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Dublin Core
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Title
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1828
Document
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Text
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CHRISTIAN CHARITY.
__________
“Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law thou art not a doer of the law but a judge.”
Dr. FRANKLIN said, with his characteristic wisdom and good feeling, that he was inclined to believe “there never was a good war nor a bad peace.” If this may be true of the civil affairs of men, how much more applicable is it to their religious concerns!
All true christians, of all parties and sects, lament that difference of opinion should give rise to discord, strifes, uncharitableness, and evil speaking. If then they feel that religion is wronged—that its bond of love is severed—that their master is wounded in the house of his friends—that their wars and fightings must proceed from bad passions, how careful should they be to guard against the extension of the evil! And particularly how scrupulous should those be who have the guidance of young maids and affect-
[PAGE 4]
tions not to impart to them their own unfavorable judgment of others. All will admit that they are fallible—they may err in judging a brother—and if they do err how fearful the responsibility of communicating this false judgment—this prejudice to a young mind, which ought to be nurtured in the spirit of the Gospel! in love and charitableness.
The principle we wish to instil is illustrated in the following short story.
SARAH ANSON was sitting with her aunt one day, when she heard a good deal of conversation between her aunt and a lady, who was on a visit to her, about “the orthodox.” When the visitor was gone, “Aunt Caroline,” said Sarah, “you are always talking about ‘orthodoxy,’ and ‘the orthodox.’ I wish you would tell me what you mean by ‘the orthodox?’”
“Why Sarah, I mean those who think they shall certainly be saved, and all the rest of the world will be condemned—that sort of people, that are for ever canting.”
“Canting—what is canting, aunt”
“Canting is talking about religion on all occasions, seasonable, and unseasonable, as the orthodox do.”
Sarah was silent for a few moments, but not being enlightened by her aunt’s replies, she was not satisfied, and she ventured to add—“Still, aunt, I do not know what you mean by the orthodox.”
“How stupid you are, Sarah!—Have you ever lived in this city all your life, and don’t know that Mr –’s and Mr –’s congregations are orthodox?”
[PAGE 5]
“No, aunt, I did not—I don’t remember,” she added with a sigh, “ever to have heard mamma speak the word orthodox—but now I hear you say so much about them, I should really like to know how they differ from other Christians.”
“Oh, they differ in every thing—they think all kinds of rational amusements a crying sin. They would have every body spend their whole lives in going to lectures and prayer-meetings, and always look solemn and dismal, and give every thing to missions.”
“Missions!” exclaimed Caroline—“there must be some missionaries that are not orthodox—that Mr. Stewart I was reading about to Lucy, could not be what you call orthodox, aunt Caroline.”
“Stewart—the missionary to the Sandwich Islands?—Oh yes, he was orthodox enough.”
Some one at this time called away her aunt, and Sarah was left revolving in her mind what she had said.
If Sarah had been like most children of eight years, she probably would have been quite satisfied with her aunt’s replies, and the seeds of prejudice, thus carelessly sown in her mind, might have taken root there; but Sarah’s mother had guarded her mind from prejudice, as a gardener would preserve his garden from the intrusion of poisonous weeds. She had not spoken to her of orthodoxy, but she had of prejudice. She had told her that very good people might be sadly prejudiced, as was Nathaniel the Israelite, in “whom there was no guile,” for he had said of Jesus “can any good come out of Naza-
[PAGE 6]
reth?” She had shown her how beautifully our Saviour had reproved the prejudice of the wicked Jews, by selecting, to illustrate the principle of true charity, not one of their own Pharisees who claimed preeminence in righteousness—not even one of their own nation, to whom they fancied the favour of the Father of all limited, but a Samaritan—a good Samaritan—one of a people most despised and hated by the Jews—a people who were the subjects of their national, and, as they believed, their just and authorized enmity.
Sarah’s mind, thus carefully guarded against the intrusion of uncharitable feeling, might be compared to that paradise which the flaming sword of the Cherubim defends from all bad spirits—and besides, happily, in the particular case of the orthodox, she had just taken an antidote against prejudice; she had been reading Stewart’s Journal to Lucy, an excellent young woman, who had been, till within a few weeks back, her attendant and nurse, and who was now rapidly declining with a consumption, the consequence, as was believed, of a too constant devotion to Sarah’s mother, who had recently died of the same fatal disease. Mr. Stewart’s beautiful description of his voyage, his apostolic devotion to the noblest enterprise of man,—the regeneration and reformation of his degraded fellow-beings,—had delighted Sarah, kindled her piety, and touched her heart to the very quick; and she was hurt and offended when her aunt spoke of him, and of the large class to which he belonged, with cold contempt.
[PAGE 7]
Little Sarah was one of the gentlest of human beings, and it seemed that to introduce any harsh feeling into her kind heart, was to break one of the strings of that fine instrument.
She determined now to appeal to Lucy for the information she had failed to obtain from her aunt. Accordingly, she went to her apartment, but when she found her friend looking much sicker than usual, she sat down on her bedside, mentally resolving not to trouble her with any questions, and after kissing her pale forehead, she took up a fan, and began fanning her, but she stopped often, figetted, and looked perplexed; and Lucy, who had been accustomed to watch her thoughts as they were expressed in her sweet open face, and who could read them there almost as plainly as if they were reflected in a mirror, said to her, “Something troubles you, Sarah—what are you thinking of, my child?”
Thus prompted, Sarah did not hesitate to say, “do you tell me, Lucy, what is the real meaning of orthodoxy.”
“Orthodoxy,” replied Lucy, with a faint smile; “certainly, I will as well as I know how; orthodoxy”—but here she paused, as she heard an approaching footstep, and then added, “wait a little while, Sarah—there is Mrs. Lumley; don’t say any thing abut it now, for she is orthodox.”
“Is she orthodox?’, exclaimed Sarah, her face brightening, for she knew Mrs. Lumley did not come within her aunt’s description of the orthodox. She was a poor widow, whose life had been marked by
[PAGE 8]
severe and multiplied sorrows, and she had borne them all with a meek and resigned spirit, cheerfully submitting to the privations of her Father in heaven inflicted, as a good child will bear to be deprived by a beloved parent of some dear possession.
When Mrs. Lumley entered, Lucy expressed great pleasure at seeing her, but said she was afraid she had stayed away from lecture to come to her.
“And what if I have, Lucy? I should make a poor use of the privelege of going to lecture, if I did not learn my duty there: It is God’s word, you know, ‘be ye doers of the word and not hearers only,’ and one of the first duties as well as a pleasure is it to do what I can for a sick friend. No, Lucy, I should not dare to enter my Father’s house, if I neglected a sick brother or sister by the way. But I am afraid you are not so well to-night, your breathing is difficult.
“Yes—I feel it to be so, and I must expect it to be even worse.”
“And yet, Lucy, you do not look frightened or troubled.”
“I thank God I am not, Mrs. Lumley. There has been a time when I shrunk from the prospect of death, when I lay for hours awake in the silent watches of the night, my heart throbbing at the thought that I must be laid in the grave; but now I feel there is no death to those who believe in the resurrection and the life—and I realize that what we call death, is but a passage to a better life. I am in the valley of the shadow of death, and I fear no evil, and it is be-
[PAGE 9]
cause the rod and the staff of my God support and comfort me.”
Lucy spoke in her usual tone of voice; there was something in its calmness that expressed the assurance of her faith, while the glow that lit up her face with a celestial brightness, made her look as if she had already entered into the joy of her Lord. Mrs. Lumley brushed the tears from her eyes. “It is truly wonderful to me, Lucy,” she said, “to see one so young, and so happy as you have been, so willing to go; but in all our trials, of every kind, we find the grace of God sufficient for us. I can say that I never felt so rich toward him, as when I have been bereft of earthly comfort.”
Sarah listened intently—her eye moved quickly from her friend to the widow, and tear after tear dropped on Lucy’s feverish hand, which she held pressed in hers. The patient sufferers, in sick chambers and in the dark paths of affliction, are the most affecting witnesses to the goodness of God, for they prove that he never forsakes his children. Lucy listened to their testimony, and laid it up in her heart.
A little bustle was now heard in the outer room, and two persons entered, one an old colored woman, who meekly remained standing at the door, and the other a tall Irish woman, who pressed forward with characteristic eagerness, and pouring half a dozen beautiful oranges from a bandanna handkerchief—“There, Lucy, dear,” said she, “they are Havanas—every one of them—I had them from Patrick Moon-
[PAGE 10]
ey, and sure they are fresh, for Pat has just stepped a shore.”
“Oh Peggy, many, many thanks; but you are too generous—you could not afford to buy so many for me.”
“Sure honey, don’t be after saying that—would not I have given the apple of my eye for them, if I could not have had them chaper? That would I do for you, dear, that’s been saint-like to me and mine, as poor Rose, that’s gone such a little bit before you, has often said—God above make the eating of them as pleasant to you, as the getting of them has been to me.” Then stooping down and kissing Lucy’s hand, and murmuring a prayer, and crossing herself, she left the room.
Lucy was affected with the honest creature’s gratitude, and she covered her eyes with her hand, and did not look up till Sarah whispered, “there is old Amy at the door.”
“Amy, is that you?” she then said—“come and sit by me, Amy, and tell me how you are nowadays.”
“I am but poorly,” said she, humbly curtsying, “but how is Miss Lucy?”
“Thank you, Amy, I trust I may say in the language of that good book you so well understand, ‘it is well with me.’”
“Ah, Miss Lucy, you put me in mind of what Elder Eton said to day, ‘them that walk with the Lord through life; the Lord will not leave them to go alone through the valley of the shadow of death.’”
“No, Amy—he does not; and it is no longer a
[PAGE 11]
dark valley when it is enlightened by his presence. But how do you get on in your worldly matters, my good friend?”
“O Miss Lucy, I don’t want to complain, but I miss your goodness, and that dear child’s mother’s, every day.”
“Does not Tom provide for you?”
“Tom—poor boy, he has been gone to sea six weeks.”
“And Sally?”
“Sally is a lost creature, Miss Lucy; she does nothing for me; and I can do nothing for her but pray for her.”
“Do you suffer for necessaries, Amy?”
“Sometimes, Miss Lucy.”
“Do you ever go hungry?”
“I can’t say but I do; but it will be but a little while, and I don’t mean to murmur.”
“Truly.” said Lucy, raising her eyes devoutly, “tribulation worketh patience ;” and then turning to Sarah, she added in a low voice, “when I am gone, remember poor old Amy—you are young for such a charge, but your mother’s disposition is in you. Now my good friends,” she added, “I believe you had best leave me: I am a little tired, but I shall sleep the better for your kind visits; good night—remember me in your prayers.” They both bade her good night, and Sarah, after lighting them down stairs, returned to Lucy, and again took her station at her bedside. “Now, my dear child,” said Lucy, “I will answer your question about orthodoxy.”
[PAGE 12]
“I remember when I was about your age, I was perplexed in the same way. I had lived two years with your mother, when I went to pay a visit to one of my aunts. She questioned me very closely about my place, and when she had found I had every reason to be satisfied and happy, she said, ‘But after all, Lucy, Mrs. Anson is a Unitarian, and your mother does very wrong to let you live with a Unitarian.’ I told her I did not know what she meant by a Unitarian, but if she meant anything that was not good, I was sure Mrs. Anson was not a Unitarian. ‘She is a Unitarian,’ she replied, ‘and it is a shame you are not put in an Orthodox family.’ When I returned home, I asked your mother what was the meaning of Unitarian and what of Orthodox. ‘You are not old enough yet, Lucy,’ she said to me, ‘to comprehend, if I were to endeavor to explain to you the differences of opinion from which different classes of Christians take their names, and I would not wish to have your attention turned to those matters wherein they disagree, but rather that you should fix it on those points where all who are named by the name of Christ agree; for among all sects, there are those who deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God. Consider all those Christians, who manifest a love to their Heavenly Father, and obedience to his well beloved Son, our Saviour; and of such do not ask if they be a Presbyterian, Unitarian, Methodist or Catholic; but regard them as Christians, fellow-christians, servants, and friends of one Master, who has said—“by this ye shall know that ye are
[PAGE 13]
my disciples, that ye love one another.”’ This was your dear mother’s instruction to me, Sarah, and I did not neglect it. You see by those good Christians, who have visited me this evening, that I have friends who bear very different names. Mrs. Lumley is Orthodox, a member of the Park street Church; Peggy is a good Catholic; Amy is a Baptist, and I, you know, am a Unitarian; but we are all, I humbly trust, heirs of that blessed country toward which I am hastening.”
“Now Sarah, give me my opiate, and then sing me one of the Hymns you and your mother used to sing together. The opiate will, I hope, give some rest to my poor sick body—and your voice, raised in a praise to God, is always a sweet cordial to my mind. Sarah prepared the medicine and then reseating herself, and taking Lucy’s hand, she sang the following hymn of Beddome:
“Let party names no more
The Christian world o’erspread;
Gentile, and Jew, and bond, and free,
Are one in Christ their head.
Among the Saints on Earth
Let mutual love be found
Heirs of the same inheritance,
With mutual blessings crowned.
Envy and strife be gone,
And only kindness known,
Where all one common Father have,
One common Master own.
Thus will the church below
Resemble that above;
Where springs of purest pleasure rise,
And every heart is love.”
[PAGE 14]
“May this spirit ever govern your heart,” said Lucy, as she folded her arms around Sarah and bade her goodnight. Sarah’s selection of this particular hymn had gratified her, for it proved that though she had not attempted to give her any explanation of the different names by which Christians are called, she made her feel that charity and love will bound over the barriers, that the wicked passions or the false zeal of man has erected between different sects of Christians; that love is the essence of religion—love to God, and love to man.
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Christian Charity
Subject
The topic of the resource
Calvinism vs. Unitarianism, orthodoxy.
Description
An account of the resource
A young girl learns the difference between Calvinism and Unitarianism, but is nevertheless encouraged to be charitable to all Christians, regardless of particular affiliation.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [By the author of Redwood.]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
A Short Essay To Do Good, 4-14.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Stockbridge [Mass.] : Printed by Webster and Stanley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1828
Contributor
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Michael Monescalchi; D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. A short essay to do good. Stockbridge [Mass.] : Printed by Webster and Stanley, 1828;
Repository Collection Development Department, Widener Library. HCL, Harvard University. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:7572801. Accessed 09 July 2019
Format
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Document
Language
A language of the resource
English
1828
A Short Essay to Do Good
African American
Baptist
Benjamin Beddome
Benjamin Franklin
Boston
Calvinism
Catholic
charity
Charles Samuel Stewart
Christianity
colored
Death
girls
Irish
James 4:11
Jesus
Jews
Juvenile fiction
missionaries
orthodoxy
Park Street Church
Pharisees
prejudice
Psalm 23
religion
Samaritans
Sandwich Islands
Unitarian
-
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73c5198ed3034f75a7054b05c56ef047
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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1827
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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ROMANCE IN REAL LIFE
By the Author of ‘Redwood’
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‘La Nature fait le mérite,
La Fortune le met en preuve.’
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[118]
Many fortunate travellers on the western border of Massachusetts, and not many miles from the Hudson, have been refreshed at the inn of Reliance Reynolds. Reliance, as his name indicates, was born in the good old times. We are aware that the enthusiasts about the ‘progress of the age,’ deny this golden period any but a retrospective existence, and maintain that, retrace the steps of the human family far as you will, it is like the age of chivalry, always a little behind you. But we adhere to the popular phraseology and call those, ‘good old times,’ when the Puritanical nomenclature prevailed; when such modest graces as faith and temperance had not been expelled from our taverns, kitchens, and workshops, by the heroes and heroines of romance – the Orlandos and Lorenzos, Rosamonds and Anna Matildas.
Reliance belonged to the ‘good old times,’ too, in the more essential matter of downright honesty, simplicity, and respectful courtesy. His was a rare character in New England – a passive spirit, content to fill and fit the niche nature had prepared for him. It was not very high,
[119]
but he never aspired above it; nor very low, but he never sank below it. He was the marvel of his neighbours, for he could never be persuaded into an enterprise or speculation. He never bought a water privilege, nor an oar bed; subscribed to a county bank, or ‘moved to the West;’ or in any mode indicated that principle in man, which, in its humble operations, its restlessness, in its lofty aspirations, a longing after immortality. Reliance’s desires never passed the bounds of his premises, and were satisfied, even within them, with a very moderate share of power. He stood at his door, his hat in his hand, to receive his guests; he strictly performed the promise of his sign, and gave ‘good entertainment to man and horse;’ he rendered a moderate bill and received his dues with a complacent smile, in which gratitude was properly tempered with a just sense of his own rights. In short, as must be already quite manifest, Reliance, though a pattern landlord, is a very poor subject for a storyteller; his qualities, like the color in a ray of light, all bending and forming one hue, and his life, presenting the same monotonous harmony.
We should not have forced him from his happy obscurity into the small degree of notoriety he may incur on our humble page, but for his being the adjunct of his wife, an important personage in our narrative.
Mrs Reynolds, too, like her husband, performed exactly the duties of her station. She never perhaps read a line of poetry, save such as might lurk in the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of a village paper, but her whole life was an illustration of the oldfashioned couplet –
‘Honor and shame from no condition rise,
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’
She never was presidentess of a ‘society for ameliorating the conditions of the Jews,’ or secretary or treasurer
[120]
of any of those beneficent associations that rescue the latent talents of women from obscurity and mettrent en scéne gems and flowers that might otherwise shine and exhale unnoticed and unknown; but though humble was her name and destiny, her memory is dear to the wayfaring. Quiet, order, and neatness, reigned at her bed and board. No pirates harbored in her bedsteads, no bad luck, that evil genius of housewives, curdled her cream, spoiled her butter or her bread, but her table was spread with such simple, wholesome fare as might have lit a smile on the wan visage of an old dispeptic; and this we take to be the greatest achievement of the gastronomic art.
With the duties of life so peacefully and so well performed, our good hostess ought, according to all the rules of happiness, to have been happy; but it is our melancholy duty to confess she was not, and to explain the cause. She had been married many years without having any children; that blessed possession that in transmitting, the parents’ existence, seems to extend its bounds, and to render even here, the mortal immortal. In addition to the feeling, common to all women, who naturally crave the sweetest objects for their tenderest and strongest affections, Mrs Reynolds lamented her childless state with a bitterness of repining approaching to that of the Hebrew wives. With everything else in her possession that could inspire contentment, her mind was fixed on this one desired good, and, like Hannah of old, she was still a ‘woman of a sorrowful spirit.’ She had endeavoured to solace herself with the children of her kindred, and several, from time to time, had been adopted into her family; but some proved disagreeable, and others homesick, and there was always a paramount duty or affection that interfered with her’s, till finally her
[121]
almost extinguished hopes were gratified, and Providence gave her a child worthy all her care and love.*
In the autumn of 1777, two travellers arrived just at nightfall at Reynold’s inn. Its aspect was inviting; situated in the heart of a fertile valley that had lately been refreshed by the early rains of autumn, and in its bright garb resembling a mature beauty that had happily harmonized some youthful tints with her soberer graces. A sprightly, winding stream gave life and music to the meadows. On every side the landscape was undulating and fertile, but not then as extensively cultivated as now, when, to the Tauconnuc on the south, and the lofty blue outline of the Catskills on the west, the eye ranges over a rich and enjoyed country. Beside the accidental charm of a pretty landscape, the inn had advantages peculiar to itself. Instead of being placed on the roadside, as most of our taverns are – for what reason we know not, unless a cloud of travellers’ dust be typical of a shower of gold to the vision of mine host – Reynold’s inn was separated from the highway by a court yard, shaded by two wide spreading elms, and enlivened with a profusion of autumnal flowers, marigolds, cockscombs, and china asters.
There was nothing that indicated any claims to particular civility in the appearance of our travellers. They were well looking and respectably appareled; and, accordingly, having announced their determination to re-
[122]
main for the night, they were shown to an inner room, the parlour, par excellence, where Mrs Reynolds appeared, and having opened a door which admitted the balmy air and a view of the western sky, just then brightened by the tints of the setting sun, she received their orders for their supper, and retired without one of those remarks or inquiries by which it is usual, on such occasions to give vent to curiosity. Nothing passed between our travellers in the dull interval that elapsed before their meal was ready, to give to our readers the least clue to their origin or destiny. One of them lulled himself into a doze in the rocking chair, while the other, younger and more active and vivacious, amused himself out of doors, plucking flowers, enraging an old petulant cock turkey, and mocking the scolding of some Guinea hens, the Xantippes of the feathered race.
The interval was not long. The door opened and the tea table was brought in, already spread (a mode we wish others would adopt from our pattern landlady), and spread in a manner to characterize our bountiful country.
What a contrast does the evening meal of our humblest inn present to the leanness of an English tea table! A cornucopia would have been the appropriate symbol for Mrs Reynolds’s table. There were beef steaks, and ham and eggs; hot cakes and toast; bread and gingerbread; all the indigenous cakes, such as crullers and nutcakes, &c.; honey, sweetmeats, apple sauce, cheese, pickles, and an afterpiece of pies. Kind reader do not condemn our bill of fare as impertinent and vulgar. We put it down to show the sacred political economists, that, with us, instead of the population pressing on the means of subsistence, the means of subsistence presses on the population.
[123]
Our travellers fell to their repast with appetites whetted by a long fast and day’s ride. Not a word was spoken, till a little girl, who was sitting on the doorstep caressing a tame pigeon, perceiving that one of the guests had garnished his buttonhole with a bunch of marigolds, plucked a rose from a monthly rose bush, trained over a trellis at the door, and laid it beside his plate. He seemed struck with the modest offering, and, turning with a look of gratitude to the child, he patted her on her head, and exclaimed instinctively, ‘Merci, merci, ma petite!’ and then correcting himself, he said, in very imperfect English, ‘I thank you, my little girl.’
The child’s attention was fixed by the first word he uttered, and as he addressed his companion in French, her countenance indicated more emotion than would naturally have been excited by the simple circumstance of hearing, for the first time, a foreign language. ‘Qu’elle est belle, cette petite,’ he continued, turning to his companion; ‘c’est la beauté de mon pays – voilá, brunette, et les yeux, si grands, si noirs, et la tournure aussi – quelle grâce, quelle vivacité! Ah! Monsieur, Monsieur, c’est tout-á-fait Françoise.’ As he proceeded the child advanced nearer to him. She shook back the rich, dark curls that shaded her face, bent her head forward, half parted her bright lips, and listened with the uncertain and eager expression of one who is catching a half remembered tune, the key to a thousand awakening recollections. It was evident that she did not comprehend the purport of the words, and that it was the sound alone to which her delighted ear was stretched.
A smile played about her lips, and tears gathered in her eyes, and there seemed to be a contrariety of emotions, confounding even to herself; but that which finally prevailed was indicated by her throwing her apron over
[124]
her head, and retreating to the doorstep, where she sat down, and for some moments, vainly attempted to stifle her sobs. She had just become tranquil, when Mrs Reynolds entered.
The elder traveller said, in an interrogating tone, ‘That is your child, ma’am?’
