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73c5198ed3034f75a7054b05c56ef047
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1827
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ROMANCE IN REAL LIFE
By the Author of ‘Redwood’
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‘La Nature fait le mérite,
La Fortune le met en preuve.’
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Many fortunate travellers on the western border of Massachusetts, and not many miles from the Hudson, have been refreshed at the inn of Reliance Reynolds. Reliance, as his name indicates, was born in the good old times. We are aware that the enthusiasts about the ‘progress of the age,’ deny this golden period any but a retrospective existence, and maintain that, retrace the steps of the human family far as you will, it is like the age of chivalry, always a little behind you. But we adhere to the popular phraseology and call those, ‘good old times,’ when the Puritanical nomenclature prevailed; when such modest graces as faith and temperance had not been expelled from our taverns, kitchens, and workshops, by the heroes and heroines of romance – the Orlandos and Lorenzos, Rosamonds and Anna Matildas.
Reliance belonged to the ‘good old times,’ too, in the more essential matter of downright honesty, simplicity, and respectful courtesy. His was a rare character in New England – a passive spirit, content to fill and fit the niche nature had prepared for him. It was not very high,
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but he never aspired above it; nor very low, but he never sank below it. He was the marvel of his neighbours, for he could never be persuaded into an enterprise or speculation. He never bought a water privilege, nor an oar bed; subscribed to a county bank, or ‘moved to the West;’ or in any mode indicated that principle in man, which, in its humble operations, its restlessness, in its lofty aspirations, a longing after immortality. Reliance’s desires never passed the bounds of his premises, and were satisfied, even within them, with a very moderate share of power. He stood at his door, his hat in his hand, to receive his guests; he strictly performed the promise of his sign, and gave ‘good entertainment to man and horse;’ he rendered a moderate bill and received his dues with a complacent smile, in which gratitude was properly tempered with a just sense of his own rights. In short, as must be already quite manifest, Reliance, though a pattern landlord, is a very poor subject for a storyteller; his qualities, like the color in a ray of light, all bending and forming one hue, and his life, presenting the same monotonous harmony.
We should not have forced him from his happy obscurity into the small degree of notoriety he may incur on our humble page, but for his being the adjunct of his wife, an important personage in our narrative.
Mrs Reynolds, too, like her husband, performed exactly the duties of her station. She never perhaps read a line of poetry, save such as might lurk in the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of a village paper, but her whole life was an illustration of the oldfashioned couplet –
‘Honor and shame from no condition rise,
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’
She never was presidentess of a ‘society for ameliorating the conditions of the Jews,’ or secretary or treasurer
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of any of those beneficent associations that rescue the latent talents of women from obscurity and mettrent en scéne gems and flowers that might otherwise shine and exhale unnoticed and unknown; but though humble was her name and destiny, her memory is dear to the wayfaring. Quiet, order, and neatness, reigned at her bed and board. No pirates harbored in her bedsteads, no bad luck, that evil genius of housewives, curdled her cream, spoiled her butter or her bread, but her table was spread with such simple, wholesome fare as might have lit a smile on the wan visage of an old dispeptic; and this we take to be the greatest achievement of the gastronomic art.
With the duties of life so peacefully and so well performed, our good hostess ought, according to all the rules of happiness, to have been happy; but it is our melancholy duty to confess she was not, and to explain the cause. She had been married many years without having any children; that blessed possession that in transmitting, the parents’ existence, seems to extend its bounds, and to render even here, the mortal immortal. In addition to the feeling, common to all women, who naturally crave the sweetest objects for their tenderest and strongest affections, Mrs Reynolds lamented her childless state with a bitterness of repining approaching to that of the Hebrew wives. With everything else in her possession that could inspire contentment, her mind was fixed on this one desired good, and, like Hannah of old, she was still a ‘woman of a sorrowful spirit.’ She had endeavoured to solace herself with the children of her kindred, and several, from time to time, had been adopted into her family; but some proved disagreeable, and others homesick, and there was always a paramount duty or affection that interfered with her’s, till finally her
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almost extinguished hopes were gratified, and Providence gave her a child worthy all her care and love.*
In the autumn of 1777, two travellers arrived just at nightfall at Reynold’s inn. Its aspect was inviting; situated in the heart of a fertile valley that had lately been refreshed by the early rains of autumn, and in its bright garb resembling a mature beauty that had happily harmonized some youthful tints with her soberer graces. A sprightly, winding stream gave life and music to the meadows. On every side the landscape was undulating and fertile, but not then as extensively cultivated as now, when, to the Tauconnuc on the south, and the lofty blue outline of the Catskills on the west, the eye ranges over a rich and enjoyed country. Beside the accidental charm of a pretty landscape, the inn had advantages peculiar to itself. Instead of being placed on the roadside, as most of our taverns are – for what reason we know not, unless a cloud of travellers’ dust be typical of a shower of gold to the vision of mine host – Reynold’s inn was separated from the highway by a court yard, shaded by two wide spreading elms, and enlivened with a profusion of autumnal flowers, marigolds, cockscombs, and china asters.
