depend.”
“Thank God,” then exclaimed Frank with a burst of honest feeling, “it was not your pride, cursed pride, and I may still think on Perdita as a true, tender-hearted girl, it was a pleasant spot in my memory,” he continued, dashing away a tear, “and I hated to have it crossed with a black line.”
Mrs. Liston improved all that remained of her mother’s absence in detailing some particulars, not necessary to relate, by which it appeared that notwithstanding she had dispensed with the article of love in her marriage, (we crave mercy of our fair young readers,) her husband’s virtue and indulgence had matured a sentiment of affection, if not as romantic, yet quite as safe and enduring as youthful passion. She assured Stuart that she regarded him as the means of all her happiness. “Not a day passes,” she said, raising her beautiful eyes to heaven, “that I do not
[44]
remember my generous deliverer, where alone I am permitted to speak of him.” The old lady now rejoined them, bringing her grandchild in her arms. Frank threw down his crutch, forgot his wounds, and permitted his full heart to flow out, in the caresses he lavished on his little namesake.
The governor redeemed Stuart’s schooner, and made such representations before the admiralty court of Stuart’s merits, and of the ill treatment he had received from the commander of the frigate, that the court ordered the schooner to be refitted and equipped, and permitted to proceed to sea at the pleasure of captain Stuart. He remained for several days domesticated in the governor’s family, and treated by every member of it with a frank cordiality suited to his temper and merits. Every look, word and action of Mrs. Liston expressed to him, that his singular service was engraven on her heart. He forbore even to allude to it, and with his characteristic magnanimity never inquired, directly or indirectly, her family name. He observed a timidity and apprehensiveness in her manner that resulted from a consciousness that she had, however reluctantly, practiced a fraud on her husband, and he said “that having felt how burdensome it was to keep a secret from his commander for a short voyage, he thought it was quite too heavy a lading for the voyage of life.”
The demonstrations of gratitude which Stuart received from governor Liston and his family, he deem-
[45]
ed out of all proportion to his services, and being more accustomed to bestow than to receive, he became restless, and as soon as his schooner was ready for sea, he announced his departure, and bade his friends farewell. He said that the tears that Perdita, (he always called her Perdita,) shed at parting, were far more precious to him than all the rich gifts she had bestowed on him.
At the moment Stuart set his foot on the deck of his vessel, the American colours, at the governor’s command, were hoisted. The generous sympathies of the multitude were moved, and huzzas from a thousand voices rent the air. Governor Liston and his suite and most of the merchant vessels, then in port, escorted the schooner out of the harbour. Even the stern usages of war cannot extinguish that sentiment in the bosom of man, implanted by God, which leads him to do homage to a brave and generous foe.
Captain Stuart continued to the end of the war, to serve his country with unabated zeal, and, when peace was restored, the same hardy spirit that had distinguished him in perilous times, made him foremost in bold adventure.
He commanded the second American trading vessel that arrived at Canton after the peace; and this vessel with which he sailed over half the globe, was a sloop of eighty tons, little more than half the size of the largest now used for the river trade. This adventure will be highly estimated by those who have
[46]
been so fortu
nate as to read the merry tale of Dolph Heilegher, and who remember the prudence manifested, at that period, by the wary Dutchmen in navigating these small vessels: how they were fain to shelter themselves at night in the friendly harbours with which the river abounds, and, we believe, to avoid adventuring through Haverstraw bay or the Tappan sea, in a high wind.
When Stuart’s little sloop rode into the port of Canton, it was mistaken for a tender from a large ship, and the bold mariner was afterwards familiarly called by the great Hong merchants, “the one-mast captain.”
_____
Fifty-seven years have gone by since the Hazard sailed from Oxford, and our hero is now enjoying in the winter of his life, the fruits of a summer of activity and integrity. Time, which he has well used, has used him gently—his hair is a little thinned and mottled, but is still a sufficient shelter to his honoured head. His eye when he talks of the past, (all good old men love to talk of the past,) rekindles with the fire of youth, his healthful complexion speaks his temperance, and a double row of unimpaired ivory, justifies the pleasant vanity of his boast, that he can still show his teeth to an enemy.
Professional carelessness or generosity has left him little of the world’s ‘gear,’ but he is rich—for he is independent of riches. He says he would recom-
[47]
mend honest dealings and an open hand, to all who would lay up stores of pleasant thoughts for their old age; and he avers—and who will gainsay him, that in the silent watches of the night, the memory of money well bestowed is better than a pocket full of guineas. He loves to recount his boyish pranks, and recal his childish feelings—how he rattled down the chincapins on the devoted heads of a troop of little girls; and how he was whipped for crying to go with Braddock and be a soldier! but above all, he loves to dwell on some of the particulars we have related, and in the sincerity of religious feeling to ascribe praise to that being, who kept his youth within the narrow bound of strict virtue.
I saw him last week surrounded by his grandchildren, recounting his imminent dangers and hair bread ‘scapes to a favourite boy, while the nimble fingers of rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed little girls were employed in making sails for a miniature ship, which the old man has just completed. Long may he enjoy the talisman that recals to his imagination, labour without its hardship, and enterprise without its failure—and God grant gentle breezes and a clear sky to the close of his voyage of life!
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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Modern Chivalry
Subject
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Runaways, female virtue, chivalry, heroism, Revolutionary War.
Description
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A young American sailor rescues a mysterious young female English runaway, and goes on to become a heroic naval captain in the Revolutionary War, and a later a prosperous merchant.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [By the author of Redwood]
Source
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The Atlantic Souvenir, 5-47
Publisher
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H. C. Carey & Lea
Date
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1826
Contributor
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Dr. Jenifer Elmore with Megan Konynenbelt, Sarah Selden, and Rachel Sakrisson; D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Reprinted in New-York Mirror, edited by Horace Greeley, 25- Nov. 1826: 137-39.
Collected in The Ladies' Monthly Museum, Vol. XXV pp. 260-264, 325-331 and Vol. XXVI pp. 29-36, 91-97, London: Dean and Munday, 1827.
Collected in Lights and Shadows of American Life, vol.. 3, edited by Mary Russell Mitford, 226-73, London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1832.
Collected in Yorkshire Literary Annual for 1832, pp.202-232, edited by C. F. Edgar, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Browne & Greene, 1832.
Collected as "The Chivalric Sailor" in Sedgwick, Tales and Sketches, pp.237-78, Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
1826
A Winter's Tale
Antigua
Atlantic Souvenir
Bacchus
British colonies
Canton
Cape May
Catholic
Chesapeake Bay
China
Cowes
cross-dressing
disguise
Dolph Heilegher
Don Juan Canto II
Ecclesiastes 9:11
Elk River
England
Gravesend
Haverstraw Bay
Henry IV Part I
Hermione
Historical fiction
Hong merchants
Hudson River
indenture
Isle of Wight
John Paul Jones (1747-1792)
Lord Byron
Maryland
Oliver Goldsmith
Pasha
Perdita
Philadelphia
plantation
Pope
Redwood: A Tale
Revolutionary War
Rodomontade novels
Romance novels
sailing
sailors
sentimentality
servants
Shakespeare
shipwreck
Sir Oracle
Sir Toby Blech
Sir Walter Scott
slavery
St. Kitts
Storm
tears
Thames River
The Heart of Midlothian
The Merchant of Venice
Twelfth Night
Washington Irving
West Indies
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/806e9c78adc1c6a6a670877ecd9f6ac6.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Uvzg3B2CGLrjYjFFahjZHtURya-U13Rozq52gtuyUhLldKVQSZKvG9pRwVNGeNzHnL1sB7v9vlVcJHJI8N4nWnpR8vigR6toMkuBgEtGO3vASJyK5-zugx9dQQFIgcsRzhCqwHEFErbtjtZX3bOkH%7ESKMhD8NGXxDpjpLXyRng3l1G2gX3TFeuFNMVlHFJ4sEHVL8fssLRImpCk4MFrhsiWBd-4-WhEEV8sJV8TFHMnLFfV3b8KEiK4oDgaYLaSqoomufQSkGLcFuTxu-5xwi2W1seaXdx6wty1rwynMEn3x07ZwlUauUGgoMu1YcgOpnUWWtqQcGfuMk1QKUG8TrQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
10a95d6b33d1568c46862dcefeaee848
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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1840
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.
Marietza.
_____
Some of you, my dear girls, remember that, in November, 1837, our secluded home was visited by a stranger whom all the civilized world delight to honour, and that you soon found the honour, reverence, and observance due to the celebrated writer merged in your love for the woman.
You remember the story of the Greek girl Marietza which she told us one happy evening when you were permitted to gather round her in the little parlour. We can recall her sweet voice, the graces of her language, and the varying expression of her face while she related the startling incidents of the young girl's life, and recalled the vivid interest that a personal knowledge of her had excited.
These pleasant recollections will invest the story with a charm to you, which it cannot possess for my other readers, for whom the picture must be transferred from a painter's to a common light. But, as there are some pictures worth looking at in any light, I trust to my true and unadorned story to fix attention for a few moments.
You do not remember, my young readers, but you may have heard of the bloody war which the oppressed Greeks waged for their independence against their cruel masters the Turks. It was a long time before the Grecian island of
[53]
Scio took any part in the contest. The Turkish dominion was less felt there than in Greece. The island, as you will perceive if you look at your maps, lies almost under the shadow of the Asiatic coast. It has a rich soil, and in its happy days was so highly cultivated, so loaded with the fruits and flowers of that fortunate clime, that it is described as filled with gardens. There was a higher cultivation there, too, than that of the earth. There were schools and colleges, richly endowed, where the people of both sexes were instructed in the sciences, and in the accomplishments of the most civilized parts of Europe. The Sciots had an extensive commerce. They had resident merchants in the great commercial cities of Europe. They carried on nearly all the trade between Greece and the Turkish cities of Smyrna and Constantinople. Their wealth was deposited in these cities, as we may say, in the very coffers of the Turks; they had, therefore, much more to hazard by a war than their compatriots. Their civil government was in the hands of elders, who adminis- tered it mildly and prudently. Prudence is the virtue (par excellence) of elders. They do not rashly risk the security, prosperity, and ease of peace, for the present glory, and distant and doubtful advantages of war. But if a war can ever be approved by Heaven, it was the war waged by the Greeks for religion and liberty. The patriot Sciots could not very long remain passive spectators of the struggles of their countrymen; nor did they long wait before the aggressions of their masters gave them occasion and impulse.
In May, 1821, a small squadron of Ipsariots (pa-
[54]
triot Greeks) appeared off their coast. The aga, or military governor, immediately resorted to measures that had already been taken at other Greek islands of the Archipelago. He seized forty elders and bishops, and shut them up in the castle as hostages for the good conduct of the people.
A large number of troops was brought from the neighbouring coast of Asia Minor, and garrisoned in the island, and the inhabitants were subjected to their excesses and lawless depredations. Assassinations were frequent; the wealthy inhabitants were plundered on every side, till, stung to madness, there was an attempt made to rouse the people to resistance. But hard it was themselves to light the fire that was to consume their pleasant homes and sweep over their garden-lands, and they were still hesitating, when two adventurers, Burnia and Logotheti, from Samos landed on Scio with a small band of followers. The prudent elders made every effort to prevent the peasantry joining them. The aga took his measures—tyrants never hesitate—and, selecting his victims from the best families, he doubled the number of hostages. The aga expected aid from the Continent. The Sciots hoped the Greek fleet would come to their aid, but they hoped in vain. On the 22d of April a Turkish fleet of fifty sail anchored in the bay, and immediately began to bombard the town. The Sciots were deserted by their Samian friends, who seemed to have come among them, as the falcon returns to his species, to lure them into the hands of their enemies.
Scio became the scene of indescribable horrors. Its inhabitants, men, women, and children, were all
[55]
massacred. The houses were plundered and then burned, not one left standing excepting those belonging to the foreign consuls.
Three days passed before the Turks left the city to penetrate into the recesses of the island. The following passage is from an eyewitness who escaped. He wrote to his friend, "Oh God! what a spectacle did Scio present on this memorable occasion! On whatever side I cast my eyes, nothing but pillage, murder, and conflagration appeared. While some were occupied in plundering the villas of rich merchants, and others in setting fire to the villages, the air was rent with the mingled groans of men, women, and children who were falling under the swords and daggers of the infidels. The only exception made during the massacre was in favour of young women and boys, who were preserved to be afterward sold as slaves. Many of these young women, whose husbands had been butchered, were running to and fro frantic, with torn garments and dishevelled hair, pressing their trembling infants to their breasts, and seeking death as a relief from the fate that awaited them."
My dear girls, when you read such details, horrible but not exaggerated, of the miseries that have been suffered in our days, do you realize them? I believe not. The people are thousands of miles removed from you. They speak a foreign language. Their religion is not your religion; their customs and manners differ from yours. But all human beings are essentially alike; they have the same passions, affections, and wants, and their resemblance increases as they approach the same grade in civilization. The Sciots were an in-
[56]
structed and accomplished people. They were Christians. And if in imagination you will transfer the scenes above described to your own town and villages—to your own happy homes, and, if you can, picture to yourselves your fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, the subjects of these cruelties, your sympathies, I think, will no longer sleep!
But I am aware that the picture of a famishing Jewish mother, wandering with her child away from her fallen city, would affect you more than a crowded canvass, which should represent all the multitude of the Jews realizing the curses that had been denounced upon them, so I fancy that the story of Marietza will interest you more than the most minute history of the massacre at Scio.
Perhaps you consider yourselves already taken in by being compelled to read this prefatory bit of history, as the customers of the Yankee pedlar were, who, if they purchased one of his cheeses, were compelled to take also one of his grindstones. Pardon me—I will go to my story without farther delay. Ten days were given to slaughter. Gardeners and others, who had been seized and carried on board the Turkish ships, on the supposition that they could reveal hidden treasures, were, to the number of 500, hung! This was the signal for the execution of the hostages in the citadel. Many young women, with their children, had fled to the mountains and hidden themselves in caves, where numbers died of terror and hunger, and others lived on fearing a worse destiny. Among these was a noble Grecian lady, the mother of Marietza. Her husband and three sons had been massacred
[57]
before her eyes; and with the two remaining children, Marietza and a boy, she had, almost by miracle, escaped, and hid herself and them in a cave in the mountains. There they were discovered and dragged forth by the hair of their head. They hoped and prayed for death, but death was no longer the order of the day. They were reserved for market, put on board a Turkish ship, and conveyed to Alexandrea.*[1] They were exhorted and commanded by the man who called himself their owner to renounce their religion. They endured all sorts of petty persecution; but, wretched, wearied, weak, and young as they were, they remained steadfast.
The Greek religion is a modification of the
[58]
Roman Catholic, and does not essentially vary from it. It is difficult for you, my dear girls, to conceive the detestation that an oppressed people feel for the religion of their oppressors; but, 1 hope, not equally difficult to imagine the clinging you would feel to the religion that had made you patient in such tribulations as our poor Greek mother and her children had endured. They were still very young; Marietza, I think, about twelve, her brother a year older: and their mother, fearing they might yield to the threats or persuasions of their Turkish master, continually exhorted them to steadfastness. She soon had the saddest proof that her fears were groundless. She was standing with her children in the balcony of a house near the river, and overlooking it. Their Turkish tyrant was insisting that her boy should give some sign of faith in the Prophet. The boy refused; and, with all the fervour of his Greek nature, expressed his hatred of Mohammed, his faith, and his followers. The Turk struck him. The boy was maddened; and, springing to the ground, he ran to the river. Whether he intended to drown himself, or whether he merely obeyed an impulse to escape anywhere from the presence of the Turk, no one could tell; for, while his head was still above water, the Turk drew a pistol from his belt and shot him through the brain. The mother and sister saw this, and lived; and I have no doubt that, after the first horror was past, they blessed God the boy had escaped from the evils that still impended over them.
The sister of the Pacha of Egypt was then at Alexandrea. She was a Mohammedan fanatic, so
[59]
sincerely devoted to her religion that she bought captives to convert them to the Mohammedan faith. The master of Marietza, hoping the zealous lady would set a due value on the possibility of offering to the Prophet two such beautiful converts (for the mother was still handsome, and Marietza lovely as an Houri), took them to the princess's apartments. They had entered the court, but there was some delay in getting admission. While they stood on the steps, the shrinking, frightened girl leaning on her mother, who could have recognised in her drooping figure the same being who, but a few weeks before, was gayest among the gay girls of Scio, dancing on the sea-beach, by the moonlight and by the music of rustic pipes, the Romaika, their classic national dance? Who could imagine this figure, that looked now pale and fixed as if it were cut in stone, linked with other young and graceful forms, chasing in the evolutions of this poetic dance the retreating wave, boldly following it till it turned, then, as it chased her back, dashing off the foam from her winged feet? Yet this had been, and, in spite of Marietza's present despair, something very like it was again to be.
After a tedious waiting they were led to a small antechamber, where persons having business with the princess were passing and repassing. Some Greeks, who had been that morning bastinadoed for refusing to abjure their religion, were stretched on the floor writhing with pain. A very old man beckoned to Marietza. She threw aside her veil, and leaned respectfully towards him. "Do not think, my poor child," said he, " that you can suffer stripes as well as bonds. I am old, and death is
[60]
better for me than life ; and yet, when I felt the bastinado to-day, I bit my tongue through to save myself from saying, as they bade me, that their cursed Mohammed was the prophet of God. Confess him now, my poor child, and retract when you can. You are young—you will have time for repentance —time to hope for God's forgiveness."
"No, father, no," replied Marietza; "my mother has told me there is double guilt in sinning because you know God forgives sin! No; mother says we must be baptized with Christ's baptism—"
"Poor child, you are so young—you cannot endure it."
"I can, if it be God's will. See here; I have been trying what I can endure;" and she pushed up her muslin sleeve, and showed the old man where, while she had been standing there, she had, to prove her fortitude, and without shrinking, pinched her arm black. The old man uttered an exclamation of mingled pity and admiration. "Besides, it would be a double shame for me to turn infidel," she added, "for my name is Marietza."*[2]
"A curse upon ye, then !" said a brutal old Turk, spitting in her face in token of the hatred he bore her name. Another Turk, an old man too (there are good Samaritans in all nations), extended to her an embroidered handkerchief drenched in a delicious perfume. She wiped away the defilement, and the blood gushed from her heart to her cheek, and she raised her eyes, glowing with a silent prayer, as she remembered that her Saviour was spit upon.
[61]
At this moment,, when she looked as beautiful as one of Raphael's saints, two young Englishmen came from the audience-room. They stopped, riveted to the spot by Marietza's beauty. Her mother advanced and drew down her veil, and directly after their master signed to them to follow him to the presence of the princess. She was evidently so much struck with the extreme beauty of Marietza, that the cupidity of the Turk was excited, and he asked for her double the price he had intended. The princess refused it. He abated, but still insisted on extravagant terms; and at last, the princess, quite disgusted, told him that she would have nothing more to say to him; and, like many a grasping trader, bitterly repenting his avarice, he withdrew. The hearts of our poor captives sunk as they turned away. They had hoped to escape from the hateful presence of the murderer of their son and brother, and there had seemed something like escape from despair—something bordering on protection, in passing into the hands of one of their own sex.
The two young Englishmen were awaiting their return, and followed them at a respectful distance. Soon after they sought an interview with their Turkish master, and eagerly inquired of him the names, rank, and former condition of his captives. They ascertained that he had failed in his treaty with the princess; and also that, in consequence of this disappointment, he was prepared to lower his terms. The young friends were filled with pity for the captives, no doubt augmented by Marietza's beauty; for it must be confessed that beauty is a wonderful
[62]
inciter of a young man's compassion. One of the young men, Reginald Butler,*[3] was the son, as those who heard the story will remember, of a friend of the lady who told it to us. He was an only son, most beloved, and most worthy of love. His mother, a widow in easy circumstances, was residing with her daughters in England, while he was seeking (and finding, too) his fortune abroad. He was not, however, rich enough to pay the money demanded for the redemption of the captives; but he would not leave them in the Turk's hands, and he and his friend agreed to pay equal portions of the purchase-money. They did so, and Marietza and her mother were transferred to them. My dear young friends, you know so little of the evil in the world, that I trust you will hardly understand me when I say that Butler's associate looked on Marietza with too bold an eye; and Butler, fearing that some undue advantage might be taken of her helpless and dependant position, paid to his partner his portion of the purchase-money, and removed the mother and daughter to a little country-house in the neighbourhood of Alexandrea, where he provided them with every comfort and indulgence within his power to procure for them.
They had no common language in which they could hold communication; and these poor females, believing that they had only changed owners, were apprehending every possible, and even impossible evil. The terrors they had suffered, the starvation they had endured, and, more than all, the unnatu-
[63]
ral disruption of their dearest ties, had impaired their health and affected their imaginations, so that they were on the brink of insanity, and looking on every side for new dangers and miseries. Butler said that Marietza was so emaciated, that he sometimes thought, when he looked at her, she might disappear from his sight like the White Lady of Avenel. He bought a horse for her to ride, in the hope that the exercise and the fresh air would give new impulse to her young life; but she afterward said that, whenever he took her out, she thought he was going to conduct her to some wild place to murder her! He provided every delicacy the market afforded, and bought her the most delicious fruits; but poor Marietza for a long while rejected everything, tormented with the imagination that he was fatting her to kill her!
By degrees, both mother and daughter truly interpreted the language of his generosity and most assiduous kindness, and then there was no limit to their gratitude. The mother, content and grateful for the present, became in some good degree resigned to her calamities; and Marietza, with the elasticity of girlhood, returned to health, and all the brightness of health and hope as soon as she was relieved from the pressure of her fears. Then she rode and ate, and became as fat and as blooming as her benefactor desired. You perhaps know that in warm climates the person is earlier developed and the physical system sooner matured than in our cold land. At twelve Marietta had the attractive graces of a girl of sixteen. Her benefactor's benevolence was transmuted to love. He wrote to his mother in
[64]
England all the particulars of Marietza's story, confessed the state of his heart, and proposed to her to receive Marietza under her protection, and to give her an education fitting the wife of her son.
The project might have struck some elderly ladies as romantic, but Mrs. Butler sympathized perfectly with her son. She had entire confidence in the truth and steadfastness of his affections. She would have preferred, she said, that he would have married one of his own countrywomen; but, for the world, she would not thwart the wishes of one who had fulfilled all her wishes. Thrice blessed, my dear girls, is the mutual confidence of parents and children!
I do not know how Butler reconciled Marietza's mother to parting with her child; but you all know that mothers will make any personal sacrifice for the advantage of their children; and probably the hearts of both mother and child were so overflowing with gratitude to their benefactor, that they would have acquiesced in whatever he proposed, even their parting. Parted they were.
Marietza went to England, where she was received into Butler's family as if she had a natural claim to their love. She was at once daughter and sister. Her exquisite beauty, set off by her Greek costume and Oriental grace, riveted every eye; her enthusiasm, affectionateness, buoyancy of spirit, and the free and animated manner natural to her people—which no misfortunes could long depress, or conventionalism restrain, or even an English atmosphere damp—made her a perpetual spring of delight to every circle she entered. She was courted and flattered on every side. Men
[65]
richer, handsomer, and of higher rank than Reginald Butler were devoted to her; but her affections never for a moment wavered from him.
Fashion robbed her of some of her outward graces, for they took her to Paris, and submitted her to the levelling processes of dressmakers, milliners, and hairdressers; but the world did not invade her heart.
At the expiration of four or five years Butler came to England to claim his bride. His friends dreaded the meeting. He had suffered from a protracted illness. His face was sallow and furrowed, and he had become, not absolutely bald, but so near it as to look a score of years older than when Marietza parted from him.
"Do I not look to you shockingly changed, Marietza?" he asked, as soon as the first emotions of meeting were over. "Shockingly! No, not shockingly changed, Reginald. Your heart is not changed—nor is mine."
These words, uttered with all her characteristic fervour, satisfied her lover; and he was not in the least disturbed when she said, with a mischievous curl of her beautiful lips, "I have danced in London with prettier men than you, Reginald!"
Marietza betrayed an Oriental love of magnificence when the arrangements for the wedding were making. The Butlers were a quiet people, who disliked display and notoriety; but they yielded in this, as in everything, to Marietza. She would have the church bells rung, and a procession of carriages, as in her own country. Her lover lavished the most costly bridal gifts upon her, and she showed her trousseau to my friend with the sort
[66]
of ecstatic pleasure that a child has with its holyday gifts. She clapped her hands, and skipped over chairs and sofas. Immediately after their marriage they returned to reside in Alexandrea.
And here, if I had invented the story, I should leave it; for the wedding is the legitimate stopping- place in a tale, though in life but the beginning of its deepest interests.
Eighteen months after the departure of Butler with his beautiful young bride, his mother received a letter from him, informing her that Marietza had died in his arms with the plague!
This seems to you, my dear girls, a sad conclusion; and sad is always the disruption of happy domestic ties; but remember, it is but a passing sadness. Death is to the good the last of pain, and trial, and disappointment; and to the good, death opens the gates of immortality and felicity.
[Sedgwick’s notes]
* [1] The prisoners were for the most part sold in Smyrna and Constantinople. "On June 19th, an order came to the slave- market for the cessation of the sale; and the circumstances which are believed to have occasioned that order are singular, and purely Oriental. The island of Scio had been granted many years before to one of the sultanas as an appropriation, from which she derived a fixed revenue, and a title of interference in all matters relating to police and internal administration. The present patroness was Asma Sultana, sister of the sultan; and that amiable princess received about 200,000 piastres a year, besides casual presents, from her flourishing little province. When she was informed of its destruction, her indignation was natural and excessive; and it was directed, of course, against Valid, the pacha who had commanded the fort, and the capudan pacha, to whose misconduct she chiefly attributed her misfortune. It was in vain that that officer selected from his captives sixty young and beautiful maidens, whom he presented to the service of her highness. She rejected the sacrifice with disdain, and continued her energetic remonstrances against the injustice and illegality of reducing rajahs to slavery, and exposing them for sale in the public markets. The sultan at length yielded to her eloquence or importunity. A license, the occasion of hourly brutalities, was suppressed; and we have reason to believe that this act of care and unprecedented humanity may be attributed to the influence of a woman."— Waddington's Visit to Greece.
* [2] Marietza is the Greek for Mary, and the name is given in honour of the Virgin.
* [3] We have not given the true name, as that might not be agreeable to him if, by any strange accident, he should ever hear of the publication of his story.
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
Marietza
Subject
The topic of the resource
1822 Greek uprising on the island of Chios, cross-cultural romance.
Description
An account of the resource
A Greek/Chian girl witnesses the destruction of her home/island as a consequence of the 1822 uprising against Turkish domination, and subsequently marries her English protector.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria [by the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live & Let Live," &c]
Source
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<em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, pp. 52-66.
Publisher
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New York: Harper & Brothers
Date
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1840
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
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Collected in <em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, 1840, 52-66, reprinted 1841, 1842, 1846, 1855, 1860; reprinted 184? By the author of "The Linwoods," "Poor Rich Man," "Love Token," "Live and Let Live," &c. London: W. Smith. <br /><br />Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 1789-1867, and Cairns Collection of American Women Writers. <em>Stories for Young Persons</em> ... New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840. HathiTrust Digital Library https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007092366 Accessed 11 July 2019.
Format
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Document
Language
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English
1840
Alexandria
captives
Chios
Christians
Constantinople
daughters
Death
Egypt
Englishmen
execution
Faith
girls
Good Samaritan
Greece
Greek Independence
Greek Orthodox
hostages
Houri
infidels
Jews
Juvenile fiction
London
marriage
massacre
Mohammed
Mothers
Muslims
Oriental
Ottoman Empire
Pacha
patriots
plague
Prophet
revolution
Romaika
Roman Catholic
Scios
Sir Walter Scott
Smyrna
sons
Stories for Young Persons
Turks
war
White Lady of Avenel
-
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f1621681b11166910481ad613cb34138
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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1828
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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CHRISTIAN CHARITY.
__________
“Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law thou art not a doer of the law but a judge.”
Dr. FRANKLIN said, with his characteristic wisdom and good feeling, that he was inclined to believe “there never was a good war nor a bad peace.” If this may be true of the civil affairs of men, how much more applicable is it to their religious concerns!
All true christians, of all parties and sects, lament that difference of opinion should give rise to discord, strifes, uncharitableness, and evil speaking. If then they feel that religion is wronged—that its bond of love is severed—that their master is wounded in the house of his friends—that their wars and fightings must proceed from bad passions, how careful should they be to guard against the extension of the evil! And particularly how scrupulous should those be who have the guidance of young maids and affect-
[PAGE 4]
tions not to impart to them their own unfavorable judgment of others. All will admit that they are fallible—they may err in judging a brother—and if they do err how fearful the responsibility of communicating this false judgment—this prejudice to a young mind, which ought to be nurtured in the spirit of the Gospel! in love and charitableness.
The principle we wish to instil is illustrated in the following short story.
SARAH ANSON was sitting with her aunt one day, when she heard a good deal of conversation between her aunt and a lady, who was on a visit to her, about “the orthodox.” When the visitor was gone, “Aunt Caroline,” said Sarah, “you are always talking about ‘orthodoxy,’ and ‘the orthodox.’ I wish you would tell me what you mean by ‘the orthodox?’”
“Why Sarah, I mean those who think they shall certainly be saved, and all the rest of the world will be condemned—that sort of people, that are for ever canting.”
“Canting—what is canting, aunt”
“Canting is talking about religion on all occasions, seasonable, and unseasonable, as the orthodox do.”
Sarah was silent for a few moments, but not being enlightened by her aunt’s replies, she was not satisfied, and she ventured to add—“Still, aunt, I do not know what you mean by the orthodox.”
“How stupid you are, Sarah!—Have you ever lived in this city all your life, and don’t know that Mr –’s and Mr –’s congregations are orthodox?”
[PAGE 5]
“No, aunt, I did not—I don’t remember,” she added with a sigh, “ever to have heard mamma speak the word orthodox—but now I hear you say so much about them, I should really like to know how they differ from other Christians.”
“Oh, they differ in every thing—they think all kinds of rational amusements a crying sin. They would have every body spend their whole lives in going to lectures and prayer-meetings, and always look solemn and dismal, and give every thing to missions.”
“Missions!” exclaimed Caroline—“there must be some missionaries that are not orthodox—that Mr. Stewart I was reading about to Lucy, could not be what you call orthodox, aunt Caroline.”
“Stewart—the missionary to the Sandwich Islands?—Oh yes, he was orthodox enough.”
Some one at this time called away her aunt, and Sarah was left revolving in her mind what she had said.
If Sarah had been like most children of eight years, she probably would have been quite satisfied with her aunt’s replies, and the seeds of prejudice, thus carelessly sown in her mind, might have taken root there; but Sarah’s mother had guarded her mind from prejudice, as a gardener would preserve his garden from the intrusion of poisonous weeds. She had not spoken to her of orthodoxy, but she had of prejudice. She had told her that very good people might be sadly prejudiced, as was Nathaniel the Israelite, in “whom there was no guile,” for he had said of Jesus “can any good come out of Naza-
[PAGE 6]
reth?” She had shown her how beautifully our Saviour had reproved the prejudice of the wicked Jews, by selecting, to illustrate the principle of true charity, not one of their own Pharisees who claimed preeminence in righteousness—not even one of their own nation, to whom they fancied the favour of the Father of all limited, but a Samaritan—a good Samaritan—one of a people most despised and hated by the Jews—a people who were the subjects of their national, and, as they believed, their just and authorized enmity.
Sarah’s mind, thus carefully guarded against the intrusion of uncharitable feeling, might be compared to that paradise which the flaming sword of the Cherubim defends from all bad spirits—and besides, happily, in the particular case of the orthodox, she had just taken an antidote against prejudice; she had been reading Stewart’s Journal to Lucy, an excellent young woman, who had been, till within a few weeks back, her attendant and nurse, and who was now rapidly declining with a consumption, the consequence, as was believed, of a too constant devotion to Sarah’s mother, who had recently died of the same fatal disease. Mr. Stewart’s beautiful description of his voyage, his apostolic devotion to the noblest enterprise of man,—the regeneration and reformation of his degraded fellow-beings,—had delighted Sarah, kindled her piety, and touched her heart to the very quick; and she was hurt and offended when her aunt spoke of him, and of the large class to which he belonged, with cold contempt.
[PAGE 7]
Little Sarah was one of the gentlest of human beings, and it seemed that to introduce any harsh feeling into her kind heart, was to break one of the strings of that fine instrument.
She determined now to appeal to Lucy for the information she had failed to obtain from her aunt. Accordingly, she went to her apartment, but when she found her friend looking much sicker than usual, she sat down on her bedside, mentally resolving not to trouble her with any questions, and after kissing her pale forehead, she took up a fan, and began fanning her, but she stopped often, figetted, and looked perplexed; and Lucy, who had been accustomed to watch her thoughts as they were expressed in her sweet open face, and who could read them there almost as plainly as if they were reflected in a mirror, said to her, “Something troubles you, Sarah—what are you thinking of, my child?”
Thus prompted, Sarah did not hesitate to say, “do you tell me, Lucy, what is the real meaning of orthodoxy.”
“Orthodoxy,” replied Lucy, with a faint smile; “certainly, I will as well as I know how; orthodoxy”—but here she paused, as she heard an approaching footstep, and then added, “wait a little while, Sarah—there is Mrs. Lumley; don’t say any thing abut it now, for she is orthodox.”
“Is she orthodox?’, exclaimed Sarah, her face brightening, for she knew Mrs. Lumley did not come within her aunt’s description of the orthodox. She was a poor widow, whose life had been marked by
[PAGE 8]
severe and multiplied sorrows, and she had borne them all with a meek and resigned spirit, cheerfully submitting to the privations of her Father in heaven inflicted, as a good child will bear to be deprived by a beloved parent of some dear possession.
When Mrs. Lumley entered, Lucy expressed great pleasure at seeing her, but said she was afraid she had stayed away from lecture to come to her.
“And what if I have, Lucy? I should make a poor use of the privelege of going to lecture, if I did not learn my duty there: It is God’s word, you know, ‘be ye doers of the word and not hearers only,’ and one of the first duties as well as a pleasure is it to do what I can for a sick friend. No, Lucy, I should not dare to enter my Father’s house, if I neglected a sick brother or sister by the way. But I am afraid you are not so well to-night, your breathing is difficult.
“Yes—I feel it to be so, and I must expect it to be even worse.”
“And yet, Lucy, you do not look frightened or troubled.”
“I thank God I am not, Mrs. Lumley. There has been a time when I shrunk from the prospect of death, when I lay for hours awake in the silent watches of the night, my heart throbbing at the thought that I must be laid in the grave; but now I feel there is no death to those who believe in the resurrection and the life—and I realize that what we call death, is but a passage to a better life. I am in the valley of the shadow of death, and I fear no evil, and it is be-
[PAGE 9]
cause the rod and the staff of my God support and comfort me.”
Lucy spoke in her usual tone of voice; there was something in its calmness that expressed the assurance of her faith, while the glow that lit up her face with a celestial brightness, made her look as if she had already entered into the joy of her Lord. Mrs. Lumley brushed the tears from her eyes. “It is truly wonderful to me, Lucy,” she said, “to see one so young, and so happy as you have been, so willing to go; but in all our trials, of every kind, we find the grace of God sufficient for us. I can say that I never felt so rich toward him, as when I have been bereft of earthly comfort.”
