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Title
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1839
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Second Thoughts Best.
By Miss Sedgwick.
“Grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body of it ever fair.” –Measure for Measure
It is a common saying, that no individual profits by another’s experience,—there are few, we believe, that profit by their own; few to whom may not be justly applied that striking saying of Coleridge that “experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which only illuminate the way that is passed.” But, of all the scholars I have ever known in this ever-open school of experience, my friend, Mrs. Dunbar, is the most unteachable. With a fair portion of intellect, with a quick observation, and fifty years’ acquaintance with the world, she is as trustful, as credulous, and as hopeful, as, when a child, she believed the rainbow was a rope, of substantial, woven light, with a golden cup at the end of it; that there was a real man standing in the moon, and that the sky would, one of these bright days, fall,
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and we should catch larks. Being of a benevolent and equable temperament, her credulity has the most happy manifestations. Her faith in her fellow-creatures is implicit, and her confidence in the happiness of the future unwavering; so that, however dark and heavy the clouds may be at any given moment, she believes they are on the point of breaking away.
I have known but a single exception to the general and pleasant current of my friend’s life. One anxiety and disappointment crossed her, which even her blessed alchymy could not gild or transmute. Her husband lost all his fortune; this was not the cross. Mrs. Dunbar said, she saw no reason why they should not take their turn on Fortune’s wheel; she did not doubt they should come up again, and, if they did not, why, her own private fortune was enough to secure them from dependence and want. Her husband had none of her philosophy, or, rather, happy temperament;—philosophy gets too much credit. He had an ambitious spirit, and his ambition had taken a direction very common in our cities; an aspiration after commercial reputation, and the wealth and magnificence that follow it. Mr. Dunbar had mounted to the very top rung of the ladder, when, alas, it fell! and his possessions and hopes were
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prostrated. A fever seized him in the severest hour of disappointment, and the moral and physical pressure killed him. But this was not the cross. Mrs. Dunbar loved and honored her husband, without having any particular sympathy with him. He imparted none of his projects to her, and neither interfered with nor participated her quiet, every-day pursuits and pleasures; so that no harmonious partnership could be dissolved with less shock to the survivor. Mrs. Dunbar, beside the common-place solaces, on such occasions, such as, “We must all die,” “Heaven’s time is the best time,” had a particular and reasonable consolation in being relieved from the sight of unhappiness that she could not remove or mitigate. This was not selfishness, but the necessity of her nature, which resembled those plants that cannot live unless they have sunshine, and plenty of it.
Mrs. Dunbar had one son, Fletcher, a youth of rare promise, who was just seventeen at his father’s death. He most happily combined the character of his parents,—the aspiring and firm qualities of his father, and the bright spirit of his mother. His education had been most judiciously directed by his father; and his mother, without any system or plan whatever, had, by the sponta-
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neous action of her own character, most happily moulded his affections. At seventeen, Fletcher Dunbar seemed to me the perfection of a youth; with a boyish freshness and playfulness, and a manly grace, generosity, and courtesy. Much more attention than is usual in our country had been given to the adornments of education; but his father, who had all respect to the solid and practical, had taken care that the weightier matters were not sacrificed; and he had a prompt reward. So capable and worthy of trust was Fletcher at his father’s death, that the mercantile house in which he was clerk offered him, on advantageous terms, an agency for six years, in France and England. Mrs. Dunbar consented to his departure. But this parting of the widow from her only son, her only child, and such a child, was not the cross. “There was nothing like throwing a young man, who had his fortune to carve, on his own responsibilities,” she justly said. “Fletcher would get good, and not evil, wherever he went. She should hear from him by every packet, and six years would soon fly away.” And they did, and this brings me to the story of that drop, that diffused its bitterness through the cup of my friend till now had preserved sweet and sparkling.
The six years were gone; six years they had
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been to Fletcher, of health, prosperity, and virtue. I need say nothing more for a young man, who had been exposed to the temptations of London and Paris. The happy day and evening of his arrival had passed away. Uncles, aunts, and friends had thronged to welcome him, and gone to their homes, and Mrs. Dunbar was left alone with Fletcher and Ellen Fitzhugh.
I have said, that Mrs. Dunbar had but one child; but, if it be possible for the bonds of adoption to be as strong as those of nature, Mrs. Dunbar loved Ellen as well as if she had been born to her. This instance was enough to prove, that there may be the happiness of a maternal affection without the instincts of nature, or the feeling of property in the object, which more selfish natures than my friend’s require. Ellen was the child of a very dear friend of Mrs. Dunbar, who, from a goodly portion of nine daughters, surrendered this, the fairest and best, to what she then deemed a happier destiny than she could in any other way secure for her.
I do not believe Mrs. Dunbar could have told which she loved the best, Ellen Fitzhugh or her son; in truth, they were so blended in her mind that they made but one idea. When she saw Ellen, Fletcher was in her imagination; when she
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thought of Fletcher, Ellen was the present visible type through which her thoughts and affections went out to him.
Now he had returned; they were under the same roof;—Fletcher was three and twenty, with a handsome fortune to begin the world with; and Ellen was just eighteen, with
“a countenance, in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”
Never was there a fitter original for this beautiful description of the poet, than Ellen Fitzhugh; and could there be any thing more natural that Mrs. Dunbar’s firm belief, that Fletcher would set right about weaving into an imperishable fabric of golden threads she had been spinning for him?
The first evening had passed away; the old family domestics had received from Fletcher’s hand some gift “far fetched,” and enriched with the odor of kind remembrance; and Mrs. Dunbar and the young couple lingered over the decaying embers, to talk over the thousand particulars that are omitted in the most minute correspond-
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ence. “Pray tell me, Fletcher,” asked Mrs. Dunbar, “who was that Bessie Elmore you spoke of so frequently in your last letters?”
“Bessie Elmore! Heaven bless her! She was the daughter of a lady who was excessively kind to me the last time I was in London. She bore a striking resemblance to Ellen, so I called her cousin,—a pretty title to shelter a flirtation;—I should inevitably have lost my heart, but for the presumption of asking her to give up her country.”
“Was she very like Ellen?”
“Excessively; her laugh, too, always recalled Ellen’s. She was a charming little creature!”
Ellen blushed slightly, and Mrs. Dunbar’s happy countenance smiled all over as she said, “Ellen is very English in her looks.”
“Yes, aunt, a ‘rosy, sturdy little person,’ as English Smith used to call me.”
“Not too sturdy, Ellen,” said Fletcher, “and not too little,—just as high as our hearts, mother, is she not?”
“She has always just filled mine,” replied the delighted mother, who had already jumped to the conclusion that the affair was as good as settled, and the wedding, and the happy years to follow, floated in rich visions before her. She ventured on one question she was anxious to have
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settled. “You have no occasion to go abroad again, Fletcher?”
“None. A happy home, in my own country, has long been my ‘castle in the air,’ and now, thank Heaven, I can give it a terrestrial foundation.”
“Ellen is not the person to relish this ‘taking for granted,’” thought Mrs. Dunbar; Fletcher should be more reserved.
Fletcher soon turned the current of her apprehensions. “Pray,” he asked, “what is the reason, Ellen, that you and my mother have so seldom mentioned Matilda Preston in your letters of late?”
“We have seen much less of her than usual the winter past. Matilda cannot
‘To a party give up what was meant for mankind.’
I suppose you know she has been a ‘bright and particular star’ this winter,—a belle?”
“Has she? I am sorry for it!”
“So is not Matilda. She enjoys her undisputed reign. She has, to those she chooses to please, captivating manners, and you know she is talented. The beaux, of a score of years standing, declare there has been nothing like her in their time. She is beset with admirers and lover. She says she is obliged, when she goes
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to a ball, to keep an ivory tablet under her belt, with a list of her partners. Some wag pasted up on Carroll Place, where the Prestons live, ‘Apollo’s Court,’ on account of the perpetual serenades there. Poor Rupert Selden told me, he has thrown away half a year’s commissions on bouquets and serenades to her, which, in his own romantic phrase, had ‘ended in smoke.’ She is said to be engaged.”
“Engaged!” Fletcher bit his nails for two or three minutes in deep abstraction, and then added, “To whom is she engaged?”
“Pray don’t look so distressed, cousin; I only reported it as an on dit,—I forgot your flame for Matilda.”
“Pshaw, Ellen! but who is the person?”
“The preeminent person at the present moment is Ned Garston.”
“Ned Garston! a monkey, --impossible!”
“Oh, he is much improved by foreign travel, and, if still a monkey, a romantic monkey, a monkey en beau. He has put himself into the hands of some Parisian master of the science of transforming the deformed, and has come forth the tableau vivant, copied after a famous picture of some Troubadour in the Louvre.”
“What do you mean, Ellen?”
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“I mean, that Ned Garston’s very pretty, black hair hangs in hyacinthine curls over the collar of his coat,—that he wears tresses, like a girl’s, on each side of his face, and mustachios and whiskers that would befit a grand Sultan. The girls call him ‘the Sublime Porte.’”
“And is it possible that Matilda Preston, that gifted, beautiful creature, is going to throw herself away upon this Jackanapes?”
“How wildly you talk, Fletcher!” interposed his mother, “you have not seen Matilda Preston since she was a mere child.”
“But a rare child, my dear mother; Matilda Preston, at thirteen, was a fit model for sculpture and painting. She moved like a goddess, and her faculties were worthy such a form. Lord bless me, what a sacrifice!—is it a sacrifice to Mammon, Ellen?”
“Do not insist that the sacrifice is certain,”—
“I have no doubt it is his fortune,” said Mrs. Dunbar, for the first time, I believe, in her life, turning a scale against an absent person that might have been struck in her favor, “that is to say, fortune and style. Garston has the most showy equipage in the city, and his family, you know, are all in the first fashion.”
“The fashion would have more influence with
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Matilda than fortune, I suspect. You know, aunt, she refused Stanhope Gilmore, who is very rich, and very clever into the bargain.”
“But you remember, Ellen, she told us her father would never have consented to her marrying a loco-foco.”
“Loco-foco! what the mischief is that, mother?”
“Why——the lowest of people—an agrarian, you know—a Tory.”
“What does my mother mean, Ellen? I never heard such a confusing combination of terms.”
“You surely know what we mean by Whigs and Tories?”
“Not I.”
“Do you never read our newspapers?”
“Very seldom,—never the party papers. An American abroad is ashamed of the petty wrangling, virulence, and vulgarity of our political papers. We care only for the honor and prosperity of the country at large. We love our countrymen, by whatever name they are called, and it makes us heart-sick to take up one of our popular journals and see it proclaimed, that ‘a crisis is at hand!’—that ‘the country is on the brink of ruin!’—that ‘the constitution is in jeopardy!’ and can only be saved by a doubtful ma-
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jority, rallying with all their strength against a corrupt faction, about to prostrate the liberties of the country! The only way to keep your temper is never to look into a newspaper. But, pray, can you tell me what are these loco-foco Tories?”
Poor Mrs. Dunbar never disturbed the serene heaven of her mind with politics. She received a very vague impression from the persons she associated with, and in accordance with this impression, she now replied, “I don’t know precisely,—I remember my father talking about the Tories in Revolutionary days being the enemies of their country, and I suppose it is just the same now.”
Mrs. Dunbar answered in good faith. The changes of the last sixty years, the new formations, and the remodellings; the old parties with new names, and the new parties with old names, still existed in her mind as the ideas had originally entered it, as banded Whigs and Tories. Fletcher laughed at her reply and said, “I see, my dear mother, you are just where I left you. The loco-focos, I take it for granted, Ellen, are the administration party.”
“Yes.”
“And Stanhope Gilmore, sprung from the most aristocratic family in the State, is a loco-foco?
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and Matilda Preston’s father, of a purely democratic origin belongs to the aristocratic party?”
“Just so.”
“Well, thank Heaven, our party associations may make a great uproar, but they can never have the element of danger while they are so unstable and accidental!”
A ring at the door, and the entrance of a note “To Miss Fitzhugh,” cut the thread of Fletcher’s generalizations. He cast his eye on the note, and exclaimed, “That I am sure is from Matilda Preston, though I have not seen her writing for six years. If there is nothing private in it will you allow me to look at it, Ellen?”
“Certainly, there is nothing private, only such a strange proposition!”
“Read it aloud, please, Fletcher,” said Mrs. Dunbar; and Fletcher read as follows:
“Dearest Ellen,
“You are engaged to go to Mrs. Reeves’s costume-ball to morrow evening. Some tiresome people have been persuading me to appear as Rebecca. Now I am well aware, that, in the article of beauty, I am not fitted to impersonate the lovely Jewess, but I am half inclined to try it, because I can so well arrange a dress for the
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character. Mamma has a remnant of a last century’s dress, a bright yellow India silk, embroidered with silver, that, with my ostrich feather and agrafe, will do admirably for the turban. I do not quite comprehend Rebecca’s simarre, but I think the bodice of my brocade will do as substitute.
“My note was interrupted by a visit from Madame Salasuar. She offers me her diamonds,—à bas pride, I’ll wear them. They are essential to give the Eastern character of magnificence. Then, you know my ‘sable tresses,’ my ‘aquiline nose,’ my ‘dark complexion,’ and my ‘Oriental eyes,’ as De Ville will call them, will all work in as accessories, to give a vraisemblance to the tableau vivant.
“Now, my sweetest Ellen, I cannot appear as the Jewess, unless you accompany me as the Lady Rowena. Pray,—pray do not refuse me, why should you?
“Perhaps you think ‘l’obscurité convient aux femmes’; — my dear, it will come soon enough when there are kitchens and nurseries for us to supervise,—let us buzz a little while in the sunshine first.
“Do you know a possible Ivanhoe among the invited? I do not. My acquaintances are all
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party-going, unknightly gentry enough. Garston proposes to appear as Brian de Bois-Guilbert!!! The perverse winds and waves! if they had but sent us Fletcher Dunbar!” (Here the reader blushed, smiled, and hesitated. “Read on, my son,” said his mother impatiently, and on he stammered.) “A Palmer’s dress, in which you know Ivanhoe first appears, would have been just the thing for Fletcher’s advent from foreign land, though the uprooted oak, the device of his shield at the tourney, and the motto, Desdichado, (Disinherited,)” would have ill fitted dear Mrs. Dunbar’s heir-apparent. It is so intolerably provoking that he has not arrived, when he is probably within two days’ sail of us. He is so clever and with such a born-hero look! Perhaps, after all, he might be cross and refuse; so let us be philosophers, and do as well as we can without him. You, dearest Ellen, will not refuse me? You will be the ‘Queen of Love and Beauty’; I only the poor Jewess, who, you remember, the Prior of Jorvaulx swore was far inferior to the lovely Saxon Rowena.”
“Is Matilda Preston out of her head?” exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar. “A fitting character for you, truly, Ellen, that pompous, cold, disagreea-
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ble, insipid Rowena. Don’t think of it, my dear child.”
“I shall not think of it for other reasons, aunt. I cannot conceive of any thing more absurd than for me to personate a beauty,—a tall beauty, too! born ‘to the exercise of habitual superiority, and the reception of general homage.’”
“I see no objection in that, my dear child. There are not half a dozen readers of Ivanhoe, who remember whether Rowena was tall or short; and as to beauty, that is, as to what is really engaging and captivating, I am sure”——
“Pray, dear aunt,”——
“The servant is waiting for an answer,” said Mrs. Dunbar’s maid.
“He shall have it instantly,” replied Ellen, taking up her pen.
“Stop one moment, my dear cousin,” said Fletcher, laying his hand on hers; “if it is not too disagreeable to you, say Yes. I should particularly like surprising Matilda, and joining you at this ball in the way she proposes. I do not see, that, in merely dressing in costume for Rowena, and calling yourself that name, you arrogate yourself beauty, and queenship, and all that. Where you make one of a group, the resemblance is a matter of inferior consequence.
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Matilda’s Jewess will be so striking, that she will shelter all our imperfections.”
Ellen still hesitated, and looked perplexed, and Fletcher added, “I see it annoys you, — it is a sacrifice of your prepossessions, — write the note as you at first intended.”
The word sacrifice seemed to Ellen to set her reluctance in a ridiculous light, and she felt ashamed of having hesitated, at this moment of Fletcher’s return, to acceded to a request that involved pleasure to him. “I will write it as I should have intended, if I had not been more thoughtful of myself then of others’ pleasure. You must make up your mind, aunt, to my doing the Lady Rowena too much honor! Shall I tell Matilda I can find an Ivanhoe, and that we will meet her at Mrs. Reeve’s at ten?
“Thank you, Ellen, — yes, — but pray don’t give a hint of my arrival; let us see, what was the Palmer’s dress, — do you remember, mother?”
Mrs. Dunbar did not; but, believing and hoping in her heart it would be something so unsuitable as to induce Fletcher to abandon the project, she eagerly sought the first volume of Ivanhoe on the book-shelf, and gave it to him. Fletcher opened at the entrance of the Palmer into Roth-
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erwood. “ ‘A mantle of coarse, black serge,’” he read aloud, “admirable! that is easily got up, and can be easily thrown aside. ‘Coarse sandals bound with thongs on his bare feet.’ By your leave, Sir Palmer, I shall not meddle with those. ‘A broad and shadowy hat, with cockle-shells stitched on its brim.’ Excellent! ‘A long staff shod with iron, to the upper end of which was attached a branch of palm.’ As we are not to tramp to Holy Land, we will omit the shoeing. The branch of palm is the grand point. That can be got from my old friend Thorburn.”
“And what is Ellen’s dress to be?” asked Mrs. Dunbar, — “I hope that will not be forgotten.”
“My dear mother, forgive me, —Ellen was busy with her note, —finished and sent is it! –you always execute while others are planning, Ellen. Ah, here is the description; ‘Hair betwixt brown and flaxen,’ — yours has a touch of the auburn, — the Saxon red.”