There was nothing that indicated any claims to particular civility in the appearance of our travellers. They were well looking and respectably appareled; and, accordingly, having announced their determination to re-
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main for the night, they were shown to an inner room, the parlour, par excellence, where Mrs Reynolds appeared, and having opened a door which admitted the balmy air and a view of the western sky, just then brightened by the tints of the setting sun, she received their orders for their supper, and retired without one of those remarks or inquiries by which it is usual, on such occasions to give vent to curiosity. Nothing passed between our travellers in the dull interval that elapsed before their meal was ready, to give to our readers the least clue to their origin or destiny. One of them lulled himself into a doze in the rocking chair, while the other, younger and more active and vivacious, amused himself out of doors, plucking flowers, enraging an old petulant cock turkey, and mocking the scolding of some Guinea hens, the Xantippes of the feathered race.
The interval was not long. The door opened and the tea table was brought in, already spread (a mode we wish others would adopt from our pattern landlady), and spread in a manner to characterize our bountiful country.
What a contrast does the evening meal of our humblest inn present to the leanness of an English tea table! A cornucopia would have been the appropriate symbol for Mrs Reynolds’s table. There were beef steaks, and ham and eggs; hot cakes and toast; bread and gingerbread; all the indigenous cakes, such as crullers and nutcakes, &c.; honey, sweetmeats, apple sauce, cheese, pickles, and an afterpiece of pies. Kind reader do not condemn our bill of fare as impertinent and vulgar. We put it down to show the sacred political economists, that, with us, instead of the population pressing on the means of subsistence, the means of subsistence presses on the population.
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Our travellers fell to their repast with appetites whetted by a long fast and day’s ride. Not a word was spoken, till a little girl, who was sitting on the doorstep caressing a tame pigeon, perceiving that one of the guests had garnished his buttonhole with a bunch of marigolds, plucked a rose from a monthly rose bush, trained over a trellis at the door, and laid it beside his plate. He seemed struck with the modest offering, and, turning with a look of gratitude to the child, he patted her on her head, and exclaimed instinctively, ‘Merci, merci, ma petite!’ and then correcting himself, he said, in very imperfect English, ‘I thank you, my little girl.’
The child’s attention was fixed by the first word he uttered, and as he addressed his companion in French, her countenance indicated more emotion than would naturally have been excited by the simple circumstance of hearing, for the first time, a foreign language. ‘Qu’elle est belle, cette petite,’ he continued, turning to his companion; ‘c’est la beauté de mon pays – voilá, brunette, et les yeux, si grands, si noirs, et la tournure aussi – quelle grâce, quelle vivacité! Ah! Monsieur, Monsieur, c’est tout-á-fait Françoise.’ As he proceeded the child advanced nearer to him. She shook back the rich, dark curls that shaded her face, bent her head forward, half parted her bright lips, and listened with the uncertain and eager expression of one who is catching a half remembered tune, the key to a thousand awakening recollections. It was evident that she did not comprehend the purport of the words, and that it was the sound alone to which her delighted ear was stretched.
A smile played about her lips, and tears gathered in her eyes, and there seemed to be a contrariety of emotions, confounding even to herself; but that which finally prevailed was indicated by her throwing her apron over
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her head, and retreating to the doorstep, where she sat down, and for some moments, vainly attempted to stifle her sobs. She had just become tranquil, when Mrs Reynolds entered.
The elder traveller said, in an interrogating tone, ‘That is your child, ma’am?’
‘I call her mine,’ was the brief and not very satisfactory reply.
‘She resembles neither you nor your husband,’ resumed the traveller.