Sarah listened intently—her eye moved quickly from her friend to the widow, and tear after tear dropped on Lucy’s feverish hand, which she held pressed in hers. The patient sufferers, in sick chambers and in the dark paths of affliction, are the most affecting witnesses to the goodness of God, for they prove that he never forsakes his children. Lucy listened to their testimony, and laid it up in her heart.
A little bustle was now heard in the outer room, and two persons entered, one an old colored woman, who meekly remained standing at the door, and the other a tall Irish woman, who pressed forward with characteristic eagerness, and pouring half a dozen beautiful oranges from a bandanna handkerchief—“There, Lucy, dear,” said she, “they are Havanas—every one of them—I had them from Patrick Moon-
[PAGE 10]
ey, and sure they are fresh, for Pat has just stepped a shore.”
“Oh Peggy, many, many thanks; but you are too generous—you could not afford to buy so many for me.”
“Sure honey, don’t be after saying that—would not I have given the apple of my eye for them, if I could not have had them chaper? That would I do for you, dear, that’s been saint-like to me and mine, as poor Rose, that’s gone such a little bit before you, has often said—God above make the eating of them as pleasant to you, as the getting of them has been to me.” Then stooping down and kissing Lucy’s hand, and murmuring a prayer, and crossing herself, she left the room.
Lucy was affected with the honest creature’s gratitude, and she covered her eyes with her hand, and did not look up till Sarah whispered, “there is old Amy at the door.”
“Amy, is that you?” she then said—“come and sit by me, Amy, and tell me how you are nowadays.”
“I am but poorly,” said she, humbly curtsying, “but how is Miss Lucy?”
“Thank you, Amy, I trust I may say in the language of that good book you so well understand, ‘it is well with me.’”
“Ah, Miss Lucy, you put me in mind of what Elder Eton said to day, ‘them that walk with the Lord through life; the Lord will not leave them to go alone through the valley of the shadow of death.’”
“No, Amy—he does not; and it is no longer a
[PAGE 11]
dark valley when it is enlightened by his presence. But how do you get on in your worldly matters, my good friend?”
“O Miss Lucy, I don’t want to complain, but I miss your goodness, and that dear child’s mother’s, every day.”
“Does not Tom provide for you?”
“Tom—poor boy, he has been gone to sea six weeks.”
“And Sally?”
“Sally is a lost creature, Miss Lucy; she does nothing for me; and I can do nothing for her but pray for her.”
“Do you suffer for necessaries, Amy?”
“Sometimes, Miss Lucy.”
“Do you ever go hungry?”
“I can’t say but I do; but it will be but a little while, and I don’t mean to murmur.”
“Truly.” said Lucy, raising her eyes devoutly, “tribulation worketh patience ;” and then turning to Sarah, she added in a low voice, “when I am gone, remember poor old Amy—you are young for such a charge, but your mother’s disposition is in you. Now my good friends,” she added, “I believe you had best leave me: I am a little tired, but I shall sleep the better for your kind visits; good night—remember me in your prayers.” They both bade her good night, and Sarah, after lighting them down stairs, returned to Lucy, and again took her station at her bedside. “Now, my dear child,” said Lucy, “I will answer your question about orthodoxy.”
[PAGE 12]
“I remember when I was about your age, I was perplexed in the same way. I had lived two years with your mother, when I went to pay a visit to one of my aunts. She questioned me very closely about my place, and when she had found I had every reason to be satisfied and happy, she said, ‘But after all, Lucy, Mrs. Anson is a Unitarian, and your mother does very wrong to let you live with a Unitarian.’ I told her I did not know what she meant by a Unitarian, but if she meant anything that was not good, I was sure Mrs. Anson was not a Unitarian. ‘She is a Unitarian,’ she replied, ‘and it is a shame you are not put in an Orthodox family.’ When I returned home, I asked your mother what was the meaning of Unitarian and what of Orthodox. ‘You are not old enough yet, Lucy,’ she said to me, ‘to comprehend, if I were to endeavor to explain to you the differences of opinion from which different classes of Christians take their names, and I would not wish to have your attention turned to those matters wherein they disagree, but rather that you should fix it on those points where all who are named by the name of Christ agree; for among all sects, there are those who deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God. Consider all those Christians, who manifest a love to their Heavenly Father, and obedience to his well beloved Son, our Saviour; and of such do not ask if they be a Presbyterian, Unitarian, Methodist or Catholic; but regard them as Christians, fellow-christians, servants, and friends of one Master, who has said—“by this ye shall know that ye are
[PAGE 13]
my disciples, that ye love one another.”’ This was your dear mother’s instruction to me, Sarah, and I did not neglect it. You see by those good Christians, who have visited me this evening, that I have friends who bear very different names. Mrs. Lumley is Orthodox, a member of the Park street Church; Peggy is a good Catholic; Amy is a Baptist, and I, you know, am a Unitarian; but we are all, I humbly trust, heirs of that blessed country toward which I am hastening.”
“Now Sarah, give me my opiate, and then sing me one of the Hymns you and your mother used to sing together. The opiate will, I hope, give some rest to my poor sick body—and your voice, raised in a praise to God, is always a sweet cordial to my mind. Sarah prepared the medicine and then reseating herself, and taking Lucy’s hand, she sang the following hymn of Beddome:
“Let party names no more
The Christian world o’erspread;
Gentile, and Jew, and bond, and free,
Are one in Christ their head.
Among the Saints on Earth
Let mutual love be found
Heirs of the same inheritance,
With mutual blessings crowned.
Envy and strife be gone,
And only kindness known,
Where all one common Father have,
One common Master own.
Thus will the church below
Resemble that above;
Where springs of purest pleasure rise,
And every heart is love.”
[PAGE 14]
“May this spirit ever govern your heart,” said Lucy, as she folded her arms around Sarah and bade her goodnight. Sarah’s selection of this particular hymn had gratified her, for it proved that though she had not attempted to give her any explanation of the different names by which Christians are called, she made her feel that charity and love will bound over the barriers, that the wicked passions or the false zeal of man has erected between different sects of Christians; that love is the essence of religion—love to God, and love to man.
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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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Christian Charity
Subject
The topic of the resource
Calvinism vs. Unitarianism, orthodoxy.
Description
An account of the resource
A young girl learns the difference between Calvinism and Unitarianism, but is nevertheless encouraged to be charitable to all Christians, regardless of particular affiliation.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [By the author of Redwood.]
Source
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A Short Essay To Do Good, 4-14.
Publisher
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Stockbridge [Mass.] : Printed by Webster and Stanley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1828
Contributor
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Michael Monescalchi; D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. A short essay to do good. Stockbridge [Mass.] : Printed by Webster and Stanley, 1828;
Repository Collection Development Department, Widener Library. HCL, Harvard University. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:7572801. Accessed 09 July 2019
Format
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Document
Language
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English
1828
A Short Essay to Do Good
African American
Baptist
Benjamin Beddome
Benjamin Franklin
Boston
Calvinism
Catholic
charity
Charles Samuel Stewart
Christianity
colored
Death
girls
Irish
James 4:11
Jesus
Jews
Juvenile fiction
missionaries
orthodoxy
Park Street Church
Pharisees
prejudice
Psalm 23
religion
Samaritans
Sandwich Islands
Unitarian
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1839
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Second Thoughts Best.
By Miss Sedgwick.
“Grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair.” –Measure for Measure
It is a common saying, that no individual profits by another’s experience,—there are few, we believe, that profit by their own; few to whom may not be justly applied that striking saying of Coleridge that “experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which only illuminate the way that is passed.” But, of all the scholars I have ever known in this ever-open school of experience, my friend, Mrs. Dunbar, is the most unteachable. With a fair portion of intellect, with a quick observation, and fifty years’ acquaintance with the world, she is as trustful, as credulous, and as hopeful, as, when a child, she believed the rainbow was a rope, of substantial, woven light, with a golden cup at the end of it; that there was a real man standing in the moon, and that the sky would, one of these bright days, fall,
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and we should catch larks. Being of a benevolent and equable temperament, her credulity has the most happy manifestations. Her faith in her fellow-creatures is implicit, and her confidence in the happiness of the future unwavering; so that, however dark and heavy the clouds may be at any given moment, she believes they are on the point of breaking away.
I have known but a single exception to the general and pleasant current of my friend’s life. One anxiety and disappointment crossed her, which even her blessed alchymy could not gild or transmute. Her husband lost all his fortune; this was not the cross. Mrs. Dunbar said, she saw no reason why they should not take their turn on Fortune’s wheel; she did not doubt they should come up again, and, if they did not, why, her own private fortune was enough to secure them from dependence and want. Her husband had none of her philosophy, or, rather, happy temperament;—philosophy gets too much credit. He had an ambitious spirit, and his ambition had taken a direction very common in our cities; an aspiration after commercial reputation, and the wealth and magnificence that follow it. Mr. Dunbar had mounted to the very top rung of the ladder, when, alas, it fell! and his possessions and hopes were
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prostrated. A fever seized him in the severest hour of disappointment, and the moral and physical pressure killed him. But this was not the cross. Mrs. Dunbar loved and honored her husband, without having any particular sympathy with him. He imparted none of his projects to her, and neither interfered with nor participated her quiet, every-day pursuits and pleasures; so that no harmonious partnership could be dissolved with less shock to the survivor. Mrs. Dunbar, beside the common-place solaces, on such occasions, such as, “We must all die,” “Heaven’s time is the best time,” had a particular and reasonable consolation in being relieved from the sight of unhappiness that she could not remove or mitigate. This was not selfishness, but the necessity of her nature, which resembled those plants that cannot live unless they have sunshine, and plenty of it.
Mrs. Dunbar had one son, Fletcher, a youth of rare promise, who was just seventeen at his father’s death. He most happily combined the character of his parents,—the aspiring and firm qualities of his father, and the bright spirit of his mother. His education had been most judiciously directed by his father; and his mother, without any system or plan whatever, had, by the sponta-
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neous action of her own character, most happily moulded his affections. At seventeen, Fletcher Dunbar seemed to me the perfection of a youth; with a boyish freshness and playfulness, and a manly grace, generosity, and courtesy. Much more attention than is usual in our country had been given to the adornments of education; but his father, who had all respect to the solid and practical, had taken care that the weightier matters were not sacrificed; and he had a prompt reward. So capable and worthy of trust was Fletcher at his father’s death, that the mercantile house in which he was clerk offered him, on advantageous terms, an agency for six years, in France and England. Mrs. Dunbar consented to his departure. But this parting of the widow from her only son, her only child, and such a child, was not the cross. “There was nothing like throwing a young man, who had his fortune to carve, on his own responsibilities,” she justly said. “Fletcher would get good, and not evil, wherever he went. She should hear from him by every packet, and six years would soon fly away.” And they did, and this brings me to the story of that drop, that diffused its bitterness through the cup of my friend till now had preserved sweet and sparkling.
The six years were gone; six years they had
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been to Fletcher, of health, prosperity, and virtue. I need say nothing more for a young man, who had been exposed to the temptations of London and Paris. The happy day and evening of his arrival had passed away. Uncles, aunts, and friends had thronged to welcome him, and gone to their homes, and Mrs. Dunbar was left alone with Fletcher and Ellen Fitzhugh.
I have said, that Mrs. Dunbar had but one child; but, if it be possible for the bonds of adoption to be as strong as those of nature, Mrs. Dunbar loved Ellen as well as if she had been born to her. This instance was enough to prove, that there may be the happiness of a maternal affection without the instincts of nature, or the feeling of property in the object, which more selfish natures than my friend’s require. Ellen was the child of a very dear friend of Mrs. Dunbar, who, from a goodly portion of nine daughters, surrendered this, the fairest and best, to what she then deemed a happier destiny than she could in any other way secure for her.
I do not believe Mrs. Dunbar could have told which she loved the best, Ellen Fitzhugh or her son; in truth, they were so blended in her mind that they made but one idea. When she saw Ellen, Fletcher was in her imagination; when she
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thought of Fletcher, Ellen was the present visible type through which her thoughts and affections went out to him.
Now he had returned; they were under the same roof;—Fletcher was three and twenty, with a handsome fortune to begin the world with; and Ellen was just eighteen, with
“a countenance, in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”
Never was there a fitter original for this beautiful description of the poet, than Ellen Fitzhugh; and could there be any thing more natural that Mrs. Dunbar’s firm belief, that Fletcher would set right about weaving into an imperishable fabric of golden threads she had been spinning for him?
The first evening had passed away; the old family domestics had received from Fletcher’s hand some gift “far fetched,” and enriched with the odor of kind remembrance; and Mrs. Dunbar and the young couple lingered over the decaying embers, to talk over the thousand particulars that are omitted in the most minute correspond-
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ence. “Pray tell me, Fletcher,” asked Mrs. Dunbar, “who was that Bessie Elmore you spoke of so frequently in your last letters?”
“Bessie Elmore! Heaven bless her! She was the daughter of a lady who was excessively kind to me the last time I was in London. She bore a striking resemblance to Ellen, so I called her cousin,—a pretty title to shelter a flirtation;—I should inevitably have lost my heart, but for the presumption of asking her to give up her country.”
“Was she very like Ellen?”
“Excessively; her laugh, too, always recalled Ellen’s. She was a charming little creature!”
Ellen blushed slightly, and Mrs. Dunbar’s happy countenance smiled all over as she said, “Ellen is very English in her looks.”
“Yes, aunt, a ‘rosy, sturdy little person,’ as English Smith used to call me.”
“Not too sturdy, Ellen,” said Fletcher, “and not too little,—just as high as our hearts, mother, is she not?”
“She has always just filled mine,” replied the delighted mother, who had already jumped to the conclusion that the affair was as good as settled, and the wedding, and the happy years to follow, floated in rich visions before her. She ventured on one question she was anxious to have
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settled. “You have no occasion to go abroad again, Fletcher?”
“None. A happy home, in my own country, has long been my ‘castle in the air,’ and now, thank Heaven, I can give it a terrestrial foundation.”
“Ellen is not the person to relish this ‘taking for granted,’” thought Mrs. Dunbar; Fletcher should be more reserved.
Fletcher soon turned the current of her apprehensions. “Pray,” he asked, “what is the reason, Ellen, that you and my mother have so seldom mentioned Matilda Preston in your letters of late?”
“We have seen much less of her than usual the winter past. Matilda cannot
‘To a party give up what was meant for mankind.’
I suppose you know she has been a ‘bright and particular star’ this winter,—a belle?”
“Has she? I am sorry for it!”
“So is not Matilda. She enjoys her undisputed reign. She has, to those she chooses to please, captivating manners, and you know she is talented. The beaux, of a score of years standing, declare there has been nothing like her in their time. She is beset with admirers and lover. She says she is obliged, when she goes
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to a ball, to keep an ivory tablet under her belt, with a list of her partners. Some wag pasted up on Carroll Place, where the Prestons live, ‘Apollo’s Court,’ on account of the perpetual serenades there. Poor Rupert Selden told me, he has thrown away half a year’s commissions on bouquets and serenades to her, which, in his own romantic phrase, had ‘ended in smoke.’ She is said to be engaged.”
“Engaged!” Fletcher bit his nails for two or three minutes in deep abstraction, and then added, “To whom is she engaged?”
“Pray don’t look so distressed, cousin; I only reported it as an on dit,—I forgot your flame for Matilda.”
“Pshaw, Ellen! but who is the person?”
“The preeminent person at the present moment is Ned Garston.”
“Ned Garston! a monkey, --impossible!”
“Oh, he is much improved by foreign travel, and, if still a monkey, a romantic monkey, a monkey en beau. He has put himself into the hands of some Parisian master of the science of transforming the deformed, and has come forth the tableau vivant, copied after a famous picture of some Troubadour in the Louvre.”
“What do you mean, Ellen?”
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“I mean, that Ned Garston’s very pretty, black hair hangs in hyacinthine curls over the collar of his coat,—that he wears tresses, like a girl’s, on each side of his face, and mustachios and whiskers that would befit a grand Sultan. The girls call him ‘the Sublime Porte.’”
“And is it possible that Matilda Preston, that gifted, beautiful creature, is going to throw herself away upon this Jackanapes?”
“How wildly you talk, Fletcher!” interposed his mother, “you have not seen Matilda Preston since she was a mere child.”
“But a rare child, my dear mother; Matilda Preston, at thirteen, was a fit model for sculpture and painting. She moved like a goddess, and her faculties were worthy such a form. Lord bless me, what a sacrifice!—is it a sacrifice to Mammon, Ellen?”
“Do not insist that the sacrifice is certain,”—
“I have no doubt it is his fortune,” said Mrs. Dunbar, for the first time, I believe, in her life, turning a scale against an absent person that might have been struck in her favor, “that is to say, fortune and style. Garston has the most showy equipage in the city, and his family, you know, are all in the first fashion.”
“The fashion would have more influence with
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Matilda than fortune, I suspect. You know, aunt, she refused Stanhope Gilmore, who is very rich, and very clever into the bargain.”
“But you remember, Ellen, she told us her father would never have consented to her marrying a loco-foco.”
“Loco-foco! what the mischief is that, mother?”
“Why——the lowest of people—an agrarian, you know—a Tory.”
“What does my mother mean, Ellen? I never heard such a confusing combination of terms.”
“You surely know what we mean by Whigs and Tories?”
“Not I.”
“Do you never read our newspapers?”
“Very seldom,—never the party papers. An American abroad is ashamed of the petty wrangling, virulence, and vulgarity of our political papers. We care only for the honor and prosperity of the country at large. We love our countrymen, by whatever name they are called, and it makes us heart-sick to take up one of our popular journals and see it proclaimed, that ‘a crisis is at hand!’—that ‘the country is on the brink of ruin!’—that ‘the constitution is in jeopardy!’ and can only be saved by a doubtful ma-
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jority, rallying with all their strength against a corrupt faction, about to prostrate the liberties of the country! The only way to keep your temper is never to look into a newspaper. But, pray, can you tell me what are these loco-foco Tories?”
Poor Mrs. Dunbar never disturbed the serene heaven of her mind with politics. She received a very vague impression from the persons she associated with, and in accordance with this impression, she now replied, “I don’t know precisely,—I remember my father talking about the Tories in Revolutionary days being the enemies of their country, and I suppose it is just the same now.”
Mrs. Dunbar answered in good faith. The changes of the last sixty years, the new formations, and the remodellings; the old parties with new names, and the new parties with old names, still existed in her mind as the ideas had originally entered it, as banded Whigs and Tories. Fletcher laughed at her reply and said, “I see, my dear mother, you are just where I left you. The loco-focos, I take it for granted, Ellen, are the administration party.”
“Yes.”
“And Stanhope Gilmore, sprung from the most aristocratic family in the State, is a loco-foco?
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and Matilda Preston’s father, of a purely democratic origin belongs to the aristocratic party?”
“Just so.”
“Well, thank Heaven, our party associations may make a great uproar, but they can never have the element of danger while they are so unstable and accidental!”
A ring at the door, and the entrance of a note “To Miss Fitzhugh,” cut the thread of Fletcher’s generalizations. He cast his eye on the note, and exclaimed, “That I am sure is from Matilda Preston, though I have not seen her writing for six years. If there is nothing private in it will you allow me to look at it, Ellen?”
“Certainly, there is nothing private, only such a strange proposition!”
“Read it aloud, please, Fletcher,” said Mrs. Dunbar; and Fletcher read as follows:
“Dearest Ellen,
“You are engaged to go to Mrs. Reeves’s costume-ball to morrow evening. Some tiresome people have been persuading me to appear as Rebecca. Now I am well aware, that, in the article of beauty, I am not fitted to impersonate the lovely Jewess, but I am half inclined to try it, because I can so well arrange a dress for the
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character. Mamma has a remnant of a last century’s dress, a bright yellow India silk, embroidered with silver, that, with my ostrich feather and agrafe, will do admirably for the turban. I do not quite comprehend Rebecca’s simarre, but I think the bodice of my brocade will do as substitute.
“My note was interrupted by a visit from Madame Salasuar. She offers me her diamonds,—à bas pride, I’ll wear them. They are essential to give the Eastern character of magnificence. Then, you know my ‘sable tresses,’ my ‘aquiline nose,’ my ‘dark complexion,’ and my ‘Oriental eyes,’ as De Ville will call them, will all work in as accessories, to give a vraisemblance to the tableau vivant.
“Now, my sweetest Ellen, I cannot appear as the Jewess, unless you accompany me as the Lady Rowena. Pray,—pray do not refuse me, why should you?
“Perhaps you think ‘l’obscurité convient aux femmes’; — my dear, it will come soon enough when there are kitchens and nurseries for us to supervise,—let us buzz a little while in the sunshine first.
“Do you know a possible Ivanhoe among the invited? I do not. My acquaintances are all
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party-going, unknightly gentry enough. Garston proposes to appear as Brian de Bois-Guilbert!!! The perverse winds and waves! if they had but sent us Fletcher Dunbar!” (Here the reader blushed, smiled, and hesitated. “Read on, my son,” said his mother impatiently, and on he stammered.) “A Palmer’s dress, in which you know Ivanhoe first appears, would have been just the thing for Fletcher’s advent from foreign land, though the uprooted oak, the device of his shield at the tourney, and the motto, Desdichado, (Disinherited,)” would have ill fitted dear Mrs. Dunbar’s heir-apparent. It is so intolerably provoking that he has not arrived, when he is probably within two days’ sail of us. He is so clever and with such a born-hero look! Perhaps, after all, he might be cross and refuse; so let us be philosophers, and do as well as we can without him. You, dearest Ellen, will not refuse me? You will be the ‘Queen of Love and Beauty’; I only the poor Jewess, who, you remember, the Prior of Jorvaulx swore was far inferior to the lovely Saxon Rowena.”
“Is Matilda Preston out of her head?” exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar. “A fitting character for you, truly, Ellen, that pompous, cold, disagreea-
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ble, insipid Rowena. Don’t think of it, my dear child.”
“I shall not think of it for other reasons, aunt. I cannot conceive of any thing more absurd than for me to personate a beauty,—a tall beauty, too! born ‘to the exercise of habitual superiority, and the reception of general homage.’”
“I see no objection in that, my dear child. There are not half a dozen readers of Ivanhoe, who remember whether Rowena was tall or short; and as to beauty, that is, as to what is really engaging and captivating, I am sure”——
“Pray, dear aunt,”——
“The servant is waiting for an answer,” said Mrs. Dunbar’s maid.
“He shall have it instantly,” replied Ellen, taking up her pen.
“Stop one moment, my dear cousin,” said Fletcher, laying his hand on hers; “if it is not too disagreeable to you, say Yes. I should particularly like surprising Matilda, and joining you at this ball in the way she proposes. I do not see, that, in merely dressing in costume for Rowena, and calling yourself that name, you arrogate yourself beauty, and queenship, and all that. Where you make one of a group, the resemblance is a matter of inferior consequence.
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Matilda’s Jewess will be so striking, that she will shelter all our imperfections.”
Ellen still hesitated, and looked perplexed, and Fletcher added, “I see it annoys you, — it is a sacrifice of your prepossessions, — write the note as you at first intended.”
The word sacrifice seemed to Ellen to set her reluctance in a ridiculous light, and she felt ashamed of having hesitated, at this moment of Fletcher’s return, to acceded to a request that involved pleasure to him. “I will write it as I should have intended, if I had not been more thoughtful of myself then of others’ pleasure. You must make up your mind, aunt, to my doing the Lady Rowena too much honor! Shall I tell Matilda I can find an Ivanhoe, and that we will meet her at Mrs. Reeve’s at ten?
“Thank you, Ellen, — yes, — but pray don’t give a hint of my arrival; let us see, what was the Palmer’s dress, — do you remember, mother?”
Mrs. Dunbar did not; but, believing and hoping in her heart it would be something so unsuitable as to induce Fletcher to abandon the project, she eagerly sought the first volume of Ivanhoe on the book-shelf, and gave it to him. Fletcher opened at the entrance of the Palmer into Roth-
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erwood. “ ‘A mantle of coarse, black serge,’” he read aloud, “admirable! that is easily got up, and can be easily thrown aside. ‘Coarse sandals bound with thongs on his bare feet.’ By your leave, Sir Palmer, I shall not meddle with those. ‘A broad and shadowy hat, with cockle-shells stitched on its brim.’ Excellent! ‘A long staff shod with iron, to the upper end of which was attached a branch of palm.’ As we are not to tramp to Holy Land, we will omit the shoeing. The branch of palm is the grand point. That can be got from my old friend Thorburn.”
“And what is Ellen’s dress to be?” asked Mrs. Dunbar, — “I hope that will not be forgotten.”
“My dear mother, forgive me, —Ellen was busy with her note, —finished and sent is it! –you always execute while others are planning, Ellen. Ah, here is the description; ‘Hair betwixt brown and flaxen,’ — yours has a touch of the auburn, — the Saxon red.”
“Red!” interposed Mrs. Dunbar, “Ellen’s hair red! It has a true golden tinge.”
“Red gold, mother.”
“At any rate, Fletcher, it is not red, flaxen, or brown; I might have remembered Rowena’s hair was flaxen, — everything about her was unmeaning.”
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“ ‘Her hair,’ ” proceeded Fletcher, “ ‘was braided with gems.’ ”
“Le Fleur will manage all that,” said Mrs. Dunbar, “with my set of pearl.” She began to feel a little womanly interest in the getting up of the dress.
“‘A golden chain,’ ” proceeded Fletcher, “‘to which was attached a small reliquary of the same metal hung round her neck.’ That, my dear cousin, you must allow me to manage, that is, if a cross will do in place of a reliquary, and, as they are both symbols of the same religion, I do not see why it will not.” He unlocked a very beautiful dressing-case, which he now told Ellen he had brought for her, and took from it a rich gold chain, with an exquisitely wrought cross attached to it. “I brought this prophetically,” he said, clasping it round Ellen’s neck.
“Would the chain, and not the cross, had been prophetic!” thought Mrs. Dunbar, and she heaved a deep sigh.
“The memory of affection is always prophetic, Fletcher,” said Ellen; “it links the memory of past to future kindness.”
“What, my dear?” asked Mrs. Dunbar; “I don’t clearly understand you.”
The chain and the cross were too suggestive
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to Ellen’s mind to admit of any very clear explanation. Fletcher’s quick eye perceived her embarrassment, and imputing it to the awkwardness that very commonly attends receiving a gift, he went on with the book. “ ‘Her dress was an under gown and kirtle of pale green silk.’ ”
“Your new gown is the very thing, Ellen,” interrupted Mrs. Dunbar; “how fortunate! green, your own color.”
“Ellen’s color the emblem of desertion! mother?”
“No, no indeed, Fletcher; no one who has ever loved Ellen could forsake her.”
Fletcher, all unconscious of the feeling that was bubbling up from his mother’s heart, coolly proceeded in his trying process. “Here is a stumbling-block! ‘The Lady Rowena wore a long, loose crimson robe, manufactured of the finest wool, which reached to the ground.’ ”
“A stumbling-block? By no means, Fletcher; Amande can convert my India shawl into such a robe without the least injury to it, and I’ll answer for it the Lady Rowena’s mantle was dowlas to that. Is there any thing else?”
“ ‘A veil of silk interwoven with gold.’ ”
“My Brussels lace will be just the thing; it is magnificent, and will shelter without concealing.”
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At another time Ellen’s right joyous spirit would have found merriment enough in the project of arraying her little, unobtrusive person in a crimson robe, flowing to the ground, and at the simplicity of good Mrs. Dunbar, in supposing she could carry off any thing “magnificent.” She had another kind of veil to wear, for the first time in her life, to conceal her feelings, and to assume cheerfulness she did not feel.
Mrs. Dunbar retired for the night. Ellen, after despatching some trifling home affairs, was following her, when Fletcher, who had been leaning abstractedly on his elbow, said, “Ellen, do not go; I have something to say to you.” Ellen turned with a beating and foreboding heart. “Tell me, Ellen, honestly, is it your belief that Matilda Preston is engaged to Garston?”
“I do not believe she is.”
“Why are you in such haste? Sit down, — there, thank you; but do not look as if I had murder to confess, — I have only to tell you the weakness and the strength of my heart. You know, my dear Ellen, — cousin, — sister, I should rather call you, for, without any tie of blood, no sister was ever dearer, there is no one but you to whom I can communicate my feelings, projects, and hopes, —from whom I can take coun-
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sel. To begin, then when I left America you and Matilda Preston were very intimate. I do not find you so much so now; what is the cause of this alienation?”
“There is no alienation, Fletcher; we are intimate still.”
“Affectionately intimate?”
“Matilda is very kind, — very affectionate to me.”
“And you not so to her? I am sure you never repelled affection with coldness. There must be some reason for this. My mother, too, seems to have a prejudice against Matilda; pray be frank with me, Ellen.”
Frankness was Ellen’s nature. She was one of the few beings in this world, who are thoroughly and habitually, by nature and by grace, true. For the first time a cloud had passed over her clear spirit. She began to speak, faltered, began again, and finally said; “It may be more mine than Matilda’s fault, that we are less intimate than formerly. Our circumstances, our tastes are different. I think Matilda is much what she was when you left us, — that is, — that is, allowing for the difference between a school-girl and a belle, Fletcher.”
“A belle! — how I hate the term. But how
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could it be otherwise in a city atmosphere, with Matilda’s beauty, talents, and accomplishments? I see she is not quite to your taste, Ellen; I am sorry for it, but this is better than I feared. Now for my confession is brief. When I left you, I was a reserved boy. Neither you, nor my mother, probably, ever suspected my predilection, but for two years I had been desperately in love with Matilda Preston. I believed she loved me. We exchanged many a love-token, many a promise. It is true she was a mere child, I a mere boy; but there are such childish loves on record, Ellen. The germ of the fruit is in the unfolding bud. It may, after all, have been, on her part, a littler innocent foolery, forgotten long ago; but, if so, I was coxcomb enough to take it all in dead earnest. Through my six years of absence I have cherished, lived upon, these remembrances. All my projects, all my successes have blended with the thought of Matilda; and, blessed by Heaven in my enterprises, I have now come home determined to throw myself at her feet, if I find her what memory and a lover’s faith have painted her.” Fletcher fixed his eye on Ellen. Hers fell. “Will you not, — can you not, Ellen, give me a ‘God speed’?”
The flush on Ellen’s cheek faded to a deadly
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paleness. After a moment’s hesitation, she summoned her resolution; and, raising her eye to meet Fletcher’s, replied, with a tolerably steady voice, “do not ask a ‘God speed’ of me now Fletcher; — wait till you have seen Matilda, and studied her character, as you to study that on which the happiness of your life is to depend; and then, if your ripened judgment confirms your youthful preference, you shall have my” — “God speed,” she would have said but her honest tongue refused to utter the word to which her heart did not answer, and adding, “my earnest wishes, — my prayers,” she burst into irrepressible tears, and, horror-struck at what she feared was a betrayal of her true feelings she fled, without even a “good night,” to her own apartment.
The truth did once flash across Fletcher’s mind. “It is a phenomenon to see Ellen in tears, save at some touching tale or known grief,” he thought; “Ellen, with her ever bright buoyant spirit, — her ‘obedient passions, will resigned.’ Has my dear, imprudent mother, with her equal fondness for us both, been kindling a spark of tenderness in Ellen’s heart?” The thought was no sooner conceived than rejected. There was no latent vanity in Fletcher’s mind to please itself with cherishing it. It was happily improbable,
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and it soon gave place to thick-coming and most pleasant fancies. But one cloud hovered over them, — Mrs. Dunbar’s and Ellen’s all too evident distrust of Matilda. “I will ‘study her character,’ and abide by the decision of my ‘ripened judgment,’ ” resolved Fletcher. Alas for the judgment of a young man of three and twenty as to talented beauty of nineteen with the desperate make-weight against it of a long-cherished love!
When love takes possession of a mind perfectly sane in other respects, it acts like a monomania. This one idea has on independent existences, a complete ascendency, and absolute rule. The faculties of perception, comparison, judgment, have no power to modify, — the will no control over it. An angel, surely, should keep
“Strict change and watch, that —
No evil thing approach or enter in”
the paradise of the affections.
The trials of the evening were not over for Ellen. It was her invariable custom to undress in Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment, and to have a little gossip over the interests of the closing day, and the anticipations of the leaf of life next to be turned, before they parted for the night. This is the
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hour, that, of all others, unlocks the treasures of the heart. Memory pours out her hoarded stores and young hope shows, by her magic lantern, her visions of the future.
Ellen had often sat with her loving friend over the dying embers, reading and re-reading the passages in Fletcher’s letters, where he dwelt on the fond remembrance of home. Every mention of Ellen, and the letters abounded with them, his mother repeated and repeated, and always with an emphasis and smile, that sometimes made Ellen’s blood tingle to her fingers’ ends. And yet, simple as a child, the good woman never dreamed that she was communicating her faith and hopes, and awakening feelings never to sleep again. This she knew, as a matter of principle and discretion, would not be right; and, while she never said to Ellen, in so many words, “My heart is set on your marrying Fletcher, and I am sure his is, even more than mine,” she did not suspect she was conveying this meaning in every look, word, and motion. And even now, when the pillars of her “castle in the air,” were tumbling about her head, she had no apprehension that Ellen would be crushed by them. They were to meet now for the first time, with the most painful feeling to loving and trusting friends, that
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their hearts must be hidden with impenetrable screens; but, such was the transparency of dear Mrs. Dunbar’s heart, that, put what she would before it, the disguise melted away is the clear light, — to tell the truth, Ellen’s was little better; her safety was in the dim sight of the eye to be eluded.
She washed away her tears, called up all the resolution she could master, and repaired to Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment, whom she hoped she might find by this time in bed, and get off with her “good-night kiss”; but, instead of this, she was pacing up and down the room, not a pin removed.
“Dear aunt, not in bed yet?”
“No, my dear child, — I did not feel like sleeping the first night, you know, of Fletcher’s being here; — it’s natural to have a good many wakeful thoughts of past times, and so forth.” While saying this she had turned her back, and was busying herself at the bureau, the tone of her voice, and the frequent use of her handkerchief, conveying the state of her feelings as precisely to Ellen, as her streaming eyes would, had she shown them.
“Now you are at the bureau, aunt, please to take out your crimson shawl,” said Ellen, luckily hitting on an external object to engage their
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attention. Mrs. Dunbar fumbled at the drawers long enough to give herself time to clear her voice and dry her eyes, and then, throwing the shawl in to Ellen’s lap, she said, “You are welcome to that, and every thing else I have in the world, God knows, my dear child; but I don’t wish you to go to Mrs. Reave’s to-morrow evening, — I don’t think you will enjoy yourself.”
“It’s no very rare thing, at a party, not to enjoy one’s self, aunt. I shall certainly have the pleasure of obliging Fletcher.”
“That’s true, Ellen; — but then it was not like him to ask you, when he saw it was so disagreeable to you. I don’t see why he should set his heart upon this foolish Ivanhoeing.”
“But you see why he does, aunt.” Ellen spoke with a smile, melancholy, in spite of her efforts.
“Yes, I do, I do!” cried Mrs. Dunbar, her tears gushing forth afresh; “I see that Fletcher has the most unexpected, incomprehensible, unreasonable, unfortunate, strange, dreadful, wonderful, and amazing interest in Matilda Preston. I had never so much as thought of it, — it’s insanity, Ellen, — he is as blind as a beetle.”