“Red!” interposed Mrs. Dunbar, “Ellen’s hair red! It has a true golden tinge.”
“Red gold, mother.”
“At any rate, Fletcher, it is not red, flaxen, or brown; I might have remembered Rowena’s hair was flaxen, — everything about her was unmeaning.”
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“ ‘Her hair,’ ” proceeded Fletcher, “ ‘was braided with gems.’ ”
“Le Fleur will manage all that,” said Mrs. Dunbar, “with my set of pearl.” She began to feel a little womanly interest in the getting up of the dress.
“‘A golden chain,’ ” proceeded Fletcher, “‘to which was attached a small reliquary of the same metal hung round her neck.’ That, my dear cousin, you must allow me to manage, that is, if a cross will do in place of a reliquary, and, as they are both symbols of the same religion, I do not see why it will not.” He unlocked a very beautiful dressing-case, which he now told Ellen he had brought for her, and took from it a rich gold chain, with an exquisitely wrought cross attached to it. “I brought this prophetically,” he said, clasping it round Ellen’s neck.
“Would the chain, and not the cross, had been prophetic!” thought Mrs. Dunbar, and she heaved a deep sigh.
“The memory of affection is always prophetic, Fletcher,” said Ellen; “it links the memory of past to future kindness.”
“What, my dear?” asked Mrs. Dunbar; “I don’t clearly understand you.”
The chain and the cross were too suggestive
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to Ellen’s mind to admit of any very clear explanation. Fletcher’s quick eye perceived her embarrassment, and imputing it to the awkwardness that very commonly attends receiving a gift, he went on with the book. “ ‘Her dress was an under gown and kirtle of pale green silk.’ ”
“Your new gown is the very thing, Ellen,” interrupted Mrs. Dunbar; “how fortunate! green, your own color.”
“Ellen’s color the emblem of desertion! mother?”
“No, no indeed, Fletcher; no one who has ever loved Ellen could forsake her.”
Fletcher, all unconscious of the feeling that was bubbling up from his mother’s heart, coolly proceeded in his trying process. “Here is a stumbling-block! ‘The Lady Rowena wore a long, loose crimson robe, manufactured of the finest wool, which reached to the ground.’ ”
“A stumbling-block? By no means, Fletcher; Amande can convert my India shawl into such a robe without the least injury to it, and I’ll answer for it the Lady Rowena’s mantle was dowlas to that. Is there any thing else?”
“ ‘A veil of silk interwoven with gold.’ ”
“My Brussels lace will be just the thing; it is magnificent, and will shelter without concealing.”
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At another time Ellen’s right joyous spirit would have found merriment enough in the project of arraying her little, unobtrusive person in a crimson robe, flowing to the ground, and at the simplicity of good Mrs. Dunbar, in supposing she could carry off any thing “magnificent.” She had another kind of veil to wear, for the first time in her life, to conceal her feelings, and to assume cheerfulness she did not feel.
Mrs. Dunbar retired for the night. Ellen, after despatching some trifling home affairs, was following her, when Fletcher, who had been leaning abstractedly on his elbow, said, “Ellen, do not go; I have something to say to you.” Ellen turned with a beating and foreboding heart. “Tell me, Ellen, honestly, is it your belief that Matilda Preston is engaged to Garston?”
“I do not believe she is.”
“Why are you in such haste? Sit down, — there, thank you; but do not look as if I had murder to confess, — I have only to tell you the weakness and the strength of my heart. You know, my dear Ellen, — cousin, — sister, I should rather call you, for, without any tie of blood, no sister was ever dearer, there is no one but you to whom I can communicate my feelings, projects, and hopes, —from whom I can take coun-
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sel. To begin, then when I left America you and Matilda Preston were very intimate. I do not find you so much so now; what is the cause of this alienation?”
“There is no alienation, Fletcher; we are intimate still.”
“Affectionately intimate?”
“Matilda is very kind, — very affectionate to me.”
“And you not so to her? I am sure you never repelled affection with coldness. There must be some reason for this. My mother, too, seems to have a prejudice against Matilda; pray be frank with me, Ellen.”
Frankness was Ellen’s nature. She was one of the few beings in this world, who are thoroughly and habitually, by nature and by grace, true. For the first time a cloud had passed over her clear spirit. She began to speak, faltered, began again, and finally said; “It may be more mine than Matilda’s fault, that we are less intimate than formerly. Our circumstances, our tastes are different. I think Matilda is much what she was when you left us, — that is, — that is, allowing for the difference between a school-girl and a belle, Fletcher.”
“A belle! — how I hate the term. But how
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could it be otherwise in a city atmosphere, with Matilda’s beauty, talents, and accomplishments? I see she is not quite to your taste, Ellen; I am sorry for it, but this is better than I feared. Now for my confession is brief. When I left you, I was a reserved boy. Neither you, nor my mother, probably, ever suspected my predilection, but for two years I had been desperately in love with Matilda Preston. I believed she loved me. We exchanged many a love-token, many a promise. It is true she was a mere child, I a mere boy; but there are such childish loves on record, Ellen. The germ of the fruit is in the unfolding bud. It may, after all, have been, on her part, a littler innocent foolery, forgotten long ago; but, if so, I was coxcomb enough to take it all in dead earnest. Through my six years of absence I have cherished, lived upon, these remembrances. All my projects, all my successes have blended with the thought of Matilda; and, blessed by Heaven in my enterprises, I have now come home determined to throw myself at her feet, if I find her what memory and a lover’s faith have painted her.” Fletcher fixed his eye on Ellen. Hers fell. “Will you not, — can you not, Ellen, give me a ‘God speed’?”
The flush on Ellen’s cheek faded to a deadly
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paleness. After a moment’s hesitation, she summoned her resolution; and, raising her eye to meet Fletcher’s, replied, with a tolerably steady voice, “do not ask a ‘God speed’ of me now Fletcher; — wait till you have seen Matilda, and studied her character, as you to study that on which the happiness of your life is to depend; and then, if your ripened judgment confirms your youthful preference, you shall have my” — “God speed,” she would have said but her honest tongue refused to utter the word to which her heart did not answer, and adding, “my earnest wishes, — my prayers,” she burst into irrepressible tears, and, horror-struck at what she feared was a betrayal of her true feelings she fled, without even a “good night,” to her own apartment.
The truth did once flash across Fletcher’s mind. “It is a phenomenon to see Ellen in tears, save at some touching tale or known grief,” he thought; “Ellen, with her ever bright buoyant spirit, — her ‘obedient passions, will resigned.’ Has my dear, imprudent mother, with her equal fondness for us both, been kindling a spark of tenderness in Ellen’s heart?” The thought was no sooner conceived than rejected. There was no latent vanity in Fletcher’s mind to please itself with cherishing it. It was happily improbable,
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and it soon gave place to thick-coming and most pleasant fancies. But one cloud hovered over them, — Mrs. Dunbar’s and Ellen’s all too evident distrust of Matilda. “I will ‘study her character,’ and abide by the decision of my ‘ripened judgment,’ ” resolved Fletcher. Alas for the judgment of a young man of three and twenty as to talented beauty of nineteen with the desperate make-weight against it of a long-cherished love!
When love takes possession of a mind perfectly sane in other respects, it acts like a monomania. This one idea has on independent existences, a complete ascendency, and absolute rule. The faculties of perception, comparison, judgment, have no power to modify, — the will no control over it. An angel, surely, should keep
“Strict change and watch, that —
No evil thing approach or enter in”
the paradise of the affections.
The trials of the evening were not over for Ellen. It was her invariable custom to undress in Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment, and to have a little gossip over the interests of the closing day, and the anticipations of the leaf of life next to be turned, before they parted for the night. This is the
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hour, that, of all others, unlocks the treasures of the heart. Memory pours out her hoarded stores and young hope shows, by her magic lantern, her visions of the future.
Ellen had often sat with her loving friend over the dying embers, reading and re-reading the passages in Fletcher’s letters, where he dwelt on the fond remembrance of home. Every mention of Ellen, and the letters abounded with them, his mother repeated and repeated, and always with an emphasis and smile, that sometimes made Ellen’s blood tingle to her fingers’ ends. And yet, simple as a child, the good woman never dreamed that she was communicating her faith and hopes, and awakening feelings never to sleep again. This she knew, as a matter of principle and discretion, would not be right; and, while she never said to Ellen, in so many words, “My heart is set on your marrying Fletcher, and I am sure his is, even more than mine,” she did not suspect she was conveying this meaning in every look, word, and motion. And even now, when the pillars of her “castle in the air,” were tumbling about her head, she had no apprehension that Ellen would be crushed by them. They were to meet now for the first time, with the most painful feeling to loving and trusting friends, that
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their hearts must be hidden with impenetrable screens; but, such was the transparency of dear Mrs. Dunbar’s heart, that, put what she would before it, the disguise melted away is the clear light, — to tell the truth, Ellen’s was little better; her safety was in the dim sight of the eye to be eluded.
She washed away her tears, called up all the resolution she could master, and repaired to Mrs. Dunbar’s apartment, whom she hoped she might find by this time in bed, and get off with her “good-night kiss”; but, instead of this, she was pacing up and down the room, not a pin removed.
“Dear aunt, not in bed yet?”
“No, my dear child, — I did not feel like sleeping the first night, you know, of Fletcher’s being here; — it’s natural to have a good many wakeful thoughts of past times, and so forth.” While saying this she had turned her back, and was busying herself at the bureau, the tone of her voice, and the frequent use of her handkerchief, conveying the state of her feelings as precisely to Ellen, as her streaming eyes would, had she shown them.
“Now you are at the bureau, aunt, please to take out your crimson shawl,” said Ellen, luckily hitting on an external object to engage their
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attention. Mrs. Dunbar fumbled at the drawers long enough to give herself time to clear her voice and dry her eyes, and then, throwing the shawl in to Ellen’s lap, she said, “You are welcome to that, and every thing else I have in the world, God knows, my dear child; but I don’t wish you to go to Mrs. Reave’s to-morrow evening, — I don’t think you will enjoy yourself.”
“It’s no very rare thing, at a party, not to enjoy one’s self, aunt. I shall certainly have the pleasure of obliging Fletcher.”
“That’s true, Ellen; — but then it was not like him to ask you, when he saw it was so disagreeable to you. I don’t see why he should set his heart upon this foolish Ivanhoeing.”
“But you see why he does, aunt.” Ellen spoke with a smile, melancholy, in spite of her efforts.
“Yes, I do, I do!” cried Mrs. Dunbar, her tears gushing forth afresh; “I see that Fletcher has the most unexpected, incomprehensible, unreasonable, unfortunate, strange, dreadful, wonderful, and amazing interest in Matilda Preston. I had never so much as thought of it, — it’s insanity, Ellen, — he is as blind as a beetle.”
“It is a blindness, aunt, that is not likely to be cured by the presence of Matilda Preston.”
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“That’s just what I feel, Ellen. Men are always carried away with beauty. I thought Fletcher was an exception; but he is not, or he would tell the gold from the glittering.”
“But, aunt, you do Matilda and Fletcher injustice. She has fine qualities; and, if what you now expect should happen, you will look on Matilda with very different eyes.”
“Never, Ellen, never in the world, —she will always seem to stand between men and —I mean, — I mean, — I can’t tell you, Ellen, what I mean. But this I will say, come what will, no one can ever take your place to me, —you are the child of my heart, — you have grown up at my side — I can never love another daughter; — whomever you marry, Ellen, wherever you go, your home shall be my home.”
“No, no, aunt,” said Ellen, hiding her tearful face on the bosom of her faithful friend, “I shall never marry, — never.” And before Mrs. Dunbar could reply, she gave her good-night kiss and left the room.
“Is it possible she could have understood me?” exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar. After a little reflection she quieted her apprehensions with the thought that she had a hundred times before spoken just as plainly, and Ellen had not suspected what she meant. She was like the child, who, shutting his own eyes, fancies no one can see him.
When Ellen left Mrs. Dunbar’s room, she went mechanically down stairs to perform her last household duty, which was to see that the doors were secured. On the floor, at the street-door, she perceived a note; and, on taking it up, saw it was addressed to a Miss Little, Miss Preston’s dress-maker, who lived opposite the Dunbars’ dress-maker, who lived opposite the Dunbars’. It had been accidentally dropped by Miss Preston’s careless servant. It was unsealed, and Ellen, taking it for granted it related to something about the costume for the Reeves party, and that it might be important to have no delay in getting it into the hands of the artiste, rang the bell for the servant, intending to send it, though the hour was unseasonable. Diana, Mrs. Dunbar’s crippled old cook, called out from the kitchen stairs to Miss Ellen, that “Daniel had just gone up to bed.” Daniel, like his pagan mate, Diana, had lived out, and overstayed his lease of threescore and ten with kind Mrs. Dunbar; and Ellen, hesitating to call him down, ventured to open the note, to see if it were a matter of any importance. It contained only the following three lines:
“Pray, Miss Littell, if you have any dealings
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with Mrs. D.’s family, do not mention that you informed me of the arrival of her son.
“M. P —.”
“I thought so!” exclaimed Ellen, involuntarily. “What is it, Ellen? What did you think?”
asked Fletcher, who, unheard by her, had just come into the open door for something he had left behind.
“Oh, nothing, — nothing at all,” said she. He playfully attempted to wrest the note from her hand, till, seeing she anxiously retained it, he desisted, and she returned to her own apartment, where she breathed freely for the first time for many hours, and where she spent a long, sleepless night in expelling from her mind her shattered hopes, and forming her plans for the future.
“Ought I not,” she said, in her self-examination, “to have obeyed the first impulse of my heart, and when Fletcher appealed to me, to have told him frankly my opinion of Matilda.” After much meditation the response of her conscience was a full acquittal. She had done all that the circumstances of the case and her relations to the parties allowed, in withholding her ‘God speed’ till Fletcher’s ripened judgment should authorize his decision. She reflected, that Matilda’s char-
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acter had seemed to her to have the same radical faults six years before, that it had now, and that, in spite of them, Fletcher loved her then. Perhaps she judged those faults too strictly. Perhaps her judgment was tinged by her self-love; for she was conscious, that, in the points so offensive to her, she was constitutionally the opposite of Matilda Preston. She looked again at Matilda’s discrepant notes of that evening, and charitably allowed, that she had at first felt too much displeasure at what struck her as absolutely false, but what, after all, might be an innocent stratagem to get up a dramatic scene, and perhaps to shelter emotions at a first meeting with Fletcher. “But oh, Matilda, why always a stratagem? Why never let the appearance answer to the reality? Why never trust yourself to simple truth?” Because Matilda was afraid, that truth would not serve her so well as she could manage for herself. We have no doubt our friends, the Phrenologists, would, with a very fair intellectual development, have found a great predominance of the organs of self-esteem, love of approbation, and cautiousness on Matilda’s head. She had an intense love of admiration, not merely of her personal charms, for her preëminent beauty was settled by universal suffrage, and she
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had no anxiety about it; but she would be thought, in all the circle of her acquaintance, to be the most capable of disinterested friendship and of self-sacrificing love; her tastes were in favor of all the virtues, — she really wished to be amiable and excellent; but the virtues have their price, and they will not abate one jot or tittle; — that price is self-abasement, self-forgetfulness, and generosity. “Hard it is to climb their steeps;” and they can only be achieved by painful and persevering efforts. At the first real trial appearances vanish like vapor, — there is no cheating in the long run in the matter of goodness.
With all Matilda’s fine taste, with her susceptibility to opinion, and her eager desire of praise, she was no favorite. Her intense selfishness would penetrate all disguises, — her consciousness of herself was always apparent, — there was never a spontaneous action, word, or look. In all this she was the very opposite of Ellen, who, most strictly watchful of the inner world, let the outer take care of itself. This gave a freedom and simplicity to her manners, and a straightforwardness to all her dealings, that inspired confidence. Matilda, in the midst of her most brilliant career, had, whenever silent, an expres-
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sion of care and dissatisfaction, — a rigidity and contraction of the upper lip, (often criticized as the only imperfection of her beauty,) that betrayed the puerile anxieties in which she was involved, the web she was perpetually weaving or raveling. There is no such tell-tale as the human countenance, or rather, we should say (with more reverence) God has set his seal of truth upon it, and no artifice has ever yet obscured the Divine impression. Ellen Fitzhugh’s lovely face was the mirror of truth, cheerfulness, and affection.
“There is no use,” thought Ellen, as she pursued the meditations in which we left her, “in trying to conceal my feelings, — I cannot, — I never did in my life, — I must just set to work and overcome them. Dear Mrs. Dunbar, all those sweet fancies that you and I have been so busily weaving, the last six years, must be sacrificed at once and for ever; and I must just learn to think of Fletcher, as I did when a little girl,— as a dear, kind brother; — that should be, — it
shall be, enough.” This resolution was made with many showers of tears, and sanctified with many prayers, ejaculated from the depths of her heart; and, once made, she set about, with most characteristic promptness, contriving the means for carrying it into execution.
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“In the first place,” thought she, “I must have something extraordinary to occupy me, or I shall be constantly, and oh how painfully, watching Fletcher’s every look and action; in spite of myself, I shall be hoping and fearing. This must not be, for I know how it must all end! It occurred to her, that it was nearly as important to divert Mrs. Dunbar’s attention as her own, and a lucky thought came into her head. Mrs. Dunbar’s physician had been urging her, for some weeks, to have a little wen removed, that was growing in a dangerous neighbourhood to her eye. Mrs. Dunbar was timid and procrastinating; but, with Fletcher’s aid, Ellen felt sure of persuading her this was the very best time for the operation. Then she determined at once to put in execution a project she had conceived, of teaching a poor, young blind girl, a pensioner of Mrs. Dunbar’s, music. Ellen was an accomplished musician; and she certainly was not over sanguine in believing, that the prospect of qualifying a drooping, dependent creature to earn an independent existence, would make sunshine for some hours of every day.