‘No; she does not favor us.’
‘I fancied she had a French look.’
‘I can’t say as to that,’ replied the landlady; ‘I never saw any French people.’
‘My friend here is a Frenchman,’ pursued the traveller, ‘and the little girl listened to him so intently, that I thought it possible she might understand him.’
‘No, I guess she did not sense him,’ replied Mrs Reynolds, with an air of indifference; and the turning hastily to the child, ‘Mary,’ she said, ‘there is more company; go and see if our father does not want you.’
She went and did not return. Mrs Reynolds herself removed the table. The elder gentleman sat down to write a letter; while the Frenchman walked to and fro, opened the doors, and peeped in every direction to get a glimpse of the little girl, who seemed to have taken complete possession of his imagination. Once, as she ran through the passage, he called to her, ‘Doucement! doucement! mon petit ange’ – she stopped as if she were glued to the floor. ‘How call you your name, my dear?’
‘Mary Reynolds, sir.’
‘Then Madame there, Mistress Reynolds, is your maman?’
‘She is –
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‘Mary, what are you staying for? Here – this instant!’ screamed Mrs Reynolds from the kitchen door, in a tone that admitted no delay, and the child ran off without finishing her sentence.
‘C’est bien singulier!’ muttered the Frenchman.
‘What do you find so singular, Jaubert?’ asked his companion, who had just finished his letter, and thrown down his pen.
‘Oh! it is nothing – perhaps – but – ’
‘“But” what, my friend?’
‘Why, there seems to me some mystery about this child; something in her manner, I know not what, that stirs up strange thoughts and hopes in my mind. She is not one of the pale, blond beauties of your climate.’
‘Ah! my good friend, we have all sorts of beauties in our clime. All nations, you know, have sent us their contributions. The blue eye and fair skin, the Saxon traits, certainly prevail in our Eastern States; but you know we border on New York, the asylum of the dark eyed Huguenots, and it is not impossible that to this child may have been transmitted the peculiarities of some French ancestor. Nothing is more common than a resemblance between a descendant and a far off progenitor.’
‘Ah! it is not only the French, the Norman aspect, the – do not ridicule me – the Angely traits that attract me; but you yourself noticed how she listened to my language, and then this Mistress Reynolds does not say she is her child, but only she calls her so.’
‘Pshaw! Is that all? It is the way of my country people, Jaubert; their indirectness is proverbial. If one of them were to say “yes” or “no,” you might suspect some deep mystery. I confess I was at first startled with the little girl’s emotion, but I soon perceived it was nothing but shame and embarrassment at
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the curiosity she had betrayed. I see how it is Jaubert; fruitless and hopeless as is our search, you cannot bear to relinquish it, and are looking for some coup de théâtre – some sudden transition from disappointment to success.’
We have put into plain English a conversation that was supported in French, and was now broken off by the approach of Mrs Reynolds, who came to tell the travellers their bedrooms were ready. By the light of the candle she brought, discovered Mary, concealed in a corner of the passage close to the door, where, in breathless stillness, she had been listening. ‘You here, Mary!’ exclaimed the good woman; ‘I thought you had been in bed this half hour. You will make me angry with you, Mary, if you do not mind me better that this,’ she added in an under tone, and the child stole away, but without looking either very penitent or very fearful; and in truth she had cause for neither penitence nor fear, for she had only gratified an innocent and almost irrepressible inclination, and as to Dame Reynolds’s anger, it was never formidable.
The travellers retired to their respective apartments, and while the landlady lingered to adjust her parlour, the letter that had been left on the table caught her eye. Nothing could be more natural than for her to look at the superscription. Painfully she spelt out the first line. ‘A Monsieur, Monsieur’ – but when she came to the next, her eye was rivetted, ‘St Jean Angely de Crève-Coeur.’ After gazing on it till she had made assurance doubly sure, she was hastening to her husband to participate the discovery with him, when, apparently changing her intentions, she retreated, bolted the door, and returned to the examination of the letter. It was unsealed. Reluctant to open it, she compromised with her conscience, and peeped in at both ends, but the writing was not perceptible, and her interest overcoming
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her scruples, she unfolded the letter. Alas! it was in French. In vain her eye ran over the manuscript to catch some words that might serve as clues to the rest. There was nothing in all three pages she could comprehend, but ‘arrivé á New York’ – ‘la rivière d’Hudson’ – ‘le manoir de Livingston.’