“It is a blindness, aunt, that is not likely to be cured by the presence of Matilda Preston.”
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“That’s just what I feel, Ellen. Men are always carried away with beauty. I thought Fletcher was an exception; but he is not, or he would tell the gold from the glittering.”
“But, aunt, you do Matilda and Fletcher injustice. She has fine qualities; and, if what you now expect should happen, you will look on Matilda with very different eyes.”
“Never, Ellen, never in the world, —she will always seem to stand between men and —I mean, — I mean, — I can’t tell you, Ellen, what I mean. But this I will say, come what will, no one can ever take your place to me, —you are the child of my heart, — you have grown up at my side — I can never love another daughter; — whomever you marry, Ellen, wherever you go, your home shall be my home.”
“No, no, aunt,” said Ellen, hiding her tearful face on the bosom of her faithful friend, “I shall never marry, — never.” And before Mrs. Dunbar could reply, she gave her good-night kiss and left the room.
“Is it possible she could have understood me?” exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar. After a little reflection she quieted her apprehensions with the thought that she had a hundred times before spoken just as plainly, and Ellen had not suspected what she meant. She was like the child, who, shutting his own eyes, fancies no one can see him.
When Ellen left Mrs. Dunbar’s room, she went mechanically down stairs to perform her last household duty, which was to see that the doors were secured. On the floor, at the street-door, she perceived a note; and, on taking it up, saw it was addressed to a Miss Little, Miss Preston’s dress-maker, who lived opposite the Dunbars’ dress-maker, who lived opposite the Dunbars’. It had been accidentally dropped by Miss Preston’s careless servant. It was unsealed, and Ellen, taking it for granted it related to something about the costume for the Reeves party, and that it might be important to have no delay in getting it into the hands of the artiste, rang the bell for the servant, intending to send it, though the hour was unseasonable. Diana, Mrs. Dunbar’s crippled old cook, called out from the kitchen stairs to Miss Ellen, that “Daniel had just gone up to bed.” Daniel, like his pagan mate, Diana, had lived out, and overstayed his lease of threescore and ten with kind Mrs. Dunbar; and Ellen, hesitating to call him down, ventured to open the note, to see if it were a matter of any importance. It contained only the following three lines:
“Pray, Miss Littell, if you have any dealings
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with Mrs. D.’s family, do not mention that you informed me of the arrival of her son.
“M. P —.”
“I thought so!” exclaimed Ellen, involuntarily. “What is it, Ellen? What did you think?”
asked Fletcher, who, unheard by her, had just come into the open door for something he had left behind.
“Oh, nothing, — nothing at all,” said she. He playfully attempted to wrest the note from her hand, till, seeing she anxiously retained it, he desisted, and she returned to her own apartment, where she breathed freely for the first time for many hours, and where she spent a long, sleepless night in expelling from her mind her shattered hopes, and forming her plans for the future.
“Ought I not,” she said, in her self-examination, “to have obeyed the first impulse of my heart, and when Fletcher appealed to me, to have told him frankly my opinion of Matilda.” After much meditation the response of her conscience was a full acquittal. She had done all that the circumstances of the case and her relations to the parties allowed, in withholding her ‘God speed’ till Fletcher’s ripened judgment should authorize his decision. She reflected, that Matilda’s char-
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acter had seemed to her to have the same radical faults six years before, that it had now, and that, in spite of them, Fletcher loved her then. Perhaps she judged those faults too strictly. Perhaps her judgment was tinged by her self-love; for she was conscious, that, in the points so offensive to her, she was constitutionally the opposite of Matilda Preston. She looked again at Matilda’s discrepant notes of that evening, and charitably allowed, that she had at first felt too much displeasure at what struck her as absolutely false, but what, after all, might be an innocent stratagem to get up a dramatic scene, and perhaps to shelter emotions at a first meeting with Fletcher. “But oh, Matilda, why always a stratagem? Why never let the appearance answer to the reality? Why never trust yourself to simple truth?” Because Matilda was afraid, that truth would not serve her so well as she could manage for herself. We have no doubt our friends, the Phrenologists, would, with a very fair intellectual development, have found a great predominance of the organs of self-esteem, love of approbation, and cautiousness on Matilda’s head. She had an intense love of admiration, not merely of her personal charms, for her preëminent beauty was settled by universal suffrage, and she
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had no anxiety about it; but she would be thought, in all the circle of her acquaintance, to be the most capable of disinterested friendship and of self-sacrificing love; her tastes were in favor of all the virtues, — she really wished to be amiable and excellent; but the virtues have their price, and they will not abate one jot or tittle; — that price is self-abasement, self-forgetfulness, and generosity. “Hard it is to climb their steeps;” and they can only be achieved by painful and persevering efforts. At the first real trial appearances vanish like vapor, — there is no cheating in the long run in the matter of goodness.
With all Matilda’s fine taste, with her susceptibility to opinion, and her eager desire of praise, she was no favorite. Her intense selfishness would penetrate all disguises, — her consciousness of herself was always apparent, — there was never a spontaneous action, word, or look. In all this she was the very opposite of Ellen, who, most strictly watchful of the inner world, let the outer take care of itself. This gave a freedom and simplicity to her manners, and a straightforwardness to all her dealings, that inspired confidence. Matilda, in the midst of her most brilliant career, had, whenever silent, an expres-
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sion of care and dissatisfaction, — a rigidity and contraction of the upper lip, (often criticized as the only imperfection of her beauty,) that betrayed the puerile anxieties in which she was involved, the web she was perpetually weaving or raveling. There is no such tell-tale as the human countenance, or rather, we should say (with more reverence) God has set his seal of truth upon it, and no artifice has ever yet obscured the Divine impression. Ellen Fitzhugh’s lovely face was the mirror of truth, cheerfulness, and affection.
“There is no use,” thought Ellen, as she pursued the meditations in which we left her, “in trying to conceal my feelings, — I cannot, — I never did in my life, — I must just set to work and overcome them. Dear Mrs. Dunbar, all those sweet fancies that you and I have been so busily weaving, the last six years, must be sacrificed at once and for ever; and I must just learn to think of Fletcher, as I did when a little girl,— as a dear, kind brother; — that should be, — it
shall be, enough.” This resolution was made with many showers of tears, and sanctified with many prayers, ejaculated from the depths of her heart; and, once made, she set about, with most characteristic promptness, contriving the means for carrying it into execution.
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“In the first place,” thought she, “I must have something extraordinary to occupy me, or I shall be constantly, and oh how painfully, watching Fletcher’s every look and action; in spite of myself, I shall be hoping and fearing. This must not be, for I know how it must all end! It occurred to her, that it was nearly as important to divert Mrs. Dunbar’s attention as her own, and a lucky thought came into her head. Mrs. Dunbar’s physician had been urging her, for some weeks, to have a little wen removed, that was growing in a dangerous neighbourhood to her eye. Mrs. Dunbar was timid and procrastinating; but, with Fletcher’s aid, Ellen felt sure of persuading her this was the very best time for the operation. Then she determined at once to put in execution a project she had conceived, of teaching a poor, young blind girl, a pensioner of Mrs. Dunbar’s, music. Ellen was an accomplished musician; and she certainly was not over sanguine in believing, that the prospect of qualifying a drooping, dependent creature to earn an independent existence, would make sunshine for some hours of every day.
With these, and other similar plans in her head, which were necessarily deferred till after the Reeves ball, Ellen appeared the next morn-
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ing with a light and strong heart, and a correspondent face, voice, and manner. Oh, if rightly put to the test, what unthought of powers there are in those who every day yield themselves the passive victims to uncontrollable circumstances;
“powers
That touch each other to the quick, in modes
Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive,
No soul to dream of.”
Ellen talked over with Fletcher, with real interest and unaffected cheerfulness, the arrangements for the evening. If she had put into action all of Talleyrand’s diplomacy, she could not so thoroughly have convinced him, that his surmise of the preceding evening was unwarranted. Half of Mrs. Dunbar’s griefs were removed by the conviction, that her favorite did not share them!
We could fill a volume with the details of the ball, and the circumstances of the following six weeks, and all the developments of character and feeling which came from them; but we must cut down our history to the dimensions of its Procrustes’ bed. We must say for our favorite Ellen, that, bating a few inches of stature, she did honor to the character she reluctantly assumed. Her usually sparkling eyes were languid from the sleeplessness of the preceding night, and
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her color, which, in heated rooms, was apt to be uncomfortably high, was abated and fluctuating, and her dress, so happily arranged and judiciously modified, that the Saxon beauty, for once, fairly divided the suffrages with the brilliant Rebecca. But with the mere externals ended all resemblance to the truth of the characters. The Palmer, the Christian devotee, had nor eye, nor ear, but for the proscribed Jewess; and Rebecca was all delight at finding, beneath the broad brim of cockle-shells, and the Slavonian, the contour and air of a very elegant young man, who, she felt assured, had returned no less her ardent lover than the boy she had parted with six years before. She managed her prepared surprise so awkwardly, that Ellen wondered at Fletcher’s blindness. He was indeed blind! As to poor Garston, he was so enchanted with himself in the Templar’s costume, that he never once dreamed how near he was to a more portentous overthrow than that of his prototype on the field of Ashby de la Zouch.
We must pass over the next six weeks with merely saying, that Ellen executed her plans, — that Mrs. Dunbar found, in the complete success of a dreaded operation, a very considerable counteraction to what she still maintained was by far
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the greatest grief of her life. But it was plain, that even in no selfish grief could her benevolent feelings be merged. She was exceedingly excited with Ellen’s marvellous success with her musical pupil, and she had the most eager pleasure, every day, in the result of a subscription Ellen had set on foot for the yet unpublished book of a poor author, or, rather, a very poor man, and good author. We must confess, that Ellen had her hours of conflict, agitation, and despondency, when life was a burden; but even then, though the eclipse seemed total to her, she saw light beyond the shadow. Is there ever total darkness to the good?
Fletcher made her his confidante. This was a pretty severe trial; but she tried to feel, and did feel, in some measure, the sympathy he expected; and she was prepared by degrees for the final communication, that he and Matilda had plighted faith. In spite of her resolutions and efforts she turned excessively pale, and tried in vain to command her voice to speak; but this did not surprise Fletcher. All deep emotions are serious. He had never himself been more so than at this moment of the attainment of the dearest, the long-cherished wish of his heart. One hour before he had felt a pang that he in vain tried to
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forget, when, while their mutual vows were still warm on their lips, Matilda had left him in haste, lest she should not be the first at the opening of a newly-arrived case of French millinery! He painfully contrasted this with Ellen’s emotion, — with his own; and a thought arose through the mists of his mind, repressed as soon as perceived, that there were more points of sympathy between him and Ellen Fitzhugh, than he had found with Matilda.
As to poor Mrs. Dunbar, whom Ellen trusted she had quite prepared for the crisis, she took to her bed, upon the first intimation of it, with a head-ache that lasted, unintermitted, as never had head-ache, or heart-ache, with her before, for three days. In vain Matilda came to ask her blessing. Mrs. Dunbar was unaffectedly too ill to receive her. “With God’s help and time,” said the good lady to Ellen, “I will do my duty to Fletcher’s wife; but as to seeing Matilda Preston now, that‘s quite impossible, — and as to ever loving her as a child, as I do you, my own dear Ellen, that‘s not to be looked for.—’ The wind bloweth where it listeth.’” Mrs. Dunbar was no philosopher; — her instincts alone had led her to the discovery of the great truth, that our volitions have no power over our affections.
Ellen, now that all was decided, kept her eye
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resolutely on the bright side. “I am very sorry, aunt,” she said, “you did not feel equal to seeing Matilda this morning; I have seen her more brilliant, but never one half so interesting. Love has given an exaltation to all her feelings, — has breathed a soul into her face. There was a gentleness and a deference in her manners to Fletcher, that is quite new to her. She feels his superiority, and it may work wonders on her character.”
“Do you think so, Ellen?—well,—for Fletcher’s sake, — God bless him! — I’ll hope for the best. I am not an observing person, Ellen; but I have often remarked, that love, like showers from Heaven, is reviving to the thinnest soil, and every thing is fresh, and sweet, and beautiful for a little while; but the flowers soon fade, — the grass withers, — nature will take a natural course.”
“But, aunt,” replied Ellen, with a smile, “may not grace subdue nature?”
“No, my dear, no; it may help nature on in its own way, but not change it. I am sure I have tried my best for the last six weeks to put down nature; but it is too strong for me, Ellen.” Mrs. Dunbar wiped away a flood of tears, and then went on. “Ellen, I have been thinking this was a good time, while we are all
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so wretched,—I mean, while I am,—to speak to Fletcher about looking over that private desk of his father’s. Will you take it to him, dear? You know I have never looked into it. Before strangers come into the family, it is best to have papers that concern no one but us, disposed of. You need not say that to Fletcher; but I can trust you, dearest child, to say nothing to him that appears unfriendly to Matilda; — just give him the desk and key.”
Ellen did so; and, at the first leisure moment, Fletcher sat down to its examination. He found nothing of particular interest till he came to a file of letters, marked, “Correspondence with Selden Fitzhugh.” Before transcribing the only two letters of interest to the reader, it is necessary to premise, that the elder Dunbar and Fitzhugh had been intimate from their childhood, and that, after their marriage, the closest friendship united their families. A letter from Fletcher’s father to his friend, which seemed to have been written soon after his failure, ran thus:
“Dear Fitzhugh,
“My ruin is total. The labors, the enterprises, the successes of twenty years, are wrecked, — nothing remains. I am the victim, in part, of the
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folly of others, in part, I confess it with shame, of my own grasping. I had competence, I desired riches, and thus it has ended. But the worst is to come, my dear friend. I have made shipwreck of your little fortune, as well as of my own hopes. I have been obliged to give up all my property to satisfy my indorsers, according to the received notion, that debts to them are debts of honor, and I have not wherewith to pay a penny of the thirty thousand dollars you trusted to me without bond, mortgage, or security of any sort. This is the requital of your generous, but too rash friendship!
“Fitzhugh, I am a heart-broken man. My hope and energy are gone. If it were not so, I might promise you a day of restitution, —I should expect it myself; but all before me is dark and dreary. Even now I feel as if a fever were drying up the fountains of life. Forgive me, — pity me, my dear friend; I curse my own folly. You will not curse me, but, believe me, I would coin my heart’s blood to make you restitution.
“Your miserable friend,
“F. Dunbar.”
The following answer to Mr. Dunbar’s letter
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was dated at Mr. Fitzhugh’s country residence; and written a week later than his.
“Dear Dunbar,
“I am truly sorry for your misfortunes; but, my dear fellow, take heart of grace. If you have made a total shipwreck, as you say, why so has many a good fellow before you. The storm will pass, — you can fit out again; only don’t carry quite so much sail, and take out a clearance for some other port than El Dorado. As to my money, believe me, on my honor, after the first surprise and shock were over, the loss has not given me a moment’s uneasiness. I would not have put the money at risk for myself, or you, if I had not secured an adequate provision for my good wife, and eight dear little girls, and Ellen into the bargain, if ever she comes home to us. Our wants are moderate, and our supplies sufficient; and, believe me, a few thousand dollars to be added to the inheritance of each of my girls would not make one of our bright hours brighter. They will never hear of the loss, for I have taken care they should not count upon money that I had subjected to the chances of mercantile life. I have been thus particular to tranquillize you, my dear friend. If finally you
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retrieve your circumstances, you will pay the debt, and all will be well; — and, if you never pay it, — why it will be just as well.
“Ever faithfully yours,
“SELDEN FITZHUGH.”
“God bless and reward you, noble, dear friend,” was an indorsement on the back of this letter, dated two days before Mr. Dunbar’s death, and written by himself, evidently with a weak and tremulous hand.
Fletcher had read and re-read the letters, and had sat for an half hour meditating on their contents, when Matilda, who had called, on an appointment with Ellen, opened the door, and, seeing him deep in occupation, was retreating, when he said, “Pray come in, Matilda, you are the person I most wished to see.”
“That, I trust, is not very singular! But what is the matter, Fletcher? Are you making your will?”
“I am thinking over the disposition of my worldly effects,” he replied, with a very faint smile. “Will you read these letters, Matilda?”
“Yes; but, for Heaven’s sake, don’t look of solemn; I should think they were from the dead to the living.”
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“They are,—read them, and tell me what you think of them.”
Matilda read his father’s, while Fletcher perused her countenance with a far deeper interest than she evinced. “I see nothing very particular in this,” she said. “Your poor father seems to have taken his failure sadly to heart. I never heard before that Mr. Fitzhugh lost by him. But the Fitzhughs are very well off for the country, and I suppose it did not matter much. Ellen was probably adopted by your mother as an offset.”
“No; my mother never knew any thing of the business.”
“No! Oh, I forgot,—Ellen has lived here all her life. But why are you so sad, dear Fletcher,—there is no use in fretting over past troubles?”
“You have read but one of the letters, Matilda,” said Fletcher, coldly, without noticing her last reply!
“So I see; but I was thinking so much more of you than of the letters!” She read Mr. Fitzhugh’s. Fletcher’s eye was riveted to her face; there was no change of color, no moistening of the eye, the return messages of a kindred spirit to a generous action. “How well he took it!”
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she said in her ordinary tone of voice. “I have often hear your mother say, that Ellen was just like her father, making the best of everything,— ‘from evil still educing good.’” Matilda saw that Fletcher expected something more from her; but what, exactly, she could not divine. “Mr. Fitzhugh’s letter must have been a balm to your father’s wounded spirit, just as that sad time,” she added, and paused again. A servant entered and filled the awkward interval with some good reason why Miss Ellen would not keep her appointment.
“I am not sorry,” said Matilda, when the door closed, “for now, dear Fletcher, you will go with me.”
“No, Matilda, I cannot.”
“But you will,” she urged, laying her hand persuasively on his shoulder, and with a look that would have seemed to defy denial. “Come, come away, Fletcher, from these musty papers,—you will be devoured with blue devils; come, I must go, and I will not go without you.”
“You must excuse me.”
“You are unkind, Fletcher,” said Matilda, and her starting tears showed that she could feel keenly. Her pride would not brook any further entreaty, and she abruptly left the room, not doubting, however, that she should be intercepted, or
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immediately followed by her penitent lover. But she reached her own home unmolested, and retired to her own apartment, hurt and offended, and resolved, when Fletcher should come to his senses, to be unrelenting. There was ring after ring at the street-door, and visiter after visiter was announced; but the only one she cared for came not, and to every one else she was denied. At last the servant brought a note from Fletcher. “There must be something more than one note,” thought Matilda, as she broke it open. The current of her feelings was somewhat changed as she read what follows:
“My Dearest Matilda,
“Forgive me, I pray you. I have seemed unreasonable and sullen to you, and I have done you in my heart more wrong than I have expressed. That heart is wholly yours, and no feeling it harbors shall ever be hidden from you. The truth was, that I expected the letters would have called forth more feeling than they did. I ought to have rejected (and have since), that our feelings depend much on our humors,—that your mind was preoccupied,—and that, having no particular interest in the parties, you could not participate the strong and painful sympathy
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that then thrilled every nerve in my frame. I was wrong, and again, on my knees, I beg you to forgive me! I have bound myself to tell the whole truth; and must confess, that I expected still more,— that I expected you would anticipate the conclusions which of course were instinctive with me; but I should have remembered, my dear Matilda, that women, having no business habits or notions, the duty devolving on me at this moment would not have occurred to you. That duty plainly is, to pay my father’s debt to the Fitzhughs. There is no legal obligation, but a moral obligation, and an added debt of gratitude, that no human law could make more binding, or could invalidate. If I had a family dependent on me, there might be a question; but, situated as I am, there can be none. The debt, with its accumulation of interest, will swallow up nine tenths of the property I have acquired; but, with the remnant, with rare experience for three and twenty, with business talents, and a fair reputation, I shall soon go forward again. That event, which is to be the crowning joy of my life, must be deferred for two years. This is no small trial of my philosophy,—of my religion (for I will use the right word); but, with this bright reward ever in view, no labors, no difficulties will daunt my
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spirit. Dearest, dearest Matilda, forgive me for having for a moment doubted you. It was the first time. I believe, as I believe in all truth, it will be the last.”
The following brief note, in pencil, was returned by the servant:
“Come see me at nine, this evening. I shall be alone and disengaged then, and not till then. In the mean time, make no disclosures of your inventions to your mother, to Ellen, or to any one.”
The interval was one of reposeful confidence to Fletcher, and of that celestial joy that springs from an ability, and an immovable resolution, to perform a right action at a great personal sacrifice. We claim for him no great merit in yielding the money. Any right-minded young man full of health and hope, and conscious capacity, might have done this without a pang; but Fletcher was a passionate lover, and he had to encounter the miserable uncertainties of a hope deferred.
Let us see how the interval was passed by Matilda. After much agitating self-deliberation,
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she called her mother to her counsel. Mrs. Preston was the prototype of her daughter, save that what was but in the gristle with the daughter, had hardened into bone with the mother, and save that Matilda, from having had an education very much superior to Mrs. Preston’s, had certain standards and theories of virtue in her mind’s eye, that had never entered the mother’s field of vision. Matilda, too, from having been all her short life in fashionable society, did not estimate it as so high a rate as her mother, who has paid for every inch of ground she had gained there.
Matilda related her last interview with Fletcher, and showed his note. “Do you believe,” said Mrs. Preston, after reading it, “that Fletcher Dunbar will be so absurd as to adhere to this plan?”
“I am sure he will. He is perfectly inflexible when he makes up his mind to what he thinks a duty, however ridiculous it may appear to others.”
“Of course, my dear, you are absolved from your engagement.”
“If I choose to be.”
“If I choose! My dear Matilda, you know how much it was against my wishes that you should form this engagement,—that you should
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give up the most brilliant match in the city for what, at the very best, would be merely a genteel establishment. But the idea of your going into the shade at once, giving up everything, and living, perhaps, at lodgings, or setting up your housekeeping with two servants that you must look after all day, and spend your evenings making your husband’s shirts, by a single astral lamp, ride in an omnibus (you might ride in that splendid carriage), and treat yourself, perhaps, to one silk gown a year,—and all for what? To humor the notions of a young man, who is in no respect superior to Garston, except that he is rather taller, and has a straighter nose, and darker, larger eyes, not much larger either!”
Mrs. Preston had struck a wrong note. Matilda shrunk back from the path her other was opening, as the images of her two lovers passed before her.
“Oh, mamma,” she exclaimed, “there is a horrid difference between them; and if I only could persuade Fletcher to abandon this notion”—
“Well, my dear, in my opinion, if he loves you, he will;— if he does not, why then you lose nothing and gain everything. Luckily your engagement is a secret, as yet, and you have
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taken no irretrievable step. Garston was here this morning,—a look could bring him back to you.”
“But, mamma, to give up what I have been so long dreaming of?” “Yes, and whatever young girl dreams of, and wakes up betimes to pretty dull realities. How should you like, for instance, to wash the breakfast things, and stir up a pudding,—to wash and dress your children, and make a bowl of gruel for your dear mamma-in-law?”
“Oh detestable!” Matilda pondered for a few moments, and then said, “I really think, if Fletcher loves me, he will sacrifice his feelings to me. I am sure he owes it to me, after the sacrifice I made to him;—I have certainly proved myself disinterested, but I do not like to be treated as if I could be set aside, and wait for the working of any fancy that comes up. I will tell him so,—I am resolved. He must take the responsibility of deciding it.”
The evening came, and, when the clock struck nine, Fletcher entered Miss Preston’s drawing room, his fine countenance beaming with the serenity and trustfulness of his heart; but Matilda’s first look sent a thrill through it, that was like the snapping of the chords of a musical instrument at the moment it is felt to be in perfect
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tune. She advanced towards him, and gave him her hand as usual, and she smiled; but it was a mere muscular movement, the expression was anything but a smile. Her beautiful face had all the rigidity that a fixed and painful purpose could give to it; but it was a purpose that depended on a contingent, and to that contingent the smile and the responding pressure of her hand were addressed.
Her eyes were red and swollen, and, for the first time, her dress was not elaborately arranged.
She spoke first, “You do not love me, Fletcher!”
“Not love you, Matilda! God only knows how tenderly I love you.”
“No, Fletcher, you do not love me,—the truth has broken upon me with irresistible proof.”
“What do you mean, Matilda? What have you heard? Surely it is not—it cannot be”—
“It is, Fletcher. Your note has nullified our engagement. I have judged you by my own heart. I have questioned, examined that, and I am sure that no fancied duty,—no absolute duty could have forced me,—much less persuaded me at its first intimidation, to expose the happiness that was just within our grasp to the hazards of time.”
Fletcher poured out protestations and prayers,
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and concluded with assuring Matilda, that, “if she would share with him, at the present moment, his acted fortune, if she would at once risk the uncertainties that he must encounter, he should be a happier and prouder man than all the wealth in the world could make him.”
Matilda burst into tears. “It is not right,—it is not generous,” she said, “to put what you consider a test to me. It is none. You must acquit me of any groveling care for money. You have but to look six weeks backward to remember, that the first fortune in the city was waiting my acceptance, and fashion, and brilliant family connexions. I sacrificed all, without a shadow of regret, to you, and now I am thought very lightly of in comparison with a fancied duty.”
“A fancied duty? Good Heaven!”
“A real duty, then; but so questionable, that nine men out of ten would pronounce it no duty at all. It is not the money. I care as little for that as you can; but it is the terrible truth you have forced on me,—you do not love me.”
“Matilda, you wrong yourself,—you wrong me.”
“Prove it to me then, Fletcher. Let our relations be what they were yesterday,—burn those letters, and forget them.”
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“Never!” cried Fletcher, indignantly, “so help me God,—never.”
“Then the tie that bound us is sundered,—our engagement is dissolved.”
“Amen!” said Fletcher, and he rushed from the house,—his mind confused and maddened with broken hopes, disappointed affection, and dissolving delusions.
There is one painful but sure cure for love. The slow-coming, resisted, but irresistible conviction of the unworthiness of the person beloved.
* * * * *
A little more than two years had passed away, when one bright morning, at the hour of ceremonies visiting, a superb carriage, looking more like a ducal equipage than one befitting a wealthy citizen of a republic, drew up a Mrs. Dunbar’s door. The gilded harness was emblazoned with heraldic devices, and a coat of arms was embroidered in gold on the hammer-cloth, and painted on the pannels. The coachman and footman in fresh and tasteful liveries, were in the dickey, and the proprietor of the equipage (in appearance a very inferior part of it) was seated on the box with a friend. Within the
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coach was a lady, magnificently dressed in the latest fashion. She seemed
“A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;”
but she had thwarted the plan,—she had extinguished the “angel light,” — she had herself closed the gates of Paradise, and voluntarily circumscribed her vision to this world. She had foregone the higher element for which she was destined; but the wings she had folded for ever betrayed by their fluttering her disquietude with the way she had chosen. The face that, turned heavenward would have reflected Heaven, was fixed earthward, and the dark spirits of Discontent and Disappointment brooded over it.
There is a baser traffic going on in this world of ours, than that which the poet has immortalized in his history of Faust, carried on under the forms of law, and with the holy seal and superscription of marriage.
The lady alighted from the coach and was on the door-step awaiting her husband. He did not move, the footman had rung the bell, and Mrs. Dunbar’s servant stood awaiting the entrée.
“Are you not going in with me, Ned?” she asked.
“Not I,—I hate bridal visits.”
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“Oh, come with me, I entreat you,” she said, earnestly.
“It’s a bore! I can’t. Bob and I will drive round the square, and take you up as we return.”
The lady looked vexed and embarrassed; but there seemed no alternative.
“Is there much company in the drawing-room, Daniel?” she asked.
“None, ma’am. Miss Ellen, that is, Mrs. Dunbar, the bride,—Miss Ellen that was,—don’t see company in a regular way, as it were.”
“No? I heard she did. I’ll leave my card now.”
While she was taking it from her card-case the door opened, and Fletcher Dunbar, with a manner the most frank and unembarrassed, advanced, and offered her his hand. “Pray, Mrs. Garston,” he said, “do not turn us off with a card; we are at home, and, like all happy people, most happy to hear congratulations.”
Matilda Garston had not been under Mrs. Dunbar’s roof since the memorable morning, when she found Fletcher at his father’s desk. How changed was life now to all parties! Fletcher had awakened from the dream of boyhood to a reality of trustful love, to which his “ripened judgement” had set its seal.
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Ellen, who had resigned her hope of reigning in Fletcher’s heart, was not its elected and enthroned queen. She looked like the embodied spirit of home, and domestic love and happiness. The two young women contrasted like the types of spiritual and material world.
Our good friend, Mrs. Dunbar, was at the acme of felicity. It would have been in vain for her to try to express the overflowing of her heart, and try she did not. It sparkled and ran over like a brimming glass of champagne.
“I am truly glad to see you here again, Matilda,—Mrs. Garston, I mean,” she said; “I really am, my dear. And now we have met, old friends together, I will tell you, that I never had one hard thought, no, not one, at your breaking off with Fletcher. It was providential all round. Fine pictures should have fine frames;—you, my dear, just fit the one you are set in, and our little Ellen was made to be worn, like a miniature, close to the heart. I used to be a believer in first love, now I think ‘second thoughts best.’ ”
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Second Thoughts Best
Subject
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Courtship, marriage, love, duty.
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An engagement is jeopardized by the couple's conflicting values and attitudes towards love and duty.
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Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
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The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich, pp. 201-258.
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Boston: Otis, Broaders, & Company
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1840 [pub. 1839]
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L. Damon-Bach with Asa Anderson, Deanna Depaz, Megan Hennessey, Emily Moss, Kevin White, and Dr. Jenifer Elmore with Adriana Duebel, Ariana Fernandez, Lauren Sumner, and Julianna Weiss
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Volume reissued as The Moss Rose, New York: 1846; and as The Honeysuckle, New York: 1848. Story reprinted in New-Yorker (31 August and 14 September 1839, pp: 386 and 406, and in The Rural Repository, 28 September 1839, pp 57-60 and 12 October 1839, pp. 65-69.
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English
"Address to Kilchurn Castle Upon Loch Awe"
"Faust"
"Principles and Prudence in Politics: The Friend"
"She Was a Phantom of Delight"
"The Seasons: A Hymn"
1839
1840
2 Corinthians 1:22
All's Well That Ends Well
Apollo
Ashby de la Zouch
bankruptcy
belle
Charles Maurice de Tallyrand
courtship
Death
Democrat
duty
El Dorado
engagement
Ephesians 1:13
factionalism
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Ivanhoe
James Thomson (1700-1748)
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letters
loco-foco
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marriage
Measure for Measure
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Paradise Lost
party politics
phrenology
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Samuel G. Goodrich
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Shakespeare
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sultan
tableau vivant
The Token
Tories
Whigs
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William Wordsworth
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/68f58347e550646b36cbf19d6fadcbd7.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=PX-DIexxBNbIUB4-gViieBqxjO0xrpdbrPLIKU4kv4dREj2YTDa9kspmRWkBa3jyAYcI7g5MyYC6CCEKr72NBo%7Exrw8ClAbDkDGyBCteV0H0g6sdu-fXhSxQRyzygDbxJDjDq8N28l3ykOK9Uu1XJHijPKHbs30b7kVYCb9N5xCRH75UbaDW65miU2Q1KndBMtxOCNApyE0TvsnOldyRpaGL8KO5duy88KB1acJRYlkaj1MHAqiLdwEqni95gEIxNpMrZ7Sfh1mC3R3lmXnG7qEKu3ZZAY-qifqEaBQr0mfDYK5ldFqH8pgHsIWZrbslUlRLy8D2pAJwhu5gKANMHg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
51cb66a62bd05ddfe28adee6b0f075d5
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1833
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Stories published in 1833.
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A REMINISCENCE OF FEDERALISM
By Miss Sedgwick
‘O shame on men! devil with devil damn’d,
Firm concord holds: men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace: and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife.’
Milton.
A calm observer who has scarcely lived half the age of man, must look back with a smile at human frailty, rather than with a harsher feeling upon the subjects that have broken the world in which he has lived, (be it a little or a great one,) into opposed and contending parties. The stream for a while glides on with an unbroken surface, a snag interposes, and the waters divide, and fret, and foam around it till chance or time sweep it away, when they again commingle, and flow on their natural unruffled union. This is the common course of human passions. The subject in dispute may be more of less dignified; the succession to an empire, or to a few acres of sterile land; the rival claims of candidates for the presidency, or competitors for a village clerkship; the choice of a minister to England, or the minister of our parish; the position of a capital city, or of an obscure meeting house;* [1] the excellence of a Catalani, or of a rustic master of psalmody; a dogma
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in religion or politics; in short any thing, to which, as with the shield in the fable, there are two sides.
Some who have lived to swell the choral song to Adams and Jefferson, and blend their names in one harmonious peal, will remember when the one, in his honest distinction, was a patriot hero, and the other the arch enemy of his country. For myself, having been bred, according to the strictest sect of my political religion, a federalist, I regarded Mr. Jefferson, (whom all but his severest enemies do not now deny, to have been a calm, and at least well-intentioned philosopher,) as embodying in his own person whatever was impracticable, heretical and corrupt in politics, religion and morals. Some impressions of my early childhood which were connected with the subsequent fate of obscure but interesting individuals, have preserved a vivid recollection of those party strifes that should now only be remembered to assuage the heat of present controversies.
I was sent when a very young child, (I am not the hero of my own story, my readers must therefore bear with a little prefatory egotism,) to pass the summer in a clergyman’s family in Vermont, in a village which I shall take the liberty to call Carrington. Whether I was sent there for the advantage of a better school than my own village afforded, or for the flattering reason that governs the disposition of most younger children in a large family, to be got out of the way, the domestic archives do not reveal. Whatever was the motive I am indebted to the fact for some of the most interesting recollections of my life. The first absence from home
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is a period never forgotten, and always vivid. How well do I remember the aspect of that long, broad, and straight street that traversed the village of Carrington, as it appeared to me when I first entered it. The meeting house, with its tall, grenadier looking steeple; the freshly painted school house, the troop of shouting boys springing from its portal; the neat white houses with Venetian blinds, and pretty court-yards and gardens, the dwellings of the physician, the lawyer, and the merchant, the modest gentry of the place; and that, to my youthful vision, colossal piece of architecture, a staring flaming mansion, (I afterwards learned that Squire Hayford was its master,) with pilasters, pillars and piazzas, a balustrade, cupola, and four chimneys! Even then I turned my eyes from this chef-d’oeuvre of rustic art to the trees by the way side, whose topmost boughs in their freshest green, (for summer was still in its youth,) were flushed with the beams of the setting sun. And I eagerly gazed at the parsonage which stood at the extremity of the plain, flanked by an orchard of scrawny neglected apple-trees, its ill-proportioned form, and obtrusive angles sheltered by the most ample elm that ever unfolded its rich volume of boughs. A willow there was too, I remember, that hung its tresses over the old well-curb, for there Fanny Atwood and I have cracked may a ‘last year’s butternut,’ sweeter to us far than the freshest, most flavorous nuts of the south, or any thing else would now be.
It is difficult, in our leveling and disenchanted days, to recal the awe that thirty years ago the puritan clergy of New England inspirited in the minds of children.