With these, and other similar plans in her head, which were necessarily deferred till after the Reeves ball, Ellen appeared the next morn-
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ing with a light and strong heart, and a correspondent face, voice, and manner. Oh, if rightly put to the test, what unthought of powers there are in those who every day yield themselves the passive victims to uncontrollable circumstances;
“powers
That touch each other to the quick, in modes
Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive,
No soul to dream of.”
Ellen talked over with Fletcher, with real interest and unaffected cheerfulness, the arrangements for the evening. If she had put into action all of Talleyrand’s diplomacy, she could not so thoroughly have convinced him, that his surmise of the preceding evening was unwarranted. Half of Mrs. Dunbar’s griefs were removed by the conviction, that her favorite did not share them!
We could fill a volume with the details of the ball, and the circumstances of the following six weeks, and all the developments of character and feeling which came from them; but we must cut down our history to the dimensions of its Procrustes’ bed. We must say for our favorite Ellen, that, bating a few inches of stature, she did honor to the character she reluctantly assumed. Her usually sparkling eyes were languid from the sleeplessness of the preceding night, and
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her color, which, in heated rooms, was apt to be uncomfortably high, was abated and fluctuating, and her dress, so happily arranged and judiciously modified, that the Saxon beauty, for once, fairly divided the suffrages with the brilliant Rebecca. But with the mere externals ended all resemblance to the truth of the characters. The Palmer, the Christian devotee, had nor eye, nor ear, but for the proscribed Jewess; and Rebecca was all delight at finding, beneath the broad brim of cockle-shells, and the Slavonian, the contour and air of a very elegant young man, who, she felt assured, had returned no less her ardent lover than the boy she had parted with six years before. She managed her prepared surprise so awkwardly, that Ellen wondered at Fletcher’s blindness. He was indeed blind! As to poor Garston, he was so enchanted with himself in the Templar’s costume, that he never once dreamed how near he was to a more portentous overthrow than that of his prototype on the field of Ashby de la Zouch.
We must pass over the next six weeks with merely saying, that Ellen executed her plans, — that Mrs. Dunbar found, in the complete success of a dreaded operation, a very considerable counteraction to what she still maintained was by far
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the greatest grief of her life. But it was plain, that even in no selfish grief could her benevolent feelings be merged. She was exceedingly excited with Ellen’s marvellous success with her musical pupil, and she had the most eager pleasure, every day, in the result of a subscription Ellen had set on foot for the yet unpublished book of a poor author, or, rather, a very poor man, and good author. We must confess, that Ellen had her hours of conflict, agitation, and despondency, when life was a burden; but even then, though the eclipse seemed total to her, she saw light beyond the shadow. Is there ever total darkness to the good?
Fletcher made her his confidante. This was a pretty severe trial; but she tried to feel, and did feel, in some measure, the sympathy he expected; and she was prepared by degrees for the final communication, that he and Matilda had plighted faith. In spite of her resolutions and efforts she turned excessively pale, and tried in vain to command her voice to speak; but this did not surprise Fletcher. All deep emotions are serious. He had never himself been more so than at this moment of the attainment of the dearest, the long-cherished wish of his heart. One hour before he had felt a pang that he in vain tried to
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forget, when, while their mutual vows were still warm on their lips, Matilda had left him in haste, lest she should not be the first at the opening of a newly-arrived case of French millinery! He painfully contrasted this with Ellen’s emotion, — with his own; and a thought arose through the mists of his mind, repressed as soon as perceived, that there were more points of sympathy between him and Ellen Fitzhugh, than he had found with Matilda.
As to poor Mrs. Dunbar, whom Ellen trusted she had quite prepared for the crisis, she took to her bed, upon the first intimation of it, with a head-ache that lasted, unintermitted, as never had head-ache, or heart-ache, with her before, for three days. In vain Matilda came to ask her blessing. Mrs. Dunbar was unaffectedly too ill to receive her. “With God’s help and time,” said the good lady to Ellen, “I will do my duty to Fletcher’s wife; but as to seeing Matilda Preston now, that‘s quite impossible, — and as to ever loving her as a child, as I do you, my own dear Ellen, that‘s not to be looked for.—’ The wind bloweth where it listeth.’” Mrs. Dunbar was no philosopher; — her instincts alone had led her to the discovery of the great truth, that our volitions have no power over our affections.
Ellen, now that all was decided, kept her eye
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resolutely on the bright side. “I am very sorry, aunt,” she said, “you did not feel equal to seeing Matilda this morning; I have seen her more brilliant, but never one half so interesting. Love has given an exaltation to all her feelings, — has breathed a soul into her face. There was a gentleness and a deference in her manners to Fletcher, that is quite new to her. She feels his superiority, and it may work wonders on her character.”
“Do you think so, Ellen?—well,—for Fletcher’s sake, — God bless him! — I’ll hope for the best. I am not an observing person, Ellen; but I have often remarked, that love, like showers from Heaven, is reviving to the thinnest soil, and every thing is fresh, and sweet, and beautiful for a little while; but the flowers soon fade, — the grass withers, — nature will take a natural course.”
“But, aunt,” replied Ellen, with a smile, “may not grace subdue nature?”
“No, my dear, no; it may help nature on in its own way, but not change it. I am sure I have tried my best for the last six weeks to put down nature; but it is too strong for me, Ellen.” Mrs. Dunbar wiped away a flood of tears, and then went on. “Ellen, I have been thinking this was a good time, while we are all
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so wretched,—I mean, while I am,—to speak to Fletcher about looking over that private desk of his father’s. Will you take it to him, dear? You know I have never looked into it. Before strangers come into the family, it is best to have papers that concern no one but us, disposed of. You need not say that to Fletcher; but I can trust you, dearest child, to say nothing to him that appears unfriendly to Matilda; — just give him the desk and key.”
Ellen did so; and, at the first leisure moment, Fletcher sat down to its examination. He found nothing of particular interest till he came to a file of letters, marked, “Correspondence with Selden Fitzhugh.” Before transcribing the only two letters of interest to the reader, it is necessary to premise, that the elder Dunbar and Fitzhugh had been intimate from their childhood, and that, after their marriage, the closest friendship united their families. A letter from Fletcher’s father to his friend, which seemed to have been written soon after his failure, ran thus:
“Dear Fitzhugh,
“My ruin is total. The labors, the enterprises, the successes of twenty years, are wrecked, — nothing remains. I am the victim, in part, of the
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folly of others, in part, I confess it with shame, of my own grasping. I had competence, I desired riches, and thus it has ended. But the worst is to come, my dear friend. I have made shipwreck of your little fortune, as well as of my own hopes. I have been obliged to give up all my property to satisfy my indorsers, according to the received notion, that debts to them are debts of honor, and I have not wherewith to pay a penny of the thirty thousand dollars you trusted to me without bond, mortgage, or security of any sort. This is the requital of your generous, but too rash friendship!
“Fitzhugh, I am a heart-broken man. My hope and energy are gone. If it were not so, I might promise you a day of restitution, —I should expect it myself; but all before me is dark and dreary. Even now I feel as if a fever were drying up the fountains of life. Forgive me, — pity me, my dear friend; I curse my own folly. You will not curse me, but, believe me, I would coin my heart’s blood to make you restitution.
“Your miserable friend,
“F. Dunbar.”
The following answer to Mr. Dunbar’s letter
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was dated at Mr. Fitzhugh’s country residence; and written a week later than his.
“Dear Dunbar,
“I am truly sorry for your misfortunes; but, my dear fellow, take heart of grace. If you have made a total shipwreck, as you say, why so has many a good fellow before you. The storm will pass, — you can fit out again; only don’t carry quite so much sail, and take out a clearance for some other port than El Dorado. As to my money, believe me, on my honor, after the first surprise and shock were over, the loss has not given me a moment’s uneasiness. I would not have put the money at risk for myself, or you, if I had not secured an adequate provision for my good wife, and eight dear little girls, and Ellen into the bargain, if ever she comes home to us. Our wants are moderate, and our supplies sufficient; and, believe me, a few thousand dollars to be added to the inheritance of each of my girls would not make one of our bright hours brighter. They will never hear of the loss, for I have taken care they should not count upon money that I had subjected to the chances of mercantile life. I have been thus particular to tranquillize you, my dear friend. If finally you
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retrieve your circumstances, you will pay the debt, and all will be well; — and, if you never pay it, — why it will be just as well.
“Ever faithfully yours,
“SELDEN FITZHUGH.”
“God bless and reward you, noble, dear friend,” was an indorsement on the back of this letter, dated two days before Mr. Dunbar’s death, and written by himself, evidently with a weak and tremulous hand.
Fletcher had read and re-read the letters, and had sat for an half hour meditating on their contents, when Matilda, who had called, on an appointment with Ellen, opened the door, and, seeing him deep in occupation, was retreating, when he said, “Pray come in, Matilda, you are the person I most wished to see.”
“That, I trust, is not very singular! But what is the matter, Fletcher? Are you making your will?”
“I am thinking over the disposition of my worldly effects,” he replied, with a very faint smile. “Will you read these letters, Matilda?”
“Yes; but, for Heaven’s sake, don’t look of solemn; I should think they were from the dead to the living.”
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“They are,—read them, and tell me what you think of them.”
Matilda read his father’s, while Fletcher perused her countenance with a far deeper interest than she evinced. “I see nothing very particular in this,” she said. “Your poor father seems to have taken his failure sadly to heart. I never heard before that Mr. Fitzhugh lost by him. But the Fitzhughs are very well off for the country, and I suppose it did not matter much. Ellen was probably adopted by your mother as an offset.”
“No; my mother never knew any thing of the business.”
“No! Oh, I forgot,—Ellen has lived here all her life. But why are you so sad, dear Fletcher,—there is no use in fretting over past troubles?”
“You have read but one of the letters, Matilda,” said Fletcher, coldly, without noticing her last reply!
“So I see; but I was thinking so much more of you than of the letters!” She read Mr. Fitzhugh’s. Fletcher’s eye was riveted to her face; there was no change of color, no moistening of the eye, the return messages of a kindred spirit to a generous action. “How well he took it!”
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she said in her ordinary tone of voice. “I have often hear your mother say, that Ellen was just like her father, making the best of everything,— ‘from evil still educing good.’” Matilda saw that Fletcher expected something more from her; but what, exactly, she could not divine. “Mr. Fitzhugh’s letter must have been a balm to your father’s wounded spirit, just as that sad time,” she added, and paused again. A servant entered and filled the awkward interval with some good reason why Miss Ellen would not keep her appointment.
“I am not sorry,” said Matilda, when the door closed, “for now, dear Fletcher, you will go with me.”
“No, Matilda, I cannot.”
“But you will,” she urged, laying her hand persuasively on his shoulder, and with a look that would have seemed to defy denial. “Come, come away, Fletcher, from these musty papers,—you will be devoured with blue devils; come, I must go, and I will not go without you.”
“You must excuse me.”
“You are unkind, Fletcher,” said Matilda, and her starting tears showed that she could feel keenly. Her pride would not brook any further entreaty, and she abruptly left the room, not doubting, however, that she should be intercepted, or
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immediately followed by her penitent lover. But she reached her own home unmolested, and retired to her own apartment, hurt and offended, and resolved, when Fletcher should come to his senses, to be unrelenting. There was ring after ring at the street-door, and visiter after visiter was announced; but the only one she cared for came not, and to every one else she was denied. At last the servant brought a note from Fletcher. “There must be something more than one note,” thought Matilda, as she broke it open. The current of her feelings was somewhat changed as she read what follows:
“My Dearest Matilda,
“Forgive me, I pray you. I have seemed unreasonable and sullen to you, and I have done you in my heart more wrong than I have expressed. That heart is wholly yours, and no feeling it harbors shall ever be hidden from you. The truth was, that I expected the letters would have called forth more feeling than they did. I ought to have rejected (and have since), that our feelings depend much on our humors,—that your mind was preoccupied,—and that, having no particular interest in the parties, you could not participate the strong and painful sympathy
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that then thrilled every nerve in my frame. I was wrong, and again, on my knees, I beg you to forgive me! I have bound myself to tell the whole truth; and must confess, that I expected still more,— that I expected you would anticipate the conclusions which of course were instinctive with me; but I should have remembered, my dear Matilda, that women, having no business habits or notions, the duty devolving on me at this moment would not have occurred to you. That duty plainly is, to pay my father’s debt to the Fitzhughs. There is no legal obligation, but a moral obligation, and an added debt of gratitude, that no human law could make more binding, or could invalidate. If I had a family dependent on me, there might be a question; but, situated as I am, there can be none. The debt, with its accumulation of interest, will swallow up nine tenths of the property I have acquired; but, with the remnant, with rare experience for three and twenty, with business talents, and a fair reputation, I shall soon go forward again. That event, which is to be the crowning joy of my life, must be deferred for two years. This is no small trial of my philosophy,—of my religion (for I will use the right word); but, with this bright reward ever in view, no labors, no difficulties will daunt my
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spirit. Dearest, dearest Matilda, forgive me for having for a moment doubted you. It was the first time. I believe, as I believe in all truth, it will be the last.”
The following brief note, in pencil, was returned by the servant:
“Come see me at nine, this evening. I shall be alone and disengaged then, and not till then. In the mean time, make no disclosures of your inventions to your mother, to Ellen, or to any one.”
The interval was one of reposeful confidence to Fletcher, and of that celestial joy that springs from an ability, and an immovable resolution, to perform a right action at a great personal sacrifice. We claim for him no great merit in yielding the money. Any right-minded young man full of health and hope, and conscious capacity, might have done this without a pang; but Fletcher was a passionate lover, and he had to encounter the miserable uncertainties of a hope deferred.
Let us see how the interval was passed by Matilda. After much agitating self-deliberation,
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she called her mother to her counsel. Mrs. Preston was the prototype of her daughter, save that what was but in the gristle with the daughter, had hardened into bone with the mother, and save that Matilda, from having had an education very much superior to Mrs. Preston’s, had certain standards and theories of virtue in her mind’s eye, that had never entered the mother’s field of vision. Matilda, too, from having been all her short life in fashionable society, did not estimate it as so high a rate as her mother, who has paid for every inch of ground she had gained there.
Matilda related her last interview with Fletcher, and showed his note. “Do you believe,” said Mrs. Preston, after reading it, “that Fletcher Dunbar will be so absurd as to adhere to this plan?”
“I am sure he will. He is perfectly inflexible when he makes up his mind to what he thinks a duty, however ridiculous it may appear to others.”
“Of course, my dear, you are absolved from your engagement.”
“If I choose to be.”
“If I choose! My dear Matilda, you know how much it was against my wishes that you should form this engagement,—that you should
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give up the most brilliant match in the city for what, at the very best, would be merely a genteel establishment. But the idea of your going into the shade at once, giving up everything, and living, perhaps, at lodgings, or setting up your housekeeping with two servants that you must look after all day, and spend your evenings making your husband’s shirts, by a single astral lamp, ride in an omnibus (you might ride in that splendid carriage), and treat yourself, perhaps, to one silk gown a year,—and all for what? To humor the notions of a young man, who is in no respect superior to Garston, except that he is rather taller, and has a straighter nose, and darker, larger eyes, not much larger either!”
Mrs. Preston had struck a wrong note. Matilda shrunk back from the path her other was opening, as the images of her two lovers passed before her.
“Oh, mamma,” she exclaimed, “there is a horrid difference between them; and if I only could persuade Fletcher to abandon this notion”—
“Well, my dear, in my opinion, if he loves you, he will;— if he does not, why then you lose nothing and gain everything. Luckily your engagement is a secret, as yet, and you have
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taken no irretrievable step. Garston was here this morning,—a look could bring him back to you.”
“But, mamma, to give up what I have been so long dreaming of?” “Yes, and whatever young girl dreams of, and wakes up betimes to pretty dull realities. How should you like, for instance, to wash the breakfast things, and stir up a pudding,—to wash and dress your children, and make a bowl of gruel for your dear mamma-in-law?”
“Oh detestable!” Matilda pondered for a few moments, and then said, “I really think, if Fletcher loves me, he will sacrifice his feelings to me. I am sure he owes it to me, after the sacrifice I made to him;—I have certainly proved myself disinterested, but I do not like to be treated as if I could be set aside, and wait for the working of any fancy that comes up. I will tell him so,—I am resolved. He must take the responsibility of deciding it.”
The evening came, and, when the clock struck nine, Fletcher entered Miss Preston’s drawing room, his fine countenance beaming with the serenity and trustfulness of his heart; but Matilda’s first look sent a thrill through it, that was like the snapping of the chords of a musical instrument at the moment it is felt to be in perfect
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tune. She advanced towards him, and gave him her hand as usual, and she smiled; but it was a mere muscular movement, the expression was anything but a smile. Her beautiful face had all the rigidity that a fixed and painful purpose could give to it; but it was a purpose that depended on a contingent, and to that contingent the smile and the responding pressure of her hand were addressed.
Her eyes were red and swollen, and, for the first time, her dress was not elaborately arranged.
She spoke first, “You do not love me, Fletcher!”
“Not love you, Matilda! God only knows how tenderly I love you.”
“No, Fletcher, you do not love me,—the truth has broken upon me with irresistible proof.”
“What do you mean, Matilda? What have you heard? Surely it is not—it cannot be”—
“It is, Fletcher. Your note has nullified our engagement. I have judged you by my own heart. I have questioned, examined that, and I am sure that no fancied duty,—no absolute duty could have forced me,—much less persuaded me at its first intimidation, to expose the happiness that was just within our grasp to the hazards of time.”
Fletcher poured out protestations and prayers,
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and concluded with assuring Matilda, that, “if she would share with him, at the present moment, his acted fortune, if she would at once risk the uncertainties that he must encounter, he should be a happier and prouder man than all the wealth in the world could make him.”