She was refolding the letter, when the following postscript, inadvertently written in English, caught her eye; ‘As we have no encouragement to proceed farther in our search, and Jean and Avenel are all impatience, Jaubert will embark in the Neptune, which is to sail on the first.’
A gleam of pleasure shot across Mrs Reynolds’s face, but it soon darkened again with anxiety and perplexity. ‘Why did I open the letter?’ she asked herself. ‘Why did I look at it at all? But nobody will ever know that I have seen it unless I tell it myself; and why should I tell?’ A burst of tears concluded this mental interrogation, and proved that, however earnestly her heart might plead before the tribunal of conscience, yet the stern decision of that unerring judge was heard. Self-interest has a hard task when it would mystify the path of one who habitually walks by the clear light of truth straight onward in the path of duty.
It may seem unnatural to the inexperienced, that Mrs Reynolds did not communicate her embarrassment and irresolution, from whatever cause they proceeded, to her husband; but she knew well what would be the result of a consultation; for he, good man, never viewed a subject but from one position, and we are all slow to ask advice that we foresee will be counter to our wishes.
Mrs Reynolds, so far then from appealing to the constituted authority of her household, locked her discovery within her own bosom, and to avoid all suspicion and inquiry, she composed herself as soon as possible, and
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retired to her bed, but not to sleep; and at peep of dawn, she was up and prepared to obtain all the satisfaction that indirect interrogation could procure from the travellers, and her mental resolution, invigorated by a night’s solitary reflection, was to ‘act up to her light.’
They had ordered breakfast at a very early hour, and she took care to be the only person in attendance on them. When they were seated at table, she placed herself in a rocking chair behind them, a position that happily reconciles the necessity of service with the dignity of independence, and began her meditated approaches, by saying to her own countryman, ‘I believe you left a letter here last night, sir; I laid it in the cupboard for fear of accidents.’
‘Thank you, ma’am; I ought to have been more careful. It was a letter of some consequence.’
‘Indeed! Well, I was thinking it might be.’
‘Ah! what made you think so?’
Now we must premise, that neither of the parties speaking, knew anything of that sensitiveness that starts from a question as if an attack were made on private property; but they possessed, in common, the good-natured communicativeness that is said to characterize the New England people, who, in their colloquial traffic, as in other barter, hold exchange to be no robbery.
Most women are born diplomatists, and Mrs Reynolds took care to reply to the last interrogatory so carefully as not to commit herself. ‘It stands to reason,’ she said, ‘a letter that is to go all the way over the wide sea to the old countries, should be of consequence.’
‘Yes – it is a long voyage.’
‘You have taken it yourself, perhaps, sir?’
‘I have. I went out an officer on board one of our cruisers, and was wrecked on the coast of France.’
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‘Of France! Well, we are hand and glove with the French now; but I tell my husband it seems to me like joining with our enemies against those of our own household.’
‘Ah! Mrs Reynolds, “friends are sometimes better than kindred.” I am sure my own father’s son could not have been kinder to me than was Monsieur Angely de Crève-Coeur – hey, Jaubert?’
‘Ah! vraiment, Monsieur! c’est un bien brave homme, Monsieur St Jean Angely.’
‘Angely!’ said Mrs Reynolds, as if recalling some faded recollection, ‘Angely – I think I have heard that name before.’
‘It may be. The gentleman I speak of resided some time in this country.’
‘But it can’t be the same,’ replied Mrs Reynolds; ‘for the person I speak of lived over in Livingston’s manner; and kind to strangers he could not be, for he deserted his own flesh and blood, and went off early in the war.’
‘It may be the same for all that, and must be. As to deserting his children, “thereby hangs a tale;” but it is a long one.’
‘Well, sir, if you have anything to say in his favor, I am bold to say I think you ought to speak it; especially as the gentleman seems to have stood your friend in a cloudy day. The story certainly went sadly against him here.’
‘I have not the slightest objection, ma’am, to telling the story, if you have the patience to hear it; especially as I see I must wait till Jaubert has finished two more of your nice fresh eggs – “eggs of an hour,” Mrs Reynolds.’