‘I call her mine,’ was the brief and not very satisfactory reply.
‘She resembles neither you nor your husband,’ resumed the traveller.
‘No; she does not favor us.’
‘I fancied she had a French look.’
‘I can’t say as to that,’ replied the landlady; ‘I never saw any French people.’
‘My friend here is a Frenchman,’ pursued the traveller, ‘and the little girl listened to him so intently, that I thought it possible she might understand him.’
‘No, I guess she did not sense him,’ replied Mrs Reynolds, with an air of indifference; and the turning hastily to the child, ‘Mary,’ she said, ‘there is more company; go and see if our father does not want you.’
She went and did not return. Mrs Reynolds herself removed the table. The elder gentleman sat down to write a letter; while the Frenchman walked to and fro, opened the doors, and peeped in every direction to get a glimpse of the little girl, who seemed to have taken complete possession of his imagination. Once, as she ran through the passage, he called to her, ‘Doucement! doucement! mon petit ange’ – she stopped as if she were glued to the floor. ‘How call you your name, my dear?’
‘Mary Reynolds, sir.’
‘Then Madame there, Mistress Reynolds, is your maman?’
‘She is –
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‘Mary, what are you staying for? Here – this instant!’ screamed Mrs Reynolds from the kitchen door, in a tone that admitted no delay, and the child ran off without finishing her sentence.
‘C’est bien singulier!’ muttered the Frenchman.
‘What do you find so singular, Jaubert?’ asked his companion, who had just finished his letter, and thrown down his pen.
‘Oh! it is nothing – perhaps – but – ’
‘“But” what, my friend?’
‘Why, there seems to me some mystery about this child; something in her manner, I know not what, that stirs up strange thoughts and hopes in my mind. She is not one of the pale, blond beauties of your climate.’
‘Ah! my good friend, we have all sorts of beauties in our clime. All nations, you know, have sent us their contributions. The blue eye and fair skin, the Saxon traits, certainly prevail in our Eastern States; but you know we border on New York, the asylum of the dark eyed Huguenots, and it is not impossible that to this child may have been transmitted the peculiarities of some French ancestor. Nothing is more common than a resemblance between a descendant and a far off progenitor.’
‘Ah! it is not only the French, the Norman aspect, the – do not ridicule me – the Angely traits that attract me; but you yourself noticed how she listened to my language, and then this Mistress Reynolds does not say she is her child, but only she calls her so.’
‘Pshaw! Is that all? It is the way of my country people, Jaubert; their indirectness is proverbial. If one of them were to say “yes” or “no,” you might suspect some deep mystery. I confess I was at first startled with the little girl’s emotion, but I soon perceived it was nothing but shame and embarrassment at
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the curiosity she had betrayed. I see how it is Jaubert; fruitless and hopeless as is our search, you cannot bear to relinquish it, and are looking for some coup de théâtre – some sudden transition from disappointment to success.’
We have put into plain English a conversation that was supported in French, and was now broken off by the approach of Mrs Reynolds, who came to tell the travellers their bedrooms were ready. By the light of the candle she brought, discovered Mary, concealed in a corner of the passage close to the door, where, in breathless stillness, she had been listening. ‘You here, Mary!’ exclaimed the good woman; ‘I thought you had been in bed this half hour. You will make me angry with you, Mary, if you do not mind me better that this,’ she added in an under tone, and the child stole away, but without looking either very penitent or very fearful; and in truth she had cause for neither penitence nor fear, for she had only gratified an innocent and almost irrepressible inclination, and as to Dame Reynolds’s anger, it was never formidable.
The travellers retired to their respective apartments, and while the landlady lingered to adjust her parlour, the letter that had been left on the table caught her eye. Nothing could be more natural than for her to look at the superscription. Painfully she spelt out the first line. ‘A Monsieur, Monsieur’ – but when she came to the next, her eye was rivetted, ‘St Jean Angely de Crève-Coeur.’ After gazing on it till she had made assurance doubly sure, she was hastening to her husband to participate the discovery with him, when, apparently changing her intentions, she retreated, bolted the door, and returned to the examination of the letter. It was unsealed. Reluctant to open it, she compromised with her conscience, and peeped in at both ends, but the writing was not perceptible, and her interest overcoming
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her scruples, she unfolded the letter. Alas! it was in French. In vain her eye ran over the manuscript to catch some words that might serve as clues to the rest. There was nothing in all three pages she could comprehend, but ‘arrivé á New York’ – ‘la rivière d’Hudson’ – ‘le manoir de Livingston.’
She was refolding the letter, when the following postscript, inadvertently written in English, caught her eye; ‘As we have no encouragement to proceed farther in our search, and Jean and Avenel are all impatience, Jaubert will embark in the Neptune, which is to sail on the first.’
A gleam of pleasure shot across Mrs Reynolds’s face, but it soon darkened again with anxiety and perplexity. ‘Why did I open the letter?’ she asked herself. ‘Why did I look at it at all? But nobody will ever know that I have seen it unless I tell it myself; and why should I tell?’ A burst of tears concluded this mental interrogation, and proved that, however earnestly her heart might plead before the tribunal of conscience, yet the stern decision of that unerring judge was heard. Self-interest has a hard task when it would mystify the path of one who habitually walks by the clear light of truth straight onward in the path of duty.
It may seem unnatural to the inexperienced, that Mrs Reynolds did not communicate her embarrassment and irresolution, from whatever cause they proceeded, to her husband; but she knew well what would be the result of a consultation; for he, good man, never viewed a subject but from one position, and we are all slow to ask advice that we foresee will be counter to our wishes.
Mrs Reynolds, so far then from appealing to the constituted authority of her household, locked her discovery within her own bosom, and to avoid all suspicion and inquiry, she composed herself as soon as possible, and
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retired to her bed, but not to sleep; and at peep of dawn, she was up and prepared to obtain all the satisfaction that indirect interrogation could procure from the travellers, and her mental resolution, invigorated by a night’s solitary reflection, was to ‘act up to her light.’
They had ordered breakfast at a very early hour, and she took care to be the only person in attendance on them. When they were seated at table, she placed herself in a rocking chair behind them, a position that happily reconciles the necessity of service with the dignity of independence, and began her meditated approaches, by saying to her own countryman, ‘I believe you left a letter here last night, sir; I laid it in the cupboard for fear of accidents.’
‘Thank you, ma’am; I ought to have been more careful. It was a letter of some consequence.’
‘Indeed! Well, I was thinking it might be.’
‘Ah! what made you think so?’
Now we must premise, that neither of the parties speaking, knew anything of that sensitiveness that starts from a question as if an attack were made on private property; but they possessed, in common, the good-natured communicativeness that is said to characterize the New England people, who, in their colloquial traffic, as in other barter, hold exchange to be no robbery.
Most women are born diplomatists, and Mrs Reynolds took care to reply to the last interrogatory so carefully as not to commit herself. ‘It stands to reason,’ she said, ‘a letter that is to go all the way over the wide sea to the old countries, should be of consequence.’
‘Yes – it is a long voyage.’
‘You have taken it yourself, perhaps, sir?’
‘I have. I went out an officer on board one of our cruisers, and was wrecked on the coast of France.’
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‘Of France! Well, we are hand and glove with the French now; but I tell my husband it seems to me like joining with our enemies against those of our own household.’
‘Ah! Mrs Reynolds, “friends are sometimes better than kindred.” I am sure my own father’s son could not have been kinder to me than was Monsieur Angely de Crève-Coeur – hey, Jaubert?’
‘Ah! vraiment, Monsieur! c’est un bien brave homme, Monsieur St Jean Angely.’
‘Angely!’ said Mrs Reynolds, as if recalling some faded recollection, ‘Angely – I think I have heard that name before.’
‘It may be. The gentleman I speak of resided some time in this country.’
‘But it can’t be the same,’ replied Mrs Reynolds; ‘for the person I speak of lived over in Livingston’s manner; and kind to strangers he could not be, for he deserted his own flesh and blood, and went off early in the war.’
‘It may be the same for all that, and must be. As to deserting his children, “thereby hangs a tale;” but it is a long one.’
‘Well, sir, if you have anything to say in his favor, I am bold to say I think you ought to speak it; especially as the gentleman seems to have stood your friend in a cloudy day. The story certainly went sadly against him here.’
‘I have not the slightest objection, ma’am, to telling the story, if you have the patience to hear it; especially as I see I must wait till Jaubert has finished two more of your nice fresh eggs – “eggs of an hour,” Mrs Reynolds.’
‘We always calculate to have fresh eggs, sir. But what was you going to say of Mr Angely?’ she added,
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betraying in the tremulous tones of her voice, some emotion more heart stirring than curiosity. Jaubert turned a glance of inquiry on her that was unanswered by the sudden rush of blood to her cheeks; but the narrator proceeded without noticing anything extraordinary. ‘It was my good, or ill luck,’ he said, – ‘and it is the only in the long run we can tell whether luck be good or ill – but it was my luck to be shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy, and good luck it certainly was, Jaubert, in my distress, to make such a port as the Château de Crève-Coeur – the castle, or as we should call should call it here, Mrs Reynolds, the estate of the Angely’s. A fine family they are. You may think what a pleasure it was to me to find a gentleman acquainted with my country, and speaking my language as did Mr St Jean Angely. He was kind and affable to me, and always doing something for my pleasure, but I could see he had a heaviness at his heart – that he was often talking of one thing and thinking of another – nothing like so gay as the old gentleman, his father; who was like a fall flower – one of your marigolds, Mrs Reynolds, spreading itself open to every ray of sunshine, as if there were no frosts and winter and death at hand. I felt a pity for the young man. With everything that heart could desire, and without a heart to enjoy, he seemed to me like a sick man seated at a feast of which he could not taste. The day before I was to have come away, he took me aside, and, after saying that I had won his entire confidence, he disclosed to me the following particulars: –
‘He entered the French army early in life, and while yet a hotblooded, inconsiderate youth, he killed a brother officer in a duel, and was obliged to fly to his country. He took refuge in Lisbon. Judgment, I may say mercy, too – in the dealings of Providence, Mrs Reynolds, one is always close on the track of the other – followed
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him thither. Mr Angely found employment in a mercantile house, and was standing writing at his desk at the moment of the terrible earthquake that laid Lisbon in ruins. The timbers of the house in which he was, were pitched in such a manner as to form a sort of arch over his head, on which the falling roof was sustained, and thus he was, as it were, miraculously delivered from danger. From Lisbon he came to this country. “Mechanics,” says a Spanish proverb, “make the best pilgrims,” but, I am sure, not better than Frenchmen; for cast them where you will, they will get an honest living. Mr Angely came up into Livingston’s Manor, and there he took a fancy to a pretty Yankee girl, the only child of a widow, and married her. He earned a subsistence for his family by surveying. The country was new, and skillful surveyors scarce. After a few years his wife died and left him three children.’
‘Three!’ repeated Mrs Reynolds, involuntarily sighing.
‘Yes, poor things! there were three of them; too many to be left in these hard times fatherless and motherless.’
‘Ah sir! and what must we think of the father that could forsake his little children at such a time?’
‘Think no evil, my friend; for Mr Angely did not deserve it. He was employed by Mrs Livingston, early in the war, to go down the river to survey some land near New York. There he was taken by the British as a spy, and, in spite of his remonstrances, sent to England. This was before the French had taken part with us, and he obtained leave to go to France, on giving his parole that he would not return to America. He received a parent’s welcome, and affair of the duel being nearly forgotten, a pardon was obtained for him without difficulty. If he could have forgotten his children, he would have been as happy as man could
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be; but his anxiety for them preyed on his health and spirits; and when I arrived at the château, his friends imagined he was sinking under some unknown disease. He had not communicated to his father the fact of his marriage and the existence of his children when I arrived there. The old gentleman, kind hearted and reasonable in the main, has all the prejudices of the nobility in the old countries about birth, and his son was afraid to confess, that he had smuggled an ignoble little Yankee into the ancient family of the Crève-Coeurs. So good an opportunity as I afforded of communicating with his children, could not be passed by, and he at length summoned courage to tell the truth to his father. At first he was wroth enough, and stormed and vapored; but after a little while his kind nature got the mastery of the blood of the Crève-Coeurs, and he consented to the children being sent for – the boys, at least.’
‘Only the boys!’ exclaimed Mrs Reynolds, feeling relieved from an insupportable weight.
‘Only the boys. But the old gentleman might have as well saved all his credit and sent for the girl too; but that was not his pleasure. Well, Monsieur Jaubert here, a relative and particular friend of the family, came out with me to take charge of the children. We found the boys without much difficulty; two noble little fellows that a king might be proud of. After waiting for some time for Monsieur Angely’s return, the overseers of the poor, believing he had abandoned his children, bound them out. The little girl had been removed to some distance from her brothers. We found the place where she had been, but not the family. The husband and wife had quarrelled, and separated, and disappeared; and all the information we could obtain, was a vague story such a child had lived there and had run away; and as nobody in these troublesome
times
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can do no more than look after their own children, this poor thing was left to her fate. Hopeless as it appears, Jaubert is not willing to give up our search. He fancies every brunette he sees is the lost Marie, and only last evening he would have persuaded me, that your black eyed little girl might be this stray scion of the Crève-Cœurs.’
Mrs Reynolds rose and left the room, and did not return till she was sufficiently composed to ask, in an assured voice, ‘What was their object in looking for the girl, if a father did not mean to reclaim her?’
‘He did mean to reclaim and provide for her,’ replied the traveller, ‘and for that purpose I have ample funds in my hands. He only conceded to the old gentleman her remaining in the country for the present.’
‘Had you any direction as to how you were to dispose of her?’
‘Yes, positive orders to convey her to Boston, and place her under the guardianship of a French lady who resides there, a friend of Mr Angely—one Madame Adelon.’
‘But could you find no trace of the child?’
‘Not the slightest.’
‘And you have determined to make no further inquiry?’
‘Why should we? Inquiry is useless, and would but delay to a tempestuous season, Jaubert’s return with the boys.’
Our readers are doubtless sufficiently aware, that the adopted child of our good landlady was the missing child of Monsieur Angely. A few words will be necessary to explain how she became possessed of her.
Mrs Reynolds and her husband were, two years prior to this period, approaching the close of a winter day’s ride. Their sleigh was gliding noiselessly through a dry, new fallen snow, when their attention was arrested by
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the moanings of a child. To stop the horses and search the sufferer from whom the sounds proceeded, was the instinctive impulse of benevolence. They had not gone many yards from the road, when, nestled close to a clump of laurels, they found a little girl, her hands and feet frozen, and nearly insensible. They immediately carried her to the sleigh, and put their horses to their utmost speed; but, as they were none of the fleetest, and the nearest habitation was at several miles distance, a considerable time elapsed before they could obtain the means of restoration, and in consequence of this delay, and of severe previous suffering, it was many weeks before the child recovered. In the mean time, though Mrs Reynold’s residence was not more than thirty miles from the place where she had found the child, no inquiry was made for her. The account she gave of herself sufficiently explained this neglect. She said she had no mother; that her father had left home just after the snows melted and the birds came back; that he had left her and her two brothers, Jean and Avenel, with a woman to take care of them; that when this woman had waited a great while for their father, she grew tired and was cross to them, and then she too went away, and left them quite alone. Then she said they had nothing to eat, and she supposed they were the poor, for the men they called the overseers of the poor took her and her brothers, and separated them, and she was carried a great way off to a woman who was very cross to her, and cross to her own children, and her husband was cross too. One night he came home in a great passion, and he began to whip his wife with his big whip, and his wife beat him with the hot shovel, and she, the child, was scared, ran out of the house, and far up into a wood, to get beyond their cries; and when she would have
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returned, the snow was falling, and she could not find the path, and she had wandered about till she was so cold and tired she could go no farther. Her name, she said, was Angely, and she believed her father was called a Frenchman. The only parental relic she possessed confirmed this statement. It was a locket which she wore suspended at her neck. It contained a lock of hair; an armorial crest was engraven on the back, and under it was inscribed, ‘St Jean Angely de Crève-Cœur.’ This simple story established the conviction, that had been gaining strength in Mrs Reynold’s mind, with every day’s attendance on the interesting child, that they had been brought together by the special providence of God; and most faithfully did she discharge the maternal duties that she believed had been this miraculously imposed on her. The little girl was on her part happy and delighted, and though she sometimes bitterly lamented her father and brothers, yet, as the impressions of childhood are slight, the recollection of them was almost effaced when the mysterious energies of memory were awakened by the sound of a language that seemed to have been utterly forgotten. These events occurred during the revolutionary war, a period of disaster and distress, when a very diligent search for a friendless child was not likely to be made, and as no inquiry ever reached Mrs Reynold’s ear, and as she deemed the foundling an orphan, she had not hesitated to appropriate her. Her name was changed from Marie Angely to Marie Reynolds; and the good woman seemed as secure and happy as any mother, save when she was reminded of the imperfection of her title by the too curious inquiries of the travellers. On these occasions, she was apt to betray a little irritability, and to veil the truth with a slight evasion, as in the instance which excited the suspicion of our sagacious Frenchman.
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Her condition was now a pitiable one. She had the tenderness, but not the rights of a parent. She was habitually pure and upright; but now she was strongly swayed by her affections. She would have persuaded herself, that the abandonment in which she first found the child, invested her with a paramount claim; but the stranger’s story had proved that her father had not voluntarily abandoned her. Then she thought, ‘It cannot be for Mary’s interest, that I should give her up;’ and her mind took a rapid survey of the growing property of which the child was the heir apparent. But she would ask herself, ‘What do I know of the fortune of her father?’ ‘But surely he cannot, he cannot love her as I do.’ ‘Ah I do not know the feeling of a real parent;’ and a burst of tears expressed the sadness of this conviction, and obliged her abruptly to withdraw from the presence of her guests, and leave them amazed at her sudden and violent emotion, while she retired to her own apartment, to implore guidance and support from Heaven. Those who honestly ask for light to point out a way which they would fain to see, and for power to endure a burden from which their nature shrinks, are often themselves astonished at the illumination vouchsafed, and the strength imparted. This was the experience of Mrs Reynolds. She rose from her devotions with the conviction, that but one course remained to her, and with a degree of tranquility, hastened to Mary’s bedroom.
The child was just risen and dressed. Without any explanation to her—she was at the moment incapable of making any—she tied her locket, her sole credential, around her neck, led her down stairs, and placing her hand in Jaubert’s, she said, ‘You have found the child!’ and then retreated to hide the emotion she could not subdue.
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It was fortunate for her, that she was not compelled to witness the gay demonstration of Jaubert’s ecstasies. the graver, but not more equivocal manifestations of his companion’s satisfaction, and the amazement and curiosity of the little girl, who was listening to the explanation of the strangers, with childlike animation, without adverting to her approaching separation from her who had given her the affection and cares of a parent.
But when she came to be severed from this kind friend, she made amends for her thoughtlessness. She clung to her as if nature had knit the bonds that united them, and, amid her cries and sobs, she promised always to remember and love her as a mother. Many have made such promises. Marie Angely kept them.
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Ten years subsequent to the events above narrated, a letter, of which the following is a translation, was addressed by a foreigner in a high official station in this country, to his friend.
‘DEAR BERVILLE—
‘It is, I believe, or should be, a maxim of the true church, that confession of a sin is the first step towards its expiation.
‘Let me, then, invest you with a priest’s cassock, and relieve my conscience by the relation of an odd episode in my history. When I parted from you, I was going with my friend, Robert Ellison, to visit his father, who has a beautiful place on the banks of the Hudson. Young Ellison, as you know, is a thorough republican, and does not conceal his contempt for those of his compatriots, who, professing the same principles, are really aristocrats in their prejudices and manners; who, having parted, and as they pretend voluntarily, with the substances, still grasp at the shadow. To test these false pretensions, and to mortify an absurd pride, he joyfully acquiesced in a proposition I made to him, to lay aside the pomp and circumstances of my official character, and to be presented to his friends without any of the accidental advantages with which fortune has invested me. You will inquire my motive, for you will not suspect me of the absurdity of crusading against the follies of society, the most hopeless of all crusades. No, as our own Moliére says,
C’est une folie, à nulle autre seconde,
De vouloir se méler de corriger le monde.
My motives were then, in the first place, a love of ease, of dishabille; an impatience of the irksomeness of having the dignity of a nation to sustain; and, in the second place, I wished to ascertain how much of the favor lavished on me I should place to the account of the ambassador, and how much I might reserve to my own proper self.
‘You may call this latent vanity. I will not quarrel with you. I will not pretend that I was moved solely by a love of truth, by a pure desire to find out the realities of things; but alas! my dear Berville, if we were to abstract from the web of our motives, every thread tinged with self, would not warp and woof too disappear? Let, then, my motive be what it might, you will allow the experiment required courage.
‘We had some difficulty in settling the precise point at which to gage my pretensions. “Do not claim a drop of noble blood,” said my friend, “it would defeat your purpose. There is something cabalistic in that word ‘noble.’ The young ladies at ____ would at once invest you with the attributes of romance; and the old dowagers would persecute you with histories of their titled ances-
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tors, and anecdotes of lords and ladies that figured in the drawing rooms of the colony. Neither must you be a plain gentleman of the fortune, though that may seem to you a sufficient descent from your high station; but fortune has everywhere her shrines and her devotees. You must be the artificer of your own fortune, a talented young man who has no rank or fortune to be spoken of. What say you to the profession of a painter, a portrait painter, since that is the only branch of the art that gets a man bread in this country.” I acceded without shrinking, secretly flattering myself that my friend either underrated my intrinsic merit, or did the world rank injustice.
‘When we arrived we found a large party of the neighbouring gentry assembled to dine at _____. I was received with great courtesy by the elder Ellison, and with kindness by Madame, on the ground, simply, of being an acquaintance of their son’s. My friend took care to prevent any elation from my reception by saying to me in a low voice, “My father, God bless him, has good sense, good feeling, and experience, and he well knows that the value of gold does not depend on the circulation it has obtained;” and truly if he had known that I bore the impress of the king’s countenance he could not have received me more graciously. There might have been more formality in his reception of the public functionary, but there could not have been more genuine hospitality. He presented me to his guests, and here I was first reminded of my disguise. Instead of the sensation I have been accustomed to see manifested in the lighting up of the face, in the deferential bow, or the blush of modesty, no emotion was visible. No eye rested on me, not a link of conversation was broken, and I was suffered, after rather an awkward passage through the ceremony, to retire to my seat, where I remained, observing, but not
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observed, till dinner was announced. From the habit of precedence, I was advancing to lead Madame to the dining room, when I encountered my friend’s glance, and shrunk back in time to avoid what must have appeared an unpardonable impertinence. I now fell into my modest station in the rear, and offered my arm to an awkward, bashful girl, who I am sure had two left hands by the manner in which she received my courtesy, and who did not honor me so far as to look up to see who it was that had saved her from the mortifying dilemma of leaving the drawingroom alone. I helped my companion from the dish nearest to me, and waited myself till Madame, reminded by her son of her oversight, sent me a plate of soup. I was swallowing this, unmolested by any conversation addressed to me, when my friend’s father said to him, “When have you seen the French ambassador, Robert? I hoped you would have persuaded him to pay us a visit.”