Matilda burst into tears. “It is not right,—it is not generous,” she said, “to put what you consider a test to me. It is none. You must acquit me of any groveling care for money. You have but to look six weeks backward to remember, that the first fortune in the city was waiting my acceptance, and fashion, and brilliant family connexions. I sacrificed all, without a shadow of regret, to you, and now I am thought very lightly of in comparison with a fancied duty.”
“A fancied duty? Good Heaven!”
“A real duty, then; but so questionable, that nine men out of ten would pronounce it no duty at all. It is not the money. I care as little for that as you can; but it is the terrible truth you have forced on me,—you do not love me.”
“Matilda, you wrong yourself,—you wrong me.”
“Prove it to me then, Fletcher. Let our relations be what they were yesterday,—burn those letters, and forget them.”
[255]
“Never!” cried Fletcher, indignantly, “so help me God,—never.”
“Then the tie that bound us is sundered,—our engagement is dissolved.”
“Amen!” said Fletcher, and he rushed from the house,—his mind confused and maddened with broken hopes, disappointed affection, and dissolving delusions.
There is one painful but sure cure for love. The slow-coming, resisted, but irresistible conviction of the unworthiness of the person beloved.
* * * * *
A little more than two years had passed away, when one bright morning, at the hour of ceremonies visiting, a superb carriage, looking more like a ducal equipage than one befitting a wealthy citizen of a republic, drew up a Mrs. Dunbar’s door. The gilded harness was emblazoned with heraldic devices, and a coat of arms was embroidered in gold on the hammer-cloth, and painted on the pannels. The coachman and footman in fresh and tasteful liveries, were in the dickey, and the proprietor of the equipage (in appearance a very inferior part of it) was seated on the box with a friend. Within the
[256]
coach was a lady, magnificently dressed in the latest fashion. She seemed
“A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, and command;”
but she had thwarted the plan,—she had extinguished the “angel light,” — she had herself closed the gates of Paradise, and voluntarily circumscribed her vision to this world. She had foregone the higher element for which she was destined; but the wings she had folded for ever betrayed by their fluttering her disquietude with the way she had chosen. The face that, turned heavenward would have reflected Heaven, was fixed earthward, and the dark spirits of Discontent and Disappointment brooded over it.
There is a baser traffic going on in this world of ours, than that which the poet has immortalized in his history of Faust, carried on under the forms of law, and with the holy seal and superscription of marriage.
The lady alighted from the coach and was on the door-step awaiting her husband. He did not move, the footman had rung the bell, and Mrs. Dunbar’s servant stood awaiting the entrée.
“Are you not going in with me, Ned?” she asked.
“Not I,—I hate bridal visits.”
[257]
“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.
[258]
Ellen, who had resigned her hope of reigning in Fletcher’s heart, was not its elected and enthroned queen. She looked like the embodied spirit of home, and domestic love and happiness. The two young women contrasted like the types of spiritual and material world.
Our good friend, Mrs. Dunbar, was at the acme of felicity. It would have been in vain for her to try to express the overflowing of her heart, and try she did not. It sparkled and ran over like a brimming glass of champagne.
“I am truly glad to see you here again, Matilda,—Mrs. Garston, I mean,” she said; “I really am, my dear. And now we have met, old friends together, I will tell you, that I never had one hard thought, no, not one, at your breaking off with Fletcher. It was providential all round. Fine pictures should have fine frames;—you, my dear, just fit the one you are set in, and our little Ellen was made to be worn, like a miniature, close to the heart. I used to be a believer in first love, now I think ‘second thoughts best.’ ”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Second Thoughts Best
Subject
The topic of the resource
Courtship, marriage, love, duty.
Description
An account of the resource
An engagement is jeopardized by the couple's conflicting values and attitudes towards love and duty.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich, pp. 201-258.
Publisher
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Boston: Otis, Broaders, & Company
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1840 [pub. 1839]
Contributor
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L. Damon-Bach with Asa Anderson, Deanna Depaz, Megan Hennessey, Emily Moss, Kevin White, and Dr. Jenifer Elmore with Adriana Duebel, Ariana Fernandez, Lauren Sumner, and Julianna Weiss
Relation
A related resource
Volume reissued as The Moss Rose, New York: 1846; and as The Honeysuckle, New York: 1848. Story reprinted in New-Yorker (31 August and 14 September 1839, pp: 386 and 406, and in The Rural Repository, 28 September 1839, pp 57-60 and 12 October 1839, pp. 65-69.
Format
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Document
Language
A language of the resource
English
"Address to Kilchurn Castle Upon Loch Awe"
"Faust"
"Principles and Prudence in Politics: The Friend"
"She Was a Phantom of Delight"
"The Seasons: A Hymn"
1839
1840
2 Corinthians 1:22
All's Well That Ends Well
Apollo
Ashby de la Zouch
bankruptcy
belle
Charles Maurice de Tallyrand
courtship
Death
Democrat
duty
El Dorado
engagement
Ephesians 1:13
factionalism
Isaiah 40:8
Ivanhoe
James Thomson (1700-1748)
Jewess
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
John 3:8
John Milton
letters
loco-foco
Louvre
Love
Mammon
marriage
Measure for Measure
Oliver Goldsmith
Paradise Lost
party politics
phrenology
Procrustes bed
Samuel G. Goodrich
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Shakespeare
Sir Walter Scott
speculation
sultan
tableau vivant
The Token
Tories
Whigs
widows
William Wordsworth
-
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1f3337d28b37d64bd8a5fe27ef712f9d
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
1827
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.
SATURDAY NIGHT.
_________
[p. 146]
Ellen and Charles, two good and happy children, had just been undressed, and were jumping into bed, when their mother came into the room where they were. “Oh, come, mother,” they both cried in the same breath, “and lie down by us, and tell us a story.”
“Lie my side,” said Ellen.
“Oh no, lie my side,” said Charles.
“I cannot do both,” said their mother.
“Then come between us,” said Ellen; “that is the fairest way.”
“Yes, that is the fairest way,” said Charles; and both the children moved, and left a good place for their mother between them.
“Do, mother,” said Ellen, “tell us a fairy story—you know I delight in fairies—now dancing over the flowers, without even bending their slender stems; and now hiding away in acorn cups. Oh! I wish I had lived in fairy-land. I should so have liked to have had a magic lamp, or a ring for a talisman, that would have pinched my finger when I did wrong.”
“Pooh, Ellen!” exclaimed Charles, “you know there is no such place in reality, as fairy-land—is there mother?”
“I know that, as well as you do, Charles; but
[p. 147]
then there is no harm in talking of it, as if there were. That you call one of the pleasures of the imagination—don’t you mother?”
Ellen’s mother smiled, and said, “yes my dear; but when you are wishing for such a fairy gift as the wonderful ring you spoke of, do not forget that God has given you some thing much more wonderful, to you when you do right, and when you do wrong.”
“You mean my conscience, mother,” said Ellen; for her mother had so often spoken to her of conscience, that she very well knew what she meant.
“Now Ellen,” said Charles, is a beseeching tone, “don’t interrupt mother again; and do, mother tell me a story of a lion or a panther, or a faithful dog. A faithful dog, like that you read about in your Natural History, Ellen, is worth a sea full of fairies.”
“Fairies live in the green wood, Charles, and not in the sea,” said Ellen, a little hurt at Charles’ contempt for her favourites.
“To-night I shall not tell you about either beasts, or fairies,” said their mother.
“Oh it is Saturday night!” exclaimed Ellen; “I had forgotten that. A Bible story then—I am sure I think the story about Joseph, or that about Isaac, or the Prodigal Son, or Lazarus and his sisters, as interesting as a fairy story.”
“They are a hundred times more interesting,” said Charles.
Ellen’s mother was glad to find that the true and instructive histories to find that the true and instructive histories from the good book interested her children as much as those stories were contrived to delight them. “My dear chil-
[p. 148]
ren,” she said “I shall not tell you a story from the Bible, to-night; but relate an anecdote (which, you know, means a short story,) of some little children of our acquaintance. “There are two children, who have a great and kind Friend, who is always taking care of them, whether they are awake, or asleep.”
“I suppose you mean their mother,” said little Charley, who was always impatient to get at the story.
“No, my love. This Friend gave them their father and their mother.”
“Oh you mean God!” whispered Ellen.
Her mother did not reply to her, but proceeded—“This bountiful Friend has given to them, the most beautiful and wonderful gems in the world; worth as Charles would say, a whole sea full of diamonds.”
“Gems, what are gems, mother?” asked Charles.
“Precious jewels, my dear. Those I am speaking of are very small, but so curiously formed, that as soon as the casket which contains them is opened, there is immediately painted on them a beautiful picture of all the objects towards which they are turned. If a landscape, like that you see every morning from your chamber window, there appear on the gems those beautiful mountains, that rise one above and beyond another; the mist that curls up their sides, as if, Ellen, to hide troops of your tiny fairies behind its silvery curtain; the bright lake which glitters in the depth of the valley, and which you call the mountain mirror, Ellen; the large orchards, with their trees, gracefully
[p. 149]
bending with their ruddy and golden fruit; the neat house opposite us, with its pretty curtain of vines hanging over the door, and rose bushes clustering about the windows.”
“What, mother!” exclaimed Charles, “all these things painted on a little gem?”
“Yes, Charles, all. The high mountain, and the rose-bushes, every leaf and bud of them; and then, if the gems are turned towards the inside of the house, the landscape disappears, and all the furniture is painted on them, and the perfect pictures of their friends: not such pictures, as you see done by painters, looking grave and motionless; but smiling, speaking, and moving.”
“Oh, mother, mother!” exclaims Ellen, this is a fairy story after all.”
“Are there, in reality, any such gems?” asked Charles; who did not like that the story should turn out a fairy story.
“There are, my dear Charles;” and the same Friend, who gave the children these gems, has given to them, many other gifts, as wonderful. He has given to them an instrument, by which they can hear the music of the birds, the voices of their friends, and all other sounds; and another, by which, they enjoy the delicious perfume of the flowers; the fragrance you so often spoke of, Ellen, when the fruit-trees were in blossom; and the locust trees in flower, and the clover in bloom.”
“Oh what a generous Friend that must be,” said Charles, “to give such valuable presents, and so many of them! Are there any more, mother?”
“Yes, Charles, more than I could describe to you, if I were to talk till to-morrow morning;
[p. 150]
there is a very curious instrument, by which, they can find out the taste of every thing that is to be eaten; and another, that by just stretching out their fingers, they can tell whether a thing is smooth or rough, hard or soft.”
“Why, I can tell that with my fingers!” exclaimed Charles.
“Yes, my dear,” said his mother, “and cannot you taste, by putting food in your mouth? And is there not an instrument set in your head, by which, you can hear?”
“My ear, mother?” asked Charles.
“Yes, my child, your ear.”
And do you mean the eyes, by those wonderful gems?” asked Ellen.
“Yes.”
But, I am sure there is no painting in the eyes.”
“Yes, Ellen, every object you behold, is painted upon the part of the eye, called the retina; but that you cannot understand now; and you must let me go on with my anecdote of the two children. When they arose in the morning, they found that their Friend had taken such good care of them, when they slept, that they felt no pain; that their limbs were all active; and they could every moment receive pleasure from the precious gems, and instruments I have mentioned. They, both looked out of the window, and exclaimed “What a beautiful morning!” The little girl turned her gems towards her multiflora, now full of roses, and glistening with dew-drops, and she clapped her hands, and asked her brother, if he ever saw anything so beautiful; and he turned his gems to a
[p. 151]
pair of humming-birds, that were fluttering over the honeysuckle, and thrusting their tiny pumps into the necks of the flowers, and as their bright images shone on his gems, he shouted, “Did you ever see anything so handsome?”
“You mean, mother,” said Charles, “that he looked at the humming birds, when you say he turned his gems?”
“Yes, my dear; and when he heard the pleasant humming they make with their wings, it was by the instrument set in the head, which you call the ear. There was not a moment of the day, but the children enjoyed some good thing, their Friend had given to them. They learned their lessons, by using the memories He had given to them; the books they read, delighted them, because their Friend had given to them minds by which they understood them. They loved their parents, and relations, and companions, because their Friend had given them affections.”
“It seems to me,” interrupted Charley, “that Friend gave them every thing. It must be God, you mean, mother; for I know he gives us every thing we have.”
“Yes, my dear Charley; and I am sorry to say, these two children neglected their Friend. They had often been told by their mother never to get in bed without first kneeling and thanking him for all his gifts; but they did not think of him. They used and enjoyed the gifts, but they sometimes forgot the Giver.”
Ellen laid her head on her mother’s bosom. “Mother,” she said, “you mean us.”
“My dear Ellen,” replied her mother, “your
[p. 152]
conscience is like the ring, in the fairy tale. Yes, I did mean you and Charles. I was sorry, when I came into the room, to-night, to see you getting into bed, without saying your prayers. God has given you a voice, to speak my children. Your dog, Stumah, Charles, cannot speak, to thank God for anything he receives, but you can.”
“And I will,” said the good little boy; ashamed that he had been ungrateful and thoughtless. “Come, Ellen; we’ll jump up, and say our prayers; and,” he added, in a whisper; “we’ll speak for Stumah, too.”*
* This reply of the child is true.
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
Saturday Night
Subject
The topic of the resource
Teaching children to appreciate the gifts of the five senses and God.
Description
An account of the resource
A mother tells her children a bedtime story about a mysterious Friend who gives children precious gifts, and teaches a lesson about gratitude and prayer.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Stories for Young Persons, 146-52.
Publisher
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Harper & Brothers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1840
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Heather Harman, Nicole Wheatley, D, Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Originally published "by Stockbridge S." in the Juvenile Miscellany, [edited by Lydia M. Child] (January 1827): 31-39. Collected in A Short Essay to Do Good, 18-24, 1828
Language
A language of the resource
English
1827
1840
bible
children
Dogs
fairies
God
Joseph
Juvenile Miscellany
Lazarus
Mothers
Stories for Young Persons
the five senses
the Prodigal Son
-
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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
Any textual data included in the document.
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
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New York: Harper & Brothers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
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.
Format
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Document
Language
A language of the resource
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
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.
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.”
[10]
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
[11]
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
[12]
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.”
[13]
“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.”
[14]
“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
[15]
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.
[16]
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.”
[17]
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-
[18]
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
[19]
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
[20]
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
[21]
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.
[22]
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
[23]
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
[26]
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.
[27]
“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
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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. 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
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English
Type
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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
-
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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
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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
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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
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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/806e9c78adc1c6a6a670877ecd9f6ac6.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Uvzg3B2CGLrjYjFFahjZHtURya-U13Rozq52gtuyUhLldKVQSZKvG9pRwVNGeNzHnL1sB7v9vlVcJHJI8N4nWnpR8vigR6toMkuBgEtGO3vASJyK5-zugx9dQQFIgcsRzhCqwHEFErbtjtZX3bOkH%7ESKMhD8NGXxDpjpLXyRng3l1G2gX3TFeuFNMVlHFJ4sEHVL8fssLRImpCk4MFrhsiWBd-4-WhEEV8sJV8TFHMnLFfV3b8KEiK4oDgaYLaSqoomufQSkGLcFuTxu-5xwi2W1seaXdx6wty1rwynMEn3x07ZwlUauUGgoMu1YcgOpnUWWtqQcGfuMk1QKUG8TrQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
10a95d6b33d1568c46862dcefeaee848
Dublin Core
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Title
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1840
Document
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Text
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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
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. 52-66.
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
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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.
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MATTY GORE.
BY MISS C. E. SEDGWICK. [sic]
“Say rather, all his thoughts now flowing clear,
From a clear fountain flowing, he looks round
And seeks for good; and finds the good he seeks.”
[p. 50]
“WHAT ails you, Matty, to sit moping at that window—are you counting the rain-drops that fall on the pavement?
“No, Harry, I was just thinking—that's all.”
“A penny for your thoughts!”
“I was thinking how dismal it is to live in a city! How pleasant it is to hear the soft dropping rain on the grass! and here it is nothing but patter, patter, patter on the dirty pavement; and, as I looked at the lamps that shed such a dim light through the watery air, and at those blank houses opposite with all their windows closed, I remembered how many times I had gone to our east window in the sitting-room at Fairtown, and seen the lights from Mr. Jessup's, and widow Allen's,
[p. 51]
and Deacon Milnor's, and fancied I could see the families, and what they were all about, and it seemed as if I could almost hear their voices. To my eye there is no life in these dwellings—they don't look like homes— nothing is right here; the stars don't look as they did through our clear air, and the thunder don't sound half so good as it did at Fairtown!”
“Why, Matty, you get the blues sitting here alone; if you would go to the theatre with me, and to the public balls, and Miss Wright's lectures, you would find something brighter than starlight, and quite as entertaining as Fairtown thunder.”
“O! Harry, my dear brother, it is your going to such places that makes me more than all wish we were back in Fairtown. I have heard of many young men who were first drawn aside from the narrow path, by going to those public places where so many bad people go. It is not easy for us, while we are young, Harry, to resist temptation, so it is best to fence ourselves about as well as we can.”
“Pray don't preach, Matty.”
“I won't, Harry; don't call it preaching; but do let me speak what is so heavy at my heart. I don't like your going to the theatre, but I would rather you would go there every night, than go to hear infidel lectures.”
“My dear child, you don't know any thing about it; ‘live and let live,’ Matty,—you go your way, and let me go mine.”
[p. 52]
“There is but one way, Harry.”
“That is an old fashioned notion, my dear; in this age of steamboats, and railroads, new ways are opened. Don't look so solemn, Matty, I don't wish to disturb your faith, and so I tell father.”
“O! Harry, that is not what I am afraid of, for I will hold fast that which is good; but disturbed I must be, when I see you and father seeking, as it were, darkness, and avoiding the light that has come into the world. I cannot reason, as the people do who come here and talk with father, and only cloud up the truth; but I feel, and believe.”