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Who is there bred in the land of pilgrims, that has not in his memory an immaculate personage, tall or short but always erect, with a three-cornered cocked hat, long blue yarn stockings drawn over the knee, silver shoe buckles and a silver headed cane, looking stern and unrelenting, as if he embodied the terrors of the law? Who does not remember depressing his voice and checking the ‘little footsteps that lightly pressed the ground,’ as he passed the minister’s house, the domain that seemed to him to shut out all human sympathies, to stand between heaven and earth, a certain purgatory, at least to all youthful sinners?
With such prepossessions I entered Doctor Atwood’s family. The Doctor himself was absent on some pastoral duty when I arrived. I was soon put at my ease by the hospitalities of his social family. How the prejudices of childhood melt away and disappear in the first beam of kindness! A most kind and simple hearted race were the Atwoods. Miss Sally, the oldest, was housekeeper; a bountiful provider of ‘spring beer,’ cherry pies and gingerbread. Man and woman too, and above all a child, is an eating animal. The record of culinary virtues remains long after every other trace of good Miss Sally has faded from my mind. The second sister was Miss Nancy, a ‘weakly person’ she was called, and truly was. I can see her pale serious face now, in which sensibility to her own ailments, and solicitude for those of her fellow mortals, were singularly blended; her slender tall figure, as she stood shaking that vial with contents so mysterious to me, which she called her ‘mixture;’ her hands all veins and chords
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that seemed to have been made to spread plasters. Miss Nancy, in poetic phrase, was a ‘culler of simples.’ She gathered herbs, (for my friend Fanny called them sickness,) for all the village, and administered them too. She could tell with unerring certainty when motherwort would kill, and boneset would cure. Forgive me, gentle reader, (for Miss Nancy could not,) if I have mistaken an alias for a species. In brief, Miss Nancy was one of those prudent apprehensive people peculiarly annoying to children. Her memory was a treasure house of hair breadth escapes and fatal accidents; and her eye would fix upon that imaginative column in the newspapers devoted to the enumeration of such fancy articles as ‘caution to youths;’ ‘fatal sport;’ ‘hydrophobia!’ &c. &c., as a speculator devours the price of stocks. Malvina was the third daughter; I knew little of her, for she was a lady of the shears, and pursued her calling by keeping the even tenor of her way through the neighborhood, making ‘auld claiths look amaist as weel’s the new.’ I should have said that Malvina was among the few who would go through life content with the sphere providence had assigned her, without one craving from that ‘divinity that stirs within;’ limiting her ambition to pleasing the little boys, and satisfying their mammas, and her desires to her well earned twenty-five cents per day. But Malvina married and emigrated. Her husband was, as I have heard, a disciple of Tom Paine, and poor Malvina, who was only adequate to shape a sleeve or collar, began to reason of ‘fate and free will,’ foreknowledge absolute; and afterwards, when she visited her friends, she bewailed their irrational
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views, wondered they could believe the bible! and would have enlightened them with that precious textbook, the Age of Reason, had not Dr. Atwood consigned it forthwith to an auto-d-fé.
The doctor, according to the common custom of New England clergymen, who have an income of four or five hundred dollars a year, had educated several sons at college. One was a thriving attorney and counselor at law, in New York, and two others, (who closed the account of the doctor’s first marriage,) were keeping school, and qualifying themselves for the learned professions. The doctor in middle life, as it is by courtesy called, but long after his sun had declined from its meridian, had married a young and very pretty girl, who, by all accounts, looked much beside her autumnal consort, like a fresh blown rose attached to a stalk of sere and yellow leaves. The human frailty the doctor betrayed in his preference of this lamb of his flock over certain quite mature candidates for his conjugal favor, gave such scandal to his parish that the good man was fain to leave Connecticut, the land of his forefathers, and remove to Vermont, then called the new state, where his domestic arrangements were viewed with more indulgence. His wife, who seems to have had no fault but that one which was mending every day, died in the course of a few years, after having augmented the doctor’s wealth by the addition of one child.
This child was the gem of the family, and a gem of ‘purest ray serene,’ was my little friend Fanny. Fanny Atwood! Writing her name even at this distance of
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time makes my heart beat quicker. Affection has its bright, its immortal names, that will live after the trump of fame is a broken instrument, and the names it has pealed over the world are with all forgotten things. Perhaps I commit a mistake in making Fanny Atwood the heroine of a story. It may be that like those wild flowers she so much resembled, that are so delicate and sweet in their native green wood, but so fragile that they fade and droop as soon as they are exposed to the eye of the sun, and appear spiritless and insignificant when compared with the splendid belles of the greenhouse, on which the art of the horticulturist has been exhausted, so my little rustic favorite may seem tame, and she and her fortunes be derided by the fine ladies, if any such grace my humble tale with a listening ear.
I have known those who have drank of the tainted waters of a city till they confessed that the pure element as it welled up from the green turf, or sparkled in the crystal fountain of a mountain rock, was tasteless and disagreeable! But I know those too, who, though they have mastered the music of Rossini, have yet ears and hearts for wood notes wild. Nature is too strong for art, and those who are accustomed to the refinements of artificial life, may look without a ‘disdainful smile’ on Fanny Atwood as she was when I first saw her; as she continued, the picture of simplicity and all lovable qualities. She had a little round Hebe form. Her neck, chest, shoulders and arms were the very beau ideal of a French dress maker, so fair and fat; her hands were formed in the most delicate mould, and dimpled as an infant’s; her hair was of the tinge between flaxen
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and brown; glossy and wavy. Her mouth bore the signet of the sweet and playful temper that bade defiance to all the curdling tendencies of life, it was certainly the fittest organ for ‘words o’ kindness’ that could be formed. She had a slight lisp; graceful enough in childhood, but happily, as she grew up, it wore off. The line of her nose was sufficiently Grecian to be called so by her admirers, but her eyes, I am compelled to confess, even while I yet feel their warm and gentle beam upon me, were not according to the rule of beauty; they were clear and bright as health and cheerfulness could make them, but they lacked many shades of the violet, and were smaller than the orthodox heroine dimensions. If my bill of particulars fail to present the image of my friend, let my readers embody health, good humor, order, a disinterestedness, considerateness or mindfulness, a quick sympathy with joy and sorrow, in the image of a girl of nine years, and it cannot fail to resemble Fanny Atwood. She would have been a spoiled child, if unbounded love and indulgence could have spoiled her; but she was like those fruits and flowers which are only made more beautiful or flavorous by the fervid rays of the sun. She sometimes tried Miss Sally’s patience by a too free dispensation of the luxuries of her frugal pantry, and Miss Nancy’s by deriding her herb teas, even that ‘sovereignest thing on earth,’ her motherwort; and once, when in the act of raising a dose of the panacea, the mixture, to her lips, she let fall dose, vial and all; accidently, no doubt; but poor Miss Nancy! I think her nerves never quite recovered the shock. However,
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these offences were soon forgiven, and would have been, if magnified a hundred fold, for in the touching language of old Israel, she ‘was the only child of her mother, and her mother was dead.’
I was within a few months of Fanny’s age when we first met, and with the facility of childhood we became friends in half an hour. She had presented me to her two favorites, a terrier puppy and black cat, between whom she had so assiduously cultivated a friendship that she had converted their natural gall into honey, and they coursed up and down the house together to the infinite amusement of my friend, and the perpetual annoyance of the elderly members of the family. Nothing could better illustrate Fanny’s power than the indulgence she obtained for these little pests. Miss Sally prided herself on her discipline of animals, but she was brought to wink at Fido’s misdeeds, suffered him to sleep all day by the winter’s fire, and when she once or twice resolutely ordered him out for the night, she was persuaded by Fanny to get up with her and let him in. And the cat, though Miss Nancy’s aversion, fairly installed herself on a corner of Fanny’s chair, and was thrice a day fed from her plate.
As I have said, Fanny and I made rapid progress in our friendship. She had introduced me to her little family of dolls, which were all patriotic, all of home manufacture, and I had offered to her delighted vision my compagnon de voyage, a London doll; in our eyes the master piece of the arts. We were consulting confidently on some matters touching our respective families, when I heard the lumbering sound of the
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doctor’s chaise, and I felt a chill come over me like that of poor Jack, the bean-climber of aspiring memory, when seated at the giant’s hearth, and chatting with his lady, he first heard the homeward step of her redoubtable lord and master. My prejudices against the clerical order were certainly not dispelled by my first impressions of Doctor Atwood. He wore a thick set fozy wig, cut by a sort of equatorial line around the forehead. His chin was not a freshly mown stubble field, for it was Saturday, and the doctor shaved but once a week. His figure was tall and corpulent, and altogether he presented a lowering and most forbidding aspect to one who had been accustomed to a more advanced state of civilization than his person indicated. I had retreated to the farthest corner of the room, dropped my head and hidden my doll in my handkerchief, when Fanny, to my astonishment, dragging me into notice, exclaimed in the most affectionate tone, ‘Oh, father, how glad I am you have come! I wanted you to see C----‘s doll; she is the most perfect beauty! are you not glad she’s come?’ Now meaning me, not the doll.
The doctor made no reply for a moment, and when he did, he merely said, without a sign of courtesy or even humanity, ‘How d’ye do, child, pretty well?’
‘Father!’ exclaimed Fanny in a tone which betrayed her mortification and disappointment. I shrank away to my seat, abut Fanny remained hovering about the place where her father stood, lost apparently in sullen abstraction. The doctor sat down. Fanny seated herself on his knee, (I wondered she could.) ‘How
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funny your wig looks! father,’ she said, ‘its all awry.’ Then laughing and giving it a fearless twirl, she took a comb from the doctor’s waistcoat pocket, smoothed it down, threw her fat arms round his neck and kissed him first on one check, then on the other, saying, ‘you look quite handsome, now, father!’ Scanty as my literature was, a classical allusion occurred to me; ‘Beauty and the Beast!’ thought I, but far would it have been from the nature of that Beast to have been as dull to the caresses of Beauty as the doctor seemed to Fanny’s. She was evidently perplexed by his apparent apathy; for a moment she laid her check to his, then sprang from his knee and went to a cupboard about ten inches square, made in the chimney beside the fireplace, (an anomaly in the architecture, these puritan cupboards were,) and drew from it a long pipe, filled, lighted, and put it in her father’s lips. He received it passively, smoked it with continued unconsciousness, and when the tobacco was exhausted, threw pipe and all out of the window. Fanny looked at me and laughed, then suddenly changing to an expression of solicitude, she leaned her elbow on the doctor’s knee, looked up in his face, and said in a voice that must penetrate to the heart, ‘what is the matter, father?’
The doctor seemed suddenly to recover his faculties; to come to himself, in the common phrase, and with tears gushing form his eyes, he said, ‘Fanny, my child, poor Randolph’s mother is dead.’
‘Dead, father! What will Randolph do?’
‘Do, Fanny? Replied the doctor, brushing off his tears, ‘why, he will do his duty; no easy matter in the
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poor boy’s case.’ The doctor then proceeded to relate the scene he had just come from witnessing, and which had melted one of the tenderest hearts that ever was in a human frame, uncouth and repelling as that frame was. The facts which will explain the doctor’s emotions are briefly these. There was a certain Squire Hayford residing in Carrington, the proprietor of the stately mansion we have noticed. He was a democrat, according to the classification of that day, and one of the most impassioned order. A democrat in theory, but in his own little sphere as absolute a despot as ever sat on a throne. He was the wealthiest man in Carrington, owned most land, and had most ready money; in short, he was the great man of the place, and, as was happily said on another occasion, ‘the smallest of his species.’ Of all the men I ever met with he had the most unfounded and absurd vanity. His opinions were all prejudices, and in each and all of them he held himself infallible. He was the centre of his world, the sun of his system, which he divided into concentric circles. Himself first, then his household, his town, his county, his state, &c. Fortunately for himself, he had adopted the popular side in politics, and with a character that would have been particularly odious to the sovereign people he made himself an oracle among them. This man had one child, a daughter, a gentle and lovely woman as she was described to me, who some fourteen years before my story begins, had married a Mr. Gordon, from one of the Southern States. It was a clandestine marriage. Squire Hayford having refused his consent, because
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Gordon was a ‘southerner,’ and he held all ‘southerners’ in utter contempt and aversion, and never graced them with any other name than slave drivers, with the addition of such expletives as might give force to the reproach. Gordon was a high spirited man and an ardent lover, and he easily persuaded Miss Hayford to escape from the unreasonable opposition of her father, and transfer her allegiance to him. This was her first disobedience, but disobedience to him was an unpardonable sin in the squire’s estimation, and he permitted his only child to encounter the severest evils, and languish through protracted sufferings, before he manifested the slightest relenting. She lost several children; she became a widow, was reduced to penury, and sacrificed her health in one of our southern cities, in an attempt to gain a livelihood as governess. Her father then sent her a pitiful sum of money, and the information that a small house in Carrington, belonging to him was vacant, and she might come and occupy it if she would. The kindness was scanty, and the manner of it churlish enough; but disease and penury cut off all fastidiousness, and Mrs. Gordon returned to Carrington with her only son Randolph.
Here she languished month after month. The bare necessities of existence were indirectly supplied by her father, but he never spoke to her, and, what affected her far more deeply, he never noticed her son, never betrayed a consciousness of his existence.
Adversity, if it does not sever the ties of nature, multiplies and strengthens them. Never was there a tenderer union than that which subsisted between
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Randolph and his mother, and nothing could have been more natural than Fanny’s exclamation when told of Mrs. Gordon’s death, for it seemed as if the life of parent and child were fed from the same fountain. As my readers are now acquainted with the relative position of the parties, I shall give the doctor’s account to Fanny in his own words. ‘I left the chaise at Mrs. Gordon’s door, my child,’ said he, ‘that Randolph might take her to ride. They had ridden but a short distance when she complained of faintness, and Randolph turned back. She had fainted quite away just as they stopped at their own door. There was a man riding past; Randolph called to him for help. He came and assisted in carrying the poor lady to her bed. When she recovered her senses, she looked up and saw the man; it was her father, Fanny!’
‘Her father! what, that hateful old Squire Hayford?’
‘Yes, my child. Providence brought him to her threshold at the critical moment. When I called for the chaise, I went in. I saw she was dying. Randolph was bathing her head with camphor, and his tears dropped on the pillow like rain. Her father stood a little way from the bed. He looked pale and his lip quivered. Ah, Fanny, my child, death takes hold of the heart that nothing else will reach. When Mrs. Gordon heard my step she looked up at me and said, “I believe I am dying; pray with me once more Doctor Atwood; pray that my father may forgive—that—he—may—” here her voice faltered, but she looked at Randolph, and I understood her, and went to prayer.
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‘But, father, what did Squire Hayford do? you know he swore a horrid oath last independence that he would never hear “Parson Fed* [2] pray again.” ’
‘Yes, yes; Fanny, I remember, and he remembered too, for he walked out of the door and stood in the porch, but I took care to raise my voice so loud that he could not help hearing me. The Lord assisted me, my child; words came to me faster than I could utter them; thoughts, but not my thoughts; words, but not of my choosing, for their pierced even my own heart. When I had done, Squire Hayford came in, walked straight to the bed, and said, “Mary, I forgive you; I wish your troubles may be all at an end, but I am not answerable for your past sufferings; I told you what you must expect when you married that southern beggar.” ’
‘Father,’ exclaimed Fanny, ‘why did you not stop him.’
‘I did long to knock him down, Fanny, and I though Randolph would, for his black eyes flashed fire; but oh, how quick they fell again when his mother looked up like a dying saint as she was, and said, “Father, let the past be past.” ’
‘ “Well,” said he, “so I will; and as I am a man of deeds and not of words, I promise you I will do well by your boy; I will take him home, and he shall be the same as a son to me, provided—” ’
‘Here he paused. I think she did not hear his last word, for her face lighted up, she clasped her hands
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and thanked God for crowning with such mercy her dying hour; then she drew Randolph down to her, kissed him, and said, “now, my son I can die in peace.”
“But,” said her father, “you have not heard me out, Mary. Randolph must give up the name of Gordon for that of Hayford—”’
‘Oh, father,’ interrupted Fanny, ‘he did not, did he?’
‘Let me finish, child. The poor lady at the thought of her son giving up his dead father’s name, heaved a sigh so deep and heavy, that I feared her breath would have gone with it. She looked at Randolph, but he turned away his eye. ‘My dear child,’ she said, ‘it must be; it is hard for me to ask and you to do, but it must be; speak Randolph, say you accept the terms.’
‘Thus pressed, the poor boy spoke, and spoke out his heart, “Do not ask me that, mother;” he said, “give up my dear father’s name! No, never, never.” ’
‘ “My child, you must, you will be destitute; without a home, a friend, a morsel of bread.” ’
‘ “I shall not be destitute, mother, I can work, and is not Doctor Atwood my friend? and besides, mother, I care not what becomes of me when you are gone.” ’
‘ “But I do my son; I cannot leave you so. Oh, promise me, Randolph.” ’
‘ “Do not ask me, mother; I cannot give up the name I love and honor above all others, for that—” ’ I know not what the poor boy might have said, for his mother stopped him. “Listen to me my son,” she said, “my breath is almost spent; you know how I have been punished for one act of disobedience; how much misery I brought on your dear father, on all of us; you may
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repair my fault. Oh, give me peace, promise to be faithful in your mother’s place to her father.” ’
‘ “I will promise any thing, dear mother; I will do any thing but take his name.” ’
‘ “All is useless without that;” her voice sunk to a whisper,--“dear, dear child,” she added, “it is my last wish.” I saw her countenance was changing, and I believe I said, ‘she is going,’ and poor Randolph cried out, ‘Mother, mother, I will do every thing you ask—I promise—’ a sweet smile spread over her face. He laid his cheek to her’s, she tried to kiss him, but her lips never moved again, and in a few moments, my dear Fanny, she was with the saints in heaven.’
Fanny’s tears had coursed down her cheeks as her father had proceeded in his narration. Soon after I heard her repeating to herself, ‘Randolph Hayford, Randolph Hayford; I will never call him any thing but Randolph; but I suppose I shall not often have a chance to call him any thing. That cross of Squire Hayford hates you so, father, he’ll never let Randolph come and see us; he’ll never let him go any where but to some dirty democrat’s.’
I now look back, almost unbelieving of my own recollections, at the general diffusion of the political prejudices of those times. No age nor sex was exempt from them. They adhered to an old man to the very threshold of another world, and they sometimes clouded the serene heaven of such a mind as my friend Fanny Atwood’s.
The rival parties in Carrington were so nearly balanced, that each individual’s weight was felt in the
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scale. All qualities and relations were merged in the political attribute. I have often heard, when the bell tolled the knell of a departed neighbor, the most kind hearted person, say, ‘we’ or ‘they have lost a vote!’ Good Doctor Atwood was as sturdy in his political as in his religious faith. He had a vein of humanity like my Uncle Toby’s, that tempered his judgment in individual cases, but in the abstract I rather think he believed that none but federalists and the orthodox, according to the sound school of the Mathers and Cottons, could enter the kingdom of heaven. With this creed, with an ardent temperament that glowed to the last hour of his life, and with the faculty of expressing pithily what he felt strongly, and without fear or awe of mortal man, he was, of course, loved almost to idolatry by his own party, and hated in equal measure by the rival faction.
I have said that the village street of Carrington traversed a hill and plain. The democrats for the most part occupied the hill. What an infected district it then seemed to me! The federalists, (alas! was it an augury of their descending fortunes?) lived in the vale. The most picturesque object in the village, and one as touching to the sentimental observer as Sterne’s dead ass, was a superannuated horse; a poor commoner, who picked up an honest living by the way side. His walk was as regular as Edie Ochiltree’s, or any other licensed gaberlunzie’s. He began in the morning, and grazing along, he arrived about midday at the end of his tour, he then crossed the street and returned, now
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and then resting his weary limbs in the shadow of a tree planted by the way side. Thus sped his innocent life. It was an edifying sight to see the patience and satisfaction with which he gleaned his scanty portion of the bounties of nature. Jacques would have moralized on the spectacle. The children called him Clover, why, I know not, unless it were an allusion to his green old age. He was a great favorite with the little urchins; the youngest among them were wont to make their first equestrian essays on Clover’s bare back. My friend Fanny’s gentle heart went out towards him in the respect that waits on age. Many a time have I known her to abstract a measure of oats from the parson’s frugal store, and set it under the elm tree for Clover, and as she stood by him while he was eating, patting and stroking him, he would look round at her with an expression of mute gratitude and fondness, that words could not have rendered more intelligible.
Strange as it may seem, even poor Clover was converted into a political instrument. This ‘innocent beast and of a good conscience,’ was made to supply continual fuel to the inflammable passions of the fiery politicians of Carrington. His sides were pasted over with lampoons in which the rival factions vented their wit or their malignity safe from personal responsibility, for Clover could tell no tales. Thus he trudged from the hill, a walking gazette, his ragged and grizzled sides covered with these militant missives, and returned bearing the responses of the valley, as unconscious of his hostile burden, as the mail is of its portentous
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contents. Sometimes, indeed, Clover carried that which was more accordant with his kind and loving nature.
As Fanny had predicted, after Randolph’s removal to the great house, his grandfather prohibited his visits at Doctor Atwood’s, but Fanny often met him in the lagging walk to school, berrying, nutting, and on all neutral ground, and when they did not meet, they maintained a continual correspondence by Clover. The art was simple by which they secured their billetdoux from the public eye, but it sufficed. The inside contained the effusion of their hearts. The outside was scribbled with some current political sarcasm or joke. The initial letter of Randolph’s superscription was always F., Fanny’s G., for she tenaciously adhered to the name of Gordon. The communications were attached by the corners to Clover. I found recently among some forgotten papers one of Fanny’s notes, and childish as it is, I shall make no apology for inserting it verbatim.
‘Dear Randolph—I thank you a thousand times and so does C--, for the gold eagles. There never was any thing in the world so beautiful, I do’nt believe. They are far before the grown up ladies. We shall certainly wear them to meeting next Sabbath, and fix them so every body in the world can see them, and not let the bow of ribbon fall down over them, as Miss Clarke did last Sabbath, cause she has got that old democrat, Doctor Star, for a sweetheart; but I managed her nicely, Randolph. In prayer time when she did not dare move, I whirled round the bow
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so the eagle stood up bravely, and flashed right in Doctor Star’s eyes. I did not care so very much about having an eagle for myself, (though I do now since you have given it to me,) but I thought it very important for C— to wear the federal badge, because her father is a senator in Congress. Father is almost as pleased as we are. I see Clover coming, and I must make haste; poor old fellow! I heard his tread when it stormed so awfully last night, and I got father to put him up in our stable. Was not he proper good? It was after prayers, too, and his wig was off and his knee buckles out. There, they all go out of Deacon Garfield’s to read Clover’s papers. Good bye, dear, dear Randolph. F.A.’
If my readers are inclined to smile at the defects of my heroine’s epistle, they must remember those were not the days when girls studied Algebra, and read Virgil in the original before they were ten years old. Besides, I have not claimed for Fanny intellectual brilliancy. The manifestations of her mind were (where some bel esprits last look for it,) in the conduct of her daily life.
But I am fondly lingering on the childhood of my friend. I must resolutely pass over the multitude of anecdotes that occur to me, to those incidents that are sufficiently dignified for publication.
Eight years flowed on without working any other change in the condition of my friends in Carrington than is commonly effected by the passage of time. Doctor Atwood continued his weekly ministrations, varied only by a slight verbal alteration in his prayer.
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During Mr. Adams’ presidency, he implored the Lord to continue to us rulers endued with the spirit of their station. When Mr. Jefferson became chief magistrate, he substituted ‘give’ for continue. Miss Sally still brewed and baked with her accustomed energy. Miss Nancy by the too lavish consumption of her own nostrums, had lost every thing but her shadow. Squire Hayford was more opinionated and insufferable than ever. Poor old Clover was dead, and at Fanny’s request, had been honorably interred beneath the elm tree, his favorite poste restante. Fanny had preserved the distinctive traits of her childhood, and at seventeen, was as good humored, as simple, as lovely and, (as more than one thought,) far more loveable than when I first knew her.
The sad trials of Randolph’s youth had early ripened his character, and had given to it an energy and self-government that he could have derived alone from the discipline of such circumstances. The lofty spirit of his father had fallen on him like the mantle of an ascending prophet. His mother’s concentrated tenderness had fostered his sensibility, and the influence of her dying hour passed not away with the days of mourning, but stamped his whole after life.
Who has ever lost a friend, without that feeling so natural, that a painter of nature has put it into the mouth of a man lamenting over a dead beast? ‘I am sure thou hast been a merciful master to him’ said I. ‘Alas!’ said the mourner, ‘I thought so when he was alive, but now that he is dead I think otherwise.’
The solution of this universal lamentation and just
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suffering, must be found in the fact that the very best fall far short of the goodness of which their Creator has made them capable. It is in the spirit of expiation that far more deference is paid to the wishes of the dead than the living; and affectionate and devoted as Randolph was to his mother, I doubt if she had lived, that she ever could have persuaded him to the sacrifices and efforts he made for her sake when she was dead. He immediately assumed the name of Hayford, without expressing a regret, even to Fanny; and accustomed as he had been to the control alone of his gentle mother, he submitted without a murmur to the petty and irritating tyrannies of his grandfather. He suppressed the expression of his opinions and surrendered his strongest inclinations at the squire’s command. Never was there a case in which the sanctifying influence of a pure motive was more apparent. The same deference which Randolph paid to his relative, might have been rendered by a sordid dependant, but then where would have been that moral power which gave Randolph an ascendancy even over the narrow and unperceiving mind of his grandfather, and which achieved another and a more honorable triumph.
A Mrs. Hunt, a widowed sister of the squire, presided over the female department of his family. She was a well intentioned woman, a meek and patient drudge, who had been content to toil in his house, year after year, for the poorest of all compensations, presents; the common and wretched requital for the services of relations. Mrs. Hunt had been sustained in her endurance by a largess that now and then fell upon her
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eldest son, and by the hope that ultimately her brother’s fortune would descend to her unportioned children. This hope was suddenly blighted by his adoption of Randolph; and Randolph, of course, became the object of her dislike, and he daily suffered those annoyances and discomforts, which a woman always has in her power to inflict. To these he opposed a respectful department; a mindfulness of her convenience and comfort, and a generous attention to her children, which smoothed her rugged path, and all unused as she was to such humanities, won her heart. It was not long before the good woman found herself going to him, whom she had regarded as her natural enemy, for aid and sympathy in all her troubles.
If I am prosing, my readers must forgive me. It has always seemed to me that we may get the most useful lessons from those who are placed in circumstances not uncommon, nor striking, but to which a parallel may be found in every day’s experience. It is a common doctrine, but one not favorable to virtue, that characters are formed by circumstances. If it be true, my friend Randolph was a noble exception; his character controlled circumstances; and, by the best of all alchymy, he extracted wholesome food out of the materials that might have been poison to another.
His boyish affection for Fanny Atwood had ripened into the tenderest love, and was fully returned, without my friend ever having endured the reserve and distrust that are supposed to be necessary to the progress of the passion. Trials their love had, but they came from without. Doctor Atwood had heard the squire had
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said, ‘the parson might try his best to get his heir for his daughter Fanny; he’d never catch his heir, though he caught Randolph!’ The good doctor was a proud father, and a poor man, and, though it cost him many a heartache, he shut his doors against Randolph.
Meanwhile, the squire’s self complacency (the squire had the art of making every body’s merit or demerit minister to this great end of his being,) in Randolph increased. He was proud of his talents, his scholarship and his personal elegance, though his fac-simile resemblance to his father was so striking, that the squire was never heard to speak of his appearance, except to say, ‘what a crop of hair he has, just like all the Hayfords!’
There was on peculiarity about Randolph, that puzzled his grandfather. ‘The fellow is so inconsistent,’ said he to himself one day, after he had been reviewing his account books; ‘when he has money of his own earning he pours it out like water; gave the widow fifty dollars last week, but he seems as afraid of spending my cash as if I exacted Jews’ usury; quite contrary to the old rule, ‘light come, light go.’ I have footed it right; eight years since Mary died—day after we lost Martin’s election by the parson’s vote; can’t be mistaken; he’s got through college, fitted for the law, and I have paid out cash for him but ninety-nine pounds, five shillings, and three pence, lawful! By George! the widow’s brood has cost me more in that time. Ah! it’s number one after all; is sure of it at last, and that southern blood can’t bear an obligation. Trust me for seeing into a millstone. I can tell him he’ll have to wait; I feel as young as I did thirty years
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ago; sound grinders, good pulse, steady gait. Ten years to run up to three score, and ten may last to eighty. Grandmother Brown lived to ninety and upwards; why should not I? when I quit, am willing Randolph, (wish his name was Silas,) should have it. If it was not for that southern blood he’d be about the likeliest of the Hayfords. All his obstinacy comes from that ‘I’ll not disobey you, sir, and even if I would, Miss Atwood would not marry me without your consent; but be assured, sir, I shall never marry any other!’ We’ll see, my lord; while I can say nay, you shall never marry that old aristocrat’s daughter. Just one-and-twenty now; guess you’ll sing another tune before you are twenty-five. Time to go up to the printing office; wonder if we shall have another Hampden this week; confounded smart fellow that.’
Then looking at his watch and finding the happy hour for country ennuyés, the hour for the mail and daily lounge, had arrived, the squire sallied forth to take his morning walk to the printing office, the village reading room.
There was a weekly journal published in Carrington, the ‘Star’ or ‘Sun,’ I forget which, but certainly the ascendant luminary of the democrat party. There had appeared, recently, in this journal, a series of articles written temperately, and with vigor and elegance, on the safety of a popular government.
The writer advocated an unlimited trust in the sanitive virtue of the people; he appeared familiar with the history of the republics that had preceded ours, and
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contended that there was no reason to infer our danger from their brief existence. He maintained, (and it will now perhaps be admitted with truth,) that distrust of the people was the great error of the federalists; that the prestiges of the old government still hung about them, and that they were committing a fatal mistake in applying old principles to a new condition of things.
These articles were read, lauded and republished. The name of the author was sought, but in vain. Even the printer and the editor, (I believe one person represented both these august characters,) were ignorant, and could only guess that it was a judge—, or lawyer—, the lights of the state. But conjecture is not certainty, and the author still remained the ‘great unknown,’ not only of Carrington, but of the county and state.
The squire returned from his morning lounge with a fresh journal, containing a new article from Hampden, the signature of the unknown author. A fresh newspaper! Its vapor was as sweet as a regale to the little vulgar pug-nose of our village politician as the dews of Helicon to the votaries of the muses. It so happened that Randolph was sitting in the parlor, reading, when the squire came in. ‘Have you seen the paper, this morning, Randolph?’ he asked.
‘No; I have not.’
‘I guess not, I have got the first that was struck off. Another article from Hampden, I understand. He is answered in the Boston Centinel. They own he writes ‘plausibly, ably and eloquently;’ the d—speaks truth for once I guess the Boston chaps find their
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match at last.’ The squire had a habit not peculiar to him, but rather annoying, of reading aloud a passage that either pleased or displeased him, without any regard to the occupations of those around him. His comments, too, were always expressed aloud. He drew out his spectacles and sat down to the paper. His sister, Mrs. Hunt, was sewing in one corner of the room, and Randolph sitting opposite to him, but apparently absorbed in his book. ‘Too deuced cool,’ grumbled the squire, after reading the first passage. ‘Ah, he warms in the harness; not up to the mark, though; I wish he’d give ‘em one of my pealers.’ ‘Good, good; wonder what the Centinel will say to that.’ ‘By George, capital! I could not have writ it better. I would have put in more spice, though.’
‘Ha! as good as the Scripture prophet.’ ‘Listen, Randolph.’ The squire then read aloud. ‘We are aware that prediction is not argument, but we venture to prophesy that in twenty years from this time the federal party will have disappeared. The grandsire will have to explain the turn—’
‘Term, sir,’ interposed Randolph.
‘Yes, yes, term. The grandsire will have to explain the term to the child at his knee. We shall be a nation of republicans, and whenever—’
‘Wherever, sir.’
‘So it is; wherever an American is found, at home or aboard—’
‘Abroad, sir.’ This time there was a slight infusion of petulance in Randolph’s tone, and still more in the squire’s at the repeated interruptions as he proceeded.
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‘At home or abroad, in office or out of it, in high station or low, he will claim to be a Republican, and cherish the title as the noblest and happiest a civilian⎯’
‘Citizen, sir⎯noblest and happiest a citizen can claim.’
‘Confound you, Randolph!” exclaimed the squire, dropping the paper and fixing his eyes on his grandson; ‘how do you know the words before I speak them?’ This was rather an exclamation of vexation than suspicion. Randolph was conscious that in involuntarily interposing to save his offspring from murder he had risked a secret, and he answered the squire’s exclamation with a look of confusion that at once flashed the truth upon his obtuse comprehension. He jumped up, clapped Randolph on the shoulder, exclaiming, ‘You wrote it yourself, you dog, you can’t deny it. It’s a credit to you, a credit to the name. But you might have known I should have found you out. Just like all the Hayfords, keep every thing snug till out it comes with a crack.’
‘I thought all along,’ meekly, said Mrs. Hunt, who had been plying her needle unobserved and unobserving, ‘I thought all along cousin Randolph wrote them pieces.’
‘Now shut up, widow,’ retorted the squire, ‘you did not think no such thing; just like all fore-thoughts, come afterwards. Now, ma’am please to step out; I must have a little private conversation with Mr. Hampden.’
‘Be kind enough before you go, aunt,’ said Randolph, ‘to promise me that you will say nothing of what has
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just passed. I have made no admissions, and I do not wish to be thought the writer of the Hampden articles.’
Mrs. Hunt, of course, promised to be faithful. As soon as she was out of hearing, ‘What does that mean?’ asked the squire. ‘It is all stuff to make a secret of it any longer.’
‘I think not, sir. The articles have far more reputation and influence, (if I may believe they have influence,) than if they were known to proceed from a young man whose name has no authority.’
‘Hoity-toity! who’s got a better name than yours? a’nt willing the Hayfords should have the credit, hey!’ Randolph did not vouchsafe any reply to the squire’s absurd mistake, and after a few moments his gratified vanity regained its ascendancy.
‘The pieces please me,” said he, “though if you had told me you were writing them I could have given you some hints that would have improved them. They want a little more said about men, less of principles. They want fire too; egad, I’d send ‘em red-hot bullets; but they’ll do; you’ve come out like a man, on the right side, and now I believe, what I felt scary about before.’ Here the squire paused, and fixed one of his most penetrating glances upon Randolph. ‘I believe you will vote to-morrow, and vote right.’ Randolph made no reply.
A few words will here be necessary to explain the dilemma in which Randolph was about to be placed. The annual election of a representative to the state legislature was to occur the next day. The rival parties in Carrington were known to their champions to be exactly balanced. There was not a doubtful vote
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except Randolph Hayford’s. He had never yet voted, not having till now arrived at the requisite age. He had not thrown himself into the scale of either party. His opinions were independent, and independently expressed. The squire’s hopes of his vote were very much encouraged by the Hampden articles, but still there were circumstances in this case that made him somewhat apprehensive.
‘Your vote,’ resumed the squire, ‘will decide the election to-morrow.’ Again he paused, but without receiving a reply. ‘I can’t have much doubt which way Hampden will vote, but I like to make all sure and fast. Randolph, I know what scion you want to see engrafted on that tree.’ The squire pointed to the only picture in his house, a family tree, that in a huge black frame stretched its frightful branches over the parlor fireplace. On these branches hung a regiment of militia captains, majors, colonels, sundry justices of the peace; precious fruit all, supported by an illustrious trunk, a certain Sir Silas Hayford, who flourished in the reign of Charles the First. Strange and inconsistent as it may appear with his ultra democracy, never was there a man prouder of his ancestral dignities, or more anxious to have them transmitted, than our village squire.