‘“Perhaps he may,” replied my friend, “before the summer is over. He is at present out of the city on some excursion.”
‘“A prodigious favorite is your son with the French ambassador, as I hear from all quarters,” said a gentleman who sat next Mr Ellison.
‘“Ah! is that so, Robert? Are you intimate with Monsieur—?”
‘“He does me the honor to permit my society, sir.” Every mouth was now opened in praise of the ambassador. None of the company had seen him, but all had heard of his abilities, the charms of his conversation, his urbanity, his savoir plaire. “You must be proud of your countryman, M. Dufau?” (this was my assumed name) said my host, with that courtesy that finds a word for the humblest guest.
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‘I said it was certainly gratifying to my national feeling to find him approved in America, but that, perhaps it was not his merit alone that obtained him such distinguished favor; that I had understood he was a great admirer of this country, and though I should do him injustice to say “he praised, only to be praised,” yet I believed there was always a pretty accurately measured exchange in this traffic.
‘“The gentleman is right,” said an old Englishman who sat opposite to me, and who had not before vouchsafed to manifest a consciousness of my existence; “this is all French palaver in Monsieur —. He cannot be such a warm admirer of this country. The man knows better; he has been in England.”
‘I was too well acquainted with English manners to be startled by any manifestation of that conviction which an Englishman demonstrates in every part of the world, that his nation has no equal; but I instinctively defended my countryman, and eager for an opportunity to test the colloquial powers so much admired in the ambassador, I entered the lists with my English opponent, and thus stimulated, I was certainly far more eloquent than I ever had been before, on the history, the present condition, and the prospects of this country. But alas for the vanity of M. Dufau! my host, it is true, gave me all the attention he could spare from the courtesies of the table, but save his ear, I gained none but that half accorded by my contemptuous, testy, and impatient antagonist, who after barking out a few sentences at me, relapsed into a moody silence.
‘I next addressed some trifling gallantries to my bashful neighbour, fancying that she who was neglected by everybody else, would know how to appreciate my attentions; but her eyes were riveted to a fashionable beauty at the upper extremity of the table, and a half a
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dozen “no, sirs” and “yes, sirs,” misplaced, were all the return I could obtain from her. To remain silent and passive, you know, to me, was impossible; so I next made an essay on a vinegar faced dame on my left, far in the wane of life. “If my civilities have been lead elsewhere, in this market,” thought I, “they will at least prove silver or gold.” But here I received my cruelest rebuff; for the lady, after apparently listening to me, said, “I do not understand you.” I raised my voice, but she, determining to shelter the infirmity of age at my expense, replied, “I am not so deaf, sir, but really you speak such broken English, that I cannot understand you.” This was too much, and I might have betrayed my vexation, if an intelligent and laughing glance from my friend had not restored my good humor, and a second reflection, suggesting that it was far more important to the old woman’s happiness that her vanity should remain unimpaired, than it could be to me to have mine reduced, even to fragments, I humbly begged her pardon, and relapsed into a contented silence, solacing myself with the thought, that our encounter was but an illustration of that of the china earthen jars. But I will not weary you with detailing all the trials of my philosophy, but only confess that the negligence of the servants was not the least of them—the grinning self-complacency with which these apes of their superiors signified to me that my wants might be deferred.
‘After all, my humble position would not have been so disagreeable, if I had been accustomed to it. The world’s admiration, like all other luxuries, in the end becomes necessary, and then, too, like other luxuries, ceases to be enjoyed, or even felt, till it is withdrawn and leaves an aching void. If this is Irish, set it down to my broken English.
‘After dinner, I followed the ladies to the drawingroom, and was presented by my friend to Miss —, a reigning beauty. She received me with one of those gracious smiles, that a hacknied belle always bestows on a new worshipper at her shrine. These popular favorites, be it a clergyman, politician, or beauty, are as covetous of the flatteries they receive, as a miser is of gold. No matter how unclean the vessel from which the incense rises; no matter what base alloy may mingle with the precious metal. Have you ever encountered one of those spoiled favorites in the thronged street, and tried to arrest the attention for a moment; to fix the eye that was roving for every tributary glance? If you have, you will understand without my describing it, the distrait manner with which the belle received my first compliments. Even this was not long accorded me, for a better accredited and more zealous admirer than myself appearing, she left me to my meditations, which were not rendered the more agreeable by my overhearing an old lady say, in a voice, which, though slightly depressed, she evidently made no effort to subdue to an inaudible key, “I wonder what possessed Robert Ellison to bring that French portrait painter here! How the world has changed since the Revolution! There is no longer any house where you don’t meet mixed society.” My friend had approached in time to overhear her as well as myself. “The ignorant old fool!” he exclaimed, “shall I tell her that artists are the nobility of every country?”
‘“No,” said I, “do not waste your rhetoric; there is no enlightening the ignorance of stupidity; a black substance will not reflect even the sun’s rays.”
‘Ellison then proposed that I should join a party at whist; but I complained of the heated air of the drawingroom, and, availing myself of an insignificance, I fol-
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lowed the bent of my inclinations, a privilege the humble should not undervalue, and sauntered abroad. The evening was beautiful enough to have soothed a misanthrope, or warmed the heart of a stoic. Its peace, its salutary, sacred voice restored me to myself, and I was ashamed that ‘my tranquility had been disturbed. I contemned the folly of the artificial distinctions of life, and felt quite indifferent to them—when alone.
‘The ground in front of my friend’s house slopes to the Hudson, and is still embellished with trees of the majestic native growth. Where nature has left anything to be supplied by art, walks have been arranged and planted; but carefully, so as not to impede the view of the river, which was now in perfect repose. A sloop lay in the channel, its sails all furled, idly floating on the slumbering surface. While I was wishing my friend were with me, for I am too much of a Frenchman to relish fully even nature, the favorite companion of sentimentalists, in solitude, I saw a boat put off from the little vessel, and row slowly towards the shore. Presently a sweet female voice swelled on the stillness of the night, accompanied by the notes of a guitar, struck by a practised hand. Could any young man’s mercury resist moonlight and such music? Mine could not, and I very soon left behind me all of terra firma that intervened between me and the siren, and ensconced myself in a deeply shaded nook at the very water’s edge, where I could see and hear without being observed. The boat approached the spot where I stood, and was moored at half a dozen yards from my feet; but as my figure was in shadow, and sheltered by a thick copse of hazel bushes, I was perfectly concealed, while, by a flood of moonbeams, that poured on my unsuspicious neighbours, I saw them as plainly as if it were daylight. These were two men, whom I soon ascertained to be the captain
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of the sloop and an attendant, and that they were going to a farm house in the neighbourhood for eggs, milk, &c. The two females were to remain in the boat till their return. The lady of the guitar was inclined to go with them as far as the oak wood on the brow of the hill; but the captain persuaded her to remain in the boat, by telling her there was a formidable dog on the place, which she might encounter. As soon as the captain was gone, her companion, an elderly, staid looking country woman, said to her, “Now, child, as I came here for your pleasure, you must sing for mine. None of your newfangled fancies, but good Old Robin Grey.”
‘“Oh, Robin Grey is a doleful ditty; but anything to reward you for indulging me in coming on shore.”
‘She then sung that touching ballad. The English, certainly the Scotch, excel us as much in the pathos of unembellished nature and truth, as we do them in all literary refinement, ingenuity, and grace. I know not how much of the tribute that gushed from my heart was paid to the poetry and music, and how much to the beautiful organ by which they were expressed, for the fair musician looked herself like one of the bright creations of poetry. I would describe her, but description is cold and quite inadequate to convey an idea of her, and of the scene with which she harmonized. It was one of nature’s sweetest accords; the balmy air, the cloudless sky, the river, reflecting like a spotless mirror the blue arch, the moon and her bright train; my enchantress, the embodied spirit of the evening, and her music the voice of nature. I might have forgotten that I was in human mould, but I had one effectual curb to my imagination; one mortal annoyance. Argus, confound him! had followed me from the house, and it was only by dint of continued coaxing and caressing that I could keep him quiet. Before the ballad was
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finished, however, he was soothed by its monotonous sadness, and crouching at my feet, he fell asleep, I believe. I forgot him. Suddenly “the dainty spirit” changed from the low breathings of melancholy to a gay French air – the very air, Berville, that Claudine, in her mirthful moments, used to sing to us. The transition was so abrupt that it seemed as if the wing of joy had swept over the strings of her instrument. I started forth from my concealment. That was not all. Argus sprang out, too, and barking furiously, bounded towards the boat. The old woman screamed, “There is the dog!” and the young lady, not less terrified. Dropped her guitar, and, unhooking the boat, she seized an oar and pushed it off without listening to my apologies and assurances. In her agitation she dropped the oar, and her companion, still more tremulous than herself, in her attempt to regain it, lost the other, which she had instinctively grasped. As soon as the first impulse imparted to the boat was expended, it scarcely moved at all, and I had leisure to explain my sudden appearance and to say that my dog, far from being the formidable animal they imagined, was a harmless spaniel, who should immediately make all the amends in his power for the terror he had caused. I then directed him to the floating oars. He plunged into the water and brought them to me, but he either did not, or would not understand my wish that he should convey them to the boat, which, though very slowly, was evidently receding from the shore. I then, without farther hesitation, threw off my coat, swam to the boat, and receiving there the oars from Argus’s mouth, I soon reconducted the boat to its haven. There was something enchanting to me in the frankness with which my fair musician expressed her pleasure at the homage I had involuntarily paid to her art, and the grace with which she re-
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ceived the slight service I rendered her. Perhaps I felt it the more for the mortifying experience of the day. I do not care very nicely to analyze my feelings, not to ascertain how much there was of restored self complacency in the delicious excitement of that hour.’
‘The elderly lady, for lady she must needs be since my fair incognita called her mother, expressed a matronly solicitude about the effect of my wet garments, but I assured her that I apprehended no inconvenience from them, and I begged to be allowed to remain at my station till the return of their attendants. The circumstances of out introduction had been such as to dissipate all ceremony. Indeed, this characteristic of English manners would have as ill fitted the trustful, ingenuous, and gay disposition of my new acquaintance, as a coat of mail her light, graceful person. She sung, at my request, our popular opera airs, with more effect, because with far more feeling, than our best professed artists. She talked of music, and of the poetry of nature, with genius and taste; and she listened with that eager and pleased attention, which is the second best gift of conversation. I should have taken no note of the passage of time but for the fidgeting of the old lady, who often interrupted us with expressions of her concern at the captain’s delay, for which he, quite too soon, appeared to render an account himself. As I was compelled to take my leave, I asked my fair unknown if I might not be allowed to think of her by some more accurate designation than the “Lady of the Guitar.”
‘”My name is”—she replied promptly, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “No—pardon me, your romantic designation better suits the adventure of the night.” I was vexed at my disappointment, but she chased away the shade of displeasure by the graceful playfulness with which she kissed her hand to me as the
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boat pushed off. I lingered on the shore till she had reached the vessel, and then slowly retraced my steps towards the house. I was startled by meeting my friend, for my mind was so absorbed that I had not heard his approaching footstep. “Ah!” he exclaimed, ‘is this your philosophy? turned misanthrope at the first frown from the world?”
‘”My philosophy,” I replied, “has neither been vanquished, nor has it conquered, for I had forgotten all its trials.”
‘My friend evidently believed, notwithstanding my disclaimer, that my vanity required some indemnity for the humiliations it had sustained, and he repeated to me some assuaging compliments from his father, “But,” he concluded, “tell me, have you really turned sentimentalist, and been holding high converse with the stars?”
‘With a most brilliant star,’ I replied, and related my adventure.
‘Ellison’s curiosity was excited, and he proposed we should take our flutes, go out in the barge, and serenade the “Lady of the Guitar.” I, of course, assented, and the next half hour found us floating around the little vessel like humble satellites. We played an accompaniment and sung alternately, he in English, and I in French; but there was no token given that the offered incense was accepted; no salutation, save a coarse one from the captain, who invited us to go “on board and take some grog.” We of course declined his professional courtesy. “Then, for the Lord’s sake, lads,” he said, “stop your piping, and give us a good birth. Sleep, at this time o’ night, is better music than the jolliest tune that ever was played.”
‘Thus dismissed, and discomfited by the lady’s neglect, we resumed our oars and were preparing to return to the shore, when the cabin window was gently rais-
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ed, and our fair incognita sung a sweet little French air, beginning “Adieu, adieu ! ” We remained, sound, motion, almost breath suspended till the song was finished.’
“So sweetly she bids us adieu,
I think that she bids us return,”
said my friend, and we instantly rowed our boat towards the stern of the vessel. At this moment the sash was suddenly dropped, and taking this for a definitive “Good night,” we retired.
‘Now, dear Berville, I have faithfully related the adventures of my masquerade—my boyish pastime, you may call it. Be it so. This day has been worth a year of care and dignity. I shall return to New York in a few days. Till then farewell. Yours,
CONSTANT.’
But though M. Constant professed himself satisfied with his day, there was a lurking disquietude at his heart. He had written to assure himself there was nothing there he dare not express, and yet he had concluded without one alluding to the cause of his self-reproach. He had folded the letter, but he opened it, and added ;—
‘P. S. I did not describe to you my friend’s vexation that the responded song was in French. “Ah!” said he, “I see there is no chance for such poor devils as I, so long as you are neither married nor betrothed.”’
He again closed the letter, and was for a moment satisfied that there could be nothing in the nature of that which he had so frankly communicated that required concealment. He walked to the window and eyed the little vessel as a miser looks at the casket that contains
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his treasure ; then starting from his reverie, he took from his bosom a miniature, and contemplated it steadfastly for a few moments; ‘It is my conscience that reproaches me,’ he said, ‘and not this serene, benign countenance. O Emma ! thou art equally incapable of inflicting and resenting wrong, and shall thy trust and gentleness be returned by even a transient treachery ? Am I so sure of faithfully keeping the citadel that I may parley with an enemy? ’
The result of this self-examination was a determination to burn the letter, and to dismiss forever from his mind the enchantress whose power had so swayed him from his loyalty. But though he turned from the window, resolutely closed the blind, and excluded the moonlight, which he fancied influenced his imagination as if he were a lunatic; though he went to bed and sunk into the oblivious sleep, the spirit was not laid. Imagination revelled in its triumph over the will. He was in France, in beautiful France—more beautiful now than in the visions of memory and affection. He was at his remembered haunts in his father’s grounds ; the ‘Lady of the Guitar’ was with him ; she sang his favorite songs ; he saw her sparkling glance, her glowing cheek, her rich, dark tints,
‘The embrowning of the fruit that tells
How rich within, the soul of sweetness dwells;’
He heard the innocent childlike laugh, that,
—‘without any control,
Save the sweet one of gracefulness rung from her soul.’
Then there was interposed between him and this embodied spirit of his joyous clime a slowly moving figure; a cold, fail, pensive countenance, that had more of sorrow than resentment, but still, though its reproach was gentle, it was the reproach of the stern spectre of con-
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science. He cast down his eyes, and they fell in the word ‘BETROTHED,’ traced in the sand at his feet. The ‘Lady of the Guitar’ was gaily advancing towards him. Another step and her flowing mantle would have swept over the word, and effaced it forever. He raised his hand to deprecate her approach, and awoke ; and while the visions of sleep still confusedly mingled with the recollections and resolutions of the preceding day, he was up and at the window ; had thrown open the blind and ascertained that the vessel still lay becalmed in the stream. That virtue is certainly to be envied, that does not need to be shielded and fortified by opportunity and circumstance. If the vessel had disappeared, the recollections of the evening might have been as evanescent and ineffectual as the dreams of the night; but there it was, in fine relief, and as motionless as if it were encased in the blue waters. In spite of M. Constant’s excellent resolutions, he lingered at the window, and returned there as if he were spellbound. Strange power that could rivet his eyes to an ill shapen little Dutch skipper! But that body did contain a spirit, and that spirit, seemingly as perturbed as his own, soon appeared, moving with a light step to and fro on the deck.
The apartment M. Constant occupied, was furnished, among other luxuries, with a fine spyglass. To resist using this facility for closer communion was impossible; and by its aid he could perceive every motion of the ‘lady of his thoughts,’ almost the changes of her countenance. He saw she was gazing on the shore, and that she turned eagerly to her companion to point her attention to some object that had caught her eye, and at the same moment he perceived it was his friend, who was strolling on the shore. Ellison saw him too, and waved his handkerchief in salutation. M. Constant returned the greeting, threw down the glass, and with-
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drew from the window with a feeling of compunction at his indulgence, as if he had again heard that word betrothed spoken. Why is it that external agents have so much influence over the mysterious operations of conscience? Why is it that its energy so often sleeps while there is no witness to the wrong we commit? ‘Keep thy heart, for out of it are the issues of life.’
After breakfast, Ellison said to M. Constant, ‘I am afraid you find your masquerade dull. Let us beguile the morning by a visit your “Lady of the Guitar.” There is nothing lends such wings to time as a pretty girl. Our guests are a dull concern.’
‘A dull concern, when there is a beauty and a fortune among them!’
‘Yes, a sated belle is to me as disagreeable as a pampered child; as my grandmother’s little pet Rosy, whom I saw the other day, tossing away her sugar plums, and crying “’T is not sweet enough;” and as fortune, though I am neither a philosopher not a sentimentalist, I shall never take the temple of Hymen in my way to wealth; for of all speculations, a matrimonial speculation seems to me the most hazardous, and the most disgraceful. But we loiter. Will you pay your devoirs to our unknown?’
‘I believe not; I have letters to write this morning,’
‘To Emma? Pardon me—I do not mean to pry into your cabinet, but if the letters are to her they may be deferred. She is a dear good soul and will find twenty apologies for every fault you commit.’
‘If they are to her, such generosity should not be abused. No, I will not go. But on what pretext will you?’
‘Pretext indeed! does a pilgrim seek for a pretext to visit my Lady of Loretto, or the shrine of any other saint ? Here comes the gardener with a basket of fine fruit which I have ordered to be prepared, and of which
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I shall be the bearer to the sufferers pent in that dirty sloop this breathless August morning—from mere philanthropy you know. Commend me to Emma, ’ he added gaily; ‘I will bear witness for you that your enthusiasm for this unknown was a mere coup de la lune, and that when daylight appeared you were as loyal, and—as dull as a married man.’
Ellison’s raillery did not render the bitter pill of self-denial more palatable to M. Constant. He turned away without reply, but instead of returning to his apartment he obtained a gun, and inquiring the best direction to pursue in quest of game, he sauntered into a wooded defile that wound among the hills, and was so enclosed by them as not to afford even a glimpse of the river. Here he threw himself on the grass, took a blank leaf from his pocketbook and began a sonnet to constancy, but broke off in the middle; scribbled half a dozen odd lines from the different songs that had entranced him on the preceding evening; sketched a guitar, then rose, and still musing, pursued his way up the defile. The path he had taken led him around the base of an eminence to a rivulet that came frolicking down a hill now leaning and now loitering with the capricious humor of childhood. He traced it to its source, a clear fountain bubbling up from the earth at the foot of a high, precipitous rock. Clusters of purple and pink wild flowers hung from the clefts of the rock, wreathing its bare old front, and presenting a beautiful harmony in contrast, like infancy and old age. The rock and the sides of the fountain formed a little amphitheatre, enclosed and deeply shaded by the mountain ash, the aromatic hemlock and the lofty basswood. This sequestered retreat, with its fresh aspect and sweet exhalations, afforded a delicious refuge from the fierce heat and overpowering light of an August day. M. Constant
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was lingering to enjoy it when his ear caught the sound of distant and animated voices. He started, and for a moment thought himself cheated by the illusions of a distempered fancy ; but, as the sounds approached nearer, he was assured of their reality, and they affected him like the most painful discord, though they were produced by the sweet, clear, penetrating voice of the unknown and the hitherto welcome tones of his friend.
The impropriety of a young girl straying off into such a solitude with an acquaintance of an hour was obvious, but was perhaps more shocking to M. Constant than it would have been to a perfectly disinterested observer. It gave a dreadful jar to his preconceived notions, and contrasted, rudely enough, with the conduct of the preceding night, when the lady had, with such scrupulous delicacy, forborne to show herself on the deck of the sloop. As they drew nearer he thought there was something in the gay, familiar tones of Ellison, disgusting; and the laugh of the lady, which before had seemed the sweetest music of a youthful and innocent spirit, was now harsh and hoydenish. The strain of their conversation, too, for they were near enough to be heard distinctly, while the windings of the path prevented his being seen, though it was graceful chitchat enough, appeared to him trifling and flippant in the extreme. As they came still nearer he listened more intently, for he had a personal interest in the subject.
‘And so, my “Lady of the Guitar,”’ said Ellison, ‘you persist in preserving that scrap of paper, merely, I presume, as a specimen of the sister arts of design and poetry. You are sure those scratches are meant for a guitar, and not a jewsharp, and that the fragment is a sonnet and not a monody?’
‘Certainly it is a sonnet; the poet says so himself. See here—“Sonnet à la Constance.”’
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‘Well, it is certainly in the strain of a “lament.” My friend was in a strait ; what he would do he could not. Constancy is a very pretty theme for a boarding-school letter, but I am afraid the poor fellow will not find his inspiration in this tame virtue ?’
‘Ah ! these tame virtues, as you call them,’ replied the lady, ‘ are the salutary food of life, while your themes of inspiration are intoxicating draughts, violent and transient in their effects.’
‘A very sage lesson, and very well conned. Did your grandmother teach it to you ?’
‘No matter—I have got it by heart.’
‘O those moral New Englanders, they change all the poetry of life to wise saws. Thank heaven you have escaped from them in time to retain some portion of your mercurial nature. But now let me tell you, my sage young friend, that same paper may prove as dangerous where you are going as a match to a magazine. So let me advise you, either keep it quite to yourself, or give it to the winds.’
‘You talk riddles, Mr Ellison; but I will not be quizzed into believing this little castaway scrap of paper can be of any import.’
‘Let me label it for you then, if, as I see, it is to be filed among the precious stores of your pocketbook.’
There was a short pause when the lady, as M. Constant supposed, looking over Ellison’s superscription, read aloud, ‘Love’s Labor Lost,’ and then exclaimed, ‘Pshaw, Robert, how absurd !’ and tore off the offensive label, while he laughed at her vexation.
M. Constant felt that it would be very embarrassing for him to be discovered as a passive listener to this coversation. He had been chained to the spot by an interest that he would gladly not have felt, but which he could not suppress.
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Another turn would bring them directly before him. To delay longer without being seen was therefore impossible. As he put aside the rustling branches, he heard Ellison exclaim, “Ha! there are some startled quail ;’ but before his friend could take a more accurate observation, he had sprung around an angle of the rock, and was beyond sight and hearing.
The gentlemen met before dinner. M. Constant was walking on the piazza, apparently moody and little disposed to sympathize with Ellison’s extravagant expressions of admiration of the unknown, or of regret that the fresh breeze was now wafting the vessel and its precious cargo far away.