Harry, notwithstanding his resolution not to interfere with his sister's faith, could not forbear saying, “A common family division, my dear; 'the men reason— the women believe.”
“No, Harry, that is not fair, for we are required to give a reason for the faith that is in us; therefore faith in man or woman must have reason to support it.”
Matty was interrupted by her father's entrance. He looked displeased. This was unusual; for John Gore, though rough, was not irritable or churlish. He thrust the poker into the grate, and, without seeming to know what he was about, poked out every coal of a light, spring fire; and then turning to Matty he asked, “Are we not going to have tea to-night?”
“I understood you, sir, that you were not coming home to tea.”
[p. 53]
“Well, I suppose I can change my mind.”
“O, yes, sir," said Matty, setting herself eagerly about arranging the tea apparatus.
“And if I may, Miss Martha, it's a privilege I use only on small occasions.” Gore had not called his daughter Martha, half a dozen times in her life. She felt sure she had displeased him, and stopping before him, she said, with all the courage she could summon “Have I offended you, father?”
“Yes--no—make the tea, will you?”
Matty, pale and trembling, went to the little cup board for the tea canister, and her brother left the room whispering, as he went past her, “This storm has blown up from Fairtown, I guess.”
The tea was soon ready, and Matty sat down and poured out cup after cup, which her father swallowed without uttering a word. He rejected the bread and butter which Matty offered, and, in the hope of pleasing him, she set on the table a beefsteak pie. This was an article of food he particularly liked. His wife had excelled in preparing it, and had communicated her skill to Matty. This was the first she had made since their removal from Fairtown.
“Will you take a bit, father?” she asked; “Harry said it tasted just like mother's.”
“No!” he replied, and then added in a softened voice, “not to-night, Matty”—he hemmed and cleared his throat. “Like mother's, is it? your mother never
[p. 54]
disobeyed me. How long, Miss Martha, have you been keeping up a correspondence with Russel Milnor?”
“Simple truth” was Matty's “utmost skill.” “I have had no correspondence with Russel, sir,” she replied, “excepting that he has sent his kind remembrance to me, and I, mine to him.”
“Then this is his first letter, since we left Fairtown, is it?” and he took a letter from his pocket, and threw it across the table.
“It is, sir,” replied Matty, faintly, while her eyes filled and her cheeks glowed with the irrepressible feeling that is awakened in every woman's heart, by the sight of the first love-letter.
“You need not study the outside any longer,” resumed her father, and for the first time Matty raised her eyes, that had been downcast and fixed upon the letter, as he added, “I know every thing that is in it—I don't mean the love and nonsense, but the business part—it came in a letter to me. Why don't you break the seal?”
“I can't, sir,” she answered, and burst into tears. Various feelings struggled in Matty's tender heart. She knew what Russel's letter must contain, the first expression, in words, of a long-cherished affection. She knew that her father had strong prejudices against her lover, and that his prejudices were as rigid as his iron frame. She thought of her mother, and that if she were alive, she would share every feeling with fond
[p. 55]
sympathy; but now, in the trials that awaited her, there was no one to whom to look for sympathy; not even Harry; her dear and only brother, for he too had prejudices against Russel. Matty was of the ivy nature, dependence was habitual to her; but there is no strict analogy between a vegetable and rational existence. The weakest human soul is capable of receiving a divine energy, and if it mount heavenward it needs not to grasp an earthly support. “Hush up your tears, child,” said Gore, “my mind is settled; and you must settle yours, and cry or laugh afterwards, as the case may be. In the first place tell me, how happens it Russel stuck to farming! I thought the Education Society were going to run him over into a minister.”
“Russel was advised to that, sir; but he did not wish to put himself into a dependent situation, and he thought he might serve his Master as acceptably, by being a farmer, as if he were a minister.”
“Cant! but, however, there is some sense in it. There may be now and then an honest professor out of the pulpit; but it's all hypocrisy where there is a bounty paid. It seems Russel has laid up money enough to buy him a farm in Michigan. He has bought it, and now has the modesty to ask my leave to let you go out and help him take care of it. If you go, mark me! you go contrary to my wishes and my judgment; but I don't forbid it. I am not one of their religious folks,
[p. 56]
who think they have a divine right to lord it over the world. I believe that women, though they are far enough from being fit for it, have a right to independence; and, therefore, you are free to go; but if you go, never come back to my house again—never expect any help from me, be the case what it will; for Russel Milnor's wife's husband will be always the man that I can't abide. I don't set up any right over you. I am an enemy to all arbitrary authority—to father-craft, as well as kingcraft and priestcraft.” John was just as honest as others are when, giving way to the impulse of temper and prejudice, they fancy themselves acting in obedience to an established principle.
There had been an old feud between Deacon Milnor and John Gore, which eventuated in a long pending lawsuit. Gore finally gained the suit, and, as is common in country neighbourhoods, the general sympathy was with the losing party, and Gore, alienated from his old friends, transferred his residence from Fairtown to New York, where he still followed successfully the vocation of master-builder. Gore was a strong, though narrow-minded man. He saw clearly, but he looked through a knot-hole. He never had any religious faith, unless the accidental belief of his childhood might be dignified by that name. He had always treated lightly the faith of his wife, a meek
“Traveller between life and death.”
He took pride in differing from the strictly religious
[p. 57]
community in which he lived, and contracted a very common habit of looking at the abuses of religion, at the dishonour which the bigotries, pretensions, and lapses of its false professors cast upon it, while he was deaf and blind to the testimony, on every side, of its true disciples. After he went to town, he fell in with some clamorous skeptics, and had not the ability, or, alas! the inclination to resist their specious arguments. They were, like Gore, uninstructed men, but they could quote the names of Hobbes and Hume, and Gore's vanity pleased itself with the idea that his preconceived opinions were in accordance with these great mens'. Wo to the ignorant, who are not intrenched in the strongest hold of Christianity, a deep, heart-felt conviction of its truth, resulting from an experience of its adaptation to the wants of humanity!
Gore has hinted his theoretical respect for the “rights of women.” He had recently imbibed it from a certain eloquent lecturer, who has done them worse than doubtful service. The truth was, he looked upon the whole sex with a feudal eye; regarding women as liege subjects, if not “born thralls” of their natural lords; and if his new notions forced him to admit that they were possible equals, he had never yet doubted they were actual inferiors. John Gore's theories had made as yet no apparent difference in his mode of life; his industrious habits were fixed, and the external moralities were second nature to him; but that spiritual work of
[p. 58]
subduing the passions, disciplining the temper, and elevating the affections, John had never yet begun.
But while John Gore went on in his old track, the effect of their new associations on his son Harry, was but too obvious. He had cast aside the faith of his boyhood, but he was too much under the dominion of his senses, to adopt practically the theories of virtue inculcated by his new teachers. He had rejected his mother's pious instructions as nursery tales, and in his change of residence he had escaped from the vigilance and restraints of a moral community. He was destined to learn too late, or never to learn, that the only safe liberty for a young person, in the flush of life, is the liberty that follows self-conquest. Harry Gore was just two-and-twenty; handsome, with that frank and gay expression so captivating to young women, and with that manliness, reckless generosity and impulsive ardour, which altogether constitute the “whole-souled” character so attractive to young men. With these characteristics this unfortunate young man was introduced by his father to a society of skeptics; and by his young companions plunged into the second or third-rate dissipation of a great city. The character of his career might be foreseen; its sad particulars time alone could disclose.—But we forget that it is not Harry Gore's story we are writing. We left John Gore producing a miserable perplexity in his daughter's mind, by the annunciation of his
[p. 59]
wishes, his judgment, and his will. She saw that, by the terms of his opposition, she might follow her inclination without violating the letter of filial obedience; but the spirit of all her duties governed Matty Gore; and though we think she erred, she believed that in all circumstances the precept, “honour your parents,” required the surrender of her own wishes to her father's.
Accordingly, when she answered her lover's letter, which she did that sleepless night, while her tears almost blinded her, she made no secret of the state of her affections. She repeated all that had occurred that evening, and concluded by saying, that her duty was implicit submission to her father's wishes.
We have given merely the points of Matty's letter; the essence of such a letter is of too delicate a nature to be imparted.
To these points came, immediately, a reply from Russel Milnor, enclosed in a letter to Gore, in which he communicated the purport of that to his daughter. Russel said that he trusted he should be enabled to submit to a known duty, even though it required such a martyrdom as the relinquishment of Matty; but that his view of the case differed totally from her's. "You were twenty-one, the first day of this present month, Matty," he said, "and at that age the law allows men and women, if ever they were capable, to be capable of judging for themselves. If your father alleged any thing against my character, or any thing in my circum-
[p. 60]
stances, that formed a reasonable barrier to our union, it would be your duty to acquiesce; but where there is no such reason, I cannot think that parents have a right to control their children. They marry for themselves, not for their parents. In the course of nature they must long survive them. It is, then, their own concern, and they ought to act independently, according to their light, that is, according to the dictate of their best judgment, and of tried affection. Parents do not enough respect the rights of their children on this subject. They interfere by their wishes, their biases, and their manoeuvring. It is an inexpressible happiness when parents approve the choice of their children; but no right of theirs to direct or mar this choice. Our affections are amenable to God only, and when He has joined, man should not sunder them. I have not urged my wishes or my love, for beside that you know I should neither expect nor wish it to prevail against your sense of duty; that once settled in your mind, I am sure, wherever the sacrifice may fall, you will act in conformity to it.”
Before this letter arrived a sudden and great change had taken place in John Gore's domestic arrangements. He had placed at the head of his household a very pretty and flippant young woman, some months Matty's junior, whom he called his wife. Matty had painful reason to suspect that this marriage was merely one of those fragile, and evanescent ties substituted for the holy one of God's appointment, and advocated by a few
[p. 61]
of her father's new associates. Emboldened by that courage which religion alone could inspire in a timid girl, who had grown up in habitual awe of her father; she determined to know from himself the truth; and she took the first occasion, when neither the new Mrs. Gore nor Harry were present, to ask her father, "If he wished her to call his wife, mother?” John's eye fell, and a deeper hue dyed his sanguine cheek, as he an- swered; “Yes—no—that is to say, just as you like; a name does not signify.”
“That name seems to me,” replied Matty; “to signify more than all other words;” and while she spoke, the eye that she kept steadfastly fixed on him filled with tears, and his quailed under it; as that of the lower animals is said to do, beneath the intellectual ray of man. “Father,” she continued; “it is best to speak plain my meaning; I cannot profane that word mother. Is this person my mother in the eye of the law?”
“The law has nothing to do with the matter, and the gospel less,” cried Gore, recovering his usual tone. “She is my wife, according to her view, and my view; and if you don't like her for a mother, you need not make one of her; and that's the end on't.”
“O! father, it is not the end,” exclaimed Matty; in the earnestness of her feeling, forgetting her habitual quietness, and falling on her knees at his feet. “It is God's law you are violating; O! pray, pray, do not bring this shame on us all! this dishonour and misery
[p. 62]
on your old age! O! send her away, sir! Those men that come here, and scoff at all that's good and holy, have been a snare to your soul. Send her away, father, and let us go back to Fairtown; or, lay me down there by mother's grave.”
“Hush! Matty, my child; hush!” His voice was softened, and Matty proceeded. “Dear father, God has made misery to follow sin—even in this world—and there is a judgment to come—for the deeds done in the body, we must give account. What signifies all they say! we know, we feel it in ourselves; there is a heaven, and there is a hell.”
While Matty was speaking the last words, the door opened and Mrs. Gore, flushed with exercise, and the pleasurable excitement of a walk with her young gallant, Harry, entered. Harry divined the meaning of the scene and disappeared; and Mrs. Gore, with affected unconcern, echoed in a soft under tone, “Hell! bless my soul, Miss Matty! a big word for a mealy-mouthed young woman.”
Matty rose from her knees, and turned on the woman a look so full of sorrow, so beaming with the elevation of a spirit immeasurably above her, that she shrunk away abashed. Gore was dimly conscious of a feeling akin to that of a bully, when he is detected by a comrade in an act of cowardice; he rose, and blustered round the room, muttering something of “Matty's nonsense and superstition!”
[p. 63]
Poor Matty went to her own little room, and there remained, in tears and prayers, till she was roused by her father's voice calling her. She met him at the head of the stairs. He gave her Russel's letter, saying, “Russel acts above-board; I give him credit for this; it's his mother's blood, not his sneaking father's. I know, mainly, what is in his letter to you, by one he has written to me. He says what I said to you; that you have a right to follow your inclinations. I'll hold no woman in bondage. One thing that I said to you when Russel first proposed, I take back; the rest must stand. Circumstances alter cases; and now, if you marry Russel, you will not act against my wishes; but remember, Matty! no person that bears the name of Milnor shall ever enter my doors, or have a penny of my property. I have chosen my way, you are free to choose your's.”
There are periods when thoughts pass so rapidly, and the affections will work with such energy, that we seem in brief instants to have lived an age. This was such a moment to Matty. While her father was speaking, the prospect he opened before her, of leaving her wretched home, to live with him who would have made any desert home to her, seemed like a gleam of paradise; and then the thought of leaving her father to wear out his last days in sin and certain misery, closed the gate of happiness against her. “If I could but save him,” she said, mentally, “I would relinquish every
[p. 64]
earthly hope; I am weak, but for such a work, there is strength that will be made perfect in my weakness.” When he had finished speaking, she said in a very low but resolute voice; “Father, there is something nearer my heart than Russel; it is that you should do the right thing.”
“Stop there, Matty! you have taken me to task once, and that is once too many. Water won't run up hill; fathers won't be chidden by their children.”
“But once more, father, I beg you to hear me; but once more.”
“No, no!” he cried, but in a gentler voice; for he was softened; who could resist that earnest and most sweet countenance? “No, Matty! I must follow my light.”
“O! father; that light is darkness: hear me, I beseech you, in the name of God.”
“No, no, Matty! you are too superstitious; there is no use.”
“In the name of my mother, then.”
“You look now like her own self—speak—say quick what you have to say.”
“O! think that it is my mother pleading with you; think that you are back in those days when you believed in truth, and followed after good. Forgive me, forgive me, sir, but I must speak. I must pray you to repent and return to Him, who is ever ready to receive those who forsake their sins. Send away this bad woman,
[p. 65]
father! I will stay with you; I will never, never leave you. I will write to Russel that I have solemnly devoted myself to you. I will do every thing to make your home comfortable and cheerful; it will be neither, with this woman. I will watch over Harry, night and day; I will do all, with God's help, that child and sister can do.”
“You have not considered, Matty.”
“I have considered, sir; and resolved.”
“Well, let me go; let me go; I must consider too;” and he turned from his child, and with faltering steps, and a purpose that now faltered for the first time, retraced his way to his little parlour, while Matty returned to her own room, to strengthen her resolution with prayer; and so strengthened was she by this holy office, that she read Russel's letter with calmness, and sat down to write to him all that had occurred, with a conviction that he would acquiesce in the sacrifice they were to make. But her generosity was not to have its reward. If Gore had been left alone to the workings of conscience, and the gracious ministry of his awakened affections, he might have been saved; but his evil genius interposed. The woman who had led him away from domestic purity and peace, came in while his countenance was dark and agitated with the stormy conflict of right and wrong. With the quick instincts of her sex, she perceived the nature of his disturbance, and suspected
[p. 66]
the source of it. Her youth, beauty and art, soon enabled her to regain her ascendancy over the weak old man, who had nothing to oppose to her but the good feelings that his daughter had awakened. Faith and its securities were gone.
In the course of the morning the following brief note was brought to Matty by the servant girl.
“You've been a good child, and serviceable to me, Matty; and I give you the enclosed, (a hundred dollar note.) It is but justice to say I've nothing to complain of from you; but we've come to the parting point, Matty. It is best we should not have any good bye- ing. I am going out for the rest of the day. Pack and direct your things, and I will send them after you. You had best go to your aunt's before night, as I mistrust we should not all sleep well under the same roof.
“Your father, John Gore.”
Poor Matty! this was almost too much for her to bear. Religion even, cannot soothe the anguish that sin inflicts; the sin of those we love. Matty sat for some time stupified; suddenly she was roused by the thought that she might make an appeal to the woman, who seemed to her the personification of evil. She gained admittance to her room. She was dressed gayly, and was arranging some artificial flowers on her hat preparatory to a walk. She was flurried by the sight of the innocent girl; and she said—the most na-
[p. 67]
tural thing to say—looking at Matty's swollen eyes and colourless cheek; “You don't seem well, Miss Matty.”
“O! I am not well—I am sick—sick at heart;” and she was obliged to grasp the bed-post against which she stood for support.
It is useless to enter into the particulars of the conversation that ensued. Every thing that a pure woman and a devoted child could say, Matty urged; every argument of religion, she exhausted in vain.
There is no harder subject to deal with, than a young woman who has thrown down the bulwarks of religion, and defied the usages of society; not blinded and impelled by the impulses of passion, but a voluntary sacrifice to vanity and selfishness. Matty could not awaken her fears, for she felt secure in her young life; and she could not touch her affections, for their fountains were dried away. Wearied and sick at heart, the poor girl returned to her own room.
A less spiritual being would have been satisfied; would have felt that, having done her filial duty, she was free to indulge the yearnings of her heart. But to this good young person it was not so. She did not act simply with reference to quieting her own conscience. She felt that there must be a most bitter infusion in her cup, while the death of the soul was impending over her father and brother. Her letter to her lover was coloured by her sad feelings. She assented to his plans
[p. 68]
and appointed the time for their meeting; and then reverted to her deep anxieties in a prayer, that she might be patient and never without hope, in the greatest of all tribulations.
After leaving her father's house, she saw her brother repeatedly, but all her efforts to influence him were ineffectual. He did not listen seriously to her entreaties; he did not oppose her arguments with reason; but answered her only with bantering and ridicule; fruits of the lightest, the most hopeless soil.