‘Randolph,’ he continued, assured of success by the falling of Randolph’s eye, and a certain half pleased, half anxious expression that overspread his face. ‘Randolph, I have always said that I never would give my consent to your marriage with that old aristocratic parson’s daughter. But circumstances alter cases. I am a man that hears to reason when I approve of it. I have no
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fault to find with the girl; never heard her speak; believes she’s well enough.’ Randolph bit his lips. How hard it is to hear an idolized object spoken of as if she were of the mass of human kind. ‘To come to the point, Randolph,⎯if you’ll go forward to-morrow like a man, and give in your vote for Martin and make Ross’ scale kick the beam, I’ll withdraw my opposition to this match. Hear me out. I’ll do more for you. I’m pleased with you, Randolph. I’ve just received the money for my Genesee lands. I’ll give you two hundred pounds to buy your law library, and you may go next week to any town in the state you like, and open your office, and be your own man, and take your girl there as soon as you like.’
‘Good Heaven!’ exclaimed Randolph, ‘you can offer nothing more; the world has nothing more to tempt me.’ And he left the room in a state of agitation in which the squire had never before seen him. The squire called after him,— ‘Take time to consider, Randolph. To-morrow morning is time enough for your answer.’
In the course of evening, Randolph met Fanny Atwood. Whether the meeting was accidental, I cannot pretend to say. It would seem to have been disobedience in my friend to have kept up her intercourse with Randolph after the doctor had shut his doors upon him. But Fanny well knew there was nothing beside herself, the doctor loved so well as Randolph; nothing that in his secret heart he so much desired as to see them united, and that his resolute and rather harsh procedure in excluding Randolph from his house had been a sacrifice of his own inclinations to his
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honest pride. This being the state of matter, it cannot appear strange that Fanny should be willing to meet him when ‘with rosy blush,
‘Summer eve is sinking;
When on rills that softly gush,
Stars are softly winking;
When through boughs that knit the bower,
Moonlight gleams are stealing.’
Or at any of those times and places which nature’s and our poet had appointed to tell, ‘Love’s delightful story.’
The lovers took a sequestered and favorite walk to a little waterfall at some distance from the village. Here, surrounded by moonlight, the evening fragrance and soft varying and playful shadows, they seated themselves on the fallen trunk of a tree, one of their accustomed haunts.
When they first met, Fanny had said, ‘So Randolph, your secret is out at last.’
‘Out! is it?’
‘Pshaw, you know it is. Your grandfather hinted it at the post office, and the town is ringing with it.’
‘I am sorry for it. I was aware that my grandfather knew it, but I have seen nobody else to-day. Has your father heard it, Fanny?’
‘Yes; finding it was out, I told him myself. Dear father! he both laughed and cried.’
‘Cried!’
‘Yes; you know that is no uncommon thing for him to do. He was grieved that you had to come out on the democratic side, for you know he thinks a democrat next to an infidel; but then he was pleased to find you could write such celebrated articles. He has said all
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along that they had more sense and reason in them than could be distilled from every thing else written by the democrats. Now he is amazed, he says, that a boy, (you know he calls every one a boy that is not forty,) should write so wisely, and above all, so temperately.’
‘Ah, my dear Fanny, adversity, though a ‘stern rugged nurse’ she be, enforces a discipline that makes us early wise. Heaven grant that her furnace may not be heated so hot as to consume instead of purifying.’
‘What do you mean, Randolph? you are very sad this evening. Are you not well? You are not troubled about this secret. I thought you looked very pale; what has happened to you?’
Randolph kissed the hand that Fanny in her earnestness had lain on his, ‘My dearest Fanny,’ he replied, ‘since you have exchanged those vows with me that pledge us to ‘halve our sorrows as well as double our joys,’ you have condemned yourself to trials too severe for your sweet and gentle spirit.’
‘Randolph, if my spirit is sweet and gentle, it can the better bear them; and besides, nothing can be a very, very heavy trial that I share with you. But tell me quick what it is? I am sure I shall think of some way of getting rid of it.’
Randolph shook his head, and then related his morning’s conversation with his grandfather. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you see the cruel predicament in which I am placed. You, my beloved Fanny, the object of my fondest hopes, all that makes life attractive and dear to me, are placed within my grasp; an honorable career is opened to me, escape from the galling thralldom of my
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grandfather’s house, from the perpetual annoyance of his vulgarity, his garrulity, jealousy, and petty tyrannies; and this, without the slightest deviation in the spirit or even the letter from my promise to my dying mother.’ Randolph paused. Fanny watched every motion of his countenance with breathless expectation; she could not speak; she did not know what remained to be said, but she ‘guessed and feared.’ He proceeded. ‘But the price, Fanny, the price I am to pay for these ineffable blessings! I must give my vote to an unprincipled demagogue, and withhold it from an honest man. I must sacrifice the principles that I have laid down to govern my conduct. They may be stigmatized as juvenile, romantic, and fantastical; as long as I believe them essential to integrity, I cannot depart from them without a consciousness of degradation. My moral sense is not yet dimmed by the fumes of party, and it seems to me as plain a proposition as any other, that we ought only to support such men and such measures as are for the good of the country, and the whole country. It seems to me, that no man enlists under the banner of a party without some sacrifice of integrity. My grandfather says to me, in his vulgar slang, ‘between two stools you will fall to the ground. Be it so. It will be ground on which I can firmly plant my foot, and look up to heaven with consciousness that I have not offended against the goodness that made me a citizen of a country destined to be the greatest and happiest the world ever saw, provided we are true to our political duties. Dearest Fanny, do not think I am haranguing and not feeling. God knows I have had a sore conflict;
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my heart has been wrung. You cover your face. Have I decided wrong?’
‘Oh, no, no;’ she replied in a voice broken by her emotion. ‘For all the world, I would not that you should have decided otherwise. And yet, is it not very, very hard? I mean for you, Randolph. For myself, I have a pleasant home, and I am happy enough while I can see you every day, and be sure each day that we love one another better than we did the last. Besides,’ she added, looking up with her sunny smile, ‘on some accounts it is best as it is; it would almost break father’s heart to part from me; and, as he says, dear Randolph, when the right time comes, ‘Providence will open up a way for us.’’
‘Then, Fanny, you approve my decision?’
‘Approve it, Randolph! I do not seem proud, perhaps; but it would humble me to the very dust to have you think even of acting contrary to what you believe to be right. Oh, if we could only live in a world where it was all love and friendship and no politics!’
Randolph smiled at the simplicity of Fanny’s wish, and expressed, with all a lover’s fervor, his admiration of the instinctive rectitude of her mind. He confessed that he had resolved and re-resolved his grandfather’s proposition, in the hope that he might hit upon some mode of preserving his integrity and securing the bright reward offered him, but in vain.
Our lovers must be forgiven if they protracted their walk long after the orthodox hour for barring a minister’s doors. My friend, still the ‘spoiled child,’
[138]
found her old sister Sally sitting up for her; and as they crept up their rooms, ‘They say old maids are cross,’ said Fanny, ‘but they don’t know you who say so. You remember, sister, when you used to love to walk by the moonlight, with a certain Mr.⎯⎯⎯?’
‘Whisht, nonsense, Fanny,’ said our ‘nun demure,’ but she finished the ascent of the stairs with a lighter step, and as Fanny kissed her for good night, she saw that a slight blush had overspread her wan cheek at the pleasurable recollections called up. So true is woman to the instincts of her nature.
On the next morning, Randolph was absent, and Mrs. Hunt said, in answer to his grandfather’s inquiries that he had ridden to the next village on business, and had left word that he should return in time for the election. The squire was excessively elated. He was on the point of obtaining a party triumph by the casting vote of his grandson; he should exhibit him for the first time in the democratic ranks, ‘enlisted for the war,’ with the new blown honors of Hampden thick upon him. There are elevated points in every man’s life, and this morning was the Chimborazo of the squire’s.
At the appointed hour the rival parties assembled at the meeting house; that being in most of our villages the only building large enough to contain the voters of the town, is, notwithstanding the temporary desecration, used as a political arena. There the rival parties met as (with sorrow we confess it,) rival parties often meet in our republic, like the hostile forces of belligerent nations, as if they had no interest nor sentiment in common.
[139]
The balloting began. Randolph had not arrived. The squire, though not yet distrustful, began to fidget. He had taken his station beside the ballot box; a station which, in spite of its violation of the courtesies if not the principle of voting by ballot, is often occupied by eager village politicians, for the purpose of peering into the box, and detecting any little artifice by which an individual may have endeavored to conceal his vote. Here stood the squire, turning his eyes from the door where they eagerly glanced in quest of Randolph, to the box, and giving a smile or scowl to every vote that was dropped in. ‘What keeps the parson back?’ thought he, knitting his gristled brows, as he looked at Doctor Atwood, ‘he is always the first to push forward.’ This was true. The doctor’s principles kindly coincided with his inclination in bringing him to the poll, but once having ‘put in his mite,’ as he said, ‘into the good treasury,’ he paid so much deference to his office, as immediately to withdraw from the battle-field.
The doctor had controlling reasons for lingering on this occasion. Fanny had acquainted him with Randolph’s determination. The old man was touched with his young favorite’s virtue, and the more (we must forgive something to human infirmity,) that Randolph’s casting vote would decide the election in favor of the federal party. The balloting was drawing to a close, and still Randolph did not appear. The doctor now fully participated the squire’s uneasiness. He took off his spectacles, wiped them over and over again, and strained his eyes up the road by which Randolph was to return. ‘It was not like him to flinch,’ thought the sturdy old man, ‘he is always up to the mark.’ Still,
[140]
as the delay was prolonged his anxiety increased. ‘Better have come boldly out on their side than sneak off in this fashion. I might have known that no one tainted with this jacobinism could act an upright manly part. He writes well, to be sure; find sentiments, but nothing so namby pamby as sentiment that is not backed up by conduct. Well, well; we are all in the hands of the Lord, and he may see fit yet to turn his heart; poor little Fanny; I’ll throw in my vote and go home to her.’ The doctor gave one last look through the window, and now, to his infinite joy, he descried Randolph approaching. In a few moments more he entered the church. His vote had been a matter much debated and of vital interest to both parties. As he entered, every eye turned towards him, and a general murmur ran round the church. ‘He’ll vote for us!’ and ‘he’ll vote for us!’ passed from mouth to mouth, and as usual the confident assertions were vouched by wagers. Whatever wrestlings with himself Randolph might have had in secret, he was too manly to manifest his feelings to the public eye, and he walked up the aisle with his customary manners, revealing nothing by look or motion to the eager eyes of his observers; though there was enough to daunt, or at least to fluster a man of common mettle, in the well known sound of the doctor’s footsteps, shuffling after him, and in the aspect of the squire standing bolt upright before him; confidence and exultation seeming to elevate him a foot above his ordinary stature.
‘Ha,’ thought he, ‘every man has his price; bait your hook with a pretty girl, and you’ll be sure to catch these boys.’ At this critical moment, Randolph
[141]
dropped in his vote. It was open, fairly exposed to the squire’s eye, and it bore in legible, indubitable characters, the name of the Federal candidate. The doctor involuntarily grasped his hand, and whispered, ‘You have done your duty, my son, God bless you!’
Words cannot describe either the squire’s amazement or his wrath. Randolph had presumed too far when he hoped that the decency due to a public meeting would compel his relative to curb his passion, till reflection should abate it. It burst forth in incoherent imprecations, reproaches, and denunciations; and Randolph, finding that his presence only served to swell the storm, retreated.
The votes were now counted, and notwithstanding Randolph’s vote, and, contrary to all expectation, there proved to be a tie. Some federalist had been recreant. The balloting was repeated. Doctor Atwood had gone, and the democratic candidate was elected by a majority of one.
This unexpected good fortune turned the tide of the squire’s feelings. His individual chagrin was merged in the triumph of his party. They adjourned to the tavern to celebrate their victory in the usual mode of celebrating events, by eating and drinking. Excitement had its usual effects on our unethereal squire, and he indulged his stimulated appetite somewhat beyond the bounds of prudence.
Even the tiger is said to be comparatively good natured on a full stomach. The squire’s wrath was appeased by the same natural means; and when Hampden was toasted, he poured down a bumper, saying
[142]
to his next neighbor as he did so, ‘I might have known a fellow with his nonsensical notions would have voted for the man he thought best of.’ The conviviality of our politicians continued to a late hour. Libations were poured out to all the bright champions of their party. The moderns unfortunately swallow their libations. Finally, the squire proposed a parting glass to ‘the confusion and overthrow of all monarchists, aristocrats, federalists, or despots, by whatever name called,’ and in the very act of raising it to his lips, he was seized with an apoplexy, which, in spite of his ‘sound grinders, full pulse, steady gait and grandmother Brown having to lived to ninety,’ carried him off in the space of a few hours, leaving his whole estate real and personal to his legal and sole heir, Randolph Hayford.
And how did Randolph bear this sudden reverse of fortune in his favor? This versification, as it truly seemed, of the doctor’s prophecy, that ‘Providence would open up a way for them.’
In the first place, he laid the axe to the root of the Hayford tree, renouncing at once and forever the name, (of which he had so religiously preformed the duties,) and resuming with pride and joy his honored patronymic. He then, by a formal deed of quit claim, relinquished all right and title to the estate, real and personal, and goods and chattels of Silas Hayford, Esquire, in favor of Martha Hunt, said Silas’ sister.
Thus emancipated, and absolved from all farther duties and obligations to the name of Hayford, with a character improved and almost perfected by the exact performance of self-denying and painful duties, he
[143]
began his professional career, depending solely on his own talents and efforts; thank heaven, a sure dependence in our favored country.
My sweet friend, Fanny, who seemed to be the pet of destiny, as well as of father, sisters, and friends, was thus indulged in bearing the name of Gordon, to which she so fondly adhered. She was soon transferred to Randolph’s new place of residence, and without breaking her father’s heart by a separation. He having rashly preached an ultra federal sermon on a fast day, that widened the breach between himself and the majority of his parish, so far, that it was impossible to close it without emulating the deed of Curtius. To this the good doctor had no mind, and just then most fortunately (we beg his pardon, his own word is best,) ‘providentially’ receiving a call to vacant pulpit in the place of Randolph’s residence, he once more transferred his home; spent his last days near his favorite child, and at last, in language of scripture, ‘fell asleep’ on her bosom.
----------
[Sedgwick’s notes]
[1] This fruitful subject of dispute, has rent asunder many a village society in New England.
[2] Federalist.
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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A Reminiscence of Federalism
Subject
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Federalists and Democrats, partisanship, voting, friendship, courtship.
Description
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The narrator recounts the partisan divide between Federalists and Democrats in a New England town by reminiscing about a childhood friend, and her suitor's coming of age.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
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The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich.
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Boston: Charles Bowen
Date
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1834 [pub. 1833]
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Jenifer Elmore, Naomi Lau, Kaylin Ricciardi, Abigail Skinner
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Collected in Catharine Sedgwick, Tales and Sketches. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835: pp. 9-43. Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 1, edited by Nina Baym, pp. 1017-38. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.
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English
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Document
"Hymn to Adversity" (1782)
"Il Penseroso" (1645)
1833
1834
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
Acts 7.60
Angelica Catalani
anonymous publication
aristocracy
As You Like It
ballots
Beauty and the Beast
Chimborazo
clergy
coming of age
Cotton Mather
courtship
Curtius
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Edie Ochiltree
elections
Federalism
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Helicon
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Judges 11:34
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Laurence Sterne
lawyer
letters
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newspapers
Norton Anthology of American Literature
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Shakespeare
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Tales and Sketches -First Series
The Age of Reason (1794)
The Antiquary (1816)
The Token
Thomas Gray
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Uncle Toby
Vermont
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William Cullen Bryant
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/67539f2ee17e08003194b36700bcdf40.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=NAvOzowQfJrwEV6qQ467TA1EffYWXF7kSJb9B5tk4ZU5DRTvrVEeDZIjowOe6Q%7EgZRNCh8LjvE8-ivIn%7E3LsipXoAGPfI83vtnaPIfK%7EBGL68utsAO3wmy%7EEnTJSLKfNF1LtMNYIrhZTbfuAu5dSeRlcWeMalX%7EpvnyAisabvvUHHdwuf9ETyZZrF9I32eNBQqPdRuHlcytbqPUwFsNZ9RDxVJ0IvT4mTHqkVED%7E6Tjtpl9DWCg90xx4jlNMy-6b5S0Hj9Hyy%7Etd3U9a5V2hHbLJ4FyPiEt7rvARVQ5rDEbpBBi28UbhbWUyBEAnrO8wkU69k%7EBWEKWBzvyUWDrrxQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
5d7506166e2a35732f0e2730ac8ffc79
Dublin Core
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1838
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THE WHITE SCARF.
BY MISS SEDGWICK.
“Be just, and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s.
Thy God’s, and truth’s; then, if thou fall’st , O Cromwell,
Thou fall’st a blessed martyr.”
[1]
THE reign of Charles the Sixth is one of the most humiliating periods of the French history, which, in its centuries of absolute kinds and unquestioning subjects, presents us a most melancholy picture of the degradation of man, and disheartening prolongation of the infancy of society. Nature had given Charles but an hereditary monarch’s portion of brains, and that portion had not been strengthened or developed by education or exercise of any sort. Passions he had not; he never rose to the dignity of passion; but his appetites were strong,
[2]
and they impelled him, unresisted, to every species of indulgence. His excesses brought on fits of madness, which exposed his kingdom to the rivalship and misrule of the princes of the blood. Fortunately for the subsequent integrity of France, these men were marked by the general, and as it would seem, constitutional weakness of transmitted royalty; and were besides too much addicted to pleasure, to crave political independence or renown in arms, the common passions of the powerful and high-born.
Instead of sundering the feeble ties that bound them to their allegiance, and raising their princely domains to independence of the crown, they congregated in Paris, then, as now, the Paradise of the devotees to pleasure, and surrendered themselves, as their chroniclers quaintly express it, to “festins, mascarades, danses, caroles et ébattemens,” (every species of diversion,) varied by an occasional affray, an ambuscade, or an assassination. The talent, that is now employed upon the arts of life, in inventing new machines, and contriving new fabrics, was then exhausted in originating new pastimes. Games of cards, and the revival of dramatic entertainments,
[3]
date from this period,--the beginning of the fifteenth century.
There shone at Charles’s court one of those stars, that occasionally cross the orbit of royalty, whose brilliancy obscured the splendor of the hereditary nobility,--the lights, that, according to conservative opinion, are set in the firmament to rule the day and night of the plebeian world.
In the month of September, of the year 1409, a stranger, attended by a servant with a small travelling-sack, knocked at the gate of a magnificent hôtel in Paris. He was answered by a porter, who cast on him a glance of inquiry as keen as a bank clerk’s upon the face of an unknown bank-note; and, seeing neither retinue, livery, nor other insignia of rank, he was gruffly dismissing him, when the stranger said, “Softly, my friend; present this letter to the Grand-Master, and tell him the bearer awaits his pleasure! Throw the sack down within the gate, Luigi!” he added to his attendant, “and come again at twelve; “ and, without more ado, he took his station within the court, a movement in which the porter acquiesced, seeing that in the free bearing of the stranger, and in the flashing of
[4]
his dark eye, which indicated, it were wise not to question an authority that had nature’s seal. On one side of the court was fountain, and on the other a group of Fauns, rudely carved in wood. Adornings of sculpture were then unknown in France; -- the art was just reviving, and the ancient models still lay buried under barbaric ruins. Two grooms appeared, conducting, in front of the immense flight of steps that led up to the hôtel, four horses caparisoned for their riders, two for females, as was indicated by the form of the saddles, and the gay silk knots that decked the bridles, one of which was studded with precious stones. At the same moment, there issued from the grand entrance a gentleman, and a lady who had the comely embonpoint befitting her uncertain “certain age.” She called her companion “mon mari,” and he assisted her to mount, with that nonchalant, conjugal air, which indicated that gallantry had long been obsolete in their intercourse.
The interest the wife did not excite, was directed to another quarter. Mon mari’s eye was constantly reverting to the door, with an expression of eager expectation. “Surely,” said the lady, “Violette has had time to find
[5]
my eau-de-rose; --let us go, my husband,-- we are losing the freshness of the morning. She may follow with Edouard.”
“Go you, ma chère amie,” replied her husband. “Mount, Edouard, and attend your mistress, --my stirrup wants adjusting, -- I’ll follow presently. How slow she rides! A plague on old women’s fears!” he muttered, as she ambled off. “Ah, there you are, my morning star,” he cried, addressing a young girl who darted through the door and appeared well to warrant a comparison to the most beautiful of the celestial lights. She wore a Spanish riding-cap, a cloth dress, the waist neatly fitted to her person, and much in the fashion of the riding costume of the present day, save that it was shorter by some half-yard, and thus showed to advantage a rich Turkish pantalette and the prettiest feet in the world, laced in boots. “Is my lady gone?” she exclaimed, dropping her veil over her face.
“Yes, Violette, your lady is gone, but your lord is waiting for my lady’s mignonne. Come, mistress of my heart! here is my hand for your stepping-stone.” He then threw his arm around her waist, under the pretext of
[6]
assisting her to mount; but she darted away like a butterfly from a pursuer’s grasp, and, snatching the rein from the groom’s hand, and saying, “My lord, I am country bred, and neither need nor like your gallantries,” she led the horse to the platform on which the Fauns were placed, and, for the first time seeing the stranger, who stood, partly obscured by them, looking curiously upon this little scene, she blushed, and he involuntarily bowed. It was an instinctive homage, and she requited it with a look as different from that which she returned to the libertine gaze of the Count de Roucy, as the reflection in a mirror of two such faces, the one bloated and inflamed, the other pure and deferential, would have been. Availing herself of the slight elevation of the platform, she sprang into her saddle and set off at a speed, that, in De Roucy’s eye, provokingly contrasted with her mistress’s cautious movement. “who are you, and what do you here?” he said, turning to the stranger.
“My name,” replied the stranger, without condescending to notice the insolent manner of the question, “is Felice Montano, and I am here on business with the Grand-Master.”
[7]
“Did ye not exchange glances with that girl?”
“I looked on her, and the Saints reward by her, she looked on me.”
“Par amour?”
“I stand not here to be questioned; -- I ne’er saw the lady before, but, with Heaven’s kind leave, I will see her again!”
“Take care, -- the girl is my wife’s minion, the property of the house, --ye shall be watched!” muttered De Roucy, and, mounting his hourse, he rode off, just as the porter reappeared, attended by a valet-de-place, whose obsequious address indicated that a flattering reception awaited Montano.
Montano was conducted up a long flight of steps, and through a corridor to an audience-room, whose walls were magnificently hung with tapestry, and its windows curtained with the richest Oriental silk. Silver vases, candelabra of solid gold, and various costly furniture, were displayed with dangerous profusion, offering a tempting spoil to the secret enemies of their proprietors.
There were already many persons of rank assembled, and others entering. Montano stood apart, undaunted by their half insolent,
[8]
half curious glances. He had nothing to ask, and therefore feared nothing. He felt among these men, notorious for their ignorance and their merely animal lives, the conscious superiority of an enlightened man, that raised him far above the mere hereditary distinction, stigmatized by a proud plebian as the “accident of an accident.” Montano was an Italian, and proudly measured the eminence from which his instructed countrymen looked down upon their French neighbors.
As he surveyed the insolent nobles, he marveled at the ascendency which Jean de Montagu, the Grand-Master of the Palace, had maintained over them for nearly half a century. The son of a humble notary of Paris, he had been ennobled by King John, had been the prime and trusted favorite of three successive monarchs, had maintained through all his capricious changes the favor of Charles, had allied his children to nobles and kings, had liberally expended riches, that the proudest of them all did not possess, had encouraged and defended the laboring classes, and was not known to have an enemy, save Burgundy, the fearful “Jean sans peur.”
The suitors to the Grand-Master had as-
[9]
sembled early, as it was his custom to receive those who had pressing business before breakfast, it being his policy not to keep his suitors in vexing attendance. He knew his position even while it seemed firmest, to be an uncertain one; and he warily practiced those arts which smooth down the irritable surface of men’s passions, and lull to sleep the hydra, vanity.
“The Grand-Master is as true as the dial!” said a person standing near Montano; “the clock is on the stroke of nine; -mark me! as it striketh the last stroke, he will appear.”
Montano fixed his eyes on the grand entrance to the saloon, expecting, that, when the doors “wide open flew, “ he should see that Nature had put the stamp of her nobility on the plebeian who kept these lawless lords in abeyance. The portal remained closed, there was no flourish of trumpets, but, at a low side-door, gently opened and shut, entered a man low of stature, and so slender and shrunken, that it would seem Nature and time had combined to compress him within the narrowest limits of the human frame. His features were small, his chin beardless, and the few locks that hung, like silver fringe around
[10]
his head, were soft and curling as an infant’s. He wore a Persian silk dressing-gown over a citizen’s simple under-dress, and his tread was so soft, his manner so unpretending and unclaiming, that Montano would scarcely have looked at him a second time, if he had not perceived every eye directed towards him, and certain tokens of deference analogous to those flutterings and shrinkings that are seen in the basse cour, when its sovereign steps forth among his subdues and abject rivals. But, when he did look again, he saw the fire glowing in a restless eye, that seemed to see and read all at a glance,-- an eye that no man, carrying a secret in his bosom, could meet without quailing.
“Your Grace believes,” said the Grand-Master to the Duke of Orleans, who had been vehemently addressing him in a low voice, “that these mysteries are a kind of divertisement that will minister to our sovereign’s returning health?”
“So says the learned leech, and we all know they are the physic our brother loves.”
“Then be assured, your poor servant will honor the drafts on his master’s treasury, thought it be well nigh drained by the revels
[11]
of the late marriages. The King’s poor subjects starve, that his rich ones may feast; and children scarce out of leading-strings are married, that their fathers and mothers may have pretexts for dances and masquerades.”
“Methinks,” said the Count de Vaudemont, the ally and messenger of Burgundy, “the Grand-Master’s example is broad enough to shelter what seems, in comparison of the late gorgeous festival within these walls, but the revels of rustics.”
“The festivals within these walls are paid with coin from our own poor coffers,” replied the Grand-Master, “not drawn from the King’s treasury, after being coined from the sweat and tears of his subjects. But what have we here?” He passed his eye over a petition to the King, from sundry artisans, whose houses had been stripped of their movables by the valets of certain Dukes,-- these valets pleading the common usage in justification of this summary process. “Tell our good friends,” he said, “it shall be my first business to present this to our gracious sovereign; but in the mean time, let them draw on me for the amount of their loss. I can better afford the creditor’s patient waiting than our
[12]
poor friends, who, after their day’s hard toil, should lie securely on their own beds at night. Ah, my lords, why do ye not, like our neighbors of England, make the poor man’s cottage his castle.” After various colloquies with the different groups, in which, whether he denied or granted, it was always with the same gracious manner, the same air of self-negation, he drew near to De Vaudemont, who stood apart from the rest, with an air of frigid indifference, and apparent unconsciousness of the Grand-Master’s presence or approach, till Montagu asked, in a low and deferential tone, “What answer sendeth his Grace of B-b-b-b-b--?” Montague had a stammering infirmity, which beset him when he was most anxious to appear unconcerned. He lowered his voice at every fresh effort to pronounce the name, and this confidential tone gave a more startling effect to the loud, rough voice, in which the party addressed pronounced, “Burgundy! his Grace bids me say, that for some diseases blood-letting is the only remedy.”
“Tell Burgundy,” replied the Grand-Master, now speaking without the slightest faltering, an in allusion to the recent alliance of his own with the royal family, “tell Burgundy,
[13]
that the humblest stream that mingles with the Ganges becomes a portion of holy water, and that blood-letting is dangerous when ye approach the royal arteries! Ah!” he continued, turning suddenly to Montano, grasping his hand, and resuming his usual tone, “You, I think, are the son of Nicoló Montano, -- welcome to Paris! You must stay to breakfast with me. I have much to ask concerning my old friend. It is one and twenty years since your mother put my finger in your mouth to feel your first tooth. Bless me, what goodly rows are there now! So time passes!”
“And where it were once safe to thrust your finger, it might now be bitten off. Ha! Jean de Montagu?” growled Vaudemont.
“ When there are wolves abroad, we keep our fingers to ourselves,” replied Montagu.
These discourteous sallies and significant retorts were afterwards remembered, as are the preludes to an earthquake after the catastrophe has interpreted them. The assembly broke up, Montagu bidding his young friend to take a stroll in the garden, and rejoin him at the ringing of the breakfast bell. When that sounded, a valet appeared and
[14]
conducted Montano to a breakfast room, where game, cakes, and fruit were served on plate, and the richest wine sparkled in cups that old Homer might fain have gemmed with his consecrating verse. “I had forgotten,” said Montagu, “that a boy of two and twenty needs no whetting to his appetite; but sit ye down, and we will dull its edge. Ah, here you are De Roucy. We have a guest to season our fare this morning, the son of my old schoolmate, Nicoló Montano.” De Roucy bowed haughtily, and Montano returned the salutation as it was given. “Why comes not Elinor to breakfast?” asked Montagu of the Count de Roucy, who was the husband of his eldest daughter.
“She likes not strangers.”
“God forgive her! Felice Montano is no stranger;-- the son of her father’s first and best friend, --of the playfellow of his boyhood, -- of the founder of his fortunes, a stranger!”
“I thought you had woven your own fortunes, Sir.”
“So have I, and interwoven with them some rotten threads. Think not, De Roucy, I do not notice, or that, noticing, I care for your
[15]
allusion to my father’s craft. Come hither, Pierre.” De Roucy’s son, a boy of seven, came and stood at his knee. “When you are a grown man, Pierre, remember, that when your father’s fathers were burning cottages, bearing off poor men’s daughters, slaughtering their cattle, and trampling down their harvest-fields, -- doing the work of hereditary lordlings, --my child, your mother’s ancestor’s were employed in planting mulberries, rearing silkworms, multiplying looms—in making bread and wine plenty, and adding to the number of happy homes in their country.
“But, grandpapa, I wont remember the wicked ones that stole and did such horrid deeds!”
“Ah, Pierre, you will be a lord then, and learn in lordly phrase to call stealing levying. Go, boy, and eat your breakfast; -- God forgive me ! I have worked hard to get my posterity into the ranks of robbers !”
At another moment, Montano would have listened with infinite interest to all these hints, as so many clues to the history and mind of a man who was the wonder of his times; but now something more captivating to the imagi-
[16]
nation of two and twenty, than the philosophy of any old man’s history, occupied him, and he was wondering, why no inquiry was made about the companion of the Countess, and whether that creature, who seemed to him only fit to be classed with the divinities, was really a menial in the house of this weaver’s son.
“Your father,” resumed the Grand-Master, “writes with a plainness that pleases me. I thank him. It shall not be my fault, if every window in my sovereign’s palace is not curtained with the silks from his looms; and, if it were not that my son’s espousals have drained my purse, I would give you the order on the instant for the re-furnishing of my hôtel. But another season will come, and then we shall be in heart again. Your father does not write in courtly vein. He says, that, amid his quiet and obedient subjects, who toil and spin for him while he sleeps, he envies not my uncertain influence over a maniac monarch, and dominion over factious nobles. Uncertain, -- St. Peter ! What think ye, De Roucy? May not a man who has allied one daughter to your noble house, another to the Sire de Montbaron, and another to Meun, and now
[17]
has affianced his only son to the Constable d’Albret, doubly cousin to the King, may not he throw his glove in dame Fortune’s face?”
“Yes, my lord, and dame Fortune may throw it back again. He only betrays his weakness, who props himself on every side.”
“Weakness ! I have not an enemy save Burgundy.”
“And he who has Burgundy needs none other.”
“You are bilious this morning, De Roucy. But come, wherewith shall we entertain our young friend? We have no pictures, no statues. Our gardens are a wilderness to your paradises; but I have one piece of workmanship, that I think would even startle the masters of your land.” He called the servant in waiting, and whispered an order to him. In a few moments the door re-opened and a young girl appeared, bearing a silver basket of grapes. Her hair was golden, and, parted in front and confined on her temples with a silver thread, fell over her shoulders, a mass of curls. Her head was gracefully bent over the basket she carried, showing, in its most beautiful position, a swan-like neck. Her features were all symmetrical
[18]
and her mouth had that perfection of outline, that art can imitate, and that flexibility, obedient to every motion of the soul, in which Nature is inimitable. Her dress was of rich materials, cut in the form prescribed to her rank. The mistresses were fond of illustrating their own generosity, or outdoing their rivals, by the rich liveries of their train, while they jealously maintained every badge of the gradation of rank. Her dress was much in the fashion of a Swiss peasant girl of the present times. Her petticoat, of a fine light-blue cloth, was full and short, exposing a foot and ancle, that a queen might have envied her the power to show, and which she, however, modestly sheltered, with the rich silver fringe that bordered her skirt. Her white silk boddice was laced with a silver cord, and her short, full sleeves were looped with cords and tassels of the same material. “Can ye match this girl in Italy?” whispered the old man to Montano.
“In Italy! nay, my lord, not in the world is there such another model of perfection!” replied Montano, who, changed as she was, by doffing her demi-cavalier dress, had, at a glance, recognized his acquaintance of the morning.
[19]
“Thank you! Violette,” said Montagu, “are these grapes from your own bower?”
“They are, my lord.”
“Then they must needs be sweeter than old Roland’s, for they have been ripened by your bright eyes and sunny smiles.”
“Ah, but grandfather,” interposed little Pierre, “Violette did not say that, when I asked her for her grapes. She said, they would only taste good to her father, for whom she reared them, and that I should love Roland’s better.”
“And why did you not thus answer me, Violette ?”
“You asked for them, my lord, --the master’s request is law to the servant.”
“God forgive me, if I be such a master ! Take away the grapes, Violette, and send them, with what else ye will from the refectory, to the forester. Nay, -- no thanks, my pretty child, or, if you will, for all thanks let me kiss your cheek.” Violette stopped and offered her beautiful cheek, suffused with blushes, to Montagu’s lips.
“The old have marvelous privileges !” muttered De Roucy. The same thought was expressed in Montano’s glance, when his eye,
[20]
as Violette turned, encountered hers. She involuntarily curtsied, as she recognized the gallant of the court. “A very suitable greeting for a stranger, Violette,” said the Grand-Master ; “but this youth must have a kinder welcome from my household. It is Felice Montano, -- my friend’s son, -- give him a fitting welcome, my child.”
“Nobles and princes,” she replied, in a voice that set her words to music, “have welcomes for your friends, my lord ; but such as a poor rustic can offer, she gives with all her heart.” She took from her basket of grapes a half-blown rose. “Will ye take this, Signor?” she said, “ it offers ye Nature’s sweet welcome.”
Montano kissed the rose, and placed it in his bosom, as devoutly as if it had dropped from the hand of his patron saint. He then opened the small sack which his attendant had brought to the hôtel, and which, at his request, had been laid on a side-table. It contained specimens of the most beautiful silks manufactured in his father’s filature in Lombardy, unrivaled in Italy. While these were spread out and displayed, to the admiration of the Grand-Master, he took from
[21]
among them, a white silk scarf, embroidered in silver with lilies of the valley, and throwing it over Violette’s shoulders, he asked, if she “would grace and reward their arts of industry by wearing it ?”