‘In the name of Heaven, Constant,’ he said, ‘what has so suddenly turned you to ice? Last night you seemed to think it necessary to invent—pardon me—allege some apology for your prompt sensibility, and you said it was not the beauty, the voice, the grace, or any of the obvious and sufficient charms of this young enchantress—that was your word—that fascinated you, but it was a resemblance to the glowing beauties of your own clime ; and now, if you had been born at the north pole and she at the equator, you could not manifest less affinity.’
‘There are certain principles,’ replied M. Constant, coldly, ‘that overcome natural affinities. I hope you have passed your morning agreeably.’
‘Agreeably ? Delightfully ! Our incognita is more beautiful than you describe her.’
‘Is she then still incognita to you?’ asked M. Constant with a penetrating glance.
‘Not exactly ; she favored me with her name.’
‘Her name ! what is it ?’
‘ Pardon me, I am under a prohibition not to tell.’
‘The lady certainly makes marked distinctions. She is as reserved towards others, as frank to you.’
‘She had her reasons.’
‘Doubtless; but what were they?’
‘Why, one was that I refused to tell her your name.’
‘And why did you that ?’
‘I had my reasons, too.’
M. Constant was vexed at the mystery his friend affected. H was annoyed, too, at his perfect self complacency and imperturbable good nature, and more than all, ashamed of his own irritability. He made an effort to overcome it, and to put himself on a level with Ellison. He succeeded so far in his efforts as to continue to talk of the lady with apparent nonchalance till he was summoned to dinner ; but though he tried every mode his ingenuity could devise, he could not draw from his friend the slightest allusion to the lady’s extraordinary visit to the shore, or any particular of their interview, which explained the perfect familiarity that seemed to exist between them ; and what made this mystery more inscrutable, was the tone of enthusiasm which Ellison maintained in speaking of the lady, and which no young man sincerely feels without a sentiment of respect.
In spite of M. Constant’s virtuous resolutions and efforts, the ‘Lady of the Guitar’ continued to occupy his imagination, and he determined to take the surest measures to dispel an influence which he had in vain resisted. As he parted from his friend at night, he announced his intention of taking his departure the following morning. After expressing his sincere regret, Ellison said, ‘You go immediately to town ?’
‘No, I go to Mr. Liston’s.’
‘Ah! Is it so ?’
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‘Even so. Ellison ; but no more till we meet again. I have supported my masquerade with little spirit ; but do not betray me, and we, neither of us, shall lose reputation.’
M. Constant had for a long time been on terms of intimacy and friendship with Miss Liston. This lady belonged to one of the most distinguished families in our country. She was agreeable in her person, had a fund of good sense, was well informed and perfectly amiable. Such characters are admirable in the conduct of life, if not exciting to the imagination ; that precious faculty, which, like the element of fire, the most powerful and dangerous agent, may warm, or may consume us. Long and intimate friendship between unfettered persons of different sexes is very likely to terminate, as that of M. Constant and Miss Liston terminated, in an engagement.
He had a sentiment of deep and fixed affection for her, which, probably, no influence could have materially affected; but when that being crossed his path who seemed to him to realize the brightest visions of his youth, he felt a secret consciousness that the fidelity of his affection was endangered. The little mystery in which the unknown was shrouded, the very circumstance of calling her ‘the unknown,’ magnified the affair, as objects are enlarged, seen through a mist. He very wisely and prudently concluded that the surest way of dispelling all illusion, would be frankly to relate the particulars to Miss Liston, only reserving to himself certain feelings which would not be to her edification, and which he believed would be dispelled by participating their cause with her. Accordingly, at their first meeting he was meditating how he should get over the embarrassment of introducing the subject, when Miss Liston said, ‘I have a great pleasure in reserve for
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you,’ and left him without any farther explanation, and in a few moments returned, followed by a lady, and saying as she reentered, ‘Marie Angely, you and Constant, my best friends, must not meet as strangers.’ A half suppressed exclamation burst from the lips of both. All M. Constant’s habitual grace forsook him. He overturned Miss Liston’s workstand, workbox, and working paraphernalia, in advancing to make his bow. Miss Angely’s naturally high color was heightened to a painful excess; she made an effort to reciprocate the common courtesies of an introduction, but in vain; the words faltered on her lips, and after struggling a moment with opposing feelings, the truth and simplicity of her heart triumphed and turning to Miss Liston, she said, ‘Your friend, Emma, is the gentleman I met on the river.’
Miss Liston had been the confidant of all her romantic young friend’s impressions from her moonlight interview with the stranger, and it was now her turn to suffer a full share of the embarrassment of the other parties. She looked to M. Constant for an explanation. Never had he, in the whole course of his diplomatic career, been more puzzled; but after a moment’s hesitation he followed Miss Angely in the safe path of ingenuousness and truly told all the particulars of his late adventures, concluding with a goodhumored censure of his friend Ellison, who had long and intimately known Miss Angely, and who, to gratify his mischief loving temper, had contrived the mystery which led to the rather awkward d́énouement.
Thus these circumstances, which might have been woven into an intricate web of delicate embarrassment and romantic distress, that might have ended in the misery of one, perhaps of all parties, were divested of their interest and their danger by being promptly and frankly disclosed.
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Miss Angely, whom our readers have already recognised as the little girl of the inn, had met with Miss Liston at a boarding school in Boston, where, though Miss Liston was her elder by several years, they formed an enthusiastic, and rare in the annals of boarding schools, an enduring friendship. Marie Angely had faithfully discharged the debt of gratitude to Mrs Reynolds, and though acquiring, as may be supposed, somewhat of the fastidiousness that accompanies refined education and intercourse, no one could perceive any abatement of her respect or affection for her kind protectress, or the slightest diminution of her familiarity with her. She passed a part of every summer with her, always called her mother, and, by the fidelity of her kindness and the charm of her manner, she diffused light and warmth over the whole tract of Mrs Reynolds’s existence. She linked expectations, that might have been blasted, to a happy futurity, and cherished and elevated affections, which, but for her sunny influence, would have been left to wither and perish. Oh that the fortunate and happy could know how much they have in their gift!
Miss Angely had been on one of her annual visits to her humble friend, and was on her way, accompanied by her, to New York, where she was to join Miss Liston, when the incidents occurred which we have related.
There is nothing in the termination of our tale to indemnify the lover of romance for its previous dullness; but it is a true story, and its materials must be received from tradition, and not supplied by imagination.
M. Constant was, in the course of a few weeks, united to Miss Liston. This lady had long cherished a hope that her friend would be a permanent member of her family, and she used every art of affection to persuade her to remain with her at least so long as she should decline the suits of all the lovers who were now
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thronging around her, attracted by her beauty, or loveliness, or the eclat she derived from her intimacy with the wife of the ambassador. M. Constant did not very warmly second his wife’s entreaties. He perhaps had a poignant recollection of certan elective affinities, and his experience taught him the truth, if indeed he had not derived it from a higher source, that, in the present infirm condition of human virtue, it is always safest and best not voluntarily to ‘enter into temptation.’
Miss Angely returned to Boston. M. Constant’s union with Miss Liston was one of uninterrupted confidence and conjugal happiness; but it was not destined to be of long duration. His wife died in about a year after their marriage. Among her papers was found a letter addressed to her husband, written in expectation of the fatal issue of the event that had terminated her life, in which she earnestly recommended her friend as her successor. In due time her request was honored. M. Constant married Miss Angely. After residing for some time in America, they went to France, where she was received as an ornament to her noble family, and acknowledged to be, ‘the brightest jewel in its coronet.’
Far from the mean pride of those who shrink from recurring to the humble stages in their progress to the heights of fortune, Madame Constant delighted in relating the vicissitudes of her life, and dwelt particularly on that period, when, as Mrs Reynolds’s handmaid, she considered herself honored in standing behind the chair of the wife of the great General Knox.
‘The longest day comes to the vesper hour.’ Madame Constant closed at Paris a life of virtue, prosperity, and happiness, in July 1827.
_______________
*We would gladly have had it in our power to be exact in dates, as our story in good faith is true in all, even the least important particulars. Some few circumstances, and the ‘spoken words,’ had escaped tradition, and of course were necessarily supplied, as the proper statue receives a foot or finger from the ruder hand of modern art. The name of the heroine having been subsequently merged and forgotten in that of her husband, we have ventured to retain it. The rest we have respectfully veiled under assumed appellations.
Dublin Core
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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Romance in Real Life
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [By the Author of "Redwood."]
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Legendary, edited by Nathaniel Parker Willis, 118-61.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Boston: Samuel G. Goodrich
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1828 [pub. 1827]
Relation
A related resource
Reprinted in The Garland, pp. 198-264, Boston, 1839. Reprinted in The Diadem, New York: 1850. Collected in Tales and Sketches, By Miss Sedgwick, Author of "The Linwoods," "Hope Leslie," &c. &c. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835, pp. 237-78.
Format
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Document
Language
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English
Contributor
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Esther Hagan, Savvy Myles, and Angelica Tijerino, with Dr. Jenifer Elmore (Palm Beach Atlantic University); and Julia Carey, Sean Godbout, Emily Kay, Isabella Lopresti, Diana Villanueva, Jake Lyons, with Dr. Lucinda Damon-Bach (Salem State University),
Subject
The topic of the resource
Historical fiction, Romance, French and American relations.
Description
An account of the resource
An historical romance in two parts, focusing first on the Boston childhood of orphan Marie Reynolds/Angely (implied to be the long-lost daughter of a fictionalized Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur), and subsequently on Marie's mysterious meeting with and eventual marriage to a US diplomat.
1777
1787
1827
1839
adoption
Alexander Pope
ambassador
An Essay on Man -Epistle IV
Anna Matilda
As You Like It
Auld Robin Gray
boarding school
Boston
Catskills
class
Comte de Mosloy
constancy
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1856
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THE WHITE HILLS IN OCTOBER
[p. 44]
OUR town friends who fly from the heat, and dust, and menacing diseases, and insupportable ennui of their city residence, during the moths of July and August, may have an escape, but they have little enjoyment. We admire the heroism with which they endure, year after year, the discomforts of a country hotel, or the packing in the narrow, half-furnished bedrooms and rather warm attics of rural lodging-houses, and the general abatement and contraction of creature-comforts, in such startling contrast to the abounding luxuries of their own city palaces. But they are right; the country, at any discount, is better, in the fearful heats of July and August, than the town with its hot, unquiet nights and polluted air. Any hillside or valley in the country, and a shelter under any roof in or upon them, with the broad cope of heaven above, (not cut into patches and fragments by intervening walls and chimney-tops,) and broad fields, and grass, and corn, and woodlands, and their flowers, and freshening dews and breezes, and all Nature’s infinite variety, is better than every appliance and contrivance for battling with the din, the suffocation, and unrest of city life.
Yes, our city friends are right in their summer flights from
“The street,
Filled with its ever-shifting train.”
But they must not flatter themselves that their mere glimpse of country life, their mere snatch at its mid-summer beauty, the one free-drawn breath of their wearied spirit, is acquaintance with it. As well might one who had seen Rosalind, the most versatile of Shakspeare’s heroines, only in her court-dress at her uncle, the duke’s ball, guess at her infinite variety of charm in the Forest of Ardennes. Nature holds her drawing-room in July and August. She wears her fullest and richest dresses then; if we may speak flippantly without offense to the simplicity of her majesty, she is then en pleine toilette. But any other of the twelve is more picturesque than the summer months. Blustering March, with its gushing streams tossing off their icy fetters—changeful April, with its greening fields and glancing birds—sweet, budding, blossoming May—flowery June—fruitful September—golden, glorious October—dreary, thoughtful November; and all of winter, with its potent majesty and heroic adversity.
But let our citizens come to our rural districts—the more, the better for them! Only let them not imagine they get that enough which is “as good as a feast.”
This preamble was naturally suggested by our autumnal life in the country, and by a recurrence to a late delightful passage through the White Hills of New-Hampshire.
“That resort of people that do pass
In travel to and fro,”
during the intense months of July and August, we found in October so free from visitors, that we might have fancied ourselves the discoverers of that upland region of beauty, unparalleled, so far as we know, in all the traveled parts of our country. And for the benefit of those who shall come after us, for all who have their highest enjoyment, perhaps their best instruction, in Nature’s Free School, we intended to give some brief notices of our tour, in the hope of extending the traveling season into October by imparting some faint idea of the startling beauty of this brilliant month in the mountains; but what we might have said was happily superseded.
At a little inn, in a small town, after we came down from the “high place,” we met a party of friends who had preceded us along the whole route by a day.
A rain came on, and we were detained together for twenty-four hours. We agreed to pass the evening in a reciprocal reading of the brief notes of our journey. It came last to the turn of my friend, a very charming young person, whom I shall take the liberty to call Mary Langdon. She blushed and stammered, and protested against being a party to the contribution. “My only record of the journey,” she said, “is a long letter to my cousin, which I began before we left home.”
“So much the better,” we rejoined.
“But,” she said, “ it has been written capriciously, in every mood of feeling.”
“Therefore,” we urged, “the more variety.”
At last, driven to the wall, she threw a nice morocco letter-case into my lap, saying: “Take it and read it to yourself, and you will see why I positively can not read it aloud.”
So we gave up our entreaties. I read the letter-journal after I went to my room. The reading cheated me of an hour’s sleep—perhaps because I had just intensely enjoyed the country my friend described; and in the morning I begged Miss Langdon’s permission to publish it. She at first vehemently objected, saying it would be in the highest degree indelicate to publish so much of her own story as was inextricably interwoven with the journey.
“But, dear child,” I urged, “who that reads our magazines knows you? You will be on the other side of the Atlantic in another month, and before you return this record will be forgotten, for alas! we contributors to monthlies do not write for immortality!”
“But for the briefest mortality I am not fitted
[p. 45]
to write,” she pleaded. I rather smiled at the novelty of one hesitating to write for the public because not fitted for the task, and (thinking of “the fools that rushed in”—there is small aptness in the remainder of the familiar quotation) I continued to urge, till my young friend yielded, on my promising to omit passages which related to the private history of her heart—Mary Langdon not partaking that incomprehensible frankness or child-like hallucination which enables some of our very best writers, Mrs. Browning, for instance, to impart, by sonnets and in various vehicles of prose and verse, to the curious and all-devouring public those secrets from the heart’s holy of holies that common mortals would hardly confess to a lover—or a priest.
It is to our purpose, writing, as we profess to do pour l’utile, that our young friend indulged little in sentiment, and that, being a country-bred New-England girl, she conscientiously set down the coarser realities essential to the well-being of a traveler—breakfasts, dinners, etc.
But before proceeding to her journal, I must introduce my débutante, if she who will probably make but a single appearance before the public may be so styled.
Mary Langdon is still on the threshold of life—at least those who have reached threescore would deem her so, as she is not more than three-and-twenty. The freshness of her youth has been preserved by a simple and rather retired country-life. A total abstinence from French novels and other like reading has left the purity and candor of her youth unscathed by their blight and weather-stain. Would that this tree of the knowledge of evil—not good and evil--were never transplanted into our New World! Beware, ye that eat of it; your love of what is natural and simple will surely die.
Mary Langdon’s simplicity is that of truth, not of ignorance. Her father has given her what he calls “a good education”—that means, he says, that “she thoroughly knows how to read, write, and cipher, which,” he rather tartly adds, “few girls brought up at French boarding-schools do.” As might be suspected from the practical ideas in her narrative, our young friend has had that complete development of her faculties which arises out of the necessities of country-life in its best aspects.
Mary Langdon is called only pretty, but her prettiness is beauty in the eyes of her friends and lovers; and then she is so buoyant, so free of step and frank of speech, that while others are slowly winding their way to your affection, she springs into your heart.
With due respect to seniority, we should have presented Mr. Langdon before his daughter. On being called on for his journal, he said he “ was not such a confounded fool as to keep one for any portion of his life.” He “should as soon think of crystallizing soap-bubbles. He had dotted down a few memoranda as warnings to future travelers, and we were welcome to them; though he thought we were too mountain mad to profit by them, if indeed any body ever profited by any body’s else experience!” The fact was, the dear old gentleman had left home in a very unquiet state of mind. He hated at all times leaving his home, abounding in comforts—he detested travel even under what he termed “alleviating circumstances.” He was rather addicted to growling. This English instinct came over with his progenitor in the May Flower, and half a dozen generations had not sufficed to subdue it. But Mr. Langdon’s “bark is worse than his bite.” In truth his ‘bite’ is like that of a teething child’s, resulting from a derangement of sweet and loving elements.
We found our old friend’s memoranda so strongly resembling the grumbling of our traveling cousins from over the water, that we concluded to print it so portions of it, in order to illustrating the effects of the lights or shadows that emanate from our own minds. Providence provides the banquet; its relish or disrelish depends on the appetite of the guest. But to Mary Langdon’s letter, which, as it was begun before she left home, bears its first date there:
“LAKE-SIDE, 28th Sept., 1854.
“MY DEAR SUE,--I have not much more to tell you than my last contained. Carl Hermann left our neighborhood last week, determined to return by the next steamer to Dusseldorf. We were both very wretched at this final parting. But as I have often seen people making great sacrifices to others, and then losing themselves, and letting others lose all the benefit of the sacrifice, by the ungracious manner of it, I summoned up courage, and appeared before my father calm and acquiescing, and (you will think me passionless, perhaps hard-hearted) I soon became so. I read over and over again your arguments, and I confess I was willing to be persuaded by them. But, after all, my point of sight is not yours, and you can not see objects in the proportions and relations that I do. You say I have exaggerated notions of filial duty—that I have come to mature age and ripe judgment, and that I should decide and act for myself—that in the nature of things the conjugal must supersede the filial relation, and that I have no right to sacrifice my life-long happiness to the remnant of my father’s days; and above all, I am foolish to give in to his prejudices, and—selfishness,’ you added, dear, and did not quite efface the word. Though I see there is much reason in what you say, I have only to reply that I can not marry with my father’s disapprobation. I can not and I will not. Our hearts have grown together. God forms the bond that ties the child to the parent, and we make the other; and it shows human work—being often fragile, sometimes rotten. Susy, you lost your parents when you were so young, that you can not tell what I feel for my surviving one. Since my mother’s death and the marriage of Alice, he has lived in such dependence on me, that I can’t tell what his life would be if I were to leave him: and I will not. You tell me this is unnatural, and a satisfactory proof to you that I do not love Carl. Oh, Sue!— ”
[pg. 46]
Here must be our first hiatus. We can only say that the outpouring of our young friend’s heart satisfied us that beneath her serene surface there was an unfathomable well of feeling, and that her friend must have been convinced that
“Love’s reason is not always without reason.”
The letter proceeds: “I very well know that my father is prejudiced, Sue, but old men’s prejudices become a part and parcel of themselves, and they can not be cured of them. My father’s do not spring from any drop of bitterness, for he has not one; nor from egotism, for he has none of it; but, as you know, his early life was in Boston, and his only society is there, and he he naturally partakes the opinions of his contemporaries, who, the few surviving among them, deem all foreigners interlopers, outside barbarians, strangers intermeddling with that liberty, equality, and pursuit of happiness which is their exclusive birth-right; or rather, I suspect, that in their secret souls they regard the theories of their revolutionary fathers as a Utopian dream. A foreign artist above all is, in my father’s eye, a mere vagrant, who neither deserves nor can attain a local habitation or a name; and thus my poor Carl, with divine gifts, and habits of industry that would make the fortune of a mere mechanic, is thrust aside.”
Here Mary Langdon begins the narration of her journey, and here we give notes, a few specimens from her father’s memoranda, that our readers may have the advantage of seeing the same objects from different points of sight, premising that our old friend’s memoranda were scanty, and repeating that we give but specimens. We smile at his petulance more in love than ridicule. We are not fond of showing it off, and only do so in these brief extracts to substantiate our opinion that his traveling temper showed him near of kin to English tourists, who seem to make it a point to turn their plates bottom side upward.
The father and daughter both record the same facts. The one shows the rights and beautiful side of the tapestry, the other the wrong one. Strange that any eye should make the fatal mistake of dwelling on the last rather than the first!
“On Monday, 2d of October,” proceeds Mary Langdon in her letter to her cousin, “we came into Boston, to take the two o’clock train for Portland. We had three hours upon our hands, which we pleasantly filled up by visits to a studio and picture-shop; and finally, our mortal part, having given out while we were feasting the immortal, we repaired to a restaurateur’s. We groped our way into a little back room in School Street, where, if we did not find luxury or elegance, we did what met our reasonable wants-- wholesome fare and civility.*…..
___________________________________
* EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
2nd October, Anno Domino, 1854. Left my comfortable lowland home for unknown parts, and known regions of snow and ice. The Lord willing, I am sure of one pleasure—coming home again!
“We had three mortal house on our hands this morning in Boston. I called on my dear old friends, the survivors of the _____ family. Not one of them, they told me, has yet risked life in a rail-car. Wisdom is not extinct!
“Called on respected Widow A-----. Could not see much of Sally -----, my old sweetheart, about her; but we got upon old times, and the color came to her pale, furrowed cheek. Women never forget—loving souls! She gave me a nice lunch—pickled oysters, etc. and a glass of old Madeira. Meanwhile the girls were ranging round studios (?), good lack! and picture-shops. This rage for ‘Art” has come in with the foreign tongues since my time. Picked them up at a restaurant. What a misnomer! A dainty place of refreshment to be sure; a little parlor behind a shop, with herds rushing in and herds rushing out!
________________________________________
“The passage to Portland was dusty but brief, and we arrived there in time to see its beautiful harbor, while the water reflected the rose-tints on the twilight clouds. We, as advised, eschewed the hotel, and were kindly received at a Miss Jones’s, a single woman, who so blends dignity with graciousness, that she made us feel like invited guests. One might well mistake the reception of the hostess for the welcome of a friend. Her table has an American variety and abundance with the nicety of English appointments. Her house is a model. Its quiet and completeness reminds one of that classic type of comfort, an English inn. The house, with its high repute, was the inheritance of two sisters from their mother, of whom we were told an anecdote which may be apocryphal, but which would harmonize with the bonhomie of Sir Roger de Coverley. The old lady closed her patriarchal length of days serenely; and when she was dying, she requested that the order of her household should be in no wise disturbed by the event of her decease, but that ‘the gentlemen should play their evening game of whist as usual!’*…..
____________________________________
*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Came by rail to Portland, in peril of life and limb. Stirred up with fifty plebieans treading on your toes and jostling your elbows. This modern improvement of cattle-pens over a gentleman’s carriage with select and elect friends, and time to enjoy a beautiful country, is the ‘advance of civilization!’ Travelers now are prisoners under sentence of death- their keeper being called a conductor. Oh! I cry with my old friend Touchstone, ‘when I was at home, I was in a better place!’ Heaven grant me his philosophy to add, “Travelers must be content.’
“Portland. Rather a nice house is this Miss Jones’s. Old-fashioned neatness and quiet. But what would our English traveler say to the lady bestowing her own company, unasked, and that of her guest, upon us! Bad butter spoiled my tea and breakfast. The girls did not notice it. Young folks have no senses.”