----------
We resume our story at a period rather more than three years subsequent to Matty's separation from her father. He still occupied the comfortable house in Elm street, in which she had left him; but how changed was its interior! The simplicity, neatness, and precision that, under her regime, had seemed the type of her well-ordered mind, had given place to slatternliness, disorder, and finery. A crazy auction pier-table, with tarnished gilding, occupied the place of the spotless waxed mahogany table with falling leaves, a Fairtown friend. The old family Bible had disappeared, and in its stead was a vase of French flowers, with a cracked shade. The new Mrs. Gore had substituted for the honest, old windsor conveniences which she condemned as “too Presbyterian,” defaced and rickety mahogany chairs, that looked as if they had mouldered at a pawnbroker’s. Over the mantel-piece had hung,
[p. 69]
time out of mind, (for it was an heirloom from Matty's maternal ancestors,) the picture of a tree bearing symbolical fruit, each apple labelled with the name of one of the Christian graces. Its perpetual verdure was preserved by an angel who was watering it, while the evil one stood in the background menacing it with a scythe. This picture, which Matty looked upon with almost a Catholic’s love, had been much derided by Gore's new friends; and with a reluctance that he was half ashamed of, he had consented to the substitution of a tarnished chimney mirror.
But John Gore stood at bay, at the next proposed alteration. His fine young lady bought a tawdry French clock, which she insisted would serve for use and ornament too; instead of a faithful old family time-piece.
“The old clock,” urged Gore, “is as true as the sun.”
“That, my dear love, is of no consequence; we have town-clocks all about us that are regulated by the sun. At Fairtown this horrid old thing might have been useful; but in the city, you know, a clock is chiefly for looks.”
“Like every thing else!” muttered John. “They build their houses for looks, and they tumble down over their heads. They buy their furniture for looks; and it warps and snaps, and is good for nothing. They take their wives for looks, and they”-----
[p. 70]
“My dear, darling husband!”
John Gore suppressed the bitter words that were on his lips, but the tender deprecation of his wife had not the accustomed effect. Either his vanity had lost something of its susceptibility, or his lady (we cannot profane the name of wife) had worn out her poor arts of cajoling. He stood for some moments before the fire, silent, with his hands behind him, as was his wont, when a tempest was gathering; and then burst forth, calling his wife by her unchanged name, as he always did when displeased with her. “I warn you, Angeliky Foot”-----
“My dear Mr. Gore, pray say Angelica!”
He merely raised his voice a tone higher, as he resumed. “I warn you, Angeliky Foot, not to sell that clock; it's the only thing nowadays that keeps me peaceable; it was my father's; it marked the prayer-time, and the meal-time, and the play-time; when all I knew was to do my duty. It struck the hour for my marriage; it told the hour of my children's birth. In my Fairtown home, it was true to us, and we were true to that. When my wife died it sounded like a tolling bell. Well it might! well it might! Once, again, it tolled! when Matty passed that threshold! and well it might then too! And now, when all is ajar, and out of time, that still is true. Its old face, as it were, speaks to me; and there are times when its look of quiet, gone-by days, is all that keeps my temper from rising over
[p. 71]
bounds. So I warn you, Angeliky Foot, not to say another word of parting with it.”
Angelica Foot did not at that time; but at prudent intervals and fortunate moments she resumed the topic, and John Gore at last yielded, as many yield, to whom “carrying the day,” seems not worth the trouble of continued resistance. He yielded however only to a compromise. The old clock was removed up stairs, and out of sight, and the “bargain,” of what John descriptively designated as “a bit of French trumpery,” bought.
Not long after this change was made, John came home one day at his usual time. He was as punctual as the old clock, and had been so rigid in the enforcement of this observance upon Miss Angelica Foot, that she, aware of the importance of keeping on his blind side, had taken care that a domestic should supply her short-comings, and have Gore's meals ready for him, when she, on the pretext of a headache, was lying in bed, or strolling in Broadway, or sitting with a sick friend. On such occasions an alibi might have been proved, by such as saw her taking a drive, far out of town, with Harry Gore!
But, on the morning to which we allude, John came home and found his little parlour looking much like a slattern, when the morning light has dawned upon her coarse and dirty finery. Every thing was out of place. The lamps of the preceding night were still dimly burn-
[p. 72]
ing. His eye involuntarily turned towards the clock, to see if he had not mistaken the hour of the day. The pointers as usual were motionless. He muttered a malediction, and proceeded through the unswept entry, down stairs to the little basement room, where he was accustomed to find his meridian meal. There were no signs of it. He went to the kitchen. There was no apparent preparation for dinner. Gore heard voices above, from one of the chambers; he followed the sound and burst most unexpectedly upon his wife, Harry, and two female friends of hers, who had forgotten him and every thing else, in the excitement of preparing for a masquerade ball. In the most innocent circumstances, it is rather provoking to find those whose duty it is to minister to our necessities, occupied with their own pleasures. The masks, ribands, flowers, and finery of all sorts, with which the room was cluttered, operated on Gore's temper as the colour of scarlet does on some enraged animals. His fury broke forth in the most unmeasured expressions. The lady-friends escaped. “What do you here, at this time of day, sir!” he asked, turning fiercely to his son.
“What do I!” he answered, with affected calmness; “why, you know, sir, it's the hour when all regular labourers go home to their meals.”
“Regular! I wonder when you have done an hour's work, regular or irregular. I tell you, sir, what I have told you before; that I'll not have you loitering here
[p. 73]
with Angeliky Foot, when I am out of the house. ‘Children, obey your parents,’ is a law that I'll uphold while I have breath.”
“Ah, father!” replied Harry, uttering a biting truth, in a manner still gay and careless. “Ah, father, quoting Scripture! You can't expect, sir, your son will wear the yoke you have broken, and trampled under foot.” Anxious to be off, before a return blow could be given, he hurried on his surtout while speaking, and in his haste accidentally dropped from it an unsealed letter. The address to himself, caught John Gore's eye. “From Matty!” he exclaimed; “why did you not give me this?”
“I forgot it; it can't be of any consequence; only one of Matty's preachments, I guess.” Harry told the truth; he had forgotten it. The poor young man had rejected the high motives to virtue, and its sanctions; and in his present downward course of life, his affections were perishing for lack of nourishment.
The sight of a letter from Matty in the midst of all this discomfort and discord, went to John Gore's heart. He put on his spectacles to read it, but they were soon blurred, and he was obliged to take them off again, and again, to clear them before he could proceed. We must premise that Matty, scrupulous in the performance of her duties, had written to her father at regular intervals since their separation, without receiving or hoping for a return.
[p. 74]
"Fairmount, Michigan,20th June, 183-
“My Ever Dear Father.—I think so much of you that I must believe you have not quite forgotten me. O! what a good gift is memory! (“to the good it may be,” thought Gore;) how it peoples the wilderness with dear recollected forms! how it brings to life again the long past pleasures of childhood! the time that was, before any trouble or change had come! How it carries me back to those pleasant Saturday evenings, when every thing, having been done decently and in order, for in every thing mother went after Scripture rule, (Gore looked round on the litter of gauzes and tinsel, and heaved a deep sigh,) Harry and I sat down on our little benches beside her, and learned our Bible lesson for Sunday. They were always got before the clock struck eight; the dear old clock that told the coming on of happy mornings, and peaceful nights. I wonder if it keeps good time yet?
“But, dear father, I sat down, not to write of the past, but to tell you of our present condition; which, thanks to the Giver of all good, has much improved since my last. The failure of crops the first season was a disappointment, and the loss of stock occasioned by low and insufficient feed fell heavy upon us; but we did not murmur. I have one sorrow at heart, that always makes worldly troubles seem light; (“Matty's religion is no sham,” thought Gore;) and Russel says he has received too much good at the hand of the Lord, to mur-
[p.75]
mur at a little evil. Last year we should have done finely, but for Russel's long sickness; but that is past now, and we trust it has done a good work for us, in making us more fully realize the worth of that hope which sustained us, when the world seemed vanishing from us. Now every thing prospers around us. I can almost see the wheat and corn grow; for in this rich soil it does not take the whole summer, as it does at the east, to come to perfection. It seems as if the Al- mighty had made gardens in this wilderness; and, dear father, I often think that if you and Harry could stand in the door of our little loghouse here at Fairmount, and look over the prairie; all that part of it which is still untouched by the hand of man, that the sight of it would draw you near to Him who created it. Those who live in cities, where nothing but man's hand is seen, may forget God, especially if there be temptation about them, to lure the eye and enchant the ear; as in poor Harry's case; but here, father, with this vastness around us; this stillness—with nothing for the eye to see but the beautiful earth God has created, and the Heavens that declare his glory, His presence is felt, and the heart goes out to Him, as naturally as a little child to its parent. O! that you and Harry were here! My little Sybil is now twenty months old. I hardly ever speak her name without thinking of you, for you were the only person I ever heard call mother by that
[p. 76]
name; and I am sure, father, I seldom think of you without a prayer in my heart to God for your best good. (“Religion does make children faithful!” thought Gore.) Sybil already speaks quite plain; and in her morning and evening duty she is taught always to remember you, father! I have a little brother for her, just six months old. I should have given him your name, if I had thought it would be pleasing to you, to have your name joined with his father's. Please tell my brother, with my love, that I call him Harry. (An involuntary prayer escaped from John's lips, “The Lord make him another kind of a man!”) O, father! what a different feeling I have had for my parents since my children were born! Short-sighted creatures are we indeed, that we must stand just in the places of others, before we can see and feel as they do! Such are now my feelings, that I think, nay, I am sure, I would give up my life freely to have you brought to the faith and love of the gospel; and what is life to that eternal happiness which awaits the humblest followers of Jesus?
“But, dear father! I would not weary you. Pray do not get so tired of my letters that you will not read them; and pray let me beg you, once more, if any great good or great sorrow comes upon you, to let some word of it be sent to your ever affectionate and dutiful daughter, MATTY.”
[p. 77]
“Good! good! will any good ever come to me?” thought Gore, in the bitterness of his heart; and then a prayer—an aspiration should we not rather call it—rose from the depths of his soul. “O ! my child, my child! would that I were altogether such as you are!” This was the first gleam of light.
Time went on; and Gore's out-of-door life presented its accustomed aspect. His habits of industry were now almost his sole comfort. He was a skilled artisan, and in the busy and flourishing city of New York, his art found ample employment and large reward. His earnings were consumed by his idle son and exacting lady. Gore was generous in his nature, and parted with his money without a regret; but frugal in his own habits, and rational in his views of the uses of money, it irritated him to see it wasted, and worse than wasted. He became reserved in his supplies, and finally, a terrible suspicion having taken possession of his mind, he drove his son from his house, and reminded Angelica Foot that she was but a tenant at will; and that the light bond that united them could be broken at his pleasure. “At my pleasure, too,” thought Angelica. A few evenings after, Gore was on some business in a distant part of the city; he met two persons, veiled and muffled, who struck him, as he passed them, as resembling Harry and Angelica Foot. He stood still to observe them: then followed them a few steps; and then, cursing his own folly, and resolving that if he returned
[p. 78]
and found her gone, he would bar his doors forever against her; he resumed his homeward way. She was not in his house. “She will return to me, to-morrow,” he said, “as she has done before, and tell me she has been watching with her sick cousin; but I know now, what I then suspected! This surely is from the hand of God; it is fitting I should be punished by the child I led astray.”
It was a proof that Gore's conscience was awakened, that he turned from upbraiding others to a crushing consciousness of his own sins. Tears gushed from his eyes; his limbs seemed sinking under him; and he leaned against the mantel-piece for support, when a letter sealed with black, in Matty's hand, caught his eye. A longer interval than usual had passed since he had heard from her. He seized it eagerly.
It was of a date two years later than the one we have already transcribed. It had been written at intervals, “in affliction and anguish of heart; and,” as the blistered paper witnessed, “with many tears.” It began,
“MY EVER DEAR FATHER.—My last letter to you was written as soon as I could hold a pen, after the birth of my second son, my little Russel. Since then I have not written to you, because I have many misgivings that you have more than trouble enough of your own; and 1 know further, by what I feel, that there is that in a parent's heart which cannot be torn out of it; and that
[p. 79]
however contrary appearances may be, my sorrows would weigh upon you; though my sorrows are, I fear, far lighter than your own.” (“God knows they are, whatever they may be,” murmured Gore.) “After Russel's birth I fell into a low fever, which is apt to set in on such occasions, and after I got a little better of that, the doctor said I was threatened with a decline; and recommended a journey; and my dear husband, who has always set my health and comfort before every earthly possession, got a trusty woman to take care of our children, and took me down to Buffalo, by the lake, to return by land. The journey was greatly blessed to me, and every thing went as we desired, till, on our way home, we were overtaken by heavy rains, and delayed two weeks. A fatal delay for us. When we arrived at home, we found that the woman left in charge of our children, not being able to overstay the time she had engaged for, had gone and left our little family in the care of a young girl. In consequence of her ignorance and neglect, poor little Harry had taken cold, and was dreadfully ill with an inflammatory rheumatism, and my poor baby seemed pining away. It had pleased God to restore my strength, and I entered upon the care of my children with resolution and hope.
“The low lands were overflowed by the freshet, and the crops much injured. They required my husband's immediate care. He overworked himself, and his fatigue and the stagnant water in the coves brought on a
[p. 80]
terrible fever. Six weeks have passed since he took to his bed. The fever is broken; but, O! my dear father, he seems sinking away, and I look for the worst; humbly trusting that God will enable me to bear what he sees fit to lay on me.”
-----
“Ten days have passed, my dear father; God has been merciful to little Harry. He is on his feet again, though still pale and feeble. My dear husband is no better. O ! my heart and strength fail me, when I think of what is coming. When Russel sees me drooping, he says, with a sweet smile, ‘stay your heart on God, Matty;’ and I do. O, father! how can those bear life whose hearts are not so stayed?
“My baby revived after we got home, and seemed to be thriving again; and was a great comfort to his father. When the little creature was sleeping, his father would have the cradle beside his bed. It seemed as if there was something in the sight of such sweet innocence, composing to the spirit. Last week the little fellow had a bad turn again, and two days ago, when he was evidently dying, my husband would have me sit with him, by his bedside. Together we watched his last breathings. O! my dear father, I thought then—I think now —that if you had lost one of us in infancy, you would never have doubted there was another world. The smile of my boy as his closing eye met mine for the last time, might convert a soul to faith in Jesus; for it
[p. 81]
was a speaking confirmation of His words, ‘of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ In that sweet smile there was love that cannot die; light beaming from immortality. We buried him the next day. The doctor was the only friend with us. He dug the grave under an oak tree, a few yards from our bed-room window. My husband selected the spot. He can see it, when he is raised on his bed. It is a trial, father, to a mother, to lay her child out of her arms into the cold earth; but there is in it no bitterness—no fear—no doubt. Believe me, dear father, for while I say it—I am sorely pressed upon —any thing may be borne, but sin and separation from God.”
(The letter dropped from Gore's hands; “That cannot!” he exclaimed; and in the anguish of his heart he cried aloud.)
-----
“Ten days have passed since my baby's death. My husband is sinking fast. The doctor told us yesterday, that our separation might take place at any moment. When he went out, Russel said, ‘This is much hardest for you, Matty. Rest on God's promises. He has never been known to forsake the widow and fatherless that put their trust in Him; we cannot be separated long; we know that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. I asked him if he had any directions to give about the children. ‘None,’ he said, ‘none; you will bring them
[p. 82]
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I have no anxieties for them, Matty; I have for you; but I am trying to cast off this care.’ He has given me his advice as to all earthly matters; he seems to have forgot nothing.”
-----
“It is over. He died at sunrise this morning; he sat up, supported by the doctor; his last look was on that little green mound under the oak tree, and then at me. I had been alone with him all night. Never, father, did I witness such faith; such peace; such joy; and, I may add, such thought for others. Surely he had drank deep of his Saviour's spirit. Before the children were put to sleep last night, he would have them come and kneel down at the bedside, while he prayed with us for the last time. Father, he remembered you and Harry! 0! how he prayed that you might be brought to believe in Jesus; ‘the resurrection and the life.’ Father, you will! you will! I am too weak to write more, his words are all written on my heart.
‘We buried him yesterday. Kind friends came to help us. There was no clergyman; but we had prayers and hymns, and a fitting service; and we laid him there beside the baby, where they will rest together, till this mortal puts on immortality. O! father, what a frightful, fathomless abyss, must the grave be to an unbeliever!”
[p. 83]
“Ten days have passed; my strength is a little recruited. Every thing has been done as my husband wished. You know many things have gone against us in a worldly way, since we have been here. I have sold all the personal property except the bed, and a little silver, and other valuables bought with the hundred dollars you gave me, and paid our debt to the doctor, and all other debts. I have fifty dollars over, for my journey to Fairtown. My husband wished me to return there, as I can do nothing here. The land may be something for the children hereafter. I begin my journey to-morrow. The lateness of the season makes it imprudent to delay. I intend taking the steamboat at Detroit. Farewell, dear father, may God have mercy on us all!”
“Amen !—amen!” cried Gore, clasping his hands, while tears poured like rain down his cheeks. It was a sleepless but a blessed night to him. Silence and solitude are powerful enforcements of conscience. Gore had never felt the influence of religion. In his youth he lived more even than most young persons, in the outward world. He judged of causes by their effects. He compared Matty's course to his own, and to Harry's. In the midst of disappointments and grievous afflictions, she dwelt in the light of another world; she was borne up by an immortal principle; the fire did not consume her, nor the floods overwhelm her. What was
[p. 84]
Harry's condition; what his own, at this moment! Like Mackenzie's philosopher, Gore wished he had never doubted; but, unlike him, he doubted no longer. For the first time since he had come to man's estate, he, that night, bent his knees to his Creator!