“If it were fitting, Signor, one to whom it is prescribed what bravery to wear, and how to ear it,” she replied, looking timidly and doubtfully at the Grand-Master.
“It is not fitting,” interposed De Roucy.
“And pray ye, Sir, why not?” asked Montagu; “we do not here allow, that gauds are for those alone who are born to them; -- beneath our roof-tree, the winner is the wearer; -- keep it, my pretty Violette, it well becomes thee.” Violette dropped on her knee, kissed the Grand-Master’s hand, and casting a look at Montano, worth, in his estimation, all the words of thanks in the French language, she disappeared.
_______
Montagu insisted, that during the time his young friend’s negotiations with the silk vendors of Paris detained him there, he should remain an inmate of his family; and nothing loath was Montano to accept a hospitality,
[22]
which afforded him facilities for every day seeing Violette. His affairs were protracted; day after day he found some plausible pretext, if pretext he had needed, for delaying his departure; but, by his intelligence, his various information, and his engaging qualities, he had made such rapid advances in Montagu’s favor, that he rather wanted potent reasons to reconcile him to their parting. If such had been the progress of their friendship, we need not be surprised, that one little month sufficed to mature a more tender sentiment, a sentiment, that, in the young bosoms of southern climes, ripens and perfects itself with the rapidity of the delicious fruits of a tropical sun. Daily and almost hourly, Violette and Montano were together in bower and hall. Set aside by their rank from an equal association with the visiters of the Grand-Master, they enjoyed a complete immunity from any open interference with their happiness; but Violette was persecuted with secret gallantries from De Roucy, that had become more abhorrent to her since her affections were consecrated to Montano. At the end of the month, their love was confessed and plighted; -- the Grand-Master had given his assent to
[23]
their affiancing, and the Countess de Roucy had yielded hers, glad to be relieved from a favorite, whom she had begun to fear as a rival. The eighth of October was appointed for their nuptials. “To-morrow morning, Violette,” said Montagu to her on the evening of the sixth, “ye shall go and ask your father’s leave and blessing, and bid him to the wedding. Tell him, “ he added, casting a side-glance towards De Roucy, who stood at a little distance, eyeing the young pair “with jealous leer malign,” “that I shall envy him his son-in-law; --nay, tell him not that, I will not envy any man aught ; my course has been one of prosperity and possession, -- I have numbered threescore and fifteen years, -- I am now in sight of the farther shore of life, and no man can interrupt my peaceful passage to it!”
“Let no man count on that from which one hour of life divides him !” cried De Roucy, starting from his fixed posture, and striding up and down the saloon. His words afterwards recurred to all that then heard him, as a prophecy.
Montano asked, for his morning’s ride, and escort of six armed men. “I have travelled,”
[24]
he said to the Grand-Master, “over your kingdom with no defence but my own good weapon, and with gold enough to tempt some even of your haughty lords to violence; but, till now, I never felt fear, or used caution.”
“Because till now,” replied Montagu, “your heart was not bound up in the treasure you exposed. That spirit is not human, that is not susceptible of fear.”
The escort was kindly provided, and, by Montagu’s order, furnished with baskets of fruit, wine, and &c., to aid the extempore hospitalities of Violette’s cottage-home. Before the sun had nearly reached the meridian, she was within sight of that dear home, on the borders of the Seine; and her eyes filled with tears, as, pointing out to Montano each familiar object, she thought how soon she was to be far separated from these haunts of her childhood. It was a scene of sylvan beauty and rustic abundance. Stacks of corn and hay, protected from the weather, not only witnessed the productiveness of the well-cultured farm, but seemed to enjoy the security, with which they were permitted to lie on the lap of their mother earth, -- a rare security in those times of rapine, when the lazy nobles
[25]
might, at pleasure and with impunity, snatch from the laborers the fruit of their toil. The cows were straggling in their sunny pasture, the sheep feeding on the hill-side, the domestic birds gossiping in the poultry-yard, and the oxen turning up, for the next summer’s harvest, the rich soil of fields whose product the proprietor might hope to reap, as he enjoyed, through the favor of the Grand-Master, the benefit of the act called an exemption de prise. Barante, Violette’s father, was lying on an oaken settle, that stood under an old pear tree, laden with fruit, at his door. Two boys, in the perfection of boyhood, were eating their lunch and gamboling on the grass with a little sturdy house dog; while an old, blind grandmother, who sat within the door, was the first to catch the sound of the trampling of the horses’ hoofs. “Look, Henri, who is coming,” she said. The dog and the boys started forth from the little court, and directly there was a welcoming bark, and shouts of, “It’s Violette ! it’s our dear sister !” Amidst this shouting and noisy joy, Violette made her way to her father’s arms, and the fond embrace of the old woman.
“And whom shall I bid welcome, Vio-
[26]
lette ?” asked Barante, offering his hand to Montano.
“Signor Felice Montano,” answered Violette, her eyes cast down, and her cheek burning, as if, by pronouncing the name, she told all she had to tell.
“Welcome here, Sir,” resumed Barante; “ye have come, doubtless, to see how poor folk live ?” and the good man looked round on his little domain with a very proud humility.
“Oh no, dear father; he came not for that.”
“What did he come for, then, sister?” asked little Hugh.
“I came not to see how you live, “ said Montano, “but to beg from you wherewith to live myself,” and taking Barante aside, he unfolded his errand.
“Come close to grandmother, Violette,” said Henri, “and let her feel your russet gown. I am glad you come not home in your bravery, for then you would not seem like our own sister.”
“And yet,” said the old woman, with a little of that womanish feeling, that clings to the sex, of all conditions and ages, “I think
[27]
none would become it better; -- but, dear me, Lettie, how you’ve grown ! I can hardly reach to the top of your head.”
“Not a hair’s breadth have I grown, grandmother, since I saw you last; but now do I seem more natural?” and she knelt down before the old woman.
“Yes, -- yes, -- now you are my own little Lettie again, -- your head just above my knee. How time flies ! it seems but yesterday, when your mother was no higher than this, and its five years, come next All-Saints-Day, since we laid her in the cold earth. But why have you bound up your pretty curls in this net-work, Lettie?” Henri playfully snatched the silver net from her head, and her golden curls fell over her shoulders. The old woman stroked, and fondly kissed them, and then passed her shriveled fingers over Violette’s face, seeming to measure each feature. “Oh, if I could but once more see those eyes, -- I remember so well their color, -- just like the violet that is dyed deepest with the sunbeams, -- and that was why we called you Violette ; but, when they turned from the light, and glanced up through your long, dark, eyelashes, they looked black ;
[28]
so many a foolish one disputed me the color, as if I should not know, that had watched them by all lights, since they first opened on this world.”
“Dear grandmother, I am kneeling for your blessing, and you are filling my head with foolish thoughts.”
“And there is another, who would fain have your blessing, good mother,” said Montano, whose hand Barante had just joined to Violette’s.
“What? – a stranger ! – who is this?”
“One, good mother, who craves a boon, which if granted, he desires nought else; if denied, all else would be bootless to him.”
“What means he, Violette?”
“Nothing, -- and yet much, grandmother,” replied Violette, with a smile and a blush, that would, could the old woman have seen them, have interpreted Montano’s words.
“Ah, a young spark!” she said. “It is ever so with them, -- their cup foameth and sparkleth, and yet there is nothing in it.”
“But there is much in it this time,” interposed Barante; and, a little impatient of the periphrasing style of the young people, he proceeded to state, in direct terms, the char-
[29]
acter and purpose of his visiter, and said, in conclusion, “I have given my consent and blessing; for you know, mother, we can’t keep our Lettie, -- we bring up our children for others, not for ourselves, and, when their time comes, they will, for it’s God’s law, cleave their father’s house and cleave unto a stranger.”
“But why, dear Lettie,” asked the old woman, “do ye not wed among your own people? why go among barbarians ?”
“Barbarians !” dear grandmother, --if ye knew all that I have learned of his people, from Felice Montano, ye would think we were the barbarians, instead of they. Why, grandmother, Felice can both read and write like a priest, while our great lords can only make their mark. And so much do these Italians know of what the learned call the arts and sciences, (I know not the meaning of the words, but Felice has promised to explain them to me, when we can talk of such things, that our people call them sorcerers.”
“Ah, well-a-day ! I thought how it would be, when the Lady Elinor took such a fancy to your bonnie face, and begged you away from us. But why cannot ye content yourself at the Grand-Master’s ?”
[30]
“Oh, ask me not to stay there. He is kind as my father, and so is the Lady Elinor; but,” added Violette in a whisper, “her husband is a bold, bad, man; he hath said to me what it maketh me blush to recall.”
“Why need ye fear him, Violette.”
“If all be true that men whisper of him, he dares do whate’er the Evil One bids him. They say he was at the bottom of the horrid affair at the Hôtel de St. Paul, and that, at Mans, he it was, that directed the mad King against the Chevalier de Polignac.” * [1]
[31]
“But surely, dear child, the Grand-Master can protect ye.”
“Now he can, -- but we know not how long his power may last. They say that he is far out of favor with Burgundy, and none standeth
[32]
long, on whom he frowneth. Indeed, indeed, dear grandmother, it is better your child should fly away to a safe shelter.”
“Ye have given me many reasons; but that ye love, is always enough for you young ones. Well, -- God speed ye, -- ye must have your day; kneel down, both, and take an old woman’s blessing, it may do ye good, -- it can do ye no harm !”
This ceremony over, the boys, who heard they were bidden to the wedding, and who thought not of the parting, not any thing beyond it, were clamorous in their expressions of joy. Their father sent them, with some refection, to the men, who, at his bidding, had conducted their horses to a little paddock in the rear of his cottage, where they were refreshing them from his stores of provender.
The day was passing happily away. Never had Violette appeared so lovely in Montano’s eyes, as in the atmosphere of home, were every look and action was tinged by a holy light that radiated from the heart. Time passed as he always does when he “only treads on flowers,” and the declining sun admonished them to prepare for their departure. “But first,” said Barante, “let us taste to-
[33]
gether our dear patron’s bounty. Unpack that hamper, boys, and you, dear Violette, serve us as you were wont.” Violette donned her little home-apron of white muslin, tied with sarsnet bows, and, spreading a cloth on the ground under the pear tree, she and the boys arranged the wine, fruit, and various confections from the basket. “It’s all sugar, Hugh!” said Henri, touching his tongue to the tip of a bird’s wing. “And this is sugar, too! replied Hugh, testing in the same mode a bunch of mimic cherries. The French artistes already excelled all others in every department of the confectionary art, and to our little rustics their work seemed miraculous. “Hark ye, Hugh!” said his brother; “I believe St. Francis dropped these from his pocket, as he flew over.”
“Come, loiterers!” cried his father, “while you are gazing, we would be eating. Ah, that is right, Signor Montano! Is it the last time, my pretty Violette?” to Violette and Montano, who were leading the old woman from her chair to the oaken settle. “Come, sit by me, my child. Now we are all seated, we will fill the cup, and drink ‘Many happy years to Jean de Montagu!’”
[34]
As if to mark the futility of the wish, the progress of the cup to the lip was interrupted by and ominous sound; and forth from the thick barrier of shrubbery, that fenced the northern side of the cottage, came twelve men, armed and masked.
“De Roucy! God help us!” shrieked Violette.
“Seize her instantly, and off with her, as I bade ye!” cried a voice, that Montano recognized as the Count de Roucy’s.
“Touch her at your peril, villain!” cried Montano, drawing his sword and shouting for his attendants. Montano and Barante, the latter armed only with a club, kept their assailants at bay till his men appeared, and they, inspired by their master’s example and adjurations, fought valiantly; but one, and then another of their number fell, and the ruffians were two to one against Violette’s defenders. The rampart they had formed around her was diminishing. “Courage, my boys, courage!” cried Barante, as he shot a glance at his children, crouching round his old mother, motionless as panic-struck birds. “Courage! God and the Saints are on our side!”
“Beat them back, my men!” shouted
[35]
Montano. “Jean de Montagu will reward ye!”
“”Jean de Montagu!” retorted De Roucy, “his bones are cracking on the rack! Ah! I’m wounded! –‘t is but a scratch! – seize her, Le Croy! – press on, my men! –the prize is ours!” But they, seeing their leader fall back, for an instant faltered.
A thought, as if from Heaven, inspired Montano. De Roucy, to avoid giving warning of his approach, had left his horses on the outer side of the wood. Montano’s attendants had, just before the onset of De Roucy’s party, saddled their master’s horse and led him to the gate of the court; there he was now standing, and the passage from Violette to him unobstructed. Once on him and started, thought Montano, she may escape. “Mount my horse, Violette,” he cried, “fear nothing, --we will keep them back,--Heaven guard you!” Violette shot from the circle, like an arrow loosed from the bow, unfastened the horse, and sprang upon him. He had been chafing and stamping, excited by the din of arms, and impatient of his position; and, as she leaped into the saddle, he sprang forward like a released captive. Vio-
[36]
lette heard the yell of the ruffians mingling with the victorious shouts of her defenders. Once her eye caught the flash of their arms; but whether they were retreating or still stationary, she knew not. She had no distinct perception, no consciousness, but an intense desire to get on faster than even her flying steed conveyed here. There were few persons on the road, though passing through the immediate vicinity of a great city. Many of those, who cultivated the environs of Paris, had their dwellings, for greater security, within the walls; and, their working-day being over, they had already retired within them.* [2]
From a hostelrie, where a party of cavaliers were revelling, there were opposing shouts of “Stop!” and “God speed ye!” and, of the straggling peasants returning from market, some crossed themselves, fancying this aerial figure, with colorless face and golden hair streaming to the breeze, was
[37]
some demon in angelic form; and others knelt and murmured a prayer, believing it was indeed an angel. She had just made a turn in the road, which brought her within sight of Notre Dame and the gates of Paris, when she heard the trampling of horses coming rapidly on behind her. Her horse too heard the sound, and, as if conscious of his sacred trust and duty, redoubled his speed. The sounds approached nearer and nearer, and now were lost in the triumphing shouts of her pursuers. Violette’s head became giddy; a sickening despair quivered through her frame. “We have her now!” cried the foremost, and stretched his hand to grasp her rein. The action gave a fresh impulse to her horse. He was within a few yards of the barriers. He sprang forward, and in an instant was within the gates. “We are baulked!” cried the leader of the pursuit, reining in his horse; and, pouring out a volley of oaths, he ordered his men to retreat, saying, it was more than the head of a follower of De Roucy was worth, to venture within the barriers. As the sounds of the retiring party died away, Violette’s horse slackened his speed, and was arrested by the captain of the guard, who had
[33]
just begun the patrol for the night. To his questions Violette replied not a word. Her consciousness was gone, and, exhausted and fainting, she slid from the saddle into his arms. Fortunately he was a humane man; he was touched with her innocent and lovely face; and, not knowing to what other place of shelter and security to convey her, he procured a little, and carried her to his own humble home, where he consigned her to the care of his good wife, Susanne. There being then little provision for the security of private property and individual rights, Montano’s horse was classed among those strays, that, in default of an owner, escheated to the King, and was sent, by the guard, to the King’s stables; and thus all clue to Montano was lost.
As soon as Violette recovered her consciousness, her first desire was to get news of those whom she had left in extremest peril; and, as the readiest means of effecting this, entreated the compassionate woman, who was watching at her bedside, to send her to the Grand-Master.
“The Grand-Master!” replied the good dame; “Mary defend us ! what would ye with him?”
[39]
Violette, in feeble accents, explained her relations with him, and her hope, through him, to obtain news of her friends. Susanne answered her with mysterious intimations, which implied, not only that he, whom she deemed her powerful protector, could do nothing for her, but that it was not even safe to mention his name; and then, after promising her that a messenger should be despatched, in the morning, to her father’s cottage, she administered the common admonitions and consolations, that seem so very wise and sufficient to the bestower, --are so futile to the receiver. “She must hope for the best; “ – “she must cast aside her cares;” – “sleep would tranquilize her;” – “brighter hours might come with the morning; but, if they came not, she might live to see what seemed worst now, to be best, and, at any rate, grieving would not help her.”
Thus it has been from the time of Job’s comforters to the present; words have been spoken to the wretched, as impotent as the effort of the child, who, stretching his arm against a torrent, expects to hold it back! But, to do dame Susanne justice, she acted as well as spoke; and the next morning a messen-
[40]
ger was sent, and returned in due time with news, which no art cold soften to Violette. Her father’s cottage was burned to the ground, and all about it laid waste. Some peasants reported, that they had seen the flames during the night, and men, armed and mounted, conveying off whatever was portable, and driving before them Barante’s live stock. What had become of the poor man, his children, and old mother, no one knew; but there were certain relics among the ashes, which too surely indicated, they had not all escaped. Poor Violette had strength neither of body nor mind left, to sustain her under such intelligence. She was thrown into a delirious fever, during which she raved continually about her murdered family and Montano, who was never absent from her thoughts. But, whatever an individual sufferer might feel, such scenes of marauding and violence were too common to excite surprise. “Barante,” it was said, “had but met at last the fate of all those, who were fools enough to labor and heap up riches, for the idle and powerful to covet and enjoy.”
This feeling was natural and just in the laboring classes, when the valets of princes were legalized robbers, and were permitted,
[41]
whenever their masters’ idle followers were to be accommodated, not only to slay the working man’s beeves, and appropriate the produce of his fields, but to enter his house and sweep off the blankets that covered him, and the pillows on which his children were sleeping. Those, who fancy the world has made no moral progress, should read carefully the history of past ages, and compare the condition of the laborers then, like so many defenceless sheep on the borders of a forest filled with beasts of prey, to the security and independence of our working sovereigns. They would find, that the jurisdiction of that celebrated judge, who unites in his own person the threefold power of judge, jury, and executioner, was then exercised by the armed and powerful; that it was universal and unquestioned, whereas now, if he ventures his summary application of Lynch law, his abuses are bruited from Maine to Georgia, and men shake their heads and sigh over the deterioration of the world, and the licentiousness of liberty!
On the ninth day of her illness, while Susanne was standing by Violette, she awoke from her first long sleep. Her countenance was changed, her flaming color was gone,
[42]
and her eye was quiet. She feebly raised her head, and bursting into tears, said, “Oh, why did you not wake me sooner ?”
“Why should I wake you, dear?”
“Why! do you not hear that dreadful bell?” The great bell of Notre Dame was tolling. “They will be buried,--the boys and all, --all, --before I get there!”
“Dieu-merci, child, your people are not going to the burial; -- that bell tolls not for such as yours and mine. We are thrown into the earth, and Notre Dame wags not her proud tongue for us.”
“Ah, true, --true.” She pressed her hand on her head, as if collecting her thoughts; and then, looking up timidly and shrinking from the answer, she said, “Ye ‘ve heard nothing of them?”
“Nothing as yet; but you are better, and that’s a token we shall hear. Now rest again. It is a noisy day. All the world is abroad. It’s the nobles’ concern, not ours; so I pray ye sleep again, and, whatever ye hear, lift not your head; there be throngs of bad men in the street, and where such are, there may be ugly sights. I will go below, and keep what quiet I can for ye.”
[43]
Susanne’s dwelling was old and ricketty. The apartment under that, which Violette occupied, was a little shop, where dame Susanne vended cakes, candies, and common toys. Violette could hear every sentence spoken there in a ordinary tone; but, owing to Susanne’s well-meant efforts, her ear caught only imperfect sentences, such as follow.
“Good day, Mistress Susanne ! will you lend me a lookout from your window to see the -----”
“Hush!”
“There are Burgundy’s men first; ye’ ll know them, boy, by the cross of St. Andrew on their bonnets; and there are the Armangacs, -- see their scarfs!”
“Speak lower, please neighbour!”
“It’s well for them they have provided against a rescue; -- the bourgeois are all for him, -- every poor man’s heart is for him; for why? he was for every poor man’s right; God reward him.”
“Pray speak a little lower, neighbour.”
“But is it not a shame, dame Susanne?
[44]
But ten days ago and all, save Burgundy, were his friends, and now-----”
“There he is, mother ! see ! see!”
“They stop ! Oh, mother, see him show his broken joints ! Mother ! mother ! how his head hangs on one side ? Curse on the rack, that cracked his bones asunder ! ”
“Hush ! I bid ye hush !”
“Who can that goodly youth be, that stands close by his side ? See, he is speaking to him !”
“Oh, he looks like and angel,-- so full of pity, mother!”
“By St. Dominic, neighbour, the boy is right!”
“Oh, mother, what eyes he has ; -- now he is looking up, --see!”
“Hush!”
“But look at them, dame Susanne,-- would ye not think the lamp of his soul was shining through them?”
“See him kiss the poor, broken hand, that hangs down so! God bless him! There’s true courage in that; and see those same lips, how they curl in scorn, as he turns towards those fierce wretches! He is some stranger-youth. Whence is he, think ye, Susanne?”
[45]
“I think by the cut of his neck-cloth, and the fashion of his head-gear,” replied Susanne, who for a moment forgot her caution, “he comes from Italy.”
The word was talismanic to Violette. She sprang from her bed to a window, and the first object she saw amidst a crowd was Montano; the second, her protector and friend, Jean de Montagu, the Grand-Master. He was stretched on a hurdle, for the torments of the rack had left him unable to sustain an upright position. Violette’s eye was riveted to the mutilated form of her good old master. Her soul seemed resolved into one deep supplication; but not one word expressed its intense emotions, so far did they “transcend the imperfect offices of prayer.” Not one treacherous glance wandered to her lover, till the procession moved; and then the thought, that she was losing her last opportunity of being re-united to him, turned the current of feeling, and suggested an expedient, which she immediately put into execution. She had taken her white scarf, in her pocket, to the cottage, to show it to her father; and through her delirium she had persisted in keeping it by her. She now hung it in the window, in
[46]
the hope, that, fluttering in the breeze, it might attract Montano’s eye. She watched him, but his attention was too fixed to be diverted by anything, certainly not by a device so girlish. The procession moved on. The hurdle, and the stately figure beside it, were passing from her view. She threw the casement open, and leaned out. The scaffold, erected at the end of the street, struck her sight. She shrieked, fainted, and fell upon the floor. That one moment gave the color to her after-life. She had been seen, and marked,
-- and was remembered.
----------
The Duke of Burgundy had taken advantage of a moment, when Charles was but partially recovered from a fit of insanity, to compass the Grand-Master’s ruin. The nobles had wept at Montagu’s execution, but they had been consoled by the rich spoils of his estate. There was no such balm for the sovereign; and it became a matter of policy to get up some dramatic novelty to divert his mind, and prevent a recurrence to the past, which might prove dangerous, even to Burgundy. Accordingly, a new mystery was
[47]
put in train for presentation, and one month after the last act of Montagu’s tragedy, and while his dishonored body was still attached to the gibbet of Montfaucon, the gay world of Paris assembled, to witness the representation of a legend of a certain saint, called “The Espousals of St. Thérèse.”
The seat over which the regal canopy was suspended, corresponded to our stage-box, and afforded an access to the stage, that royalty might use at pleasure. The King was surrounded by his own family. His wandering eye, his vacant laugh, and incessant talking, betrayed the still disordered state of his mind; for when sane, amidst a total destitution of talents and virtues, he had a certain affability of manner, and the polish of conventional life, which, as his historian says, acquired for him the “ridiculous title of ‘well-beloved.’” On Charles’s right sat his Queen, Isabel of Bavaria, a woman remarkable for nothing but excessive obesity, the gluttony that produced it, and the indolence consequent upon it, -- and a single passion, avarice. And sovereigns, such as these, are, in some men’s estimation, rulers by “divine right”! Behind the Queen, a place was left vacant for the Duke of Or-
[48]
leans, who, in consequence of a marvelous escape from death during a thunder-storm, when his horses had plunged into the Seine, had vowed to pay his creditors, and had, on that very day, bidden them to a dinner, at which he had promised the dessert should be a satisfaction of their debts. “So soon from your dinner, my lord” said his Duchess to him as he entered, with and expression of face, which indicated a fear that all had not gone as she wished.
“Yes. A short horse is soon curried.”
“What? Came they not? Surely of the eight hundred bidden, there were many who would not do you such a discredit, as to believe your virtue exhaled with the shower?”
“Ah, their faith was sufficient,-- they came, every mother’s son of them, butchers, bakers, fruiterers, and all.”
“And you sent them away happy?”
“Yes, with one of the beatitudes; -- blessed are those who have nothing! I charged my valets to turn them back from my gate, and to tell them, if they came again, they should be beaten off!”
There was a general laugh through the royal box. The Duchess of Orleans alone
[49]
turned away with an expression of deep mortification. Valentine Visconti, daughter of the Duke of Milan and Duchess of Orleans, was one of the most celebrated women of her time. Her lovely figure might have served for a model of one of the chef-d’oeuvres of her classic land. As she sat by the gross Queen, she inspired the idea of what humanity might become, when invested with the “glorified body” of the Saints. Her soul beamed with preternatural lustre from her eyes, and spoke in the musical accents of her beautiful lips. Her gentleness and sympathy, more than the intellectual power and accomplishments, that signalized her amidst a brutified and ignorant race, gave her an ascendancy over the mad King, which afforded some color to the wicked imaginations of those, who, in the end, accused her of sorcery! –an accusation very common against the Italians of that period, whose superior civilization and science were attributed to the diabolical arts of magic. The secret of Valentine’s power over the maniac King has been discovered and illustrated by modern benevolence. She could lead him like a little child, when, for months, he would not consent to be washed or dressed,
[50]
and when these offices were performed at night by ten men, masked, lest, when their sovereign recovered all the reason he ever possessed, he should cause them to be hung for this act of necessary violence!
The spectators, while awaiting the rising of the curtain, were exchanging the usual observations and salutations. “Valentine,” whispered the beautiful young wife of the old Duke of Berri, “did not that man, --mon Dieu, how beautiful he is! – who stands near the musicians, kiss his hand to you?”
“Yes, --he is my countryman.”
“I thought so; --he looks as if the blood of all your proud old nobles ran in his veins; --the Confalonieris, Sforzas, Viscontis, and Heaven knows who.”
“He has a loftier nobility than theirs, cousin; his charter is direct from Heaven, and written by the finger of Heaven on that noble countenance. As to this world’s honors, he boasts none but such as the son of a rich and skilful weaver of silks may claim.”
“Mon Dieu! Is it possible; he is a counterfeit, that well might pass in any King’s exchequer. But he looks sad and abstracted, and, seeing, seemeth as though he saw not. Know ye, cousin, what aileth him?”
[51]
“Yes, but it is a long tale; the lady of his thoughts has strangely disappeared, and, though for more than a month he has sought her, day and night, he hath, as yet, no trace of her. He has come hither ton-night at my bidding, for I deeply pity the poor youth, and would fain divert his mind; -- but soft, --the curtain is rising!”
“Pray tell me what means this scene, Valentine?”
“It is the interior of a chapel. You know the legend of St. Thérèse?”
“Indeed I do not. I cannot read, and my confessor never told me.”
“She was betrothed to one she loved. The preparations were made for the espousals, when, on the night before her marriage, she saw, in vision, St. Francis, who bade her renounce her lover, and told her, that she was the elected bride of Heaven; that she must repair to the convent of the Sisters of Charity, and there resign the world, and abjure its sinful passions. You now see her obedient to the miraculous visitation. She has concluded her novitiate. One weakness she has as yet indulged. She has secretly retained the last gift of her betrothed. Hark! there
[52]
you hear the vesper-bell. She is coming to deposite it at that shrine yonder.”
A female now entered, closely veiled and clad in a full, grey stuff dress, that concealed every line of her person. She held something in her hands, which were folded on her bosom, and walking, with faltering steps, across the stage to the shrine, knelt and made the accustomed signs of prayer. She then rose, and raising the little roll to her lips, kissed it fervently, and then, as if asking pardon for this involuntary weakness, again dropped on her knees, and depositing the roll, withdrew. It would seem, she had entered completely into the tender regrets of the young saint she impersonated, for a tear she had dropped on the last bequest of the lover was seen, as it caught and reflected the lamp’s rays. Immediately, through an open window in the ceiling, a dove entered, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. It was not uncommon, in these mysteries, to bring the sacred persons of the Trinity upon the scene. The bird descended, and took the roll in his bill. As he rose with it, it unfolded, and the white silk scarf, given to poor Violette, represented the last earthly treasure of Saint Thérèse. The dove made
[53]
three evolutions in his ascent, and disappeared. While the cries of “Bravo! Bravissimo! Petit oiseau! Jolie colombe!” were resounding through the house, the Duchess of Berri whispered to Valentine, “See your Italian! he looks as if he would spring upon the state! how deadly pale! and his eyes! blessed Mary! they are like living fires! Surely he is going mad!”
“Heaven help him!” replied the gentle Valentine. “I erred in counselling him to come hither! Would I could speak with him.”
“Never mind him now, cousin; the scene is changing; --tell me, what comes next?”
“Next you will see St. Thérèse praying before her crucifix, --ah, there she is! there is the coffin in which she sleeps at night, -- there the death’s-head she contemplates all day.”
“Shocking! shocking! I never would be a nun.”
“It is but for the last days of her penitence. After her vows are made, she, like all her order, will be devoted to nursing the sick, and succouring the wretched, --a happier life than ours, cousin!”
“Think ye so? Methinks the next world
[54]
will be soon enough to be a saint, and do such tiresome good deeds. But why has she that ugly mantle drawn up over her head, so that one cannot see her hair, or the form of her neck and shoulders?”
“Be not so impatient. You see the door behind her. The Devil is coming into her cell under the form of her lover. Ah, there he is!”
“Bless my heart, if I were the Devil, I would never leave that goodly form again. Now she’ll turn! now we shall see her face! Pshaw! she has pulled that ugly mantle over, for a veil.”
“Pray be still, cousin; --this is her last temptation. I would not lose a word. Listen, --hear how she resists the prince of darkness.”
“The pretended lover performed his part so as to do honor to the supernatural power he represented. At first, he would have embraced the saint; but she shrunk from him, and, reverently placing her hand on the crucifix, stood statue-like against the wall. He then knelt and poured out his passion vehemently. He reminded her of their early love, -- of the home, where he had wooed and won her;
[55]
he besought her to speak to him, -- once to withdraw her veil, and look at him. She was still silent and immovable. He described the wearisome and frigid existence of a conventional life, and then painted, in a lover’s colors, the happiness that awaited them, if she would but keep her first vow made to him. He told her, that horses awaited them at the outward gate. The force of the temptation now became apparent. The weak, loving girl, was triumphing over the saint. Her head dropped on her bosom, her whole frame trembled, and was sinking. Her lover saw his triumph and sprang forward to seize her. But her virtue was re-nerved; she grasped the crucifix, and looking up to a picture of the Virgin, shrieked, “Mary, blessed mother! aid me !”
The Evil One extended his arm to wrest the crucifix, when, smitten by its holy virtue, he sunk through the floor, enveloped in flames. The saint fell on her knees, the dove again descended and fluttered around her and the curtain fell.
In those days, when conventual life had lost nothing of its sacredness, and men’s minds were still subjected to a belief in the visible interference of good and evil spirits in men’s
[56]
concerns, such a scene was most effective. The spectators were awed; not a sound was heard, till the Duchess of Berri, never long abstracted from the actual world, whispered, “Valentine, did you see your Italian when she shrieked; how he struck his hand upon his head! and see him no, what a color is burning in his cheek! He will certainly go mad, and, knowing you, he may dart hither before we can avoid him. Will ye not ask Orleans to order those men at arms to conduct him out; -- you know,” in a whisper, “ I have such a horror of madmen.”
“You need have none, believe me, in this case. My poor countryman is suffering from watching and exhaustion, and his imagination is easily excited. The next scene will calm him. The saint, victorious over the most importunate of mortal passions, will resolutely make her vows, and receive the veil.”
“Oh, then we shall see her face, after all?”
“Yes, and with all that factitious charm, that dress and ornament can lend it; for, to render her renunciation of the world more striking, she is to appear in a bridal dress, decked with the vanities that we women cling last to; -- but hush! the curtain is rising!”
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The curtain rose, and discovered the chapel of a convent. The nuns and theor superior stood on one side, a priest and attendants on the other. A golden crucifix was placed in the centre, with a figure of the Saviour, as large as life. Before this, St. Thérèse was kneeling. Her dress was white sik, embroidered with pearls, with a full sleeve, looped to the shoulder with pearls. A few symbolical orange-buds drooped over her forehead, certainly not whiter than the brow on which they rested. Her hair was parted in front, and drawn up behind in a Grecian knot of rich curls, and fastened there with a diamond cross. St. Thérèse looked, as most saints would, (not as a saint should,) pale as monumental marble; her eyes not raised to Heaven, but riveted to earth, as if she were still clinging to the parting friend. The priest advanced to cut off her hair, the last office previous to investing her with the grey gown and fatal veil. As he unfastened the diamond cross, her bright tresses fell over her neck and shoulders, and, reaching even to the ground, gave the finishing touch to her beauty, and called forth a general shout of “Beautiful! beautiful! most beautiful!”
[58]
Over every other voice, and soon stilling every other, was heard the King’s, and seized with an excess of madness, he rushed upon the stage clapping his hands and screaming, “She is mine! my bride! Out with ye, ugly nuns! She is mine! mine!” finishing each reiteration with a maniac yell.
“Nay, she is mine! my own Violette! my betrothed wife!” interposed Montano, springing forward and encircling Violette with one arm, while he repelled Charles with the other.
A general rising followed. The stage was filled with the nobles, rishing forward to chastise the stranger who had presumed to lay his hands on sacred majesty. A hundred weapons were drawn, and pointed at Montano. There was a Babel confusion of sounds. At this crisis, Valentine penetrated into the midst of the mêlée, whispering, as she passed Montano, “Leave all to me.”
The lords, who had more than once seen her power over the madness of their sovereign, fell back. She placed herself between the King and Montano, and putting her hand soothingly on Charles’s side, she said, with a smile, “Methinks, my lord King, we are all beside ourselves with this bewitching show, -- we know
[59]
not who or what we are. Here is a churl hath dared come between the King and his subject, and you, my sovereign,” (in a whisper,) “have strangely forgotten your Queen’s presence. Unhand that maiden, sir stranger. Kneel, my child, to your gracious sovereign, and let him see you loyally hold yourself at his disposal.” Violette mechanically obeyed.
“Nay, my pretty one, kneel not,” said Charles, still wild, but no longer violent. “Ah, I had forgot! here are the bridal orange-buds. Come, --come, you lazy priest, --come marry us!” Violette looked as if she would fain again take refuge in Montano’s arms.
“To-morrow, my lord King, will surely be soon enough,” whispered Valentine with a confidential air, and, pointing to Isabel, she added, “ it would not seem well to have the rights performed in her presence!” The Queen, with characteristic nonchalance, had remained quietly in her place, where she seemed quite absorbed and satisfied in devouring a bunch of delicious grapes.
“You are right, dear sister,” replied the King, --thus, in his softened moods, he always addressed Valentine,--“it is not according to church rule to marry one wife in presence
[60]
of another!” He then burst into a peal of idiotic laughter, which, after continuing for some moments, left him in a state of imbecility, so nearly approaching to unconsciousness, that he was conveyed to his palace without making the slightest resistance.