_________________________________________
“Tuesday. Miss Jones’s morning face was as benign as her evening countenance. No lady could have administered hospitality with more refinement. Just as the door of the carriage that was to convey us to the station was closing, it was reopened, and a rough-hewn, but decent country body was shoved in by the driver, who muttered something about there being no other conveyance for her. My father looked a little awry, not with any thought of remonstrating -- no native American would do that -- but he was just lighting his after-breakfast cigar, and he shrunk from the impropriety of smoking in such close quarters with a stranger who bore a sem-
[pg. 47]
blance of the sex to which he always pays deference.
“‘I hope, Madam,’ he said, ‘a cigar does not offend you?’
“ ‘La! no, sir,’ replied our rustic friend good-naturedly, ‘ I like it.’
“My father’s geniality is always called forth by the touch of a cigar.
“ ‘Perhaps, Madame,’ he said, with a smile at the corners of his mouth, ‘you would try one yourself?’
“ ‘I would,’ she answered, eagerly, and grasped the cigar my father selected, saying, ‘thank ye kindly. I s’pose I can light it at the end of yours?
“ My dear, fastidious father heroically breasted this juxtaposition, and the old lady, unconscious of any thing but her keen enjoyment of the unlooked-for been, smoked away vigorously. Dear Alice, who never loses sight of her duty to wrest a possible mischance from any human being, rather verdantly suggested, ‘that the cigar might make her sick.’
“‘Mercy, child! I am used to pipes.’
“That I had already inferred from her manner of holding the cigar. She was soon pressed by the usual necessity engendered by smoking, and half rising from her seat, it was too evident that she mistook the pure plate-glass for empty space. My father let down the glass as if he had been shot; but she, nowise discomposed, even by our laughing, merely said, cooly
“ ‘Why, I did not calculate right, did I?”
“There are idiosyncrasies in Yankeedom—there is no doubt of it! Arrived at the cars, our close companionship, and our acquaintance too, ended, except that the woman’s husband, for she had a husband, some Touchstone whose ‘humor’ it was to ‘take that no other man would,’ asked me to put my window down, for his ‘wife was sick!’ But as I had just observed the good woman munching a bit of mince pie, I thought that coming so close upon the cigar might possibly offend her stomach more than the fresh untainted air, so I declined, as courteously as possible, with the answer I have always ready for similar requests, ‘that I keep my window open to preserve the lives of the people in the car.’ ‘That’s peculiar!’ I heard her murmur; but her serenity was nowise discomposed, either by my refusal or her ‘sickness.’ Surely the imperturbable good nature of our people is national and ‘peculiar!’*…..
___________________________________
*EXTRACT FROM MR.LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Happy illustration, from a smoking old woman this morning, of the refinements of railroad travel!”
________________________________________
“By the way, there were notices posted up in these cars, which reminded us that we were near the English Provinces, and under their influence. The notices ran thus: ‘Gentlemen are requested not to put their feet on the cushions, and not to spit on the floor, and to maintain a respectable cleanliness, the conductors are required to enforce these requests.’ Must we wait for the millennium to see a like request and like enforcement pervade our tobacco-chewing country? We found ourselves surrounded by intelligent people of the country habitués, who gave us all the local information we asked, told us when we came to Bryant’s Pond, and that the poor little shrunken stream, that still brawled and fretted in its narrowed channel, was the Androscoggin.
“At Gorham, but seven miles from the ‘Glen-House,’ we left the cars and found a wagon awaiting passengers. ‘The houses are all closed,’ was the pleasant technical announcement of our driver; and he added, cheerfully,
“’The weather has been so tedious that it was burst the bubble on Mount Washington.’
“‘The “bubble!” what the deuce does the man mean?’ exclaimed my father. I perceived that it was a bit of slang wit upon ‘out-of-season’ people, to terrify them with the ‘bulb’ having burst, and so I told my father. He solemnly replied that he did not in the least doubt the fact! And as we went on slowly making the ascent, he looked ‘sagely sad;’ dear Alice, as her happy temper is, was ‘bright without the sun.’*…..
“My father made a few and faint responses to our exclamations of delight at the light wreath of mist that floated far down the mountains, and the massive clouds that dropped over their summits, so that our imaginations were not kept in abeyance by definite outlines. The air was soft, and our steeds, as if considerate of our enjoyment, prolonged it by crawling up the long ascent. We came into the ‘Glen House’ with keen appetites—a needful blessing we thought—when Mr. Thompson, the host, with solemn mien informed us he ‘was not prepared for company in October—we must expect port and beans.’ł …..
________________________________________
*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“We were pitched into an open wagon at Gorham—Scottish mist—rain impending—chilled to my very vitals. The driver tells us the bulb’s already burst on Mount Washington. Continuous ascent. Not a meadow, an orehard, or a garden, but dreary mountains shrouded in fog.
ł “Found the Glen House ‘closed,’ which means that all the comfortable rooms are dismantled and shut up, that you must take such fare as mine host pleases (‘pork and beans’ he promises), thank him for ‘accommodating’ you, and pay summer prices. Oh, ‘what fools we mortals are!”
__________________________________________
“Oh, my poor father’s blank face! Yet blanker when we were ushered into a parlor where, instead of the cracking wood fire we had fancied indigenous in these mountains, we found one of those black ‘demons’ that have taken out of our life all the poetry of the ‘hearthstone.’ But courage! We can open the stove door and get a sparkle of light and life!
“10 p.m. Before finishing my day’s journal I must tell you, ‘pour encourager les autres’ who may risk the ‘closed houses’ of October, that our host did better than he promised. Our dinner was served in a cozy little room, as neatly as a home dinner; it was hot, which a hotel dinner, in the season, never is; and that the threatened ‘pork and beans’ turned into tender fowls, fresh eggs, and plentiful accessories of vegetables and pies. William, our wagon-driv-
[pg. 48]
er, was metamorphosed into a waiter, and performed his part as if he were ‘native to the manner.’*…..
__________________________________________
*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Dinner turned out better than I expected; but where but in a Yankee tavern would one suffer the infliction of a mince pie in October?”
__________________________________________
“The cloudy evening has closed in upon us early. We have eluded its tediousness by reading aloud ‘The Heir of Redcliffe,’ a charming book, which teaches more irresistibly than the ordained preacher the virtues of forgiveness and self-sacrifice. These Christian graces are vitalized in the lives of Guy and Amy. Amy does right with so much simplicity and so little effort, that one feels as if it were easy to do it; and as my task is much easier than hers as the lover is less dear than the husband, I will try. You think me cool; I do not feel so. I start and tremble at this howling wind—it reminds me that Carl is on the ocean.
“I was here startled by seeing that my father was observing me.
“ ‘My child,’ he said, ‘you are shaking with cold,’ (not ‘with cold,’ I could have answered). ‘These confounded stoves,’ he added, ‘keep one in an alternate ague and fever. Come, waltz round the room with your sister, and get into a glow.’
“So, singing our own music, we waltzed till we were out of breath, and Alice has seated herself at picquet with my father, who has a run of luck, ‘point! seizième! and capote!’ which puts him into high good humor—and I may write unmarked. Carl was to write me once more before his embarkation, but I can not get the letter till my return, and I have not the poor consolation of looking over the list of the steamer’s passengers and seeing the strange names of those who would seem to me happy enough to be in the same ship with him; and yet, what care they for that! Poor fellow! he will be but sorry company. I find support in the faith that I am doing my duty. He could not see it in that light, and had neither comfort for himself nor sympathy for me. I almost wish now, when I think of him in his desolation, that I could receive the worldly philosophy my old nurse offered me when, as Carl drove away, she came into my room and found me crying bitterly. She hushed me tenderly as she was used to do when I was a child; and when I said,
‘‘Hannah, it is for him, not for myself, I feel!’
‘‘Oh! that’s nothing but a nonsense, child,’ she said. ‘Men ain’t that way; they go about among folks and get rid of feelings; it’s women that stay at home and keep ‘em alive, brooding on ‘em!’
“Why should I thus shrink from a consequence I ought to desire? But perhaps it will be easier as I go on, if it be true that
‘Each goodly thing is hardest to begin;
But entered in a spacious court they see
Both plain, and pleasant to be walked in.’
“Wednesday Morning. My father happened to cast his eyes across the table as I finished my last page, and he saw a tear fall on it. Throwing down his cards he said,
“ ‘Come, come, children! it’s time to go to bed;’ and stooping over me, he kissed me fondly and murmured: ‘Dear, good child! I can not stand it if I see you unhappy.’
“He shall not see me so. I have risen to-day with this resolution. The rain has been pouring down all night, but at this glorious point of sight, directly under Mount Washington, we are equal to either fate—going on or staying. Mr. Thompson has again surprised us with a delicious breakfast of tender chicken, light biscuit, excellent bread, fresh eggs, and that rarest of comforts at a hotel—delicious coffee, with a brimming pitcher of cream. We wondered at all these things, usually the result of a feminine genius, for we have not heard the flutter of a petticoat in the house till we saw our respectable landlady gliding through the room. We learned from her that she was the only womankind on the diggings. Every thing is neatly done, so we bless our October star for exempting us from the careless and hurried service of the Celtic race. While it rains, we walk on the piazza, enjoying the beautiful and ever-varying effects of the clouds as they roll down the mountains, and roll off; like the shadows on our human life, dear Susan, that God’s love does both send and withdraw.
“The Glen House is on the lowest ridge of the hill that rises opposite to Mount Washington, which, as its name indicates, stands head and shoulders above the other summits—having no peer. Madison and Monroe come next, on the left, and then Jefferson, who appears (characteristically?) higher than he is. In a line with Mount Washington, on the other side, are Adams, Clay, etc. These names (excepting always Washington) do not, with their recent political associations, seem quite to suit these subline, eternal mounts, but as time rolls on, the names will grow to signs of greatness, and harmonize with physical stability and grandeur. Jefferson’s head seems modeled after a European pattern. It runs up to a sharp point, and wants but accumulated masses of ice to be broken into Alpine angles. My father says there are other passes in the mountains more beautiful than this; none can be grander…..
“My father has been most sweet and tender to me to-day. Whenever he lays his hand upon my head, it seems like a benediction. And Alice is so kind, projecting future pleasures and sweet solaces for me. You know how I love her little girl. To-day, while we were walking, she heard me sigh, and putting her arm around me, she said: ‘Will you let Sarah come and pass the winter with you and father?’ I trust my look fully answered her. I can not yet talk even with her as I do on paper to you—a confidential implement is a pen…..
“We have all been walking, in the lowering
[p. 49]
twilight on the turnpike, which is making by a joint stock company, up Mount Washington. The road, by contract, is to be finished in three years; the cost is estimated at $63,000. The workmen, of course, are nearly all Irishmen, with Anglo-Saxon heads to direct them. The road is, as far as possible, to be secured by frequent culverts, and by Macadamizing it, from the force of winter torrents. But that nothing is impossible to modern science, it would seem impossible to vanquish the obstacles to the enterprise—the inevitable steepness of the ascent, the rocky precipices, etc. We amused ourselves with graduating the intellectual development of the Celtic workmen by their answers to our questions.
“ ‘When is the road to be finished?’
“ ‘And, faith, Sir, it must be done before winter comes down below.’
“ ‘The next replied, ‘When the year comes round.’ And another: ‘Some time between now and never.’
“ ‘Friend,’ said I to one of them, ‘have you such high mountains in Ireland?’
“ ‘That we have, and higher—five miles high!’ Paddy is never over-crowed.
“ ‘Straight up?’ I asked.
“ ‘By my faith and troth, straight up, it is.’
“ ‘In what part of Ireland is that mountain?’
“ ‘In county Cork.’
“ ‘Of course, in county Cork!’ said my father, and we passed on through the debris of blasted rocks, stumps of uprooted trees, and heaps of stone, till we got far enough into the mountain to feel the sublimity of its stern, silent solitude, with the night gathering its shroud of clouds about it, and we were glad to pick our way back to our cheerful tea-table at Mr. Thompson’s. We had a long evening before us, but we diversified it (my father hates monotony, and was glad of ‘something different,’ as he called it) by bowling—my father pitting Alice against me. She beat me, according to her general better luck in life.”*…..
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*EXTRACT FROM MR.LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Walked out this afternoon amidst precipices and uprooted trees, where Paddies, the plague of our Egypt, are making a road to the summit of Mount Washington, that men, women, and much cattle may be dragged up there, and there befogged.”
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“ Thursday Morning, 6th October. – The weather still uncertain, but more beautiful in its effects on these grand mountains in their October glory, than I can describe to you. They are grand—Mount Washington being higher than Rhigi and Rhigi and Pilatus are majestic, even in the presence of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau. The rich coloring of our autumnal foliage is unknown in Europe, and how it lights up with brilliant smiles the stern face of the mountains! Even when the sun is clouded, the beeches that skirt the evergreens look like a golden fringe, and wherever they are they ‘make sunshine in a shady place.’ The maples are flame-colored, and, when in masses, so bright that you can scarcely look steadily on them; and where they are small, and stand singly, they resemble (to compare the greater to the less) flamingos lighted on the mountain side. There is an infinite diversity of coloring—soft brown, shading off into the pale yellow, and delicate May-green. None but a White of Selborne, with his delicately defining pen, could describe them. While we stood on the piazza admiring and exclaiming, the obliging Mr. Thompson brought out a very good telescope, and adjusted it so that our eyes could explore the mountains. He pointed out the bridle-path to the summit of Mount Washington. Various obstacles have prevented our attempting the ascent. If my father would have trusted us to guides, there are none in October, nor trained horses, for as the feed is brought from below, they are sent down to the lowlands as soon as the season is over. Besides, the summits are now powdered with snow, and the paths near the summits slippery with ice; and though I like the scramble and the achievement of attaining a difficult eminence, I much prefer the nearer, better defined, and less savage views below it.*
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*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Thursday. Sitting by a window where I see nothing but these useless mountains. Slept little, and when I slept, haunted by slides, torrents, and all dire mischances. Waked by a gong! Rain and sunshine alternately, so that no mortal can tell whether to go or stay,” etc.
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“ Guided by our good landlord, my eye had followed the path past two huge out-standing rocks, which look like Druidical monuments, to the summit of Mount Washington, where I had the pleasure of descrying and announcing the figure of a man. My father and Alice both looked, but could not make it out. I referred to Mr. Thompson, and his accustomed eye confirmed the accuracy of mine. Mr. Thompson was much exercised with conjectures as to where the traveler came from. He had seen none for the last few days in the mountains except our party, and he naturally concluded the man had made his ascent from the Crawford House. My eye seemed spell-bound to the glass. I mentally speculated upon the character and destiny of the pilgrim who, at this season, and alone, had climbed these steeps. My imagination invested him with a strange interest. He had wandered far away from the world, and above it. There was something in his mind—perhaps in his destiny—akin to the severity of this barren solitude. The spell was broken by a call from my father: ‘Come, Mary! are you glued to that glass?’ he exclaimed. ‘The rain is over, and we are off in half an hour.’ And so we were, with Thompson, Junior, for our driver—one of our young countrymen who always makes me proud, dear Susan, performing well the task of your inferior, with the capacity and self-respect of your equal. Long live the true republicanism of New-England!
“My father had been rather nettled in the morning by what he thought an attempt, on the part of Mr. Thompson to take advantage of our dependence, and charge us exorbitantly for con-
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veying us thirty-three miles, to the Mountain-Notch;’ but, on talking the matter over with our host, he found that his outlay, with tolls, and other expenses, was such that he only made what every Yankee considers his birthright—‘ a good business’—out of us. So my father, being relieved from the dread of imposition, was in happy condition all day, and permitted us, without a murmur of impatience, to detain him, while we went off the road to see one of the two celebrated cascades of the neighborhood. It was the ‘Glen-Ellis Fall.’ We compromised, and gave up seeing the ‘Crystal Fall,’ a half a mile off the road on the other side; and enjoyed the usual consolation of travelers on like occasions of being told that the one we did not see was far best worth seeing. However, I hold all these wild leaps of mountain streams to be worth seeing, each having an individual beauty; and advise all who may follow in our traces, to go to the top and bottom of ‘Glen Ellis.’
“I have often tried to analyze the ever-fresh delight of seeing a water-fall, and have come to the conclusion that it partly springs from the scramble to get at the best and all the points of view, setting the blood in the most sluggish veins to dancing; for as you know, ‘Tout depend de la maniѐre que le sang circule.’ I can not describe to you the enjoyment of this day’s ride. As heart to heart, my father’s serenity answered to my cheerfulness and rewarded it. Our cup was brimming and sparkling. There was a glowing vitality in the western breeze that blew all the clouds from our spirits, and shaped those on the mountain sides into ever-changing beauty, or drove them off the radiant summits. We laughed, as the vapor condensing into the smallest of hail-stones, came pelting in our faces as if the elements had turned boys, and threw them in sport! What may not Nature be to us – play-fellow, consoler, teacher, religious minister! Strange that any one wretch should be found to live without God in the world, when the world is permeated with its Creator!
“Our level road wound through the Pinkham woods in the defiles of the mountains, and at every turn gave them to us in a new aspect. It seemed to me that the sun had never shone so brightly as it now glanced into the forest upon the stems of the white birches—Wordsworth’s ‘Ladies of the Wood’—and shone on the Mosaic carpet made by the brilliant fallen leaves. We missed the summer-birds, but the young partridges abounded, and, hardly startled by our wheels, often crossed our path. We saw a fox, who turned and very quietly surveyed us, as if to ask who the barbarians were that so out of season invaded his homestead. One of us—I will not tell you which, lest you discredit the story—fancying, while the wagon was slowly ascending, to make a cross-cut on foot through some woodland, saw a bear—yes, a bear! face to face! and made, you may be sure, a forced march to the highway. The mountaineers were not at all surprised when we recounted what we fancied a hair-breadth ‘scape; but quietly told us that ‘three bears had been seen in that neighborhood lately, but bears did no harm unless provoked, or desperately hungry.’ It was not a very pleasant thought that our lives depended on the chances of Bruin’s appetite.
“This meeting with the fox—the Mercury of the woods—and with the bear—the hero of many a dramatic fable – would, in the forests of the Old World, and in prolific Old World fancies, have been wrought into pretty traditions for after-ages. I might have figured as the
‘Forsaken, woeful, solitary maid,
In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed,’
set on by the ramping beast! And for the knight, why, it would be easy to convert the wanderer I descried on the summit of Mount Washington, into a lover and a deliverer, whose ‘allegiance and fast fealty’ had bound him to our trail. But, alas! there is no leisure in this material age for fancy-weaving; and all our way was as bare of tradition or fable as if no human footstep had impressed it, till we came to a brawling stream near ‘Davis’s Crossing,’ which we were told was called ‘Nancy’s Brook.’ We heard various renderings of the origin of the name, but all ended in one source—man’s perjury and woman’s trust. A poor girl, some said, had come with a woodsman, a collier, or tree-feller, and lived with him in the mountains, toiling for him, and singing to him, no doubt,
‘When she his evening food did dress,’
till he grew tired, and one day went forth and did not come back—and day after day she waited, but her Theseus did not return, and she was starved to death on the brink of the little brook that henceforward was to murmur her tragic tale. The sun was set behind the ridge of Mount Willard, when we reached the ‘Willey Slide,’ and Alice and I walked the last two miles to the Mountain Notch. Just after we alighted from the wagon, and while we were yet close to it, at a turn in the road I perceived a pedestrian traveler before us, who, seeming startled by the sound of our wheels, sprang lightly over the fence. I involuntarily withdrew my arm from Alice’s, and stood still, gazing after him for the half-instant that passed before he disappeared in the forest.
“‘Are you frightened?’ said Alice; ‘this is a lonely road. Shall I hail the wagon?’
“ ‘Oh! no,’ I replied.
“ ‘But,’ she urged, ‘this may be some fugitive from justice.’
“ ‘Nonsense, Alice; don’t you see by his air that he is a gentleman?’
“ ‘No,’ she saw nothing but that ‘he was light of foot, and anxious to escape observation.’
“I had seen more; I had seen his form who henceforward is to me as if he had passed the bourne whence no traveler returns; or, what is more probable, my imagination had lent to the figure the image that possesses it. Alice—she is a cautious little woman—was continually looking back, from fear, I from hope; but we saw
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nothing more of the traveler. The apparition had spoiled our walk. The brief twilight of October was shortened by the mountain-walls on either side of the road. We had no time to look for the cascades, and fantastic resemblances animals and human profiles that we had been forewarned to observe on the hillsides. The stars were coming out, and the full moon—indicated by the floods of light behind Mount Webster when we passed the ‘Notch’ and came upon the level area where the ‘Crawford House’ stands. Here we found my father, already seated in a rocking-chair, by a broad hearth-stone and a roaring, crackling fire. And beside these cheering types of home-contentments, he had found a gentleman from the low country, with whom he was already in animated discourse. The stranger was a fine, intelligent, genial-looking person, who proved to be a clergyman whom Alice had once before met at the Flume House. He is a true lover of Nature, and explorer of Nature’s secrets—a geologist, botanist, etc.; and he most wisely comes up to the high places, at all seasons, whenever he feels the need of refreshment to his bodily and mind’s eye. Perhaps he finds here an arcana for his theology, and I am sure that, after a study here, he may go home better able, by his high communing, to inform and elevate the minds of others. No teachers better understood the sources and means of mental power and preparation than Moses and Mohammed; and their studies were not in theological libraries, but in the deepest of nature’s solitudes.
“Perhaps our friend has no direct purpose beyond his own edification in his rambles in the mountains. He is familiar with every known resort among them, and most kindly disposed to give us thoroughfare travelers information. He made for us from memory a pencil-sketch of the peaks to be seen from Mount Willard, with their names. We verified them to-day, and found the outline as true as if it had been daguerreotyped. An observation so keen, and a memory so accurate are to be envied.