The next morning, before going out to his affairs; he dismissed Angelica's servant, and determined to lock his door, to prevent that bad woman access to his house. He had received the night before two thousand dollars, in payment of a debt, too late to deposit it in the bank; his first errand out was to go there with it. On opening the desk where he had put the money, he found that it was gone. The desk had been opened by a false key. The loss of the money was no insignificant matter to Gore, but every other feeling was swallowed up in the horror of the belief that Harry was a participator in the robbery. He resolved at once, to keep it secret; he told it only to one friend. A secret should have but one keeper.
We return to Matty, who was driven, with her two children, in a wagon to Detroit. She passed the night there, before embarking in the steamboat, and was compelled to sleep in a room filled with emigrants; the women of half a dozen families, Scotch, Irish, and German. When she went to bed, she put her pocket, containing her pocket-book, with her little store of bank notes, under her pillow. Worn out with fatigue, and the watchful nights of many weeks, she slept soundly.
[p. 85]
In the morning the pocket-book was gone! Matty, unconscious of her loss, paid her bill from a purse in the pocket of her dress where she had a small sum for present use. Her box, containing her bed, &c, had been left on the wharf with the steamboat baggage; and Matty, knowing little of the ill chances of a traveller, had no further anxiety but to get herself and her children on board. As soon as they had put off, and her weak head, which had reeled with the confusion of the embarkation, had recovered a degree of steadiness, she went to look after her baggage. A trunk, containing her own and her children's apparel was forthcoming, but the box was left behind.
“This is a heavy loss to you, ma'am,” said a good-natured man, who had assisted her search. “Yes,” said Matty, with a melancholy smile which the man seemed truly to interpret; for he added; “but, Lord bless me, ma'am, I think you have met with greater.”
“I guess she has,” said little Sybil; “for she has lost father and the baby, and we are all alone!”
“Well, well!” said the man, brushing away a tear; “the greater burden makes the lesser one feel light— that's a comfort, anyhow.”
Poor Matty was destined to farther experience of the truth of her comforter's philosophy. It was not long before the crier called out to the passengers from Detroit, to “come to the Captain's office, and pay their passages!” Matty waited till the press was over, and
[p. 86]
then went forward. The captain told her the amount, and, taking her little boy in his arms, was addressing a kind word to him, when he perceived the mother turn suddenly very pale.
“My pocket-book is gone,” she said; “I have not a dollar left! What is to become of us?” Her sense of their utter destitution overcame her, and she covered her face with her hands, and sank down on a bench. The children crept into her lap, and put their arms around her. Sybil whispered, “Why, mother! Mother, you always say God will take care of us? Won’t he now, mother?”
The captain fixed his eye steadfastly on the poor mother. He was accustomed to every mode of imposition and evasion, but this was truth; he felt assured, and it went to his heart, as warm and generous as any man’s; and, despite his hackneyed life, untouched by cupidity, and incapable of selfish suspicion. His attention was for a moment called off by some applicants at the office; and when it again reverted to Matty, she had wiped away her tears, and said calmly, “You must excuse me, sir; I have been through great fatigue and trouble lately;” her voice faltered, and little Sybil interposed. “She means father and baby are dead, sir.” “I see plainly,” resumed Matty, “there is but one thing to be done; I must be set on shore at the first landing place.”
“Where were you bound, ma’am?” asked the cap-
[p. 87]
tain in a voice that indicated sympathy and respect. Matty told him. He inquired, “if she expected to find friends there.”
“It is my native place, sir,” she replied; loath to enter into further particulars.
“Then,” said the captain, “we must get you there as fast as steamers and canal-boats can take you. You are in no state to be put ashore, my friend, and left to shift for yourself.” He called to the chambermaid. “Give this lady No. 15,” he said, “and a settee, and see that she has every attention and comfort.” Then taking Sybil in his arms, and kissing her, he said; “God does take care of good little children, my dear.”
“And so do good men, too!” replied the child, returning his caress. The mother smiled through her tears. It was a smile full of sweetness, peace, and gratitude. She could not speak. The captain understood her. He replaced Sybil in her arms, and turned away. Matty retired to her berth; and there her full heart found utterance without the aid of voice.
Subsequently it occurred to her, that the contents of her box, if recovered, might afford a compensation to the captain, and she told him so. “There is not much of value in the box,” she said, “excepting a bed, but it is a very good one.”
“I do not doubt it,” he replied; “or that I shall recover it; but I shall sleep all the better on my own bed, for thinking you have got yours in safety. Say no
[p. 88]
more about it, Mrs. Milnor; it is not every trip, up or down the lake, I have a chance of doing a good turn to a person I respect so much as I do you.”
When they arrived at Buffalo, the captain himself attended her to the canal-boat, and got an assurance from its commander that Mrs. Milnor should be forwarded free of expense to Albany; and then giving her a basket, well packed with an ample store of good provisions, he took a kind leave. Subsequently the box, directed and forwarded by the captain, came safely into Matty's possession.
These particulars of the captain's humanity, we should fear, might prove tiresome if they were fictitious; but being true to the letter, we would do our part towards cherishing their memory, as one of the moral treasures of our race.
It was not from this benevolent captain alone that Matty experienced kindness. Wherever she needed it, it was extended to her. She arrived safely at Schenectady. Being much exhausted, she asked leave to remain for an hour in the canal-packet, after the passengers had left it. New arrangements were now to be made. She was to change her mode of travelling, and she dreaded going among the throng, and begging a passage in a rail-road car.
Her delicacy shrunk from this prolonged dependence, and she was half inclined to stop where she was, and seek employment. But her strength was inadequate to
[p. 89]
labour, “and surely,” she thought; “experience should teach me faith in my fellow-beings, and trust in Him who hath helped me thus far!” She resolved to proceed; when a person, who, like her, was lingering in the packet, asked her if she would like to look at a “New York paper?”
“Thank you—no!” said Matty; who had no very keen appetite for newspapers.
“But there is something quite awful and interesting there,” pursued the person, pointing to a heading,
“Farther Disclosures.”
Matty took it languidly; but so she did not read, what follows. “A second examination took place yesterday, of Angelica, alias Nancy Foot. She declared that she had not had any special altercation with Gore on the fatal night; nor since the previous morning, when the robbery first got wind. He had shared the money with her, believing it was, as she assured him, her savings from various largesses. It seems that the unfortunate youth, though deeply depraved, was struck with horror at the imputation of having robbed his own father. He said to Nancy, when he heard the police were in search of him, ‘It was well there was no hell hereafter; there was enough of it here!’ It seems more than probable, that his disbelief in a final retribution, concurring with his present degradation and alarm, impelled him to the horrible act of suicide.”
Matty read no farther; the paper dropped from her
[p. 90]
hands; she fainted and fell on the floor! The person who gave her the paper had left the cabin. “O! mother has died too!” screamed Sybil, and the little boy cried piteously. At this moment an old man entered the cabin door, and when Matty opened her eyes she found herself in her father's arms.
----------
John Gore has returned to his old home in Fairtown. The waxed table, the old clock, and the Bible are in their accustomed places. But the Bible no longer seems to Gore a mere piece of furniture. He reads it daily, and with the earnest and humble mind befitting him who knows he reads the oracles of the living God. He has but one sorrow, yet that admits no cure; and he never speaks of it. He lives in close friendship with the Milnors, “not having yet forgiven them,” he says, with a smile; “but having been forgiven by them!”
Matty now only shows she has suffered by her ready and deep sympathy with all who suffer. Her losses on earth are her treasures in heaven. She is the solace of her old father; the guide and delight of her loving and good children; the example of all worth in her humble neighbourhood; and though “poor, she maketh many rich.”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Matty Gore
Subject
The topic of the resource
Christian faith and the misfortunes that result from neglect of religion.
Description
An account of the resource
A young woman's Christian faith sustains her through life's trials, while her father's and brother's lack of faith and duty lead to unhappiness and tragedy.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [Miss C. E. Sedgwick]
Source
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The Religious Souvenir, edited by Lydia Howard Sigourney, pp. 50-90.
Publisher
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New York: Scofield & Voorhies
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1840 [pub. 1839]
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
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Annual reissued as The Religious Souvenir. Hartford, Conn.: S. Andrus and Son, 1846.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
"Despondency Corrected"
1839
1840
bible
brothers
Buffalo
conversion
correspondence
daughters
Death
duty
Faith
farming
fathers
filial obedience
forgiveness
Frances Wright
frontier
God
housekeeping
illness
independence
lectures
letters
living in sin
Lydia Howard Sigourney
marriage
New York City
newspapers
parenthood
railroad
religion
robbery
suicide
The Religious Souvenir
William Wordsworth
women's rights
-
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47eac4d2e188a6c2c969113dc31829e9
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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THE BEAUTY OF SONINBERG. (A LETTER from WIESBADEN.)
_____
By Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, Author of ‘Hope Leslie,’ &c.
_____
MY DEAR J ----: You have often laughed at me for my ‘knack,' as you call it, of picking up stories by the way-side. Certainly my sympathies are not more diffusive than yours, but I am a more patient listener. You have but to listen to get those little personal revelations every one is ready to make, if you but touch the electric chord aright that binds you to your humble fellow-beings.
In going from Brussels to Waterloo a few weeks since, I took a seat on the box beside the coachman—a frank true-hearted looking youth—for the advantage of gaining answers to the questions that are constantly occurring to the traveller in a scene so full of novelty as is every part of the Old World to an American eye. Before he set us down again in Brussels, he had told me a history of personal hopes, projects and disappointments, that with a little skilful spinning would have furnished warp and wool for an octavo volume, with an appendix of ancestral anecdotes that he had better have effaced from the family archives. This will be a pretty good proof to you that I have not foregone my habits in crossing the ocean, but here at Wiesbaden I am cut off from their indulgence by my ignorance of the language. That does not, however, quite isolate me, for by a lavish use of half a dozen words that are common to the English and German, and by gracious tones and a decent kindness in return for the devotedness of the ‘Mädchen’ who attends us, I am so far in favor that I am sure she would confide to me her ‘petite belle histoire’ if she has any. ‘If!’ shame on that hypothetical ‘if!’ No one could hear the gentle tone of my good friend Cristine's voice, or see how easily the unbidden tear comes to her eye,* (her only eye, for in common with a large portion of her country-people she sees but with one,) without being sure that Cristine, though now in the depths of shady forty, might tell as ‘ower true tale’ of her losses. However, the period for the egotism of love is long past, and Cristine, instead of damming up her feelings to fret and wear inwardly, permits them to flow out in all kindly sympathies.
I just saw her in a position to illustrate this gracious disposition. She was standing on the platform of the well before the Duke of Nassau's new palace. She had filled her tub with water, and with the aid of a friend (these people by a sort of general social compact always interchange this kind office) had placed it on her head. My attention was arrested by seeing Cristine, who is no dawdler—no loiterer—stopping to listen to this friend, and as I came near enough to see her friend's face, I thought I too would have stood with the tub of water on my head, or up to my throat in the fountain, if necessary, to listen to the earnest speech of this peasant girl who had one of the sweetest faces I ever saw—and her whole heart was in it. I think she cannot be more than nineteen, but I will ask Cristine, and perhaps she will tell me some particulars of the girl's history, for Cristine, like all sympathizers, likes to tell as well as to hear. If I were a painter, I would paint them just as I saw them, the well and all. The girl in the peasant's dress, the dark blue woollen full petticoat fluted from top to bottom as neatly as a French frill, the close boddice, and the snow-white chemise sleeves. Her hair was (as is every creature’s of woman-kind’ in Germany) long,
[p. 235]
thick, and neatly combed and braided. But that of this gifted girl is longer and thicker than I have often seen, and of a rich full brown, darker than the national hue. She had, in common with other peasant-girls, a black silk cap covering just the back of the head, made of ribbon and with half a dozen streamers, or rather ends, for they only hang over the back of the neck. Cristine's friend's cap had a trifle of embroidery, and was garnished with beads; indeed I remarked in her whole dress an attention to becomingness that indicated a village beauty—a dressing for the world's eye, or, I should rather think, from a certain symptomatic ‘careless desolation’ in her manner, that the eye, for which she employed the limited art of the toilette, was all the world to her. She stood with her hand on Cristine's shoulder. I hardly knew which countenance I liked the best. The peasant-girl was evidently absorbed in some precious interest of her own at stake, while Cristine's honest kindly face expressed that entire unconsciousness of self and sympathy with another, that I fancy must characterize an angel's. I stood rivetted, gazing at them till Cristine caught my eye; and as I, unluckily, reminded her of the waiting mistress and home, and her diverse forgotten household duties, she murmured over and over again “Ja—ja—ja—wohl”, (“Yes—yes—yes—sure) and hastened homeward; and her friend too left the well.
This stone-well is to me the most interesting of the locales of this pretty town of Wiesbaden; an aqueduct brings to it from the Taunus Hills (a distance of a league and a half) an abundant supply of pure, soft and wholesome water. There is a stone column in the centre, surmounted by a lion grasping the arms of Nassau. The water rises within this column, and pours through ever-flowing pipes into a large reservoir. This is surrounded by a rudely carved curb, and a platform. Standing on this platform and leaning against the curb, you may see the maidens of Wiesbaden at all hours of the day, gossipping while their tubs are filling. Innocent gossip it is I am sure, from their sweet, low-toned voices and perennial good humor. Why is it, dear J--, that a well is linked with our poetic associations? Is it because it recalls home, and the thought of home unseals the fountain of poetry in the soul? Or is it because a well is a common feature in these Oriental stories that first awakened the poetic powers of our imaginations? The scene of the first love- story we probably ever read, the sacred story of Isaac and Rebecca's courtship, is, you know, at a well. Whether the well owes its immaterial beauty to all these sources I cannot say, but I never see one—whether it be like our own most rustic structures, composed of a single curb-pole and old oaken bucket, or like that which we went to see among the Carisbrook lions, or like that beautiful one of stone I saw the other day (still in perfection) among the ruins of Marksburg, or like this of Nassau–with- out seeing for the moment much more than the eye can see, and hearing more than the ear can hear. I listened for an instant, and then quickened my steps after Cristine.
By the way, I wonder no one has ever thought to drill young ladies into a graceful gait, by making them walk with burdens on their heads. I do not see but the German ladies go shooling and shambling along much in the fashion of other ladies, while the peasant-girls with large market-baskets piled with vegetables, or tubs of water containing three or four pails full, walk with a true, light step, and a quiet grace that a fine lady might envy, but could scarcely equal. I overtook Cristine, before she reached our door steps. I communicated my desire to know her friend's story, and she was willing enough gratify it, but I could comprehend but one word—and that word one which every woman would understand as, Falstaff knew the heir apparent, ‘by instinct’—“Liebehaber”—“Ah! a lover in the case, Cristine. Then I understand why the spoke so eagerly and you listened so patiently. # # #
I have just returned from a walk to the Weeping Oak. Its name indicates its peculiarity. It stands a little off the high road to Schwalbach, in advance of a wood of dwarf pines, and seems a fit type of the monarch of a fallen dynasty. The bark and boughs have the characteristic ruggedness and nodosity of the oak; and there is something touching in the drooping of the magnificent old limbs. It affects you like seeing an old man in sorrow and tears, and if you were ever inclined to believe the fanciful theory that gives to every tree a spirit, I am sure the old oak would persuade you to this faith.
I set off alone, and passing the Koch-brunnen, where these boiling waters are forever steaming up from their great cauldron, I turned into the Acacia walk, and out of it as soon as I could; for there is something in this long formal walk between pretensionary little trees, that are so trimmed as to look like barber's poles with a bushy wig on top, that is particularly disagreeable to me. At the foot of the Geisberg is a station for asses. Here these miserable animals, whose sad destiny in this world, it seems to me, must have some unforeseen compensation, stand all day awaiting the pleasure of the Wiesbaden visiters. I wish I could sketch them for you, with their grotesque calico housings, and their attendants, men and boys, in their dark blue blouses, lounging round them. Even these ass-drivers, the lowest class of hacks, importunate by profession, here partake the national good manners, and never importune you. If a look expresses a wish for them, they spring to your service, but they do not beset you with offers. So, thinking me probably no wiser than I should be for walking when I might ride, they let me pass, unmolested, up the Geisberg ascent.
The name of Wiesbaden—meadow-baths—describes its position. It is a little interval in the lap of the hills, and the Geisberg is one of the prettiest of the elevations that surround it. In our country, where, if we would have a rural walk, we must scramble over fences, and think ourselves fortunate if we can find a foot-path skirting a ploughed field, we can have no idea of the facilities an old country furnishes for this blessed recreation. Here there are no enclosures, no fences or hedges, and however devious your taste may be, you are sure of finding a path to wander whither you will.
I turned from the high road and wound round a plantation attached to an agricultural school. Orchards were on the slopes below me, and bits of rich green in the valley, while on the opposite hills the many colored crops were spread out much like pattern silks in the shop window. From the town rose up the vapor that is always steaming up from the boiling springs; and as I mounted higher, my eyes caught the spires of Mayence, and the gleaming Rhine, and away went my thoughts with it to the sea, and over the sea, and I had forgotten Wiesbaden and all that belong to it, till I found myself again on the high road, and not alone there. A sturdy young man passed me with the pack on his back which denotes the pedestrian traveler. He seemed wholly occupied with his own emotions, and though after passing me he often turned, stopped and looked back, he was evidently unconscious of my presence. His eyes saw only what his heart was full of, and, as he frequently passed his hand over his eyes as if to clear his vision, I came to the natural conclusion that he was leaving his home—that seeming to me, just now, the saddest circumstance of life. The traveller was attended by a little terrier dog, who seemed to me not quite to have made up his mind whether he would attend his master or not, for every now and then he turned and retraced his steps toward Wiesbaden, with his nose to the ground and his tail down, stopping and looking first toward the traveller and then toward his home, as if he were not sure which was the right way to pursue, having a divided love, or a divided duty, which is as bad. I pitied him. Presently he sprang up on a hillock by the read-side, cocked up his ears, then wagged his tail, vehemently, barked and darted into the wood. The traveller stopped, looked after him and shook his head, as much as to say–Well! you have made up your mind at last, poor fellow!". But presently he appeared again, issuing from a foot-way which, cutting through the pine wood on our left, entered the high road between me and the traveller. The dog was followed by the peasant girl I had seen at the well. An exclamation of surprise burst from the young man. I was too far off to hear what they said, and if I had heard I could not have understood. But their action was in a universal language. I saw she had followed for a last farewell, and that farewell seemed impossible. They walked on together, her hand upon his shoulder and his arm around her waist. The poor little dog seemed frantic with joy. He had now everything he desired in life. He ran first on one side, then on the other, barking, wagging his tail, jumping first on to his master then on to his mistress, till, neither noticing him, he ran along side looking wistfully in their faces as if saying, “Now you are together, what in the world can you be sorry for?” At that moment, I doubt not, they could have envied the dog's nature and thought it a happiness to look neither before nor behind them.