A general movement followed the King’s departure, and cries rose, that the stranger must be manacles and conveyed to prison. The Duchess of Orleans interposed. “My lords,” she said, “I pray ye give this youth into my charge. He is my countryman. I will be responsible for him to our gracious sovereign.” There were murmurings of hesitation and discontent. “In sooth, my lords,” added Valentine, “ye should not add an injustice to a stranger to our usages, to the error you have already committed this night, in bringing our royal master, but half recovered from his malady, into this heated atmosphere and exciting scene; -- it were well, if we can avoid it, to preserve no memorials of this night’s imprudence.” This last hint effected what an appeal to their justice failed to obtain, and the lords permitted Montano unmolested to withdraw with the Duchess of Orleans.
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Intent on making those happy, who could be happy, Valentine bade Montano and Violette attend her to her carriage. When they were alone, Violette’s first words were, “My father, --my brothers, Montano, can ye tell me aught of them?”
“They are safe, --safe and well, in all save their ignorance of you, dear Violette,” replied Montano; “and by this time they are arrived in my happy country.”
“Thank God! – and my dear old grandmother?”
“Nay, ask no farther to-night.”
“Better it is, my good friend,” said Valentine, “to satisfy her inquiry now, while her cup is full with joy, and sparkling; --you can bear, my child, patiently a single bitter drop.”
“She was murdered, then?”
“She is at rest, my child, --lay your head on my bosom, --we should weep for the good and kind.”
Before the little party separated for the night, Violette told how, in consequence of having been seen at the window on the day of Montagu’s execution, she had been sought out by the managers of the mystery, and
[62]
compelled, in the King’s name, to obey their behests.
“And to-morrow,” said Valentine, “ye shall obey mine. I, too, will be the manager of a mystery, and real espousals shall be enacted by Montano and Violette; then, ho! for my happy country.”
----------
[Sedgwick’s notes]
* [1] The two passages, here referred to, so well illustrate the character of the times, that I am induced to translate them from Sismondi’s History of the French.
“Among these festivals, there was one which terminated sadly. A widow, maid of honor to the Queen, was married a second time, to a certain Chevalier du Vermandois. The King ordered the nuptials to be celebrated at the palace. The nuptials of widows were occasions of extreme licentiousness. Words and actions were permitted, which elsewhere would have called forth blushes, at a time when blushes were rare. The King, wishing to avail himself of the occasion, assumed, with five of his young courtiers, the disguise of a Satyr. Tunics besmeared with tar, and covered with tow, gave them, from head to foot, a hairy appearance. In this costume they entered the festive hall, dancing. No one recognised them. While the five surrounded the bride, and embarrassed her with their dances, Charles left them to torment his aunt, the Duchess of Berri, who, though married to an old man, was the youngest of the princesses. She could not even conjecture who he was. In the mean time, the Duke of Orleans approached the others, with a torch in his hand, as if to reconnoiter their faces, and set fire to the tow. It was but a sally of mad sport on his part, though he was afterwards reproached with it, as if it were an attempt on his brother’s life. The King discovered himself to the Duchess of Berri, who covered him with her mantle, and conducted him out of the hall.” Four of the five perished.
The historian, after saying, that Charles, conducting his army into Brittany, left Mas one very hot day, and that, while riding over a sandy plain, under a vertical sun, and excited by a trifling accident and some random words of his fool, he became suddenly mad, proceeds; “He drew his sword, and, putting his horse to his speed, and crying ‘On, on ! Down with the traitors!’ he fell upon the pages and knights nearest to him. No one dared defend himself otherwise than by flight, and, in this access of fury, he successively killed the bastard De Polignac, and three other men. At first the pages raged him; but when he attacked the Duke of Orleans, his brother, they perceived he had lost his reason.” The historian proceeds to say, that, not daring to control him, they agreed upon the expedient of letting him pursue them till he was exhausted; but finally a Norman knight, much loved by the King, ventured to spring up behind him and pinion his arms.
* [2] “In despotic countries, rights are only respected inasmuch as they are sustained by power. The inhabitants of towns, even the poorest, had a certain degree of force. Their title, bourgeois, in the German, whence it is derived, means confederates, a reciprocal responsibility.” – Études de l’Économie Politique, par Sismondi.
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 White Scarf
Subject
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15th-century France, the Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War, romance.
Description
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An historical romance set in 15th-century France, focusing on a relationship between a French servant girl and an Italian nobleman that is disrupted by political conflicts and rivalries in the court of Charles VI.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
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The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich, pp. 1-62.
Publisher
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Boston: Otis, Broaders, and Company
Date
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1839 [pub. 1838]
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D. Gussman
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Reprinted in The Hesperian: or, Western Monthly Magazine, vol 2., no. 5, 1839, pp. 375-390. Collected in A New England Tale and Miscellanies by Catharine M. Sedgwick, New York: George P. Putnam & Co., 1852, pp. 295-334.
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Document
Language
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English
15th century
1838
1839
A New England Tale and Miscellanies
Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War (1407-1435)
bourgeois
Charles VI of France
Count de Vaudemont
Duke of Burgundy [John the Fearless]
feudalism
France
Historical fiction
Isabella of Bavaria
Italians
Italy
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Jean de Montagu
John - Duke of Berry
literacy
Louis I Duke of Orleans
lynch law
marriage
mystery play
Notre Dame
Romance
scaffold
St. Therese
The Hesperian
The Token
torture rack
Valentina Visconti (Duchess of Orleans)
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/4bdd8ab286fd377ba95741eeba328700.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=gR1EKYvBMms02S0KPupmtCbL6hPieq2pkflo83611x8eS3aXWNfPSxRSzycm3Tfcs49ct5pR0buWWU%7E32xjllyHyc5197jHu8mtumwtAepkXh2IZ0Foj6LL5lxxZ4uSJco6ZPuHoJiu%7E1cev9V5fj%7EL9HCN%7Ejd9dj1HU8FHMzTUaj1yZKE%7EtHDJBOun1g7Ua9pmvu2yMRU%7ExygKzxBgORFiJADh2Q9TP3Ba0X6ffixsrHJw7t8Bufnh%7EP1yeK9DAz1%7EMQ%7EQocgdhEQ4KDWqJg1vpd56Y3jmLGicNTLLAB5JJLGkFNKTGckLzHaea9R3MXjC6m9Vep39EVT1NMu63qw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
73c5198ed3034f75a7054b05c56ef047
Dublin Core
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1827
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Text
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ROMANCE IN REAL LIFE
By the Author of ‘Redwood’
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‘La Nature fait le mérite,
La Fortune le met en preuve.’
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Many fortunate travellers on the western border of Massachusetts, and not many miles from the Hudson, have been refreshed at the inn of Reliance Reynolds. Reliance, as his name indicates, was born in the good old times. We are aware that the enthusiasts about the ‘progress of the age,’ deny this golden period any but a retrospective existence, and maintain that, retrace the steps of the human family far as you will, it is like the age of chivalry, always a little behind you. But we adhere to the popular phraseology and call those, ‘good old times,’ when the Puritanical nomenclature prevailed; when such modest graces as faith and temperance had not been expelled from our taverns, kitchens, and workshops, by the heroes and heroines of romance – the Orlandos and Lorenzos, Rosamonds and Anna Matildas.
Reliance belonged to the ‘good old times,’ too, in the more essential matter of downright honesty, simplicity, and respectful courtesy. His was a rare character in New England – a passive spirit, content to fill and fit the niche nature had prepared for him. It was not very high,
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but he never aspired above it; nor very low, but he never sank below it. He was the marvel of his neighbours, for he could never be persuaded into an enterprise or speculation. He never bought a water privilege, nor an oar bed; subscribed to a county bank, or ‘moved to the West;’ or in any mode indicated that principle in man, which, in its humble operations, its restlessness, in its lofty aspirations, a longing after immortality. Reliance’s desires never passed the bounds of his premises, and were satisfied, even within them, with a very moderate share of power. He stood at his door, his hat in his hand, to receive his guests; he strictly performed the promise of his sign, and gave ‘good entertainment to man and horse;’ he rendered a moderate bill and received his dues with a complacent smile, in which gratitude was properly tempered with a just sense of his own rights. In short, as must be already quite manifest, Reliance, though a pattern landlord, is a very poor subject for a storyteller; his qualities, like the color in a ray of light, all bending and forming one hue, and his life, presenting the same monotonous harmony.
We should not have forced him from his happy obscurity into the small degree of notoriety he may incur on our humble page, but for his being the adjunct of his wife, an important personage in our narrative.
Mrs Reynolds, too, like her husband, performed exactly the duties of her station. She never perhaps read a line of poetry, save such as might lurk in the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of a village paper, but her whole life was an illustration of the oldfashioned couplet –
‘Honor and shame from no condition rise,
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’
She never was presidentess of a ‘society for ameliorating the conditions of the Jews,’ or secretary or treasurer
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of any of those beneficent associations that rescue the latent talents of women from obscurity and mettrent en scéne gems and flowers that might otherwise shine and exhale unnoticed and unknown; but though humble was her name and destiny, her memory is dear to the wayfaring. Quiet, order, and neatness, reigned at her bed and board. No pirates harbored in her bedsteads, no bad luck, that evil genius of housewives, curdled her cream, spoiled her butter or her bread, but her table was spread with such simple, wholesome fare as might have lit a smile on the wan visage of an old dispeptic; and this we take to be the greatest achievement of the gastronomic art.
With the duties of life so peacefully and so well performed, our good hostess ought, according to all the rules of happiness, to have been happy; but it is our melancholy duty to confess she was not, and to explain the cause. She had been married many years without having any children; that blessed possession that in transmitting, the parents’ existence, seems to extend its bounds, and to render even here, the mortal immortal. In addition to the feeling, common to all women, who naturally crave the sweetest objects for their tenderest and strongest affections, Mrs Reynolds lamented her childless state with a bitterness of repining approaching to that of the Hebrew wives. With everything else in her possession that could inspire contentment, her mind was fixed on this one desired good, and, like Hannah of old, she was still a ‘woman of a sorrowful spirit.’ She had endeavoured to solace herself with the children of her kindred, and several, from time to time, had been adopted into her family; but some proved disagreeable, and others homesick, and there was always a paramount duty or affection that interfered with her’s, till finally her
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almost extinguished hopes were gratified, and Providence gave her a child worthy all her care and love.*
In the autumn of 1777, two travellers arrived just at nightfall at Reynold’s inn. Its aspect was inviting; situated in the heart of a fertile valley that had lately been refreshed by the early rains of autumn, and in its bright garb resembling a mature beauty that had happily harmonized some youthful tints with her soberer graces. A sprightly, winding stream gave life and music to the meadows. On every side the landscape was undulating and fertile, but not then as extensively cultivated as now, when, to the Tauconnuc on the south, and the lofty blue outline of the Catskills on the west, the eye ranges over a rich and enjoyed country. Beside the accidental charm of a pretty landscape, the inn had advantages peculiar to itself. Instead of being placed on the roadside, as most of our taverns are – for what reason we know not, unless a cloud of travellers’ dust be typical of a shower of gold to the vision of mine host – Reynold’s inn was separated from the highway by a court yard, shaded by two wide spreading elms, and enlivened with a profusion of autumnal flowers, marigolds, cockscombs, and china asters.
There was nothing that indicated any claims to particular civility in the appearance of our travellers. They were well looking and respectably appareled; and, accordingly, having announced their determination to re-
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main for the night, they were shown to an inner room, the parlour, par excellence, where Mrs Reynolds appeared, and having opened a door which admitted the balmy air and a view of the western sky, just then brightened by the tints of the setting sun, she received their orders for their supper, and retired without one of those remarks or inquiries by which it is usual, on such occasions to give vent to curiosity. Nothing passed between our travellers in the dull interval that elapsed before their meal was ready, to give to our readers the least clue to their origin or destiny. One of them lulled himself into a doze in the rocking chair, while the other, younger and more active and vivacious, amused himself out of doors, plucking flowers, enraging an old petulant cock turkey, and mocking the scolding of some Guinea hens, the Xantippes of the feathered race.
The interval was not long. The door opened and the tea table was brought in, already spread (a mode we wish others would adopt from our pattern landlady), and spread in a manner to characterize our bountiful country.
What a contrast does the evening meal of our humblest inn present to the leanness of an English tea table! A cornucopia would have been the appropriate symbol for Mrs Reynolds’s table. There were beef steaks, and ham and eggs; hot cakes and toast; bread and gingerbread; all the indigenous cakes, such as crullers and nutcakes, &c.; honey, sweetmeats, apple sauce, cheese, pickles, and an afterpiece of pies. Kind reader do not condemn our bill of fare as impertinent and vulgar. We put it down to show the sacred political economists, that, with us, instead of the population pressing on the means of subsistence, the means of subsistence presses on the population.
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Our travellers fell to their repast with appetites whetted by a long fast and day’s ride. Not a word was spoken, till a little girl, who was sitting on the doorstep caressing a tame pigeon, perceiving that one of the guests had garnished his buttonhole with a bunch of marigolds, plucked a rose from a monthly rose bush, trained over a trellis at the door, and laid it beside his plate. He seemed struck with the modest offering, and, turning with a look of gratitude to the child, he patted her on her head, and exclaimed instinctively, ‘Merci, merci, ma petite!’ and then correcting himself, he said, in very imperfect English, ‘I thank you, my little girl.’
The child’s attention was fixed by the first word he uttered, and as he addressed his companion in French, her countenance indicated more emotion than would naturally have been excited by the simple circumstance of hearing, for the first time, a foreign language. ‘Qu’elle est belle, cette petite,’ he continued, turning to his companion; ‘c’est la beauté de mon pays – voilá, brunette, et les yeux, si grands, si noirs, et la tournure aussi – quelle grâce, quelle vivacité! Ah! Monsieur, Monsieur, c’est tout-á-fait Françoise.’ As he proceeded the child advanced nearer to him. She shook back the rich, dark curls that shaded her face, bent her head forward, half parted her bright lips, and listened with the uncertain and eager expression of one who is catching a half remembered tune, the key to a thousand awakening recollections. It was evident that she did not comprehend the purport of the words, and that it was the sound alone to which her delighted ear was stretched.
A smile played about her lips, and tears gathered in her eyes, and there seemed to be a contrariety of emotions, confounding even to herself; but that which finally prevailed was indicated by her throwing her apron over
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her head, and retreating to the doorstep, where she sat down, and for some moments, vainly attempted to stifle her sobs. She had just become tranquil, when Mrs Reynolds entered.
The elder traveller said, in an interrogating tone, ‘That is your child, ma’am?’
‘I call her mine,’ was the brief and not very satisfactory reply.
‘She resembles neither you nor your husband,’ resumed the traveller.
‘No; she does not favor us.’
‘I fancied she had a French look.’
‘I can’t say as to that,’ replied the landlady; ‘I never saw any French people.’
‘My friend here is a Frenchman,’ pursued the traveller, ‘and the little girl listened to him so intently, that I thought it possible she might understand him.’
‘No, I guess she did not sense him,’ replied Mrs Reynolds, with an air of indifference; and the turning hastily to the child, ‘Mary,’ she said, ‘there is more company; go and see if our father does not want you.’
She went and did not return. Mrs Reynolds herself removed the table. The elder gentleman sat down to write a letter; while the Frenchman walked to and fro, opened the doors, and peeped in every direction to get a glimpse of the little girl, who seemed to have taken complete possession of his imagination. Once, as she ran through the passage, he called to her, ‘Doucement! doucement! mon petit ange’ – she stopped as if she were glued to the floor. ‘How call you your name, my dear?’
‘Mary Reynolds, sir.’
‘Then Madame there, Mistress Reynolds, is your maman?’
‘She is –
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‘Mary, what are you staying for? Here – this instant!’ screamed Mrs Reynolds from the kitchen door, in a tone that admitted no delay, and the child ran off without finishing her sentence.
‘C’est bien singulier!’ muttered the Frenchman.
‘What do you find so singular, Jaubert?’ asked his companion, who had just finished his letter, and thrown down his pen.
‘Oh! it is nothing – perhaps – but – ’
‘“But” what, my friend?’
‘Why, there seems to me some mystery about this child; something in her manner, I know not what, that stirs up strange thoughts and hopes in my mind. She is not one of the pale, blond beauties of your climate.’
‘Ah! my good friend, we have all sorts of beauties in our clime. All nations, you know, have sent us their contributions. The blue eye and fair skin, the Saxon traits, certainly prevail in our Eastern States; but you know we border on New York, the asylum of the dark eyed Huguenots, and it is not impossible that to this child may have been transmitted the peculiarities of some French ancestor. Nothing is more common than a resemblance between a descendant and a far off progenitor.’
‘Ah! it is not only the French, the Norman aspect, the – do not ridicule me – the Angely traits that attract me; but you yourself noticed how she listened to my language, and then this Mistress Reynolds does not say she is her child, but only she calls her so.’
‘Pshaw! Is that all? It is the way of my country people, Jaubert; their indirectness is proverbial. If one of them were to say “yes” or “no,” you might suspect some deep mystery. I confess I was at first startled with the little girl’s emotion, but I soon perceived it was nothing but shame and embarrassment at
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the curiosity she had betrayed. I see how it is Jaubert; fruitless and hopeless as is our search, you cannot bear to relinquish it, and are looking for some coup de théâtre – some sudden transition from disappointment to success.’
We have put into plain English a conversation that was supported in French, and was now broken off by the approach of Mrs Reynolds, who came to tell the travellers their bedrooms were ready. By the light of the candle she brought, discovered Mary, concealed in a corner of the passage close to the door, where, in breathless stillness, she had been listening. ‘You here, Mary!’ exclaimed the good woman; ‘I thought you had been in bed this half hour. You will make me angry with you, Mary, if you do not mind me better that this,’ she added in an under tone, and the child stole away, but without looking either very penitent or very fearful; and in truth she had cause for neither penitence nor fear, for she had only gratified an innocent and almost irrepressible inclination, and as to Dame Reynolds’s anger, it was never formidable.
The travellers retired to their respective apartments, and while the landlady lingered to adjust her parlour, the letter that had been left on the table caught her eye. Nothing could be more natural than for her to look at the superscription. Painfully she spelt out the first line. ‘A Monsieur, Monsieur’ – but when she came to the next, her eye was rivetted, ‘St Jean Angely de Crève-Coeur.’ After gazing on it till she had made assurance doubly sure, she was hastening to her husband to participate the discovery with him, when, apparently changing her intentions, she retreated, bolted the door, and returned to the examination of the letter. It was unsealed. Reluctant to open it, she compromised with her conscience, and peeped in at both ends, but the writing was not perceptible, and her interest overcoming
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her scruples, she unfolded the letter. Alas! it was in French. In vain her eye ran over the manuscript to catch some words that might serve as clues to the rest. There was nothing in all three pages she could comprehend, but ‘arrivé á New York’ – ‘la rivière d’Hudson’ – ‘le manoir de Livingston.’
She was refolding the letter, when the following postscript, inadvertently written in English, caught her eye; ‘As we have no encouragement to proceed farther in our search, and Jean and Avenel are all impatience, Jaubert will embark in the Neptune, which is to sail on the first.’
A gleam of pleasure shot across Mrs Reynolds’s face, but it soon darkened again with anxiety and perplexity. ‘Why did I open the letter?’ she asked herself. ‘Why did I look at it at all? But nobody will ever know that I have seen it unless I tell it myself; and why should I tell?’ A burst of tears concluded this mental interrogation, and proved that, however earnestly her heart might plead before the tribunal of conscience, yet the stern decision of that unerring judge was heard. Self-interest has a hard task when it would mystify the path of one who habitually walks by the clear light of truth straight onward in the path of duty.
It may seem unnatural to the inexperienced, that Mrs Reynolds did not communicate her embarrassment and irresolution, from whatever cause they proceeded, to her husband; but she knew well what would be the result of a consultation; for he, good man, never viewed a subject but from one position, and we are all slow to ask advice that we foresee will be counter to our wishes.
Mrs Reynolds, so far then from appealing to the constituted authority of her household, locked her discovery within her own bosom, and to avoid all suspicion and inquiry, she composed herself as soon as possible, and
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retired to her bed, but not to sleep; and at peep of dawn, she was up and prepared to obtain all the satisfaction that indirect interrogation could procure from the travellers, and her mental resolution, invigorated by a night’s solitary reflection, was to ‘act up to her light.’
They had ordered breakfast at a very early hour, and she took care to be the only person in attendance on them. When they were seated at table, she placed herself in a rocking chair behind them, a position that happily reconciles the necessity of service with the dignity of independence, and began her meditated approaches, by saying to her own countryman, ‘I believe you left a letter here last night, sir; I laid it in the cupboard for fear of accidents.’
‘Thank you, ma’am; I ought to have been more careful. It was a letter of some consequence.’
‘Indeed! Well, I was thinking it might be.’
‘Ah! what made you think so?’
Now we must premise, that neither of the parties speaking, knew anything of that sensitiveness that starts from a question as if an attack were made on private property; but they possessed, in common, the good-natured communicativeness that is said to characterize the New England people, who, in their colloquial traffic, as in other barter, hold exchange to be no robbery.
Most women are born diplomatists, and Mrs Reynolds took care to reply to the last interrogatory so carefully as not to commit herself. ‘It stands to reason,’ she said, ‘a letter that is to go all the way over the wide sea to the old countries, should be of consequence.’
‘Yes – it is a long voyage.’
‘You have taken it yourself, perhaps, sir?’
‘I have. I went out an officer on board one of our cruisers, and was wrecked on the coast of France.’
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‘Of France! Well, we are hand and glove with the French now; but I tell my husband it seems to me like joining with our enemies against those of our own household.’
‘Ah! Mrs Reynolds, “friends are sometimes better than kindred.” I am sure my own father’s son could not have been kinder to me than was Monsieur Angely de Crève-Coeur – hey, Jaubert?’
‘Ah! vraiment, Monsieur! c’est un bien brave homme, Monsieur St Jean Angely.’
‘Angely!’ said Mrs Reynolds, as if recalling some faded recollection, ‘Angely – I think I have heard that name before.’
‘It may be. The gentleman I speak of resided some time in this country.’
‘But it can’t be the same,’ replied Mrs Reynolds; ‘for the person I speak of lived over in Livingston’s manner; and kind to strangers he could not be, for he deserted his own flesh and blood, and went off early in the war.’
‘It may be the same for all that, and must be. As to deserting his children, “thereby hangs a tale;” but it is a long one.’
‘Well, sir, if you have anything to say in his favor, I am bold to say I think you ought to speak it; especially as the gentleman seems to have stood your friend in a cloudy day. The story certainly went sadly against him here.’
‘I have not the slightest objection, ma’am, to telling the story, if you have the patience to hear it; especially as I see I must wait till Jaubert has finished two more of your nice fresh eggs – “eggs of an hour,” Mrs Reynolds.’
‘We always calculate to have fresh eggs, sir. But what was you going to say of Mr Angely?’ she added,
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betraying in the tremulous tones of her voice, some emotion more heart stirring than curiosity. Jaubert turned a glance of inquiry on her that was unanswered by the sudden rush of blood to her cheeks; but the narrator proceeded without noticing anything extraordinary. ‘It was my good, or ill luck,’ he said, – ‘and it is the only in the long run we can tell whether luck be good or ill – but it was my luck to be shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy, and good luck it certainly was, Jaubert, in my distress, to make such a port as the Château de Crève-Coeur – the castle, or as we should call should call it here, Mrs Reynolds, the estate of the Angely’s. A fine family they are. You may think what a pleasure it was to me to find a gentleman acquainted with my country, and speaking my language as did Mr St Jean Angely. He was kind and affable to me, and always doing something for my pleasure, but I could see he had a heaviness at his heart – that he was often talking of one thing and thinking of another – nothing like so gay as the old gentleman, his father; who was like a fall flower – one of your marigolds, Mrs Reynolds, spreading itself open to every ray of sunshine, as if there were no frosts and winter and death at hand. I felt a pity for the young man. With everything that heart could desire, and without a heart to enjoy, he seemed to me like a sick man seated at a feast of which he could not taste. The day before I was to have come away, he took me aside, and, after saying that I had won his entire confidence, he disclosed to me the following particulars: –
‘He entered the French army early in life, and while yet a hotblooded, inconsiderate youth, he killed a brother officer in a duel, and was obliged to fly to his country. He took refuge in Lisbon. Judgment, I may say mercy, too – in the dealings of Providence, Mrs Reynolds, one is always close on the track of the other – followed
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him thither. Mr Angely found employment in a mercantile house, and was standing writing at his desk at the moment of the terrible earthquake that laid Lisbon in ruins. The timbers of the house in which he was, were pitched in such a manner as to form a sort of arch over his head, on which the falling roof was sustained, and thus he was, as it were, miraculously delivered from danger. From Lisbon he came to this country. “Mechanics,” says a Spanish proverb, “make the best pilgrims,” but, I am sure, not better than Frenchmen; for cast them where you will, they will get an honest living. Mr Angely came up into Livingston’s Manor, and there he took a fancy to a pretty Yankee girl, the only child of a widow, and married her. He earned a subsistence for his family by surveying. The country was new, and skillful surveyors scarce. After a few years his wife died and left him three children.’
‘Three!’ repeated Mrs Reynolds, involuntarily sighing.
‘Yes, poor things! there were three of them; too many to be left in these hard times fatherless and motherless.’
‘Ah sir! and what must we think of the father that could forsake his little children at such a time?’
‘Think no evil, my friend; for Mr Angely did not deserve it. He was employed by Mrs Livingston, early in the war, to go down the river to survey some land near New York. There he was taken by the British as a spy, and, in spite of his remonstrances, sent to England. This was before the French had taken part with us, and he obtained leave to go to France, on giving his parole that he would not return to America. He received a parent’s welcome, and affair of the duel being nearly forgotten, a pardon was obtained for him without difficulty. If he could have forgotten his children, he would have been as happy as man could
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be; but his anxiety for them preyed on his health and spirits; and when I arrived at the château, his friends imagined he was sinking under some unknown disease. He had not communicated to his father the fact of his marriage and the existence of his children when I arrived there. The old gentleman, kind hearted and reasonable in the main, has all the prejudices of the nobility in the old countries about birth, and his son was afraid to confess, that he had smuggled an ignoble little Yankee into the ancient family of the Crève-Coeurs. So good an opportunity as I afforded of communicating with his children, could not be passed by, and he at length summoned courage to tell the truth to his father. At first he was wroth enough, and stormed and vapored; but after a little while his kind nature got the mastery of the blood of the Crève-Coeurs, and he consented to the children being sent for – the boys, at least.’
‘Only the boys!’ exclaimed Mrs Reynolds, feeling relieved from an insupportable weight.
‘Only the boys. But the old gentleman might have as well saved all his credit and sent for the girl too; but that was not his pleasure. Well, Monsieur Jaubert here, a relative and particular friend of the family, came out with me to take charge of the children. We found the boys without much difficulty; two noble little fellows that a king might be proud of. After waiting for some time for Monsieur Angely’s return, the overseers of the poor, believing he had abandoned his children, bound them out. The little girl had been removed to some distance from her brothers. We found the place where she had been, but not the family. The husband and wife had quarrelled, and separated, and disappeared; and all the information we could obtain, was a vague story such a child had lived there and had run away; and as nobody in these troublesome
times
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can do no more than look after their own children, this poor thing was left to her fate. Hopeless as it appears, Jaubert is not willing to give up our search. He fancies every brunette he sees is the lost Marie, and only last evening he would have persuaded me, that your black eyed little girl might be this stray scion of the Crève-Cœurs.’
Mrs Reynolds rose and left the room, and did not return till she was sufficiently composed to ask, in an assured voice, ‘What was their object in looking for the girl, if a father did not mean to reclaim her?’
‘He did mean to reclaim and provide for her,’ replied the traveller, ‘and for that purpose I have ample funds in my hands. He only conceded to the old gentleman her remaining in the country for the present.’
‘Had you any direction as to how you were to dispose of her?’
‘Yes, positive orders to convey her to Boston, and place her under the guardianship of a French lady who resides there, a friend of Mr Angely—one Madame Adelon.’
‘But could you find no trace of the child?’
‘Not the slightest.’
‘And you have determined to make no further inquiry?’
‘Why should we? Inquiry is useless, and would but delay to a tempestuous season, Jaubert’s return with the boys.’
Our readers are doubtless sufficiently aware, that the adopted child of our good landlady was the missing child of Monsieur Angely. A few words will be necessary to explain how she became possessed of her.
Mrs Reynolds and her husband were, two years prior to this period, approaching the close of a winter day’s ride. Their sleigh was gliding noiselessly through a dry, new fallen snow, when their attention was arrested by
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the moanings of a child. To stop the horses and search the sufferer from whom the sounds proceeded, was the instinctive impulse of benevolence. They had not gone many yards from the road, when, nestled close to a clump of laurels, they found a little girl, her hands and feet frozen, and nearly insensible. They immediately carried her to the sleigh, and put their horses to their utmost speed; but, as they were none of the fleetest, and the nearest habitation was at several miles distance, a considerable time elapsed before they could obtain the means of restoration, and in consequence of this delay, and of severe previous suffering, it was many weeks before the child recovered. In the mean time, though Mrs Reynold’s residence was not more than thirty miles from the place where she had found the child, no inquiry was made for her. The account she gave of herself sufficiently explained this neglect. She said she had no mother; that her father had left home just after the snows melted and the birds came back; that he had left her and her two brothers, Jean and Avenel, with a woman to take care of them; that when this woman had waited a great while for their father, she grew tired and was cross to them, and then she too went away, and left them quite alone. Then she said they had nothing to eat, and she supposed they were the poor, for the men they called the overseers of the poor took her and her brothers, and separated them, and she was carried a great way off to a woman who was very cross to her, and cross to her own children, and her husband was cross too. One night he came home in a great passion, and he began to whip his wife with his big whip, and his wife beat him with the hot shovel, and she, the child, was scared, ran out of the house, and far up into a wood, to get beyond their cries; and when she would have
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returned, the snow was falling, and she could not find the path, and she had wandered about till she was so cold and tired she could go no farther. Her name, she said, was Angely, and she believed her father was called a Frenchman. The only parental relic she possessed confirmed this statement. It was a locket which she wore suspended at her neck. It contained a lock of hair; an armorial crest was engraven on the back, and under it was inscribed, ‘St Jean Angely de Crève-Cœur.’ This simple story established the conviction, that had been gaining strength in Mrs Reynold’s mind, with every day’s attendance on the interesting child, that they had been brought together by the special providence of God; and most faithfully did she discharge the maternal duties that she believed had been this miraculously imposed on her. The little girl was on her part happy and delighted, and though she sometimes bitterly lamented her father and brothers, yet, as the impressions of childhood are slight, the recollection of them was almost effaced when the mysterious energies of memory were awakened by the sound of a language that seemed to have been utterly forgotten. These events occurred during the revolutionary war, a period of disaster and distress, when a very diligent search for a friendless child was not likely to be made, and as no inquiry ever reached Mrs Reynold’s ear, and as she deemed the foundling an orphan, she had not hesitated to appropriate her. Her name was changed from Marie Angely to Marie Reynolds; and the good woman seemed as secure and happy as any mother, save when she was reminded of the imperfection of her title by the too curious inquiries of the travellers. On these occasions, she was apt to betray a little irritability, and to veil the truth with a slight evasion, as in the instance which excited the suspicion of our sagacious Frenchman.
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Her condition was now a pitiable one. She had the tenderness, but not the rights of a parent. She was habitually pure and upright; but now she was strongly swayed by her affections. She would have persuaded herself, that the abandonment in which she first found the child, invested her with a paramount claim; but the stranger’s story had proved that her father had not voluntarily abandoned her. Then she thought, ‘It cannot be for Mary’s interest, that I should give her up;’ and her mind took a rapid survey of the growing property of which the child was the heir apparent. But she would ask herself, ‘What do I know of the fortune of her father?’ ‘But surely he cannot, he cannot love her as I do.’ ‘Ah I do not know the feeling of a real parent;’ and a burst of tears expressed the sadness of this conviction, and obliged her abruptly to withdraw from the presence of her guests, and leave them amazed at her sudden and violent emotion, while she retired to her own apartment, to implore guidance and support from Heaven. Those who honestly ask for light to point out a way which they would fain to see, and for power to endure a burden from which their nature shrinks, are often themselves astonished at the illumination vouchsafed, and the strength imparted. This was the experience of Mrs Reynolds. She rose from her devotions with the conviction, that but one course remained to her, and with a degree of tranquility, hastened to Mary’s bedroom.
The child was just risen and dressed. Without any explanation to her—she was at the moment incapable of making any—she tied her locket, her sole credential, around her neck, led her down stairs, and placing her hand in Jaubert’s, she said, ‘You have found the child!’ and then retreated to hide the emotion she could not subdue.
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It was fortunate for her, that she was not compelled to witness the gay demonstration of Jaubert’s ecstasies. the graver, but not more equivocal manifestations of his companion’s satisfaction, and the amazement and curiosity of the little girl, who was listening to the explanation of the strangers, with childlike animation, without adverting to her approaching separation from her who had given her the affection and cares of a parent.
But when she came to be severed from this kind friend, she made amends for her thoughtlessness. She clung to her as if nature had knit the bonds that united them, and, amid her cries and sobs, she promised always to remember and love her as a mother. Many have made such promises. Marie Angely kept them.
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Ten years subsequent to the events above narrated, a letter, of which the following is a translation, was addressed by a foreigner in a high official station in this country, to his friend.
‘DEAR BERVILLE—
‘It is, I believe, or should be, a maxim of the true church, that confession of a sin is the first step towards its expiation.
‘Let me, then, invest you with a priest’s cassock, and relieve my conscience by the relation of an odd episode in my history. When I parted from you, I was going with my friend, Robert Ellison, to visit his father, who has a beautiful place on the banks of the Hudson. Young Ellison, as you know, is a thorough republican, and does not conceal his contempt for those of his compatriots, who, professing the same principles, are really aristocrats in their prejudices and manners; who, having parted, and as they pretend voluntarily, with the substances, still grasp at the shadow. To test these false pretensions, and to mortify an absurd pride, he joyfully acquiesced in a proposition I made to him, to lay aside the pomp and circumstances of my official character, and to be presented to his friends without any of the accidental advantages with which fortune has invested me. You will inquire my motive, for you will not suspect me of the absurdity of crusading against the follies of society, the most hopeless of all crusades. No, as our own Moliére says,
C’est une folie, à nulle autre seconde,
De vouloir se méler de corriger le monde.
My motives were then, in the first place, a love of ease, of dishabille; an impatience of the irksomeness of having the dignity of a nation to sustain; and, in the second place, I wished to ascertain how much of the favor lavished on me I should place to the account of the ambassador, and how much I might reserve to my own proper self.
‘You may call this latent vanity. I will not quarrel with you. I will not pretend that I was moved solely by a love of truth, by a pure desire to find out the realities of things; but alas! my dear Berville, if we were to abstract from the web of our motives, every thread tinged with self, would not warp and woof too disappear? Let, then, my motive be what it might, you will allow the experiment required courage.