“This house, at the Mountain Notch is called the Crawford House. The Old Crawford House, familiar to the pioneer travelers in this region, stands a few rods from it, or rather did, till the past winter, when it was burned, and its site is now marked by charred timbers. Old Crawford’s memory will live, as one of these eternal hills bears his name. He actually lived to a good old age, and for many years in rather awful solitude here, and at the last with some of the best blessings that wait on old age—‘respect, and troops of friends.’ His son, whose stature, broad shoulders, and stolid aspect bring to mind the Saxon peasant of the Middle Ages, is driver in the season and sportsman out of it. He stood at the door this morning as we were driving off to the Falls of the Ammonoosuck, with his fowling-piece in hand, and asked leave to occupy a vacant seat in the wagon. My father was a sportsman in his youth—some forty years ago; his heart warms at the sight of a gun, and besides, I fancy he had some slight hope of mending our cheer by a brace of partridges, so he very cheerfully acquiesced in Crawford’s request. Alice and I plied him with questions, hoping to get something out of an old denizen of the woods. But he knew nothing, or would tell nothing. The ‘tongues in trees’ were far more fluent than his. But even so stony a medium had power afterward to make my heart beat. I was standing near him at the end of the Falls, and away from the rest, and I asked him (Sue, I confess I have been either thinking or dreaming of that ‘fugitive’ all night!) if he had seen a foot-traveler pass along the road the last evening or this morning? ‘No; there was few travelers any way in October.’ He vouchsafed a few more words, adding: ‘It’s a pity folks don’t know the mountains are never so pretty as in October, and sport never so smart.’ Was there ever a sportsman the dullest, most impassive, but he had some perception of woodland beauty? While we were talking, and I was seemingly measuring, with my eye, the depth of the water, as transparent as the air, my father and sister had changed their position, and come close to me. ‘Oh!’ said the man, ‘I recollect—I did see a stranger on Mount Willard this morning, when I went out with my gun; he was drawing the mountains: a great many of the young folks try to do it, but they don’t make much likeness.’ Perhaps this timely generalization of friend Crawford, prevented my father and Alice’s thoughts following the direction of mine. I know this myth is not Carl Hermann—it is not even possible it should be—and yet, the resemblance that, in my one glance, I had fancied to perceive to him and the coincidence of the sketching, had invested friend Crawford with a power to make my cheeks burn and my hands cold as ice. I stole off and looked at the deep, smooth cavities the water had welled in the rocks; but I did not escape my sister’s woman’s eye. ‘Mary dear,’ she whispered, when she joined me, ‘you are not so strong as you think yourself.’ Dear Susan, if I am not strong, I will be patient. Patience, you will say, implies a waiting for something to come. Well, let it be so. Can a spark of hope live under the ashes I have heaped upon it?.....
“The rocks are very beautiful at these Falls of the Ammonoosuck. The stream, which never here can be a river, is now, by the unusual droughts of the summer, shrunk to mere rill; but even now, and at all seasons, it must be worth the drive to see it. Worth the drive! A drive anywhere in these hills ‘pays’—to borrow the slang of this bank-note world—for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly saw young partridges in our path, nearly as tame as the chickens of the basse-cour. The whir-r-ing of their wings struck a spark from our sportsman’s eye, and—a far easier achievement—startled the blood in my father’s veins. The instinct to kill game is, I
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believe, universal with man, else how should it still live in my father, who, though he blusters like Monkbarns, is very much of an Uncle Toby in disposition? He sprang from the wagon, borrowed Crawford’s gun, and reminding Alice and me so much of Mr. Pickwick that we laughed in spite of our terror lest he should kill—not the partridge, but himself; but luckily, he escaped unharmed—and so did the bird! Crawford secured two or three brace of them in the course of the morning’s drive. I fear we shall relish them at breakfast to-morrow, in spite of our lamentations over their untimely loss of their pleasant mountain-life. I asked our driver how they survived the winter (if haply they escaped the fowler) in these high latitudes? ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘they had the neatest was of folding their legs under their wings and lying down in the snow.’ They subsist on berries and birchen-buds—dainty fare, is it not?
“We found a very comfortable dinner awaiting us, which rather surprised us, as our landlord, Mr. Lindsay—a very civil, obliging person, and a new proprietor here, I believe, had promised us but Lenten entertainment; but ‘deeds, not words,’ seems the motto of these mountaineers. In the afternoon we drove up Mount Willard –
‘Straight up Ben-Lomond did we press’—
but our horses seemed to find no difficulty for themselves, and we no danger in the ascent. I shall not attempt to describe the view. I have never seen any mountain prospect resembling that of the deep ravine (abyss), with its convex mountainsides; the turnpike-road looking like a ribbon carelessly unwound, the only bit of level to be seen, and prolonged for miles. The distant mountains that bound the prospect you may see elsewhere, but this ravine, with the traces of the ‘Willey Slide’ on one side of it, has no parallel. Don’t laugh at me for the homeliness of the simile—it suggested a gigantic cradle. Here, as elsewhere, we were dazzled by the brilliancy of the October foliage, and having found a seat quite as convenient as a sofa—though, being of rock, not quite as easy—we loitered till the last golden hue faded from the highest summit; and we should have staid to see the effect of the rising moon on the summits contrasting with the black shadows of night in the abyss, but my father had observed that our driver had neglected the precaution of blanketing his horses, and as a mother is not more watchful of a sucking child than he is of the well-being of animals, it matters not whether they are his own or another’s, he begged us to sacrifice our romance to their safety. Alice and I walked down the mountain; it was but a half-hour’s easy walk……
“I have forborne talking with Alice on the subject that haunts me. I know I have her sympathy; and that should satisfy me. But this evening, as we were returning, she said: ‘Did you feel any electric influence as we sat looking at the view Crawford’s ‘stranger’ sketched this morning?’ ‘I thought of Carl,’ I honestly answered, and turned the subject. Alas! Sue, when do I not think of him! …..
“Profile House: Saturday Evening. We have again, to-day, experienced the advantage of these open mountain vehicles, so preferable to the traveling-jails called stage-coaches, which always remind me of Jonah’s traveling accommodations. Again, to-day, we have been enchanted with the brilliancy of the foliage. It is just at the culminating point of beauty, and I think it does not remain at this point more than three or four days when you perceive it is a thought less bright. Why is it that no painting of our autumnal foliage has succeeded? It has been as faithfully imitated as the colors on the pallet can copy these living, glowing colors; but those who have best succeeded—even Cole, with his accurate eye and beautiful art—has but failed. The pictures, if toned down, are dull; if up to Nature, are garish to repulsiveness. Is it not that Nature’s toning is inimitable, and that the broad o’erhanging firmament, with its cold, serene blue, and the soft green of the herbage, and brown of the reaped harvest-field, temper, to the eye the intervening brilliancy, and that, within the limits of a picture, there is not sufficient expanse to reproduce these harmonies?”…..
“Saturday Evening. We have driven some 23 miles—from the Mountain Notch to the Franconian hotel to-day. The weather has been delicious. The drive has been more prosaic, or approaching to it, than we have before traveled in this hill-country. This October coloring would make far tamer scenery beautiful; but I can fancy it very bleak and dismal when
‘Blow, blow November’s winds:’
whereas here, at the ‘Franconian Notch,’ you feel, as it were, housed and secured by Nature’s vast fortresses and defenses. The ‘Eagle’s Cliff’ is on one side of you, and Mount Cannon (called so from a resemblance of a rock on the summit to a cannon) on the other; and they so closely fold and wall you in that you need but a poetic stretch of the arms to touch them with either hand; and when the sun glides over the arch in the zenith above—but a four hours’ visible course in mid-winter—you might fancy yourself sheltered from the sin and sorrow that great eye witnesseth. You will accuse me, I know, dear, rational friend, of being ‘exalte,’ (vernacular, cracked,) but remember, we are alone in these inspiring solitudes, free from the disenchantment of the eternal buzzing of the summer swarms that the North gives up, and the South keeps not back.
“We were received at the Profile House with a most smiling welcome by Mr. Weeks, the pro tem. host, who promises to make us ‘as comfortable as is in his power,’ and is substantiating his promise by transferring his dinner-table from the long, uncarpeted dinner-saloon, with its fearful rows of bare chairs and tables, to a well-furnished home-looking apartment, where a fire-place worthy of the Middle Ages, is already brightened with a hospitable fire. The
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great rambling hotel is vacant, and its silence unbroken, save by the hastening to and fro of our willing host, who unites all offices of service in his own person, and the pattering of his pretty little boy’s feet—the little fellow following him like his shadow, and, perchance, running away from other shadows in this great empty house. The little fellow makes music to my ear. There is no pleasanter sound than the footsteps of a child ……
“I left Alice dressing for dinner. I think Alice would perform the ceremonial of a lady if she were shipwrecked in a desert island, and my father awaiting dinner. Dear father is never the pleasantest company at these seasons, when ‘time stands still withal,’ or rather, to him keeps a snail’s fretting pace. Well, I left them both and went down to the Lake—a short walk—to greet the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ as they prosaically call the wonderful head at the very summit of the headland cliff, upreared on high over the beautiful bit of water named ‘The Old Man’s Punch-bowl.’ The nomenclature of our country certainly does not indicate one particle of poetry or taste in its people. There are, to be sure, namesakes of the Old World, which intimate the exile’s loving memories, and there are scattered, here and there, euphonious and significant Indian names, not yet superseded by ‘Brownvilles’ or ‘Smithdales,’ but for the most part, one would infer that pedagogues, sophomores, and boors had presided at the baptismal font of the land. To call that severe Dantescan head, which it would seem impossible that accident should have formed, so defined and expressive is its outline, like the Sphinx, a mystery in the desert—to call it the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ is irreverence, desecration; and this exquisite little lake, lapped amidst the foldings and windings of the mountains, whose million unseen spirits may do the bidding of the heroic old Prospero who presides over it; to call this gem of the forest a ‘punch-bowl’ is a sorry travesty! I paid my homage to him while his profile cut the glowing twilight, and then sat down at the brim of the lake. Dear Susan,
‘The leaning
of the close trees o’er the brim,
had a sound beneath their leaves;’
and I will borrow two lines more to help out my meaning;
‘Driftings of my dream do light
All the skies by day and night.’
But truly, it is mere drift-wood, not fit even to build a ‘castle in the air.’ I was startled from my musing by a rustling of the branches behind me, and I turned, expecting – not to see a bear or a fox, but my fancies incorporate. The leaves were still quivering, but I saw no apparent cause for so much disturbance—I probably had startled a brace of partridges from their roost. They brought me back to the actual world, and I came home to an excellent dinner, which I found my father practically commending.
“Sunday. My father has brought us up to so scrupulous an observance of the Puritan Sabbath, that I was rather surprised, this morning, by his proposition to drive over to the Flume. His equanimity had been disturbed by finding one of the horses that had brought us here, seemingly in a dying condition. He was one of the ‘team’ that had taken us on to Mount Willard, and my father had then prophesied that he would suffer from the driver’s neglect to blanket him. He was in nowise comforted by the verification of his ‘I told you so!’ but walked to and fro from the stable, watching the remedies administered, and vituperating all youth as negligent, reckless, and hard-hearted! I think it was half to get rid of this present annoyance that he proposed the drive to the Flume, saying, as he did so: “These mountains are a great temple, my children; it matters not much where we stand to worship.’ We stopped for a half-hour at a little fall just by the roadside, called by the mountain-folk ‘The Basin,’ and by fine people, ‘The Emerald Bowl’—a name suggested by the exquisite hue of the water, which truly is of as soft and bright a green as an emerald. The stream has curiously cut its way through a rock white and smooth, and almost polished by its friction, which overhangs the deep, circular bowl like a canopy, or rather, like a half-uplifted lid, its inner side being mottled and colored like a beautiful shell. The stream glides over the brim of its sylvan bowl and goes on its way rejoicing. We loitered here for a half-hour watching the golden and crimson leaves that had dropped in, and laid in rich mosaics in the eddies of the stream.
“The morning was misty, and the clouds were driven low athwart the mountains, forming, as Alice well said, pedestals on which their lofty heads were upreared. No wonder that people in mountains and misty regions become imaginative, even superstitious. These forms, falling, rising, floating over the eternal hills, susceptible of dazzling brightness, and deepening into the gloomiest of earth’s shadows, are most suggestive to a superstitious dreamer.
“I shall not attempt, my friend, to describe this loveliest of all five-mile drives, from the ‘Profile House’ to the Flume under the Eagle’s Cliff, and old Prospero, and beside his lake, and the ‘Emerald Bowl,’ and then finished by the most curious, perhaps the most beautiful passage we have yet seen in the mountains,‘The Flume’—thus called probably from a homely association with the race-way of a mill.
“The ravine is scarcely more than a fissure, probably made by the gradual wearing of the stream. I am told the place resembles the Bath of Pfeffers, in Switzerland; that world’s wonder can scarcely be more romantically beautiful than our Flume. The small stream, which is now reduced to a mere rill by the prolonged droughts, forces it way between walls of rock, upheaved in huge blocks like regular mason-work. Where you enter the passage, it may be some hundred yards wide, but it gradually contracts till you may almost touch either side with
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your outstretched arms. I only measured the height of the rock walls with my eye, and a woman’s measure is not very accurate—it may be one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet. Tall trees, at the summits, interlace, and where they have fallen, bridge the passage from one side to the other. Rich velvety mosses cover the rocks like a royal garment, and vines, glittering in their autumnal brightness, laid on them like rich embroidery, so that we might say, as truly as was said of the magnificence of Oriental nature, that ‘Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ But how, dear Susan, am I to show the picture to you? The sun glancing on the brilliant forest above us, and the indescribable beauty of the shrubs, golden and crimson, and fine purple, that shot out of the crevices of the rocks! It is idle to write or talk about it; but only let me impress on you that this enchanting coloring is limited to the first days of October. I am afraid it may be said of scenery as has been said of lover’s tête-a-tête talks, that it resembles those delicate fruits which are exquisite where they are plucked, but incapable of transmission. As my father can never enjoy any thing selfishly, he was particularly pleased with the nice little foot-path won from the mountain-side, and the frequent foot-bridges, that indicate the numbers that have taken this wild walk before us. My father fancies he enjoys our security from the summer swarms, but his social nature masters his theories.
“Alice and I were amused this morning, just at the highest access of our enthusiasm, while we stood under a huge rock wedged in between the two walls, on looking back to see my father sitting on a bench, arranged as a point of sight, not gazing, but listening profoundly—his graceful person and beautiful old head inclined in an attitude of the deepest attention—to a loafer who had unceremoniously joined us, and who, as my father afterwards rather reluctantly confessed, was recounting to him the particulars of his recent wooing of a third Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Brown. And when we returned to our quarters at the Profile House and came down to dinner, we met our landlord at the door, his face even more than usually effulgent with smiles.
“‘There has a lady and gentleman come in,’ he said, ‘and your father has no objection to their dining at table with you.’
“His voice was slightly deprecatory. I think he did not quite give us credit for our father’s affability, Of course, we acquiesced, and were afterwards edified by our brief acquaintance with the strangers—a mother and son, who had come up from the petty cares of city life for a quiet ramble among the hills—to find here
‘A peace no other season knows.’
“The mother wears widow’s weeds, and has evidently arrived at the ‘melancholy days.’ As we just now sat enjoying our evening fire, ‘My hearthstone,’ she said, ‘was never cold for seventeen years; but there is no light there now. My children are dispersed, and he who was dearest and best lies under the clods! My youngest and I hold together—I can not let him go.’ The loving companionship of a mother and a son who returns to her tenderness the support of his manly arm, never shrinking from the shadows that fall from her darkened and stricken heart, or melting those shadows in his own sunny youth—is one of the consoling pictures of life. This poor lady seems to have the love of nature, which never dies out. It is pleasant to see with what patience her son cared for the rural wealth she is amassing in her progress through the hills, the late flowers, and bright leaves, and mosses, though I have detected a boyish, mischievous smile as he stowed them away…..
“We had something approaching to an adventure this evening on Echo Lake, the loveliest of all these mountain lakes, and not more than half a mile from our present inn, the Profile House. Our dear father consented to go out with us, and let Alice and me, who have been well trained at that exercise in our home lake, take our turns with him in rowing. This lake is embosomed in the forest, and lies close nestled under the mountains, which here have varied shape and beautiful outline. It takes its name from its clear echoes. We called, we sang, and my father whistled, and from the deep recesses of the hills our voices came back as if spirit called to spirit, musical and distinct. You know the fascination there is in such a scene. The day had continued misty to the last; the twilights at this season are at best short, and while my father was whistling, one after another, the favorite songs of his youth, we were surprised by nightfall. My father startled us with
“ ‘Bless me, girls, what are you about?’
“It was he who was most entranced.
“ ‘I can not see our landing-place!’”
“Neither, with all possible straining, could our younger eyes descry it. We approached as near the shore as we dared, but could go no nearer without the danger of swamping our boat, when suddenly we perceived a blessed apparition—a white signal—made quite obvious in the dim light by a background of evergreens. We rowed toward it with all our might, wondering what kind friend was waving it so eagerly. As we approached near the shore it suddenly dropped and hung motionless, and when we landed we saw no person and heard no footstep. I untied the signal, and finding it a man’s large, fine linen handkerchief, I eagerly explored the corner for the name, but the name had evidently just been torn off. Strange! We puzzled ourselves with conjectures. My father cut us short with:
“ ‘’Tis that young man at the hotel. Young folks like this sort of thing.’
“But it was not he; we found him reading to his mother, who said she was just about sending him to look after us.”
Thus abruptly ended Mary Langdon’s journal-
[p. 55]
letter. The reason of its sudden discontinuance will be found in our own brief relation of the experience of the following morning, (Monday,) which we had from all the parties that partook in it.
Our friends were to leave the Profile House on Monday, on their return to the lowlands, to go from there to the Flume House, visit “the Pool,” and then down to the pretty village of Plymouth, in New Hampshire.
Mary and her sister were early, and having a spare half-hour before breakfast, went down to take a last look at Prospero and his “bowl.’ There they found a crazy, old, leaky boat, with a broken oar, and Mary, spying some dry bits of board on the shore, deftly threw them in and arranged them so that she and her sister could get in dry-shod. Alice looked doubtfully at the crazy little craft and hung back—the thought of husband and children at home is always a sedative—but her eager sister overcame her scruples, and they were soon fairly out from shore in deep water. They went on, half-floating, half-rowing, unconscious of the flying minutes. Not so their father, who after waiting breakfast “an eternity,” (as he said, possibly some five minutes!) came to the lake to recall them. Just as he came within fair sight of them, for they were not two hundred yards from him, the boat suddenly began whirling round—a veering wind rushed upon them. The poor father saw their dilemma, and could not help them. He could not swim. He screamed for help, but what likelihood that any one should hear or could aid him! Alice prudently, sat perfectly still. The oar was in Mary’s hand—she involuntarily sprang to her feet—her head became giddy, not so much, she afterward averred, with the whirling of the boat, as with the sight of her poor old father, and the sense that she had involved Alice in this peril. She plunged the oar into the water in the vain hope by firmly holding it of steadying the boat; but she dropped it from her trembling hand, and in reaching after it, she too dropped over into the water, and in her struggle she pushed the boat from her, and thus became herself beyond the possibility of her sister’s reach. Her danger was imminent—she was sinking. Her father and sister shrieked for help, and help came! A plash in the water, and a strong man, with wonderful preternatural strength and speed, was making his way toward Mary. In one moment more he had grasped her with one hand. She had still enough presence of mind not to embarrass him by any struggles, and shouting a word of comfort to Alice, he swam to the shore and laid Mary in her father’s arms. He then returned to the boat, and soon brought it to shore. There are moments of this strange life of ours not to be described—feelings for which language in no organ. While such a moment sped with father and daughters, their deliverer stood apart. The father gazed upon his darling child, satisfying himself that “not a hair had perished,” but she was only “fresher than before;” and, as he afterward said, “fully recovering his wits,” he turned to thank the preserver of his children. He was standing half concealed behind a cluster of evergreens.
“Come forward, my dear fellow,” he said; “for God’s sake, let me grasp your hand!”
He did not move.
“Oh! come,” urged Mr. Langdon. “Never mind your shirt-sleeves; it’s no time to be particular about trifles.”
Still he did not move.
“Oh, come! dear—Carl,” said Mary, and her lover sprang to her feet.
What immediately followed was not told me, but there was no after coldness or reluctance on the part of the good father. His heart was melted and fused in gratitude and affection for his daughter’s lover. His prejudices were vanquished, and he was just as well satisfied as if they had been overcome by the slower processes of reason and conviction.
The truth was, the old gentleman was not to be outdone in magnanimity. Mary’s filial devotion had prepared him to yield his opposition, and he confessed that he had, in his own secret counsel with himself, determined to recall Hermann at the end of another year, if he proved constant and half as deserving as his foolish girl thought him. “But Prospero,” he said, “had seen fit to take the business into his own hands, and setting his magic to work, had stirred up a tempest in his punch-bowl to bring these young romancers together.”
But by what spell had he conjured up the lover at the critical moment?
Hermann confessed that not being able to get off in the steamer of the 29th, he had delayed his embarkation for ten days, and the magic of love—the only magic left to our disenchanted world—had drawn him to the White Mountains, where he might have the consolation—a lover only could appreciate it—of breathing the same atmosphere with Mary, and possibly of seeing her, unseen. Thus he had stood on the summit of Mount Washington, when, by some mysterious magnetism, Mr. Thompson’s telescope had been pointed to it. He was the “fugitive from justice” at Willy’s Slide, the ambitious artist on Fort Willard, and the friend whose signal had brought them safely to port on Echo Lake!
Hermann’s arrangements for pursuing his studies in Europe were not disturbed. The good father was in the most complying temper. He consented to have the wedding within this blessed month of October, and graciously granted the prayer of the young people that he would accompany them in their year’s visit to Europe.
“Mary and I are already wedded,” said he to me, with a smile of complete satisfaction; ‘we only take this young fellow into the partnership.”
It was a bright day in the outer and inner world when we parted. And thus ended our October visit to the White Hills of New Hampshire, but not our gratitude to Him who held us
“In his large love and boundless thought.”
[p. 56]
If our friend Mary has imperfectly sketched the beauty of the Mountains, she has exaggerated nothing.
We hope our readers, though perchance o’er-wearied now, may make the complete tour of these lovely places, including, as it should, the enchanting sail over Lake Winepescago, the beautiful drive by North Conway, and the ascents of Kiersarge, Chiconea, Mount Moriah, and the Red Mountain.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The White Hills in October
Subject
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Star-crossed lovers, filial piety, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, off-season tourism.
Description
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The narrator presents the journal of a trip to the White Mountains by Mary Langdon, a young American woman, who has just ended a relationship with her German lover due to her father's disapproval. A mysterious stranger appears at a significant moment and changes the young woman's fortunes.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [published anonymously]
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Harper's New Monthly Magazine [edited by Alfred A. Guernsey] (December 1856): 44-56.
Date
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1856
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Margaret Erickson, D. Gussman
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The Continental Monthly [by C. M. Sedgwick] (October 1862): 423-44.
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English
Type
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Document
1856
Ammonoosuck
Boston
cigars
daughters
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
fathers
filial piety
German
Glen Ellis Fall
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
hiking
hotels
hunting
immigration
inns
Irish
journal
Love
marriage
Mayflower
Mohammed
Moses
Mount Rhigi
Mount Washington
Mount Webster
Nancy's Brook
Nature
New England
New Hampshire
Pickwick
Portland
Prospero
railroad
restaurants
Rosalind
rowing
Shakespeare
sisters
The Heir of Redcliffe
Theseus
tourism
Travel
waterfalls
White Mountains
Wordsworth
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ea256e30bdcfb4b2d7de082779324325
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1830
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Stories published in 1830.