I followed slowly after them till they reached the oak—the weeping oak I mentioned to you. There they stopped, and as they stood leaning against the old trunk, and in the deep shadow of its drooping branches, I thought how much stronger, firmer, more resisting is the true love of two pure hearts than even this old tree that has stood here for centuries. That will perish at last; true love never. It was a broad stretch of imagination to suppose the love of these young people of this
[p. 236]
high nature, but never mind; I honestly give you my thoughts as they came, and if you had seen these humble lovers, you would not have wondered that they embodied my abstraction of true love.
I saw this was to be the parting place. I was near enough to hear the girl's sobs, and I turned away, ashamed to be an unpermitted though an unseen spectator. I walked very slowly, and for five minutes, (it seemed to me half an hour,) I did not look again. When I did look the lover was gone, and the girl was sitting on the little embankment formed by a trench that has been dug round the oak. Her face was buried in her lap, and one arm was round the little dog, whose paws were on her knees and his head lying disconsolately against her.
I came straight home, unconscious by what way, and the moment I reached my own room, I rang the bell for Cristine, and keeping K---- by me for an interpreter, I told what I had just seen.
“Poor Grettel; poor Grettel!” she ejaculated as I proceeded; “God help her!” and when I finished she wiped away the shower of tears that had poured over her face, and smiling, said, “Never mind, Grettel has done right, and das ist besser!” ‘That is better,’ is a favorite phrase of Cristine's, and she always employs it when she wishes to express to me her entire satisfaction.
I will not set down all the particulars of my rather circumlutory conversation with Cristine, since I can very briefly tell the few circumstances explanatory of the love-scene I witnessed. It seems that Grettel lives at Soninberg, a most picturesque old village about two miles from here, close nestled under the ruins of the old castle of that name. She is the only child of her mother, a poor blind old woman, a widow who has no support comfort or solace under Heaven but Grettel.—Grettel is the Beauty of Soninberg, but as Cristine assured me, so discreet is her conduct that the old people say it is just as well her mother should be blind, for Grettel wants no eye to watch her. And she bears her honors so meekly that the prettiest girls of Soninberg are content Grettel should be first.
“But what will Grettel care for that,” said Cristine, “now Johanne is gone'.”
This Johanne, it seems, is a worthy youth who has served his apprenticeship with Leising, (our host,) a master builder here. He is a steady youth and a good workman, and having completed his term of service, including the itinerary year which is a part of every German artisan's education*[*] he was just about to set up for himself, when an unexpected course of duty and worldly advantage opened upon him, and overset all his castles in the air, beside the happy humble home which he fancied he had founded upon a rock, when Grettel promised to be its mistress.
Johanne, it seems has an uncle who went many years ago to America, and who is now a wealthy man in New-York.—He has written to Johanne that if he will come to America with his three young and orphan brothers, he will pay their passage, and take charge of their education and establishment there. For himself, Johanne said, he would not have given the offer a second thought—but the little boys! he stood in the place of a father to them, and he had no right to refuse.
“Oh! why,” he asked, “should their uncle, who had forgotten them so many years, just now remember them?”—The ‘why’ is easily told. He had lost his only son, and was too far advanced in life to hope to repair the loss.
The next thing to be done, after Johanne had made up his own mind, Cristine said, was to pursuade Grettel to go with him. “Johanne knew this would not be right, but men wereso used to having every thing their own way, that to pleasure themselves they were ready to pull down the walls God had set up.”
“Surely, surely,” Grettel said, “God would never forgive her if she forsook her old blind mother; and if in His mercy He should forgive her, she would never forgive herself!”
Johanne urged that her mother was very old—that she could live but a little while-and he must live a life-time without Grettel; that the neighbors could be kind to the old woman; that she would have a florin a month from the poor's box, beside many a casual gift when she was known to be quite alone; that his first earnings should be sent to her succor. He even went so far as to get the consent of a kind-hearted dame that the old woman should be removed to her house. Some of the neighbors, too, feeling it to be a very hard case for the lovers, joined their entreaties to Johanne's, and promised Grettel they would do all in their power for her mother. But as Cristine again and again assured me, the good child never ſaltered, and “das ist besser,” said the honest creature.
“Never, never will I bring tears from her blind eyes,” said Grettel. “God gave me to her, and till he separates us, I will not leave her.”
No arguments, no entreaties made her waver. The generous girl would not even permit her mother to know the sacrifice she was making, and when the old woman remarked that Grettel's step was heavy and her voice sickly, and begged her to take some odious nostrum, Grettel swallowed it and said nothing. “And then, when Johanne saw how good she was, he loved her better than ever, and before he went away, he said she had done right, and he did not deserve her. And for my part,” concluded Cristine, “if any man on earth gets Grettel, I think it will be more than he deserves.” By the way, our friend Cristine has contracted rather an humble opinion of the deserts of mankind; and, as often happens with ancient maidens, her charities for them contract as her sympathies with her own sex expand.
It is, as Cristine says, “a hard case.” Grettel has but obeyed the strong law of nature in setting her affections on one who, according to that law, should supersede father, mother and home, and when I think on the ease, social dignity and competence that reward the children of toil in our happy land, and see what a life of privation and hardship she must endure in this mouldering village of Soninberg, the sacrifice appears to me much greater than she knows it to be. However, she is, after all, rather to be envied than pitied. Strait and narrow is the way of self-denial, and she has entered therein—and obscure and unknown as she is, she will be one of ‘the few’ who, having resolutely chosen her duty for her law, will be rewarded with more than all the glory of this world; or even than all its love, which is a good deal more seducing.
----------
Our detention at Wiesbaden, dear J–, gives us an opportunity of seeing the strange chances of human life exemplified in the story of our poor friend of Soninberg. It is ten days since the parting at the Old Oak. When Cristine came into our room this morning, she looked haggard and sorrowful, and instead of her usual cheerful “Gutten Morgen,” she muttered something about “God's time and our time never coming together;" and before this first of Cristine's murmurings at Providence was interpreted to me, the cause of it was fully explained by her telling us that Grettel's mother was dead.
“If her poor dark life had ended but ten days ago,” Cristine said, “all would have been well enough, but now Johanne was on the sea, and who could reach him there? But it is I only, ladies, that am wicked enough to think of all this: Grettel grieving only that her mother has gone from her and thinks but of that. Grettel let the old woman believe that Johanne had gone to Frankfort to work at his trade, and was a comfort to her to think that he was just waiting to earn money enough to come back and marry Grettel. Oh! It made my heart beat as though it would come out of me when the old woman, in her last strength, rose up from her pillow and said, “Grettel, give my love and my blessing to Johanne; he is a good boy, and you will be a happy wife, and God send you as good a child for your old age as you have been to me—light to my heart when all other light was gone—God be thanked I have had you to the last—to the last.’—She sank back and did not speak again, and poor Grettel fell on her knees and said, “God be praised that I am here!’ And so I try to say to,” added Cristine in conclusion, “but indeed had it pleased God so, it would seem to work better round that the old body should have died ten days ago. But it's too late now, and so it does not signify; and poor Grettel must go on as I have done, working for others and caring for others—it's a lonesome life, ladies.”
Christine sighed deeply. It was a moment when the harness of life was galling, and though I felt how truly the poet’s words applied to her,
“With cheerful heart, and purpose pure,
So—our onward way is sure,’
I shall take a happier moment to enforce their consoling moral.
[p. 237]
I have elsewhere, my dear J----, described to you the various rural “Gast-hauser,' (guest-houses,) eating-gardens, and multiplied walks, provided about this place for the recreation of the Wiesbaden visitors. If you would lose yourself in a romantic solitude, you have but to go up the lovely valley of the New-Thal, to the forest of the New-Berg, where, in the green arched walks you will meet no one, not even such as should be found
‘In their assigned and native dwelling-place.’
Or you may mount to the old Roman water-tower, and see all these hills with their wavy outlines sloping down to Wiesbaden, and hung with vines and grain of every color, and in the distance the Rhine (its very name giving charm to the scene) for many a mile. Or if you have a town taste, and like the ‘sweet security of streets,’ you may promenade up and down the long walks in William street, where from the broad shadows of the double row of sycamores you may look out on the sunny pavement, the hotels, museum, &c., opposite to you, and the traveling post-equipages that are entering and leaving Wiesbaden, and to which it must take a long time to accustom an American eye, so that the horses without blinders, looking round as if they were on the point of speaking to you, the frightful distance between the wheel-horses and leaders, and the mystery of the safe guiding of the immense machine that comes lumbering on after him by the one postillion, shall cease to be a matter of curiosity.
Or if you like to hide yourself while you hear the din of the world all around you, you can go to the dark walks behind the colonnade. Or if you prefer ‘happy human faces,’ where there seems nothing but the spirit God has given them to make them happy, stray up the Acacia walk. There on the wooden seats you will see groups of the Bourgeois—men, women and children—looking as if they had not an anxiety or care on earth. But probably you, like myself and most of the world here, would prefer, day after day, and evening after evening, to all other resorts, the garden of the Cur-Saal. This garden, or rather pleasure-ground, occupies the whole interval between the hills from the centre of Wiesbaden to the village of Soninberg. The valley gradually narrows for two miles, and finally closes at the rocks on which the old castle of Soninberg was erected. The garden is a part of the Duke's private domain, and is kept in ducal order. You enter on each side of the Cur-saal, a public building about 300 feet long, where there are splendid apartments devoted to gambling all day and all night, excepting two or three times a week, when the roulette tables give place to music and dancing. Passing through a wood of catalpas, (unless you prefer going through the Cur-saal, and seeing the gentlemen and ladies standing round the table, losing and winning gold with apparent unconcern) you find a plot of ground behind the Cur-saal, occupied by tables and chairs, and coteries of Germans and English, regaling on Rhenish wines, coffee, cake and ices. I turned my back on all this, as usual, last evening, and took the way to Soninberg, skirting along the piece of artificial water—a clear large mirror to reflect the fine-dressed gentlemen and ladies and the far better dressed flowers that are flourishing round its brim. These gentlemen and ladies, by the by, seem to me to be travestied by a stately pair of white swans and a family of ducks that live on this water; the swans pompously sailing back and forth without an object in life, apparently, but to show off their beautiful forms and dress; and the ducks whirling and turning, and gabbling, and feeding—always feeding. But I am ashamed of an ill-natured thought here, where every living thing contributes to the cheerfulness of the scene.
Flowers, and choice ones too, are in profusion; for besides the rich fringe of geraniums, roses, pinks, myrtles and other precious plants around the edge of the water, you are constantly passing plots of heart's ease, astres, hydrangeas, strips of roses, and plantations of splendid dahlias. The walks are as intricate and multiplied as the space admits. As the valley narrows they diminish in number, and finally end in one which follows the windings of a little brook, too wide for you or me to leap, dear J----, but which H----, or any other active boy would think it no feat to jump over. It is this little brook, murmuring with a voice as soft and low as a German woman's, that gives the peculiar charm to this walk to Soninberg. The scenery is tame enough; indeed you see nothing but the garden, and the hills that slope to it. But the water is natural; it has a familiar home look and sound; and the tree (willows, locusts and poplars) and the clematis that hangs over them, and the clusters of bright red berries, all seem to have grown there at their own will and pleasure. For more than two miles, you follow the windings of the stream, and then as you approach the ruins of Soninberg, the valley has come to an end, and you mount the side of the hill.
Soninberg was one of the fortified castles of the Middle Ages. It must have occupied an important position, commanding the only pass from the upper to the lower valley.—The remains are still extensive. Arches and fragments of wall are standing at many hundred yards' distance from the Keep, and other masses of masonry in good preservation on the height. You can hardly imagine anything more picturesque in its way than this old village of Soninberg, with its little angular rookeries of rough beams and plaster all huddled together under the protecting shadow of the castle, like a brood of frightened chickens under the wing of their mother. Some of these little dwellings are niched in an angle of the old wall; others in part built of its fragments. Here a street runs under a narrow stone arch of the old fortification; there it passes the simplest of all rustic bridges over the very little stream that gladdens the garden, and here it ends against the mouldering chapel of the castle.
These abodes of extremest poverty have at this moment a beauty and luxury that our gentlemen with their hot house graperies might envy. Between the lower and upper windows there is a grape vine in a regular festoon, and pendent from it just now (for it is a most fortunate season for the vine growers) bunches of grapes so full and beautiful that they could never seem ‘sour grapes,’ even to those who could not get them! A rich drapery,’ is it not, for these poor cottages? and some counterbalance for the luxuries of space and pure air which the poorest of our country poor enjoy. But I have forgotten in the village, that I am drawing near to the ruins, and am admonished by the rose color on the evening clouds that there is no time to loiter.
I passed through the great arched way where I suppose the port-cullis was, and ascending a steep acclivity by the side of a wall overgrown with wild plants, I went round the tower and through the labyrinthine walk, which has been formed by the Duke's order I suppose, of hawthorn and clematis, and which is a very simple and excusable bit of pretty petitesse amid these grand old ruins. I smiled at seeing here and there a table arranged with a circular seat. I do not believe the Germans could be tempted to go where there was not a table on which to set a bottle of their precious Rhenish, and half a dozen social glasses. After rambling around till I was tired, I seated myself at a projecting point, a good look-off; but instead of looking off I looked up, and directly above, seated on the ground and leaning her head against a broken wall, I saw my pretty peasant girl, Grettel. She had come here to think her own thoughts, I suppose, drawn by the mysterious sympathies of Nature that even the most uncultivated feel at some moments of their lives. And here, soothed by their maternal influence, she had fallen asleep. Her knitting-work, the ‘idlesse’ of every German woman, had dropped from her hand and lay on her lap. The delicate white flowers of a clematis that fringed the broken wall, shaded her cheek, and to complete the picture (for with the rose-colored clouds above mentioned it was a picture that might have tempted Cole's Heaven-loving pencil) the little terrier-dog was sleeping at her feet. Suddenly he awoke, raised his head, and cocked up his ears. His manner quickened my senses, and I fancied I heard a quick footstep behind a wall which intervened between me and the path. Grettel was still sleeping. A smile played on her lips. I thought she had forgotten her sorrows and was dreaming of Johanne, and I would have muzzled the little dog if I could, when he sprang up, barked and bounded off. Grettel awoke, and to a reality better than any bliss of dreams, for at the next instant I saw her in Johanne's arms.
We leave Wilsbaden to-morrow, but not till the last act in this drama of my peasant girl is played out. I have just seen Cristine in her gala dress, and with a truly fête-day face, prepared to go to Grettel's wedding, and to-morrow the happy pair set off for their home in the New World.
It seems that the good school-master of Soninberg, who, if he did not think with Helóise that letters were invented for the love-stricken maiden, was eager to make them subserve her use—at the moment of the death of Grettel's mother, wrote to Johanne at Hamburg. It had so happened that Johanne, ‘by the good will of Providence,’ as Cristine says, had failed in getting there at the time he intended, and was awaiting the sailing of an American ship. The letter reached him, and in Cristine's favorite phrase, ‘das ist besser;’ that is to say, all has ended as well as if Cristine's kind and loving heart had arranged the catastrophe.
__________
[Sedgwick’s notes]
* One is painfully struck on first going to the Continent with the prevalence of diseases of the eye among the lower classes. In an infant Charity School I visited at Wiesbaden, I think out of a hundred at least ten had diseased eyes. The women live out of doors, their babies in their laps or on the ground beside them. Bonnets are not worn by females of the lower orders of any age; there is therefore no protection for the eyes.
* [*] There is a law throughout Germany, requiring the artisan, when he has finished his apprenticeship to travel a year from city to city (visiting, if he pleases, Paris and London,) in order to improve himself in his art. When he arrives in a German town, he goes to the
herberg, a tavern kept for artisans, and there, after reporting himself to the police, finds employment. This is an admirable provision tending to facilitate the diffusion of the arts, and the enlargement of the artist's knowledge out of his art.
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 Beauty of Soninberg. A Letter from Wiesbaden.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Germany, travel, love and devotion.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator writes a letter describing her travels in Germany, and recounts a love story about a beautiful young woman in the town of Soninberg.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, Author of 'Hope Leslie' &c.]
Source
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The Evergreen (May 1840), pp. 234-37.
Publisher
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New York: J. Winchester
Date
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1840
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Format
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Document
Language
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English
"God Soul and World"
1840
aqueduct
artisans
As You Like It
beauty
blindness
Carisbrook lions
Dogs
donkeys
Duke of Nassau
eye-disease
Falstaff
filial piety
Frankfurt
Geisberg
Germany
Goethe
Héloïse
Isaac
Kursaal Gardens
letters
Marksburg
Mothers
New York
old maid
Old World
peasants
Rebecca
Rhine
Schwalbach
servant
Shakespeare
Soninberg
Taunus Hills
The Evergreen
Thomas Cole
tourism
Travel
wells
Wiesbaden