‘We had some difficulty in settling the precise point at which to gage my pretensions. “Do not claim a drop of noble blood,” said my friend, “it would defeat your purpose. There is something cabalistic in that word ‘noble.’ The young ladies at ____ would at once invest you with the attributes of romance; and the old dowagers would persecute you with histories of their titled ances-
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tors, and anecdotes of lords and ladies that figured in the drawing rooms of the colony. Neither must you be a plain gentleman of the fortune, though that may seem to you a sufficient descent from your high station; but fortune has everywhere her shrines and her devotees. You must be the artificer of your own fortune, a talented young man who has no rank or fortune to be spoken of. What say you to the profession of a painter, a portrait painter, since that is the only branch of the art that gets a man bread in this country.” I acceded without shrinking, secretly flattering myself that my friend either underrated my intrinsic merit, or did the world rank injustice.
‘When we arrived we found a large party of the neighbouring gentry assembled to dine at _____. I was received with great courtesy by the elder Ellison, and with kindness by Madame, on the ground, simply, of being an acquaintance of their son’s. My friend took care to prevent any elation from my reception by saying to me in a low voice, “My father, God bless him, has good sense, good feeling, and experience, and he well knows that the value of gold does not depend on the circulation it has obtained;” and truly if he had known that I bore the impress of the king’s countenance he could not have received me more graciously. There might have been more formality in his reception of the public functionary, but there could not have been more genuine hospitality. He presented me to his guests, and here I was first reminded of my disguise. Instead of the sensation I have been accustomed to see manifested in the lighting up of the face, in the deferential bow, or the blush of modesty, no emotion was visible. No eye rested on me, not a link of conversation was broken, and I was suffered, after rather an awkward passage through the ceremony, to retire to my seat, where I remained, observing, but not
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observed, till dinner was announced. From the habit of precedence, I was advancing to lead Madame to the dining room, when I encountered my friend’s glance, and shrunk back in time to avoid what must have appeared an unpardonable impertinence. I now fell into my modest station in the rear, and offered my arm to an awkward, bashful girl, who I am sure had two left hands by the manner in which she received my courtesy, and who did not honor me so far as to look up to see who it was that had saved her from the mortifying dilemma of leaving the drawingroom alone. I helped my companion from the dish nearest to me, and waited myself till Madame, reminded by her son of her oversight, sent me a plate of soup. I was swallowing this, unmolested by any conversation addressed to me, when my friend’s father said to him, “When have you seen the French ambassador, Robert? I hoped you would have persuaded him to pay us a visit.”
‘“Perhaps he may,” replied my friend, “before the summer is over. He is at present out of the city on some excursion.”
‘“A prodigious favorite is your son with the French ambassador, as I hear from all quarters,” said a gentleman who sat next Mr Ellison.
‘“Ah! is that so, Robert? Are you intimate with Monsieur—?”
‘“He does me the honor to permit my society, sir.” Every mouth was now opened in praise of the ambassador. None of the company had seen him, but all had heard of his abilities, the charms of his conversation, his urbanity, his savoir plaire. “You must be proud of your countryman, M. Dufau?” (this was my assumed name) said my host, with that courtesy that finds a word for the humblest guest.
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‘I said it was certainly gratifying to my national feeling to find him approved in America, but that, perhaps it was not his merit alone that obtained him such distinguished favor; that I had understood he was a great admirer of this country, and though I should do him injustice to say “he praised, only to be praised,” yet I believed there was always a pretty accurately measured exchange in this traffic.
‘“The gentleman is right,” said an old Englishman who sat opposite to me, and who had not before vouchsafed to manifest a consciousness of my existence; “this is all French palaver in Monsieur —. He cannot be such a warm admirer of this country. The man knows better; he has been in England.”
‘I was too well acquainted with English manners to be startled by any manifestation of that conviction which an Englishman demonstrates in every part of the world, that his nation has no equal; but I instinctively defended my countryman, and eager for an opportunity to test the colloquial powers so much admired in the ambassador, I entered the lists with my English opponent, and thus stimulated, I was certainly far more eloquent than I ever had been before, on the history, the present condition, and the prospects of this country. But alas for the vanity of M. Dufau! my host, it is true, gave me all the attention he could spare from the courtesies of the table, but save his ear, I gained none but that half accorded by my contemptuous, testy, and impatient antagonist, who after barking out a few sentences at me, relapsed into a moody silence.
‘I next addressed some trifling gallantries to my bashful neighbour, fancying that she who was neglected by everybody else, would know how to appreciate my attentions; but her eyes were riveted to a fashionable beauty at the upper extremity of the table, and a half a
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dozen “no, sirs” and “yes, sirs,” misplaced, were all the return I could obtain from her. To remain silent and passive, you know, to me, was impossible; so I next made an essay on a vinegar faced dame on my left, far in the wane of life. “If my civilities have been lead elsewhere, in this market,” thought I, “they will at least prove silver or gold.” But here I received my cruelest rebuff; for the lady, after apparently listening to me, said, “I do not understand you.” I raised my voice, but she, determining to shelter the infirmity of age at my expense, replied, “I am not so deaf, sir, but really you speak such broken English, that I cannot understand you.” This was too much, and I might have betrayed my vexation, if an intelligent and laughing glance from my friend had not restored my good humor, and a second reflection, suggesting that it was far more important to the old woman’s happiness that her vanity should remain unimpaired, than it could be to me to have mine reduced, even to fragments, I humbly begged her pardon, and relapsed into a contented silence, solacing myself with the thought, that our encounter was but an illustration of that of the china earthen jars. But I will not weary you with detailing all the trials of my philosophy, but only confess that the negligence of the servants was not the least of them—the grinning self-complacency with which these apes of their superiors signified to me that my wants might be deferred.
‘After all, my humble position would not have been so disagreeable, if I had been accustomed to it. The world’s admiration, like all other luxuries, in the end becomes necessary, and then, too, like other luxuries, ceases to be enjoyed, or even felt, till it is withdrawn and leaves an aching void. If this is Irish, set it down to my broken English.
‘After dinner, I followed the ladies to the drawingroom, and was presented by my friend to Miss —, a reigning beauty. She received me with one of those gracious smiles, that a hacknied belle always bestows on a new worshipper at her shrine. These popular favorites, be it a clergyman, politician, or beauty, are as covetous of the flatteries they receive, as a miser is of gold. No matter how unclean the vessel from which the incense rises; no matter what base alloy may mingle with the precious metal. Have you ever encountered one of those spoiled favorites in the thronged street, and tried to arrest the attention for a moment; to fix the eye that was roving for every tributary glance? If you have, you will understand without my describing it, the distrait manner with which the belle received my first compliments. Even this was not long accorded me, for a better accredited and more zealous admirer than myself appearing, she left me to my meditations, which were not rendered the more agreeable by my overhearing an old lady say, in a voice, which, though slightly depressed, she evidently made no effort to subdue to an inaudible key, “I wonder what possessed Robert Ellison to bring that French portrait painter here! How the world has changed since the Revolution! There is no longer any house where you don’t meet mixed society.” My friend had approached in time to overhear her as well as myself. “The ignorant old fool!” he exclaimed, “shall I tell her that artists are the nobility of every country?”
‘“No,” said I, “do not waste your rhetoric; there is no enlightening the ignorance of stupidity; a black substance will not reflect even the sun’s rays.”
‘Ellison then proposed that I should join a party at whist; but I complained of the heated air of the drawingroom, and, availing myself of an insignificance, I fol-
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lowed the bent of my inclinations, a privilege the humble should not undervalue, and sauntered abroad. The evening was beautiful enough to have soothed a misanthrope, or warmed the heart of a stoic. Its peace, its salutary, sacred voice restored me to myself, and I was ashamed that ‘my tranquility had been disturbed. I contemned the folly of the artificial distinctions of life, and felt quite indifferent to them—when alone.
‘The ground in front of my friend’s house slopes to the Hudson, and is still embellished with trees of the majestic native growth. Where nature has left anything to be supplied by art, walks have been arranged and planted; but carefully, so as not to impede the view of the river, which was now in perfect repose. A sloop lay in the channel, its sails all furled, idly floating on the slumbering surface. While I was wishing my friend were with me, for I am too much of a Frenchman to relish fully even nature, the favorite companion of sentimentalists, in solitude, I saw a boat put off from the little vessel, and row slowly towards the shore. Presently a sweet female voice swelled on the stillness of the night, accompanied by the notes of a guitar, struck by a practised hand. Could any young man’s mercury resist moonlight and such music? Mine could not, and I very soon left behind me all of terra firma that intervened between me and the siren, and ensconced myself in a deeply shaded nook at the very water’s edge, where I could see and hear without being observed. The boat approached the spot where I stood, and was moored at half a dozen yards from my feet; but as my figure was in shadow, and sheltered by a thick copse of hazel bushes, I was perfectly concealed, while, by a flood of moonbeams, that poured on my unsuspicious neighbours, I saw them as plainly as if it were daylight. These were two men, whom I soon ascertained to be the captain
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of the sloop and an attendant, and that they were going to a farm house in the neighbourhood for eggs, milk, &c. The two females were to remain in the boat till their return. The lady of the guitar was inclined to go with them as far as the oak wood on the brow of the hill; but the captain persuaded her to remain in the boat, by telling her there was a formidable dog on the place, which she might encounter. As soon as the captain was gone, her companion, an elderly, staid looking country woman, said to her, “Now, child, as I came here for your pleasure, you must sing for mine. None of your newfangled fancies, but good Old Robin Grey.”
‘“Oh, Robin Grey is a doleful ditty; but anything to reward you for indulging me in coming on shore.”
‘She then sung that touching ballad. The English, certainly the Scotch, excel us as much in the pathos of unembellished nature and truth, as we do them in all literary refinement, ingenuity, and grace. I know not how much of the tribute that gushed from my heart was paid to the poetry and music, and how much to the beautiful organ by which they were expressed, for the fair musician looked herself like one of the bright creations of poetry. I would describe her, but description is cold and quite inadequate to convey an idea of her, and of the scene with which she harmonized. It was one of nature’s sweetest accords; the balmy air, the cloudless sky, the river, reflecting like a spotless mirror the blue arch, the moon and her bright train; my enchantress, the embodied spirit of the evening, and her music the voice of nature. I might have forgotten that I was in human mould, but I had one effectual curb to my imagination; one mortal annoyance. Argus, confound him! had followed me from the house, and it was only by dint of continued coaxing and caressing that I could keep him quiet. Before the ballad was
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finished, however, he was soothed by its monotonous sadness, and crouching at my feet, he fell asleep, I believe. I forgot him. Suddenly “the dainty spirit” changed from the low breathings of melancholy to a gay French air – the very air, Berville, that Claudine, in her mirthful moments, used to sing to us. The transition was so abrupt that it seemed as if the wing of joy had swept over the strings of her instrument. I started forth from my concealment. That was not all. Argus sprang out, too, and barking furiously, bounded towards the boat. The old woman screamed, “There is the dog!” and the young lady, not less terrified. Dropped her guitar, and, unhooking the boat, she seized an oar and pushed it off without listening to my apologies and assurances. In her agitation she dropped the oar, and her companion, still more tremulous than herself, in her attempt to regain it, lost the other, which she had instinctively grasped. As soon as the first impulse imparted to the boat was expended, it scarcely moved at all, and I had leisure to explain my sudden appearance and to say that my dog, far from being the formidable animal they imagined, was a harmless spaniel, who should immediately make all the amends in his power for the terror he had caused. I then directed him to the floating oars. He plunged into the water and brought them to me, but he either did not, or would not understand my wish that he should convey them to the boat, which, though very slowly, was evidently receding from the shore. I then, without farther hesitation, threw off my coat, swam to the boat, and receiving there the oars from Argus’s mouth, I soon reconducted the boat to its haven. There was something enchanting to me in the frankness with which my fair musician expressed her pleasure at the homage I had involuntarily paid to her art, and the grace with which she re-
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ceived the slight service I rendered her. Perhaps I felt it the more for the mortifying experience of the day. I do not care very nicely to analyze my feelings, not to ascertain how much there was of restored self complacency in the delicious excitement of that hour.’
‘The elderly lady, for lady she must needs be since my fair incognita called her mother, expressed a matronly solicitude about the effect of my wet garments, but I assured her that I apprehended no inconvenience from them, and I begged to be allowed to remain at my station till the return of their attendants. The circumstances of out introduction had been such as to dissipate all ceremony. Indeed, this characteristic of English manners would have as ill fitted the trustful, ingenuous, and gay disposition of my new acquaintance, as a coat of mail her light, graceful person. She sung, at my request, our popular opera airs, with more effect, because with far more feeling, than our best professed artists. She talked of music, and of the poetry of nature, with genius and taste; and she listened with that eager and pleased attention, which is the second best gift of conversation. I should have taken no note of the passage of time but for the fidgeting of the old lady, who often interrupted us with expressions of her concern at the captain’s delay, for which he, quite too soon, appeared to render an account himself. As I was compelled to take my leave, I asked my fair unknown if I might not be allowed to think of her by some more accurate designation than the “Lady of the Guitar.”
‘”My name is”—she replied promptly, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “No—pardon me, your romantic designation better suits the adventure of the night.” I was vexed at my disappointment, but she chased away the shade of displeasure by the graceful playfulness with which she kissed her hand to me as the
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boat pushed off. I lingered on the shore till she had reached the vessel, and then slowly retraced my steps towards the house. I was startled by meeting my friend, for my mind was so absorbed that I had not heard his approaching footstep. “Ah!” he exclaimed, ‘is this your philosophy? turned misanthrope at the first frown from the world?”
‘”My philosophy,” I replied, “has neither been vanquished, nor has it conquered, for I had forgotten all its trials.”
‘My friend evidently believed, notwithstanding my disclaimer, that my vanity required some indemnity for the humiliations it had sustained, and he repeated to me some assuaging compliments from his father, “But,” he concluded, “tell me, have you really turned sentimentalist, and been holding high converse with the stars?”
‘With a most brilliant star,’ I replied, and related my adventure.
‘Ellison’s curiosity was excited, and he proposed we should take our flutes, go out in the barge, and serenade the “Lady of the Guitar.” I, of course, assented, and the next half hour found us floating around the little vessel like humble satellites. We played an accompaniment and sung alternately, he in English, and I in French; but there was no token given that the offered incense was accepted; no salutation, save a coarse one from the captain, who invited us to go “on board and take some grog.” We of course declined his professional courtesy. “Then, for the Lord’s sake, lads,” he said, “stop your piping, and give us a good birth. Sleep, at this time o’ night, is better music than the jolliest tune that ever was played.”
‘Thus dismissed, and discomfited by the lady’s neglect, we resumed our oars and were preparing to return to the shore, when the cabin window was gently rais-
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ed, and our fair incognita sung a sweet little French air, beginning “Adieu, adieu ! ” We remained, sound, motion, almost breath suspended till the song was finished.’
“So sweetly she bids us adieu,
I think that she bids us return,”
said my friend, and we instantly rowed our boat towards the stern of the vessel. At this moment the sash was suddenly dropped, and taking this for a definitive “Good night,” we retired.
‘Now, dear Berville, I have faithfully related the adventures of my masquerade—my boyish pastime, you may call it. Be it so. This day has been worth a year of care and dignity. I shall return to New York in a few days. Till then farewell. Yours,
CONSTANT.’
But though M. Constant professed himself satisfied with his day, there was a lurking disquietude at his heart. He had written to assure himself there was nothing there he dare not express, and yet he had concluded without one alluding to the cause of his self-reproach. He had folded the letter, but he opened it, and added ;—
‘P. S. I did not describe to you my friend’s vexation that the responded song was in French. “Ah!” said he, “I see there is no chance for such poor devils as I, so long as you are neither married nor betrothed.”’
He again closed the letter, and was for a moment satisfied that there could be nothing in the nature of that which he had so frankly communicated that required concealment. He walked to the window and eyed the little vessel as a miser looks at the casket that contains
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his treasure ; then starting from his reverie, he took from his bosom a miniature, and contemplated it steadfastly for a few moments; ‘It is my conscience that reproaches me,’ he said, ‘and not this serene, benign countenance. O Emma ! thou art equally incapable of inflicting and resenting wrong, and shall thy trust and gentleness be returned by even a transient treachery ? Am I so sure of faithfully keeping the citadel that I may parley with an enemy? ’
The result of this self-examination was a determination to burn the letter, and to dismiss forever from his mind the enchantress whose power had so swayed him from his loyalty. But though he turned from the window, resolutely closed the blind, and excluded the moonlight, which he fancied influenced his imagination as if he were a lunatic; though he went to bed and sunk into the oblivious sleep, the spirit was not laid. Imagination revelled in its triumph over the will. He was in France, in beautiful France—more beautiful now than in the visions of memory and affection. He was at his remembered haunts in his father’s grounds ; the ‘Lady of the Guitar’ was with him ; she sang his favorite songs ; he saw her sparkling glance, her glowing cheek, her rich, dark tints,
‘The embrowning of the fruit that tells
How rich within, the soul of sweetness dwells;’
He heard the innocent childlike laugh, that,
—‘without any control,
Save the sweet one of gracefulness rung from her soul.’
Then there was interposed between him and this embodied spirit of his joyous clime a slowly moving figure; a cold, fail, pensive countenance, that had more of sorrow than resentment, but still, though its reproach was gentle, it was the reproach of the stern spectre of con-
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science. He cast down his eyes, and they fell in the word ‘BETROTHED,’ traced in the sand at his feet. The ‘Lady of the Guitar’ was gaily advancing towards him. Another step and her flowing mantle would have swept over the word, and effaced it forever. He raised his hand to deprecate her approach, and awoke ; and while the visions of sleep still confusedly mingled with the recollections and resolutions of the preceding day, he was up and at the window ; had thrown open the blind and ascertained that the vessel still lay becalmed in the stream. That virtue is certainly to be envied, that does not need to be shielded and fortified by opportunity and circumstance. If the vessel had disappeared, the recollections of the evening might have been as evanescent and ineffectual as the dreams of the night; but there it was, in fine relief, and as motionless as if it were encased in the blue waters. In spite of M. Constant’s excellent resolutions, he lingered at the window, and returned there as if he were spellbound. Strange power that could rivet his eyes to an ill shapen little Dutch skipper! But that body did contain a spirit, and that spirit, seemingly as perturbed as his own, soon appeared, moving with a light step to and fro on the deck.
The apartment M. Constant occupied, was furnished, among other luxuries, with a fine spyglass. To resist using this facility for closer communion was impossible; and by its aid he could perceive every motion of the ‘lady of his thoughts,’ almost the changes of her countenance. He saw she was gazing on the shore, and that she turned eagerly to her companion to point her attention to some object that had caught her eye, and at the same moment he perceived it was his friend, who was strolling on the shore. Ellison saw him too, and waved his handkerchief in salutation. M. Constant returned the greeting, threw down the glass, and with-
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drew from the window with a feeling of compunction at his indulgence, as if he had again heard that word betrothed spoken. Why is it that external agents have so much influence over the mysterious operations of conscience? Why is it that its energy so often sleeps while there is no witness to the wrong we commit? ‘Keep thy heart, for out of it are the issues of life.’
After breakfast, Ellison said to M. Constant, ‘I am afraid you find your masquerade dull. Let us beguile the morning by a visit your “Lady of the Guitar.” There is nothing lends such wings to time as a pretty girl. Our guests are a dull concern.’
‘A dull concern, when there is a beauty and a fortune among them!’
‘Yes, a sated belle is to me as disagreeable as a pampered child; as my grandmother’s little pet Rosy, whom I saw the other day, tossing away her sugar plums, and crying “’T is not sweet enough;” and as fortune, though I am neither a philosopher not a sentimentalist, I shall never take the temple of Hymen in my way to wealth; for of all speculations, a matrimonial speculation seems to me the most hazardous, and the most disgraceful. But we loiter. Will you pay your devoirs to our unknown?’
‘I believe not; I have letters to write this morning,’
‘To Emma? Pardon me—I do not mean to pry into your cabinet, but if the letters are to her they may be deferred. She is a dear good soul and will find twenty apologies for every fault you commit.’
‘If they are to her, such generosity should not be abused. No, I will not go. But on what pretext will you?’
‘Pretext indeed! does a pilgrim seek for a pretext to visit my Lady of Loretto, or the shrine of any other saint ? Here comes the gardener with a basket of fine fruit which I have ordered to be prepared, and of which
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I shall be the bearer to the sufferers pent in that dirty sloop this breathless August morning—from mere philanthropy you know. Commend me to Emma, ’ he added gaily; ‘I will bear witness for you that your enthusiasm for this unknown was a mere coup de la lune, and that when daylight appeared you were as loyal, and—as dull as a married man.’
Ellison’s raillery did not render the bitter pill of self-denial more palatable to M. Constant. He turned away without reply, but instead of returning to his apartment he obtained a gun, and inquiring the best direction to pursue in quest of game, he sauntered into a wooded defile that wound among the hills, and was so enclosed by them as not to afford even a glimpse of the river. Here he threw himself on the grass, took a blank leaf from his pocketbook and began a sonnet to constancy, but broke off in the middle; scribbled half a dozen odd lines from the different songs that had entranced him on the preceding evening; sketched a guitar, then rose, and still musing, pursued his way up the defile. The path he had taken led him around the base of an eminence to a rivulet that came frolicking down a hill now leaning and now loitering with the capricious humor of childhood. He traced it to its source, a clear fountain bubbling up from the earth at the foot of a high, precipitous rock. Clusters of purple and pink wild flowers hung from the clefts of the rock, wreathing its bare old front, and presenting a beautiful harmony in contrast, like infancy and old age. The rock and the sides of the fountain formed a little amphitheatre, enclosed and deeply shaded by the mountain ash, the aromatic hemlock and the lofty basswood. This sequestered retreat, with its fresh aspect and sweet exhalations, afforded a delicious refuge from the fierce heat and overpowering light of an August day. M. Constant
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was lingering to enjoy it when his ear caught the sound of distant and animated voices. He started, and for a moment thought himself cheated by the illusions of a distempered fancy ; but, as the sounds approached nearer, he was assured of their reality, and they affected him like the most painful discord, though they were produced by the sweet, clear, penetrating voice of the unknown and the hitherto welcome tones of his friend.
The impropriety of a young girl straying off into such a solitude with an acquaintance of an hour was obvious, but was perhaps more shocking to M. Constant than it would have been to a perfectly disinterested observer. It gave a dreadful jar to his preconceived notions, and contrasted, rudely enough, with the conduct of the preceding night, when the lady had, with such scrupulous delicacy, forborne to show herself on the deck of the sloop. As they drew nearer he thought there was something in the gay, familiar tones of Ellison, disgusting; and the laugh of the lady, which before had seemed the sweetest music of a youthful and innocent spirit, was now harsh and hoydenish. The strain of their conversation, too, for they were near enough to be heard distinctly, while the windings of the path prevented his being seen, though it was graceful chitchat enough, appeared to him trifling and flippant in the extreme. As they came still nearer he listened more intently, for he had a personal interest in the subject.
‘And so, my “Lady of the Guitar,”’ said Ellison, ‘you persist in preserving that scrap of paper, merely, I presume, as a specimen of the sister arts of design and poetry. You are sure those scratches are meant for a guitar, and not a jewsharp, and that the fragment is a sonnet and not a monody?’
‘Certainly it is a sonnet; the poet says so himself. See here—“Sonnet à la Constance.”’
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‘Well, it is certainly in the strain of a “lament.” My friend was in a strait ; what he would do he could not. Constancy is a very pretty theme for a boarding-school letter, but I am afraid the poor fellow will not find his inspiration in this tame virtue ?’
‘Ah ! these tame virtues, as you call them,’ replied the lady, ‘ are the salutary food of life, while your themes of inspiration are intoxicating draughts, violent and transient in their effects.’
‘A very sage lesson, and very well conned. Did your grandmother teach it to you ?’
‘No matter—I have got it by heart.’
‘O those moral New Englanders, they change all the poetry of life to wise saws. Thank heaven you have escaped from them in time to retain some portion of your mercurial nature. But now let me tell you, my sage young friend, that same paper may prove as dangerous where you are going as a match to a magazine. So let me advise you, either keep it quite to yourself, or give it to the winds.’
‘You talk riddles, Mr Ellison; but I will not be quizzed into believing this little castaway scrap of paper can be of any import.’
‘Let me label it for you then, if, as I see, it is to be filed among the precious stores of your pocketbook.’
There was a short pause when the lady, as M. Constant supposed, looking over Ellison’s superscription, read aloud, ‘Love’s Labor Lost,’ and then exclaimed, ‘Pshaw, Robert, how absurd !’ and tore off the offensive label, while he laughed at her vexation.
M. Constant felt that it would be very embarrassing for him to be discovered as a passive listener to this coversation. He had been chained to the spot by an interest that he would gladly not have felt, but which he could not suppress.
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Another turn would bring them directly before him. To delay longer without being seen was therefore impossible. As he put aside the rustling branches, he heard Ellison exclaim, “Ha! there are some startled quail ;’ but before his friend could take a more accurate observation, he had sprung around an angle of the rock, and was beyond sight and hearing.
The gentlemen met before dinner. M. Constant was walking on the piazza, apparently moody and little disposed to sympathize with Ellison’s extravagant expressions of admiration of the unknown, or of regret that the fresh breeze was now wafting the vessel and its precious cargo far away.
‘In the name of Heaven, Constant,’ he said, ‘what has so suddenly turned you to ice? Last night you seemed to think it necessary to invent—pardon me—allege some apology for your prompt sensibility, and you said it was not the beauty, the voice, the grace, or any of the obvious and sufficient charms of this young enchantress—that was your word—that fascinated you, but it was a resemblance to the glowing beauties of your own clime ; and now, if you had been born at the north pole and she at the equator, you could not manifest less affinity.’
‘There are certain principles,’ replied M. Constant, coldly, ‘that overcome natural affinities. I hope you have passed your morning agreeably.’
‘Agreeably ? Delightfully ! Our incognita is more beautiful than you describe her.’
‘Is she then still incognita to you?’ asked M. Constant with a penetrating glance.
‘Not exactly ; she favored me with her name.’
‘Her name ! what is it ?’
‘ Pardon me, I am under a prohibition not to tell.’
‘The lady certainly makes marked distinctions. She is as reserved towards others, as frank to you.’
‘She had her reasons.’
‘Doubtless; but what were they?’
‘Why, one was that I refused to tell her your name.’
‘And why did you that ?’
‘I had my reasons, too.’
M. Constant was vexed at the mystery his friend affected. H was annoyed, too, at his perfect self complacency and imperturbable good nature, and more than all, ashamed of his own irritability. He made an effort to overcome it, and to put himself on a level with Ellison. He succeeded so far in his efforts as to continue to talk of the lady with apparent nonchalance till he was summoned to dinner ; but though he tried every mode his ingenuity could devise, he could not draw from his friend the slightest allusion to the lady’s extraordinary visit to the shore, or any particular of their interview, which explained the perfect familiarity that seemed to exist between them ; and what made this mystery more inscrutable, was the tone of enthusiasm which Ellison maintained in speaking of the lady, and which no young man sincerely feels without a sentiment of respect.
In spite of M. Constant’s virtuous resolutions and efforts, the ‘Lady of the Guitar’ continued to occupy his imagination, and he determined to take the surest measures to dispel an influence which he had in vain resisted. As he parted from his friend at night, he announced his intention of taking his departure the following morning. After expressing his sincere regret, Ellison said, ‘You go immediately to town ?’
‘No, I go to Mr. Liston’s.’
‘Ah! Is it so ?’
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‘Even so. Ellison ; but no more till we meet again. I have supported my masquerade with little spirit ; but do not betray me, and we, neither of us, shall lose reputation.’
M. Constant had for a long time been on terms of intimacy and friendship with Miss Liston. This lady belonged to one of the most distinguished families in our country. She was agreeable in her person, had a fund of good sense, was well informed and perfectly amiable. Such characters are admirable in the conduct of life, if not exciting to the imagination ; that precious faculty, which, like the element of fire, the most powerful and dangerous agent, may warm, or may consume us. Long and intimate friendship between unfettered persons of different sexes is very likely to terminate, as that of M. Constant and Miss Liston terminated, in an engagement.
He had a sentiment of deep and fixed affection for her, which, probably, no influence could have materially affected; but when that being crossed his path who seemed to him to realize the brightest visions of his youth, he felt a secret consciousness that the fidelity of his affection was endangered. The little mystery in which the unknown was shrouded, the very circumstance of calling her ‘the unknown,’ magnified the affair, as objects are enlarged, seen through a mist. He very wisely and prudently concluded that the surest way of dispelling all illusion, would be frankly to relate the particulars to Miss Liston, only reserving to himself certain feelings which would not be to her edification, and which he believed would be dispelled by participating their cause with her. Accordingly, at their first meeting he was meditating how he should get over the embarrassment of introducing the subject, when Miss Liston said, ‘I have a great pleasure in reserve for
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you,’ and left him without any farther explanation, and in a few moments returned, followed by a lady, and saying as she reentered, ‘Marie Angely, you and Constant, my best friends, must not meet as strangers.’ A half suppressed exclamation burst from the lips of both. All M. Constant’s habitual grace forsook him. He overturned Miss Liston’s workstand, workbox, and working paraphernalia, in advancing to make his bow. Miss Angely’s naturally high color was heightened to a painful excess; she made an effort to reciprocate the common courtesies of an introduction, but in vain; the words faltered on her lips, and after struggling a moment with opposing feelings, the truth and simplicity of her heart triumphed and turning to Miss Liston, she said, ‘Your friend, Emma, is the gentleman I met on the river.’
Miss Liston had been the confidant of all her romantic young friend’s impressions from her moonlight interview with the stranger, and it was now her turn to suffer a full share of the embarrassment of the other parties. She looked to M. Constant for an explanation. Never had he, in the whole course of his diplomatic career, been more puzzled; but after a moment’s hesitation he followed Miss Angely in the safe path of ingenuousness and truly told all the particulars of his late adventures, concluding with a goodhumored censure of his friend Ellison, who had long and intimately known Miss Angely, and who, to gratify his mischief loving temper, had contrived the mystery which led to the rather awkward d́énouement.
Thus these circumstances, which might have been woven into an intricate web of delicate embarrassment and romantic distress, that might have ended in the misery of one, perhaps of all parties, were divested of their interest and their danger by being promptly and frankly disclosed.
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Miss Angely, whom our readers have already recognised as the little girl of the inn, had met with Miss Liston at a boarding school in Boston, where, though Miss Liston was her elder by several years, they formed an enthusiastic, and rare in the annals of boarding schools, an enduring friendship. Marie Angely had faithfully discharged the debt of gratitude to Mrs Reynolds, and though acquiring, as may be supposed, somewhat of the fastidiousness that accompanies refined education and intercourse, no one could perceive any abatement of her respect or affection for her kind protectress, or the slightest diminution of her familiarity with her. She passed a part of every summer with her, always called her mother, and, by the fidelity of her kindness and the charm of her manner, she diffused light and warmth over the whole tract of Mrs Reynolds’s existence. She linked expectations, that might have been blasted, to a happy futurity, and cherished and elevated affections, which, but for her sunny influence, would have been left to wither and perish. Oh that the fortunate and happy could know how much they have in their gift!
Miss Angely had been on one of her annual visits to her humble friend, and was on her way, accompanied by her, to New York, where she was to join Miss Liston, when the incidents occurred which we have related.
There is nothing in the termination of our tale to indemnify the lover of romance for its previous dullness; but it is a true story, and its materials must be received from tradition, and not supplied by imagination.
M. Constant was, in the course of a few weeks, united to Miss Liston. This lady had long cherished a hope that her friend would be a permanent member of her family, and she used every art of affection to persuade her to remain with her at least so long as she should decline the suits of all the lovers who were now
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thronging around her, attracted by her beauty, or loveliness, or the eclat she derived from her intimacy with the wife of the ambassador. M. Constant did not very warmly second his wife’s entreaties. He perhaps had a poignant recollection of certan elective affinities, and his experience taught him the truth, if indeed he had not derived it from a higher source, that, in the present infirm condition of human virtue, it is always safest and best not voluntarily to ‘enter into temptation.’
Miss Angely returned to Boston. M. Constant’s union with Miss Liston was one of uninterrupted confidence and conjugal happiness; but it was not destined to be of long duration. His wife died in about a year after their marriage. Among her papers was found a letter addressed to her husband, written in expectation of the fatal issue of the event that had terminated her life, in which she earnestly recommended her friend as her successor. In due time her request was honored. M. Constant married Miss Angely. After residing for some time in America, they went to France, where she was received as an ornament to her noble family, and acknowledged to be, ‘the brightest jewel in its coronet.’
Far from the mean pride of those who shrink from recurring to the humble stages in their progress to the heights of fortune, Madame Constant delighted in relating the vicissitudes of her life, and dwelt particularly on that period, when, as Mrs Reynolds’s handmaid, she considered herself honored in standing behind the chair of the wife of the great General Knox.
‘The longest day comes to the vesper hour.’ Madame Constant closed at Paris a life of virtue, prosperity, and happiness, in July 1827.
_______________
*We would gladly have had it in our power to be exact in dates, as our story in good faith is true in all, even the least important particulars. Some few circumstances, and the ‘spoken words,’ had escaped tradition, and of course were necessarily supplied, as the proper statue receives a foot or finger from the ruder hand of modern art. The name of the heroine having been subsequently merged and forgotten in that of her husband, we have ventured to retain it. The rest we have respectfully veiled under assumed appellations.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Romance in Real Life
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [By the Author of "Redwood."]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Legendary, edited by Nathaniel Parker Willis, 118-61.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Boston: Samuel G. Goodrich
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1828 [pub. 1827]
Relation
A related resource
Reprinted in The Garland, pp. 198-264, Boston, 1839. Reprinted in The Diadem, New York: 1850. Collected in Tales and Sketches, By Miss Sedgwick, Author of "The Linwoods," "Hope Leslie," &c. &c. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835, pp. 237-78.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Document
Language
A language of the resource
English
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Esther Hagan, Savvy Myles, and Angelica Tijerino, with Dr. Jenifer Elmore (Palm Beach Atlantic University); and Julia Carey, Sean Godbout, Emily Kay, Isabella Lopresti, Diana Villanueva, Jake Lyons, with Dr. Lucinda Damon-Bach (Salem State University),
Subject
The topic of the resource
Historical fiction, Romance, French and American relations.
Description
An account of the resource
An historical romance in two parts, focusing first on the Boston childhood of orphan Marie Reynolds/Angely (implied to be the long-lost daughter of a fictionalized Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur), and subsequently on Marie's mysterious meeting with and eventual marriage to a US diplomat.
1777
1787
1827
1839
adoption
Alexander Pope
ambassador
An Essay on Man -Epistle IV
Anna Matilda
As You Like It
Auld Robin Gray
boarding school
Boston
Catskills
class
Comte de Mosloy
constancy
Count Louis-Guillaume Otto
courtship
Death
Della Crusco
disguise
Dogs
Elizabeth Livingston
engagement
France
French
Friendship
General Henry Knox
guitar
Hannah
Hannah Cowley
Hudson River
Huguenot
Hymen
I Samuel 1
inn
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
Jewsharp
Lady of Loretto
Le Misanthrope
letters
Letters from an American Farmer
Lisbon
locket
Lorenzo
Love
Love’s Labour Lost
marriage
Massachusetts
Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur
Moliére
Mothers
music
New York
nobility
Normandy
Orlando
Paris
portrait painter
Providence
Revolutionary War
Robert Livingston
Robert Merry
Romance
Samuel Daniel
Saxon
Shakespeare
shipwreck
sonnets
spy
Tales and Sketches (First Series)
Tauconnuc
The Complaint of Rosamund
The Garland
The Legendary
United States
Xantippes