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“Mary Dyre”
By Miss Sedgwick
The subject of the following sketch, a Quaker Martyr, may appear to the fair holiday readers of souvenirs, a very unfit personage to be introduced into the romantic and glorious company of lords and ladye loves; of doomed brides; and all-achieving heroines; chivalric soldiers; suffering outlaws; and Ossianic sons of the forest. But of such, it is not now “our hint to speak.” Neither have we selected the most romantic heroine that might have been found in the annals of the sober-suited sect. A startling tale might be wrought from the perilous adventures of Mary Fisher, the maiden missionary, who, after being cast into prison, for saying “thee” instead of “you,” was examined before a judicial tribunal, and “nothing found but innocence;” who, released from durance, travelled over the continent of Europe, to communicate her faith; visited the court of Mahomet the Fourth, then held at Adrianople; was presented by the Grand Vizier to the Sultan, who listened to her with deference, and was, or affected to be, persuaded of her truth. A guard to Constantinople was gallantly offered her by Mahomet, which she refused; and safe and unmolested, in her armour of innocence, she proceeded to that city, receiving everywhere from the Turks the gentle usage that was denied her by those professing a more generous faith.
A tale of horrors, of cowled monks, and instruments of torture, might be framed from the “hair breadth
[p. 152]
scapes” of Catherine Evans and Sarah Chevers, the Quaker heroines who suffered with constancy, in the Inquisition at Malta. We have passed by these tempting themes, to tell a briefer story, and present a character in its true and natural light, as it stands on the historic page, without the graces of fiction, or any of those aids, by which the romance writer composes his picture - exaggerating beauties, placing them in bright lights, and omitting or gracefully shading defects. There are manifestations of moral beauty so perfect that they do not require the aids of fiction, as there are scenes in the material world, that no illusion of the imagination can improve.
Mary Dyre belonged to the religious society of “Friends;” a society, that, after having long resisted the tempest of intolerance and persecution, is melting away under the genial sun of universal toleration, and the ignoble, but no less resistless influence, of the tailor’s shears, and the milliner’s craft. As Voltaire predicted, some sixty years since, “Les enfans enrichis par l’industrie de leurs peres veulent jouir avoir des honneurs, des boutons, et des manchettes.”
Mary Dyre was among those, who, in 1657, sought in New England an asylum from the oppression of the mother country. But the persecuted had become persecutors; and, instead of an asylum, these harmless people found a prison, and were destined, for their glory and our shame, to suffer as martyrs in the cause of liberty of conscience.
Sewal, the historian “of the people called Quakers,” to whom we are indebted for most of the following particulars, has given very slight notice of Mary Dyre’s private history. “She was,” he says, “of a comely and grave countenance, of a good family and estate, and the mother of several children; but her husband, it seems, was of another persuasion.” From another document, which we have been so fortunate as to obtain, it appears that this defect of religious sympathy,
[p. 153]
had, in no degree, abated the affection and confidence of her husband.
Thus she possessed whatever comes within the aspiration of a woman’s ambition or affections; - beauty, for this is no violent paraphrase of the Quaker historian’s stinted courtesy, rank, fortune, conjugal and maternal happiness; yet she counted all these but loss, believing that her obedience to the inspirations of God required their sacrifice.
The Pilgrims, finding the penalties of fine, imprisonment, scourging with the “three-corded whip,” cutting off the ears, and boring the tongue with a red-hot iron, ineffectual in extirpating the “cursed heresy of the Quakers,” or “preventing their pestilent errors and practices,” proceeded to banish them from their jurisdiction, on pain of death.
This violence was done under a statute enacted in 1658. Mary Dyre, with many others, sought a refuge from the storm in Rhode-Island. Christian liberty, in its most generous sense, was the noble distinction of that Province. But she could not forget her suffering brethren in the Massachusetts Colony. She meditated on their wrongs till she “felt a call” to return to Boston. Two persons, distinguished for zeal and integrity, accompanied her; William Robinson, and Marmaduke Stevenson. Their intention and hope was, to obtain a repeal or mitigation of the laws against their sect. Their return was in the autumn of 1659. On their appearance in Boston, they were immediately seized, and committed to prison, and a few days subsequent, after a summary and informal examination before Governor Endicot, and the associate Magistrates, they were sentenced to suffer the penalty of death, which had been already decreed to such as, after being banished, should return.
[p. 154]
Mary’s companions replied to the annunciation of their sentence, in terms that savoured strongly of human resentment, which, alas for human weakness! is often betrayed in the anticipation of the judgments of Heaven. “Give ear, ye magistrates,” said Stevenson, “and all ye who are guilty, for this the Lord hath said concerning you, and will perform his word upon you, that the same day ye put his servants to death, shall the day of your visitation pass over you, and ye shall be cursed forevermore.” The passions of our infirm nature are sometimes confounded with the religion that accompanies them, as the cloud is, to an ignorant eye, identified with the prismatic rays it reflects.
Mary’s pure and gentle spirit dwelt in eternal sunshine; its elements were at peace. When the fearful words were pronounced, “Mary Dyre, you shall go to the prison whence you came, thence to the place of execution, and be hanged there till you are dead,” she folded her hands, and replied, with a serene aspect, “The will of the Lord be done.”
Her friends have described her demeanour at this moment, as almost supernatural, as if the outward temple were brightened by the communications of the Spirit within. They say, the world seemed to have vanished from her sight; her eyes were raised, and fixed in the rapture of devotion; her lips were moved by the ecstasy of her soul, though they uttered no articulate sound.
Governor Endicot seems to have felt an irritation at her tranquillity, not more dignified than a child’s when he vents his wrath in blows on an insensible substance.
“Take her away, Marshal,” he said harshly.
“I return joyfully to my prison,” she replied; and then turning to the Marshal, she added, “You may leave me, Marshal, I will return alone.”
[p. 155]
“I believe you, Mrs. Dyre,” replied the Marshal; “but I must do as I am commanded.”
The prisoners were condemned on the twentieth of October. The twenty-seventh was the day appointed for the execution of the sentence. With a self-command and equinimity of mind rare in such circumstances, Mary employed the interval in writing an “Appeal to the Rulers of Boston;” an appeal, not in her own behalf, not for pardon, nor life, but for a redress of the wrongs of her persecuted brethren. “I have no self-ends, the Lord knoweth,” she says, “for if life were freely granted by you, it would not avail me, so long as I should daily see or hear of the sufferings of my people, my dear brethren, and the seed with whom my life is bound up. Let my counsel and request be accepted with you to repeal all such laws, that the truth and servants of the Lord may have free passage among you, and you kept from shedding innocent blood, which I know there be many among you would not do, if they knew it so to be.” - “In love and in the spirit of meekness, for I have no enmity to the persons of any, I again beseech you.” There is not, throughout this magnanimous appeal the slightest intimation of a wish that her sentence should be remitted, no craven nor natural shrinking from death, no apologies for past offences, but the courage of an apostle contending for the truth, and the tenderness of a woman feeling for the sufferings of her people. Could it matter to so noble a creature, where, according to the quaint phrase of her sect, her “outward being dwelt,” or how soon it should be dissolved?
On the evening of the twenty-sixth, William Dyre, Mary’s eldest son, arrived in Boston, and was admitted to her prison. He came in the hope of persuading his mother to make such concessions in regard to her faith, as to conciliate her judges, and procure a reprieve. All night he remained with her. The particulars of
[p. 156]
this interview have not been preserved. Mary’s enemies have not been scrupulous in the record of her virtues, and her friends appear to have considered the affections of her nature scarcely worth a memorial, amidst the triumphs of her faith. We know the temper of a woman, the tenderness and depth of a mother’s love. We may imagine the intense feelings of the son, on the eve of his mother’s threatened execution, pleading for the boon of her life; we may imagine the conflict between the yearnings of the mother, and the resistance of the saint; and we may be sure that we cannot exaggerate it’s violence, nor its suffering. The saint was triumphant, and on the following morning, Mary was led forth, between her two friends to the place of execution. A strong guard escorted the prisoners, and, as if to infuse the last drop of bitterness in their cup, Mr. Wilson, “the minister of Boston,” attended them. There were coarse and malignant spirits among the spectators. “Are you not ashamed,” said one of them tauntingly to Mary, “are you not ashamed to walk thus hand in hand between two young men?”
“No,” she replied, “this is to me an hour of the greatest joy I could have in the world. No eye can see nor hear, nor tongue utter, nor heart understand the sweet incomes and refreshings of the spirit of the Lord, which I now feel.” Death could not appal a mind so lofty and serene. Man could not disturb a peace so profound. Her companions evinced a like composure. They all tenderly embraced at the foot of the scaffold. Robinson first mounted it, and called on the spectators to witness for him that he died, not as a malefactor, but for testifying to the light of Christ. Stevenson, the moment before the hangman performed the last act, said, “This day we shall be at rest with the Lord.”
Mary was of a temper, like the intrepid Madame Roland, to have inspired a faltering spirit by her ex-
[p. 157]
ample; far more difficult she must have found it, to behold the last quiverings and strugglings of mortality, in the persons of her friends. But even after this, she was steadfast, and ascended the scaffold with an unblenching step. Her dress was scrupulously adjusted about her feet, her face covered with a handkerchief, and the halter put around her neck.
The deep silence of this awful moment was broken by a piercing cry. “Stop! she is reprieved!” was sent from mouth to mouth, till one glad shout announced the feeling of the gazing multitude. Was there one of all those gathered to this fearful spectacle, whose heart did not leap with joy? - Yes - the sufferer and the victim, she, to whom the gates of death had been opened. “Her mind,” says her historian, “was already in heaven, and when they loosed her feet and bade her come down, she stood still, and said she was willing to suffer as her brethren had unless the magistrates would annul their cruel law.”
Her declaration was disregarded, she was forced from the scaffold, and reconducted to prison. There she was received in the arms of her son, and she learnt from him that she owed her life to his prolonged intercession.
Fortitude, the merit of superior endurance, has often been conceded to woman. One of our most celebrated surgeons had the magnanimity to say to a patient on whom he had just performed an excruciating operation, “Sir you have borne it like a woman.” But the most devoted champions of the weaker and timid sex, must concede, that they are inferior to man in courage to brave circumstances, and encounter danger; yet among all the valiant hearts in manly frames, that have illustrated our race, we know not where we shall find a more indomitable spirit, than Mary Dyre’s. The tribunal of her determined enemies; the prison; the scaffold; the actual presence of death; the joy of recovered life; and, more potent than all, the meltings of maternal love, did not abate one jot of her purpose. On the morning after her reprieve, she dispatched from her prison a letter to her judges, beginning in the following bold, and, if the circumstances are considered, sublime strain; -
“Once more to the General Court assembled in Boston, speaks Mary Dyre, even as before. My life is not accepted, neither availeth me, in comparison of the lives and liberty of the truth, and servants of the living God, for which, in the bowels of meekness and love I sought you.” She proceeds to charge them, most justly, with having neglected the measure of light that was in them, and thus concludes; “When I heard your last order read, it was a disturbance unto me, that was freely offering up my life to Him that gave it me, and sent me hither so to do; which obedience being his own work, he gloriously accompanied with his presence, and peace, and love in me, in which I rested from my labour.”
The minds of the magistrates must have been wonderfully puffed up, and clouded with an imagined infallibility, and their hearts indurated by dogmatical controversy, or they would at once have perceived, that Mary Dyre was maintaining a righteous claim to the same privilege for which they had made their boasted efforts and sacrifices; - the privilege of private judgement.
Whatever intimations they may have received from their conscience, they were not made public; no answer was returned to Mary’s letters, and no concessions made to her sect; but it was thought prudent to commute Mary’s sentence into banishment, with penalty of death in case of her return, and she was accordingly sent, with a guard, to Rhode Island.
The sympathies of the good people of Boston had been awakened by the firmness of the prisoners in their extremity. The tide of feeling was setting in
[p. 159]
favour of their cause, murmurs of dissatisfaction with the proceedings of the magistrates were running through the little community, and it was thought best to allay the ferment, by manifesto, which is throughout a lame defense, and which concludes in a manner worthy of the style of Cromwell and the school of the Jesuits. “The consideration of our gradual proceedings,” say they, “will vindicate us from the clamorous accusations of severity; our own just and necessary defence calling upon us, other means failing, to offer the point which these persons have violently and wilfully rushed upon, and thereby become felones de se, which, might it have been prevented, and the sovereign law, salus populi, been preserved, out former proceedings, as well as the sparing of Mary Dyre upon an inconsiderable intercession, will evidently evince we desire their lives absent, rather than their deaths present.”
Would the tragedy had ended here! But the last and saddest scene was yet to be enacted. We who believe that woman’s duty as well as happiness lies in the obscure, safe, and not very limited sphere of domestic life, may regret that Mary did not forego the glory of the champion, and the martyr, for the meek honours of the wife and mother. Still we must venerate the courage and energy of her soul, when, as she said, “moved by the spirit of God so to do,” she again returned to finish, in her own words, “her sad and heavy experience, in the bloody town of Boston.”
She arrived there on the twenty-first of May,1660, and appears to have remained unmolested, till the thirty-first, when she was summoned before the General Court, which had cognizance of all civil and criminal offences. In this court, Governor Endicot was the presiding officer. He began her examination by asking her, if she were the same Mary Dyre that was there before.
It appears that another Mary Dyre had made some
[p. 160]
disturbance in the Colony, and the Governor, probably pitying the rashness of our heroine, was willing to allow her an opportunity of evasion, but she replies unhesitatingly, “I am the same Mary Dyre that was here at the last General Court.”
“Then you own yourself a Quaker, do you not?”
“I own myself to be reproachfully called so.”
“I must then repeat the sentence once before pronounced upon you.”
After he had spoken the words of doom, “This is no more,” replied Mary calmly, “than thou saidst before.”
“But now it is to be executed; therefore prepare yourself for nine o’clock to-morrow.”
Still steadfast in what she believed her divinely authorised mission, she replied, “I came in obedience to the will of God, to the last General Court, praying you to repeal your unrighteous sentence of banishment, on pain of death, and that same is my work now, and earnest request, although I told you, that if you refused to repeal them, the Lord would send others of his servants to witness against them.”
“Are you a prophetess?” asked Endicot.
“I spoke the words which the lord spoke to me; and now the thing is come to pass.”
“Away with her!” cried the Governor; and Mary was reconducted to prison. We lament the imperfection of human intelligence, and the infirmity of human virtue, for “perfection easily bears with the imperfections of others;” but we rejoice, that, in the providence of God, the vice of one party elicits the virtue of another; that bigotry and persecution bring forth the faith and heroic self-sacrifice of the martyr. The fire is kindled and burns fiercely, but the Phoenix rises; the furnace, heated with seven-fold heat, does not consume, but purifies.
Mary Dyre’s family was plunged into deep distress, by her again putting her life in jeopardy. As her
[p. 161]
husband’s religious faith did not accord with her own, he could not of course perfectly sympathize with her zeal in behalf of her persecuted sect, but the following letter, addressed to the Governor, which has not, we believe, before been published, bears ample testimony, that his conjugal affection had borne the hard test of religious disagreement.
“Honoured Sir - It is with no little grief of mind and sadness of heart, that I am necessitated to be so bould as to supplicate your honoured self, with the honourable assembly of your General Court, to extend your mercy and favour once again, to me, and my children. Little did I dream, that I should have occasion to petition in a matter of this nature; but so it is, that through the divine providence and your benignity, my sonn obtayned so much pity and mercy at your hands, to enjoy the life of his mother. Now my supplication to your honours is, to begg affectionately the life of my dear wife. ‘Tis true, I have not seen her above this half yeare, and cannot tell how, in the frame of her spirit, she was moved thus againe to run so great a hazard to herself, and perplexity to me and mine, and all her friends and wellwishers.
“So it is, from Shelter Island, about by Peynod, Narragansett, &c., to the town of Providence, she secretly and speedily journeyed, and as secretly from thence came to your jurisdiction. Unhappy journey, may I say, and woe to that generation, say I, that gives occasion thus of grief (to those that desire to be quiett), by helping one another to hazard their lives to, I know not what end, nor for what purpose.
“If her zeal be so great, as thus to adventure, oh! let your pitty and favour surmount it, and save her life. Let not your love and wonted compassion be conquered by her inconsiderate maddness, and how greatly will your renoune be spread, if by so conquering, you become victorious. What shall I say more! I know you are all sensible of my condition - you
[p. 62]
see what my petition is, and what will give me and mine peace.
“Oh! let Mercy’s wings soar over Justice’s ballance, and then whilst I live, I shall exalt your goodness; but otherways’t will be a languishing sorrow - yea, so great, that I should gladly suffer the blow at once, much rather. I shall forbear to trouble you with words, neither am I in a capacity to expatiate myself at present. I only say this, yourselves have been, and are, or may be husbands to wives; so am I, yea to one most dearly beloved. Oh! do not deprive me of her, but I pray give her me once again. I shall be so much obliged forever that I shall endeavour continually to utter my thanks and render you love and honour most renouned. Pitty me! I beg it with tears, and rest your humble suppliant, W. Dyre.”
It does not appear what answer, or that any answer was vouchsafed to this touching appeal. It is enough to know that it was unavailing, and that on the very next day after her condemnation, the first of June, Mary Dyre was led forth to execution.
Some apprehensions seem to have been entertained that the mob might give inconvenient demonstrations of their pity for the prisoner, for she was strongly guarded, and during her whole progress from her prison to the place of execution, a mile’s distance, drums were beaten before and behind her.
The scaffold was erected on Boston Common. When she had mounted it, she was asked if she would have the Elders to pray for her?
“I know never an Elder here,” she replied.
“Will you have none of the people to pray for you?” persisted her attendant.
“I would have all the people of God to pray for me,” she replied.
“Mary Dyre! O repent! O repent!” cried out Mr. Wilson the minister; “be not so deluded and carried away by the deceits of the devil.”
[p. 163]
“Nay, man,” she answered, “I am not now to repent.”
She was reproached with having said she had already been in paradise.
To this she replied, “I have been in paradise many days.”
She spoke truly. Her mind was the paradise of God. The executioner did his office. He could kill the body, demolish the temple, but the pure and glorious spirit of the martyr passed unharmed, untouched, into the visible presence of its Creator.
The scene of this tragedy was the Boston Common; that spot, so affluent in beauty, so graced by the peace, and teeming with the loveliness of nature, was desecrated by a scaffold! stained with innocent blood! We would not dishonour this magnificent scene by connecting with it, in a single mind, one painful association. But let those send back one thought to the Quaker Martyr, who delight to watch the morning light and the evening shadows stealing over it; to walk under the bountiful shadow of its elms; to see the herds of cattle banqueting there; the birds daintily gleaning their food ; the boys driving their hoops, flying their kites, and launching their mimic vessels on the mimic lake; whilst the little faineants, perhaps the busiest in thought among them, are idly stretched on the grass, seemingly satisfied with the bare consciousness of existence. The Boston Common, as it is, preserved and embellished, but not spoiled by art, still retaining its natural and graceful undulations, shaded by trees of a century’s growth, with its ample extent of uncovered surface, affording in the heart of a populous city, that first of luxuries, space; trodden by herds of its natural and chartered proprietors; encompassed by magnificent edifices, the homes of the gifted, cultivated, and liberal; with its beautiful view of water (Heaven forgive those who abated it!) and of the surrounding,
[p. 164]
cultured, and enjoyed country; crowned by Dorchester Heights, and the Blue Hills; - Boston Common, had always appeared to us one of the choicest of nature’s temples. The memory of the good is worthy such a temple; and we trust we shall be forgiven, for having attempted to fix there this slight monument to a noble sufferer in that great cause, that has stimulated the highest of minds to the sublimest actions; that calls its devotees from the gifted, its martyrs from the moral heroes of mankind; the best cause, the fountain of all liberty - liberty of conscience!
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Mary Dyre
Subject
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Mary Dyer, 17th century Quaker martyr, religious persecution, liberty of conscience.
Description
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An account of the persecution and execution of New England Quaker Mary Dyre by the Pilgrims in the 1660s.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick.
Source
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<em>The Token</em> [edited by Samuel G. Goodrich]. Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1831 [pub. 1830], 294-312.
Date
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1830
Contributor
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Ashley Taylor
L. Damon-Bach
D. Gussman
Relation
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Collected in <em>Tales and Sketches, </em>Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard (1835): 151-164.<br />[Note: This transcription is from <em>Tales and Sketches</em>.]
Language
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English
Type
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Document
Boston
Boston Common
Catharine Evans
Constantinople
execution
inquisition
Jesuits
John Endicott
John Wilson
liberty of conscience
Madame Roland
Mahomet the Fourth
Malta
Marmaduke Stevenson
martyrs
Mary Dyre
Mary Fisher
Massachusetts Bay Colony
Oliver Cromwell
Pilgrims
Quakers
religious persecution
Religious Society of Friends
Rhode Island
Sarah Chevers
The Token
Voltaire
William Dyre
William Robinson
William Sewell
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d1b3fcd22f7faa30a09169e8e7bdeebc
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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1830
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1830.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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Glory and gain the industrious tribe provoke.--Pope.
The little secluded and quiet village of H. lies at no great distance from our “literary emporium.” It was never remarked or remarkable for anything, save one mournful preeminence, to those who sojourned within its borders — it was duller even than common villages. The young men of the better class all emigrated. The most daring spirits adventured on the sea. Some went to Boston; some to the south; and some to the west; and left a community of women who lived like nuns, with the advantage of more liberty and fresh air, but without the consolation and excitement of a religious vow. Literally, there was not a single young gentleman in the village — nothing in manly shape to which these desperate circumstances could give the form and quality and use of a beau. Some dashing city blades, who once strayed from the turnpike to this sequestered spot, averred that the girls stared at them as if, like Miranda, they would have exclaimed —
“What 1st? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form: — But 'tis a spirit.”
A peculiar fatality hung over this devoted place. If death seized on either head of a family, he was sure to take the husband; every woman in H. was a widow or maiden; and it is a sad fact, that when the holiest office of the church was celebrated, they were compel led to borrow deacons from an adjacent village. But, incredible as it may be, there was no great diminution of happiness in consequence of the absence of the nobler sex. Mothers were occupied with their children and housewifery, and the young ladies read their books with as much interest as if they had lovers to discuss them with, and worked their frills and capes as diligently, and wore them as complacently, as if they were to be seen by manly eyes. Never were there pleasanter gatherings or parties (for that was the word even in their nomenclature) than those of the young girls of H. There was no mincing — no affectation — no hope of passing for what they were not — no envy of the pretty and fortunate — no insolent triumph over the plain and demure and neglected, — but all was good will and good humour. They were a pretty circle of girls — a garland of bright fresh flowers. Never were there more sparkling glances, — never sweeter smiles — nor more of them. Their present was all health and cheerfulness; and their future, not the gloomy perspective of dreary singleness, for somewhere in the passage of life they were sure to be mated. Most of the young men who had abandoned their native soil, as soon as they found themselves getting along, loyally returned to lay their fortunes at the feet of the companions of their childhood.
The girls made occasional visits to Boston, and occasional journeys to various parts of the country, for they were all enterprising and independent, and had the characteristic New England avidity for seizing a “privilege;” and in these various ways, to borrow a phrase of their good grandames, a door was opened for them, and in due time they fulfilled the destiny of women.
We spoke strictly, and a la lettre, when we said that in the village of H. there was not a single beau. But on the outskirts of the town, at a pleasant farm, embracing hill and valley, upland and meadow land ; in a neat house, looking to the south, with true economy of sunshine and comfort, and overlooking the prettiest winding stream that ever sent up its sparkling beauty to the eye, and flanked on the north by a rich maple grove, beautiful in spring and summer, and glorious in autumn, and the kindest defence in winter; — on this farm and in this house dwelt a youth, to fame unknown, but known and loved by every inhabitant of H., old and young, grave and gay, lively and severe. Ralph Hepburn was one of nature's favourites. He had a figure that would have adorned courts and cities; and a face that adorned human nature, for it was full of good humour, kindheartedness, spirit, and intelligence; and driving the plough or wielding the scythe, his cheek flushed with manly and profitable exercise, he looked as if he had been moulded in a poet's fancy — as farmers look in Georgics and Pastorals. His gifts were by no means all external. He wrote verses in every album in the village, and very pretty album verses they were, and numerous too — for the number of albums was equivalent to the whole “female” population. He was admirable at pencil sketches; and once with a little paint, the refuse of a house painting, he achieved an admirable portrait of his grandmother and her cat. There was, to be sure, a striking likeness between the two figures, but he was limited to the same colours for both; and besides, it was not out of nature, for the old lady and her cat had purred together in the chimney corner, till their physiognomies bore an obvious resemblance to each other. Ralph had a talent for music too. His voice was the sweetest of all the Sunday choir, and one would have fancied, from the bright eyes that were turned on him from the long line and double lines of treble and counter singers, that Ralph Hepburn was a note book, or that the girls listened with their eyes as well as their ears. Ralph did not restrict himself to psalmody. He had an ear so exquisitely susceptible to the “touches of sweet harmony,” that he discovered, by the stroke of his axe, the musical capacities of certain species of wood, and he made himself a violin of chestnut, and drew strains from it, that if they could not create a soul under the ribs of death, could make the prettiest feet and the lightest hearts dance, an achievement far more to Ralph's taste than the aforesaid miracle. In short, it seemed as if nature, in her love of compensation, had showered on Ralph all the gifts that are usually diffused through a community of beaux. Yet Ralph was no prodigy; none of his talents were in excess, but all in moderate degree. No genius was ever so good humoured, so useful, so practical; and though, in his small and modest way, a Crichton, he was not, like most universal geniuses, good for nothing for any particular office in life. His farm was not a pattern farm — a prize farm for an agricultural society, but in wonderful order considering — his miscellaneous pursuits. He was the delight of his grandfather for his sagacity in hunting bees — the old man's favourite, in truth his only pursuit. He was so skilled in woodcraft that the report of his gun was as certain a signal of death as the tolling of a church bell. The fish always caught at his bait. He manufactured half his farming utensils, improved upon old inventions, and struck out some new ones; tamed partridges — the most untameable of all the feathered tribe; domesticated squirrels; rivalled Scheherazade herself in telling stories, strange and long — the latter quality being essential at a country fireside; and, in short, Ralph made a perpetual holiday of a life of labour.
Every girl in the village street knew when Ralph's wagon or sleigh traversed it; indeed, there was scarcely a house to which the horses did not, as if by instinct, turn up while their master greeted its fair tenants. This state of affairs had continued for two winters and two summers since Ralph came to his majority and, by the death of his father, to the sole proprietorship of the “Hepburn farm,” — the name his patrimonial acres had obtained from the singular circumstance (in our moving country) of their having remained in the same family for four generations. Never was the matrimonial destiny of a young lord, or heir just come to his estate, more thoroughly canvassed than young Hepburn's by mothers, aunts, daughters, and nieces. But Ralph, perhaps from sheer good heartedness, seemed reluctant to give to one the heart that diffused rays of sunshine through the whole village.
With all decent people he eschewed the doctrines of a certain erratic female lecturer on the odious monopoly of marriage, yet Ralph, like a tender hearted judge, hesitated to place on a single brow the crown matrimonial which so many deserved, and which, though Ralph was far enough from a coxcomb, he could not but see so many coveted.
Whether our hero perceived that his mind was becoming elated or distracted with this general favour, or that he observed a dawning of rivalry among the fair competitors, or whatever was the cause, the fact was, that he by degrees circumscribed his visits, and finally concentrated them in the family of his Aunt Courland.
Mrs. Courland was a widow, and Ralph was the kindest of nephews to her, and the kindest of cousins to her children. To their mother he seemed their guardian angel. That the five lawless, daring little urchins did not drown themselves when they were swimming, nor shoot themselves when they were shooting, was, in her eyes, Ralph's merit; and then he was so attentive to Alice, her only daughter — a brother could not be kinder. But who would not be kind to Alice? she was a sweet girl of seventeen, not beautiful, not handsome perhaps, — but pretty enough — with soft hazel eyes, a profusion of light brown hair, always in the neatest trim, and a mouth that could not but be lovely and loveable, for all kind and tender affections were playing about it. Though Alice was the only daughter of a doting mother, the only sister of five loving boys, the only niece of three single, fond aunts, and, last and greatest, the only cousin of our only beau, Ralph Hepburn, no girl of seventeen was ever more disinterested, unassuming, unostentatious, and unspoiled. Ralph and Alice had always lived on terms of cousinly affection — an affection of a neutral tint that they never thought of being shaded into the deep dye of a more tender passion. Ralph rendered her all cousinly offices. If he had twenty damsels to escort, not an uncommon case, he never forgot Alice. When he returned from any little excursion, he always brought some graceful offering to Alice.
He had lately paid a visit to Boston. It was at the season of the periodical inundation of annuals. He brought two of the prettiest to Alice. Ah! little did she think they were to prove Pandora's box to her. Poor simple girl! she sat down to read them, as if an annual were meant to be read, and she was honestly interested and charmed. Her mother observed her delight. "What have you there, Alice?" she asked, "Oh the prettiest story, mamma! — two such tried faithful lovers, and married at last ! It ends beautifully: I hate love stories that don't end in marriage."
"And so do I, Alice," exclaimed Ralph, who entered at the moment, and for the first time Alice felt her cheeks tingle at his approach. He had brought a basket, containing a choice plant he had obtained for her, and she laid down the annual and went with him to the garden to see it set by his own hand.
Mrs. Courland seized upon the annual with avidity. She had imbibed a literary taste in Boston, where the best and happiest years of her life were passed. She had some literary ambition too. She read the North American Review from beginning to end, and she fancied no conversation could be sensible or improving that was not about books. But she had been effectually prevented, by the necessities of a narrow income, and by the unceasing wants of five teasing boys, from indulging her literary inclinations; for Mrs. Courland, like all New England women, had been taught to consider domestic duties as the first temporal duties of her sex. She had recently seen some of the native productions with which the press is daily teeming, and which certainly have a tendency to dispel our early illusions about the craft of authorship. She had even felt some obscure intimations, within her secret soul, that she might herself become an author. The annual was destined to fix her fate. She opened it — the publisher had written the names of the authors of the anonymous pieces against their productions. Among them the found some of the familiar friends of her childhood and youth.
If, by a sudden gift of second sight, she had seen them enthroned as kings and queens, she would not have been more astonished. She turned to their pieces, and read them, as perchance no one else ever did, from beginning to end — faithfully. Not a sentence — a sentence! not a word was skipped. She paused to consider commas, colons, and dashes. All the art and magic of authorship were made level to her comprehension, and when she closed the book, she felt a call to become an author, and before she retired to bed she obeyed the call, as if it had been, in truth, a divinity stirring within her. In the morning she presented an article to her public, consisting of her own family and a few select friends. All applauded, and every voice, save one, was unanimous for publication — that one was Alice. She was a modest, prudent girl; she feared failure, and feared notoriety still more. Her mother laughed at her childish scruples. The piece was sent off, and in due time graced the pages of an annual. Mrs. Courland's fate was now decided. She had, to use her own phrase, started in the career of letters, and she was no Atalanta to be seduced from her straight onward way. She was a social, sympathetic, good hearted creature too, and she could not bear to go forth in the golden field to reap alone.
She was, besides, a prudent woman, as most of her countrywomen are, and the little pecuniary equivalent for this delightful exercise of talents was not over looked. Mrs. Courland, as we have somewhere said, had three single sisters — worthy women they were — but nobody ever dreamed of their taking to authorship. She, however, held them all in sisterly estimation. Their talents were magnified as the talents of persons who live in a circumscribed sphere are apt to be, particularly if seen through the dilating medium of affection.
Miss Anne, the oldest, was fond of flowers, a successful cultivator, and a diligent student of the science of botany. All this taste and knowledge, Mrs. Courland thought, might be turned to excellent account; and she persuaded Miss Anne to write a little book entitled “Familiar Dialogues on Botany.” The second sister, Miss Ruth, had a turn for education (“bachelor's wives and maid's children are always well taught”), and Miss Ruth undertook a popular treatise on that subject. Miss Sally, the youngest, was the saint of the family, and she doubted about the propriety of a literary occupation, till her scruples were overcome by the fortunate suggestion that her coup d'essai should be a Saturday night book entitled “Solemn Hours,” — and solemn hours they were to their unhappy readers. Mrs. Courland next besieged her old mother. "You know, mamma," she said, "you have such a precious fund of anecdotes of the revolution and the French war, and you talk just like the “Annals of the Parish,” and I am certain you can write a book fully as good."
"My child, you are distracted! I write a dreadful poor hand, and I never learned to spell — no girls did in my time."
"Spell! that is not of the least consequence — the printers correct the spelling."
But the honest old lady would not be tempted on the crusade, and her daughter consoled herself with the reflection that if she would not write, she was an admirable subject to be written about, and her diligent fingers worked off three distinct stories in which the old lady figured.
Mrs. Courland's ambition, of course, embraced within its widening circle her favourite nephew Ralph. She had always thought him a genius, and genius in her estimation was the philosopher's stone. In his youth she had laboured to persuade his father to send him to Cambridge, but the old man uniformly replied that Ralph was a smart lad on the farm, and steady, and by that he knew he was no genius. As Ralph's character was developed, and talent after talent broke forth, his aunt renewed her lamentations over his ignoble destiny. That Ralph was useful, good, and happy — the most difficult and rare results achieved in life — was nothing, so long as he was but a farmer in H. Once she did half persuade him to turn painter, but his good sense and filial duty triumphed over her eloquence, and suppressed the hankerings after distinction that are innate in every human breast, from the little ragged chimneysweep that hopes to be a boss, to the political aspirant whose bright goal is the presidential chair.
Now Mrs. Courland fancied Ralph might climb the steep of fame without quitting his farm; occasional authorship was compatible with his vocation. But alas! she could not persuade Ralph to pluck the laurels that she saw ready grown to his hand. She was not offended, for she was the best natured woman in the world, but she heartily pitied him, and seldom mentioned his name without repeating that stanza of Gray's, inspired for the consolation of hopeless obscurity. :
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,”
Poor Alice's sorrows we have reserved to the last, for they were heaviest. “Alice,” her mother said, “was gifted; she was well educated, well informed; she was everything necessary to be an author.” But Alice resisted; and, though the gentlest, most complying of all good daughters, she would have resisted to the death — she would as soon have stood in a pillory as appeared in print. Her mother, Mrs. Courland, was not an obstinate woman, and gave up in despair. But still our poor heroine was destined to be the victim of this cacoethes scribendi; for Mrs. Courland divided the world into two classes, or rather parts — authors and subjects for authors; the one active, the other passive. At first blush one would have, thought the village of H. rather a barren field for such a reaper as Mrs. Courland, but her zeal and indefatigableness worked wonders. She converted the stern scholastic divine of H. into as much of a La Roche as she could describe; a tall wrinkled bony old woman, who reminded her of Meg Merrilies, sat for a witch; the school master for an Ichabod Crane; a poor half wilted boy was made to utter as much pathos and sentiment and wit as she could put into his lips; and a crazy vagrant was a God-send to her. Then every “wide spreading elm,” “blasted pine,” or “gnarled oak,” flourished on her pages. The village church and school house stood there according to their actual dimensions. One old pilgrim house was as prolific as haunted tower or ruined abbey. It was surveyed outside, ransacked inside, and again made habitable for the reimbodied spirits of its founders.
The most kind hearted of women, Mrs. Courland's interests came to be so at variance with the prosperity of the little community of H., that a sudden calamity, a death, a funeral, were fortunate events to her. To do her justice she felt them in a twofold capacity. She wept as a woman, and exulted as an author. The days of the calamities of authors have passed by. We have all wept over Otway and shivered at the thought of Tasso. But times are changed. The lean sheaf is devouring the full one. A new class of sufferers has arisen, and there is nothing more touching in all the memoirs Mr. D'Israeli has collected, than the trials of poor Alice, tragi-comic though they were. Mrs. Courland's new passion ran most naturally in the worn channel of maternal affection. Her boys were too purely boys for her art — but Alice, her sweet Alice, was preeminently lovely in the new light in which she now placed every object. Not an incident of her life but was inscribed on her mother's memory, and thence transferred to her pages, by way of precept, or example, or pathetic or ludicrous circumstance. She regretted now, for the first time, that Alice had no lover whom she might introduce among her dramatis personse. Once her thoughts did glance on Ralph, but she had not quite merged the woman in the author; she knew instinctively that Alice would be particularly offended at being thus paired with Ralph. But Alice's public life was not limited to her mother's productions. She was the darling niece of her three aunts. She had studied botany with the eldest, and Miss Anne had recorded in her private diary all her favourite's clever remarks during their progress in the science. This diary was now a mine of gold to her, and faithfully worked up for a circulating medium. But, most trying of all to poor Alice, was the attitude in which she appeared in her aunt Sally's “solemn hours.” Every aspiration of piety to which her young lips had given utterance was there printed. She felt as if she were condemned to say her prayers in the market place. Every act of kindness, every deed of charity, she had ever performed, were produced to the public. Alice would have been consoled if she had known how small that public was; but, as it was, she felt like a modest country girl when she first enters an apartment hung on every side with mirrors, when, shrinking from observation, she sees in every direction her image multiplied and often distorted; for, notwithstanding Alice's dutiful respect for her good aunts, and her consciousness of their affectionate intentions, she could not but perceive that they were unskilled painters. She grew afraid to speak or to act, and from being the most artless, frank, and, at home, social little creature in the world, she became as silent and as stiff as a statue. And, in the circle of her young associates, her natural gaiety was constantly checked by their winks and smiles, and broader allusions to her multiplied portraits; for they had instantly recognized them through the thin veil of feigned names of persons and places. They called her a blue stocking too; for they had the vulgar notion that everybody must be tinged that lived under the same roof with an author. Our poor victim was afraid to speak of a book — worse than that, she was afraid to touch one, and the last Waverley novel actually lay in the house a month before she opened it. She avoided wearing even a blue ribbon, as fearfully as a forsaken damsel shuns the colour of green.
It was during the height of this literary fever in the Courland family, that Ralph Hepburn, as has been mentioned, concentrated all his visiting there. He was of a compassionate disposition, and he knew Alice was, unless relieved by him, in solitary possession of their once social parlour, while her mother and aunts were driving their quills in their several apartments.
“Oh! what a changed place was that parlour! Not the tower of Babel, after the builders had forsaken it, exhibited a sadder reverse; not a Lancaster school, when the boys have left it, a more striking contrast. Mrs. Courland and her sisters were all “talking women,” and too generous to encroach on one another's rights and happiness. They had acquired the power to hear and speak simultaneously. Their parlour was the general gathering place, a sort of village exchange, where all the innocent gossips, old and young, met together. “There are tongues in trees,” and surely there seemed to be tongues in the very walls of that vocal parlour. Everything there had a social aspect. There was something agreeable and conversable in the litter of netting and knitting work, of sewing implements, and all the signs and shows of happy female occupation.
Now, all was as orderly as a town drawing room in company hours. Not a sound was heard there save Ralph's and Alice's voices, mingling in soft and sup pressed murmurs, as if afraid of breaking the chain of their aunt's ideas, or, perchance, of too rudely jarring a tenderer chain. One evening, after tea, Mrs. Courland remained with her daughter, instead of retiring, as usual, to her writing desk. — "Alice, my dear," said the good mother, "I have noticed for a few days past that you look out of spirits. You will listen to nothing I say on that subject; but if you would try it, my dear, if you would only try it, you would find there is nothing so tranquillizing as the occupation of writing."
"I shall never try it, mamma."
"You are afraid of being called a blue stocking. Ah! Ralph, how are you?" — Ralph entered at this moment. — "Ralph, tell me honestly, do you not think it a weakness in Alice to be so afraid of blue stockings?"
"It would be a pity, aunt, to put blue stockings on such pretty feet as Alice's."
Alice blushed and smiled, and her mother said — "Nonsense, Ralph; you should bear in mind the celebrated saying of the Edinburgh wit — “no matter how blue the stockings are, if the petticoats are long enough to hide them."
"Hide Alice's feet! Oh aunt, worse and worse!"
"Better hide her feet, Ralph, than her talents— that is a sin for which both she and you will have to answer. Oh! you and Alice need not exchange such significant glances! You are doing yourselves and the public injustice, and you have no idea how easy writing is."
"Easy writing, but hard reading, aunt."
"That's false modesty, Ralph. If I had but your opportunities to collect materials" — Mrs. Courland did not know that in literature, as in some species of manufacture, the most exquisite productions are wrought from the smallest quantity of raw material — " There's your journey to New York, Ralph," she continued, "you might have made three capital articles out of that. The revolutionary officer would have worked up for the “Legendary;” the mysterious lady for the “Token;” and the man in black for the “Remember Me;” — all founded on fact, all romantic and pathetic."
"But mamma," said Alice, expressing in words what Ralph's arch smile expressed almost as plainly, "you know the officer drank too much; and the mysterious lady turned out to be a runaway milliner; and the man in black — oh! what a theme for a pathetic story! — the man in black was a widower, on his way to Newhaven, where he was to select his third wife from three re commended candidates."
"Pshaw! Alice: do you suppose it is necessary to tell things precisely as they are?"
"Alice is wrong, aunt, and you are right; and if she will open her writing desk for me, I will sit down this moment, and write a story — a true story — true from beginning to end; and if it moves you, my dear aunt, if it meets your approbation, my destiny is decided."
Mrs. Courland was delighted; she had slain the giant, and she saw fame and fortune smiling on her favourite. She arranged the desk for him herself; she prepared a folio sheet of paper, folded the ominous margins; and was so absorbed in her bright visions, that she did not hear a little by-talk between Ralph and Alice, nor see the tell-tale flush on their cheeks, nor notice the perturbation with which Alice walked first to one window and then to another, and finally settled herself to that best of all sedatives — hemming a ruffle. Ralph chewed off the end of his quill, mended his pen twice, though his aunt assured him “printers did not mind the penmanship,” and had achieved a single line when Mrs. Courland's vigilant eye was averted by the entrance of her servant girl, who put a packet into her hands. She looked at the direction, cut the string, broke the seals, and took out a periodical fresh from the publisher. She opened at the first article — a strangely mingled current of maternal pride and literary triumph rushed through her heart and brightened her face. She whispered to the servant a summons to all her sisters to the parlour, and an intimation, sufficiently intelligible to them, of her joyful reason for interrupting them.
Our readers will sympathize with her, and with Alice too, when we disclose to them the secret of her joy. The article in question was a clever composition written by our devoted Alice when she was at school. One of her fond aunts had preserved it; and aunts and mother had combined in the pious fraud of giving it to the public, unknown to Alice. They were perfectly aware of her determination never to be an author. But they fancied it was the mere timidity of an unfledged bird; and that when, by their innocent artifice, she found that her opinions could soar in a literary atmosphere, she would realize the sweet fluttering sensations they had experienced at their first flight. The good souls all hurried to the parlour, eager to witness the coup de theatre. Miss Sally's pen stood emblematically erect in her turban; Miss Ruth, in her haste, had overset her inkstand, and the drops were trickling down her white dressing, or, as she now called it, writing gown; and Miss Anne had a wild flower in her hand, as she hoped, of an undescribed species, which, in her joyful agitation, she most unluckily picked to pieces. All bit their lips to keep impatient congratulation from bursting forth. Ralph was so intent on his writing, and Alice on her hemming, that neither noticed the irruption; and Mrs. Courland was obliged twice to speak to her daughter before she could draw her attention.
"Alice, look here — Alice, my dear."
"What is it, mamma? something new of yours?”
"No; guess again, Alice."
"Of one of my aunts, of course?"
"Neither, dear, neither. Come and look for yourself, and see if you can then tell whose it is."
Alice dutifully laid aside her work, approached and took the book. The moment her eye glanced on the fatal page, all her apathy vanished — deep crimson overspread her cheeks, brow, and neck. She burst into tears of irrepressible vexation, and threw the book into the blazing fire.
The gentle Alice! Never had she been guilty of such an ebullition of temper. Her poor dismayed aunts retreated; her mother looked at her in mute astonishment; and Ralph, struck with her emotion, started from the desk, and would have asked an explanation, but Alice exclaimed — "Don't say anything about it, mamma — I cannot bear it now."
Mrs. Courland knew instinctively that Ralph would sympathize entirely with Alice, and quite willing to avoid an explanation, she said — "Some other time, Ralph, I'll tell you the whole. Show me now what you have written. How have you begun?"
Ralph handed her the paper with a novice's trembling hand.
"Oh! how very little! and so scratched and interlined! but never mind — “c'est le premier pas qui coute.”
"While making these general observations, the good mother was getting out and fixing her spectacles, and Alice and Ralph had retreated behind her. Alice rested her head on his shoulder, and Ralph's lips were not far from her ear. Whether he was soothing her ruffled spirit, or what he was doing, is not recorded. Mrs. Courland read and re-read the sentence. She dropped a tear on it. She forgot her literary aspirations for Ralph and Alice — forgot she was herself an author — forgot everything but the mother; and rising, embraced them both as her dear children, and expressed, in her raised and moistened eye, consent to their union, which Ralph had dutifully and prettily asked in that short and true story of his love for his sweet cousin Alice.
In due time the village of H. was animated with the celebration of Alice's nuptials: and when her mother and aunts saw her the happy mistress of the Hepburn farm, and the happiest of wives, they relinquished, without a sigh, the hope of ever seeing her an AUTHOR.
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
"Cacoethes Scribendi"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Women writers, love and marriage, village life.
Description
An account of the resource
A young woman is embarrassed when her writing is published by her family without her knowledge.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>The Atlantic Souvenir</em>. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Lea, 17-38.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1830
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
J. Robinson
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Also collected in: <em>Stories of American Life</em>, vol. 3, Ed. Mary Russell Mitford (London, 1830), pp. 162-186.<br /><em>Tales and Sketches</em>. By Miss Sedgwick. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835), pp. 165-181.<br /><em>Provisions: A Reader from 19th-Century American Women</em>. Ed. Judith Fetterley. Bloomington, (Indiana UP, 1985) pp. 49-59. <br /><em>The Norton Anthology of American Literature</em>, Vol. I, Ed. Nina Baym. (New York: Norton, 1998) pp.1007-1017.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
annuals
art
authorship
blue stocking
Boston
Disraeli
domestic duties
genius
Ichabod Crane
James Crichton
marriage
music
New England
New Haven
New York
North American Review
piety
Shakespeare
Sheherazade
Tasso
The Tempest
Waverley