‘We always calculate to have fresh eggs, sir. But what was you going to say of Mr Angely?’ she added,
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betraying in the tremulous tones of her voice, some emotion more heart stirring than curiosity. Jaubert turned a glance of inquiry on her that was unanswered by the sudden rush of blood to her cheeks; but the narrator proceeded without noticing anything extraordinary. ‘It was my good, or ill luck,’ he said, – ‘and it is the only in the long run we can tell whether luck be good or ill – but it was my luck to be shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy, and good luck it certainly was, Jaubert, in my distress, to make such a port as the Château de Crève-Coeur – the castle, or as we should call should call it here, Mrs Reynolds, the estate of the Angely’s. A fine family they are. You may think what a pleasure it was to me to find a gentleman acquainted with my country, and speaking my language as did Mr St Jean Angely. He was kind and affable to me, and always doing something for my pleasure, but I could see he had a heaviness at his heart – that he was often talking of one thing and thinking of another – nothing like so gay as the old gentleman, his father; who was like a fall flower – one of your marigolds, Mrs Reynolds, spreading itself open to every ray of sunshine, as if there were no frosts and winter and death at hand. I felt a pity for the young man. With everything that heart could desire, and without a heart to enjoy, he seemed to me like a sick man seated at a feast of which he could not taste. The day before I was to have come away, he took me aside, and, after saying that I had won his entire confidence, he disclosed to me the following particulars: –
‘He entered the French army early in life, and while yet a hotblooded, inconsiderate youth, he killed a brother officer in a duel, and was obliged to fly to his country. He took refuge in Lisbon. Judgment, I may say mercy, too – in the dealings of Providence, Mrs Reynolds, one is always close on the track of the other – followed
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him thither. Mr Angely found employment in a mercantile house, and was standing writing at his desk at the moment of the terrible earthquake that laid Lisbon in ruins. The timbers of the house in which he was, were pitched in such a manner as to form a sort of arch over his head, on which the falling roof was sustained, and thus he was, as it were, miraculously delivered from danger. From Lisbon he came to this country. “Mechanics,” says a Spanish proverb, “make the best pilgrims,” but, I am sure, not better than Frenchmen; for cast them where you will, they will get an honest living. Mr Angely came up into Livingston’s Manor, and there he took a fancy to a pretty Yankee girl, the only child of a widow, and married her. He earned a subsistence for his family by surveying. The country was new, and skillful surveyors scarce. After a few years his wife died and left him three children.’
‘Three!’ repeated Mrs Reynolds, involuntarily sighing.
‘Yes, poor things! there were three of them; too many to be left in these hard times fatherless and motherless.’
‘Ah sir! and what must we think of the father that could forsake his little children at such a time?’
‘Think no evil, my friend; for Mr Angely did not deserve it. He was employed by Mrs Livingston, early in the war, to go down the river to survey some land near New York. There he was taken by the British as a spy, and, in spite of his remonstrances, sent to England. This was before the French had taken part with us, and he obtained leave to go to France, on giving his parole that he would not return to America. He received a parent’s welcome, and affair of the duel being nearly forgotten, a pardon was obtained for him without difficulty. If he could have forgotten his children, he would have been as happy as man could
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be; but his anxiety for them preyed on his health and spirits; and when I arrived at the château, his friends imagined he was sinking under some unknown disease. He had not communicated to his father the fact of his marriage and the existence of his children when I arrived there. The old gentleman, kind hearted and reasonable in the main, has all the prejudices of the nobility in the old countries about birth, and his son was afraid to confess, that he had smuggled an ignoble little Yankee into the ancient family of the Crève-Coeurs. So good an opportunity as I afforded of communicating with his children, could not be passed by, and he at length summoned courage to tell the truth to his father. At first he was wroth enough, and stormed and vapored; but after a little while his kind nature got the mastery of the blood of the Crève-Coeurs, and he consented to the children being sent for – the boys, at least.’
‘Only the boys!’ exclaimed Mrs Reynolds, feeling relieved from an insupportable weight.
‘Only the boys. But the old gentleman might have as well saved all his credit and sent for the girl too; but that was not his pleasure. Well, Monsieur Jaubert here, a relative and particular friend of the family, came out with me to take charge of the children. We found the boys without much difficulty; two noble little fellows that a king might be proud of. After waiting for some time for Monsieur Angely’s return, the overseers of the poor, believing he had abandoned his children, bound them out. The little girl had been removed to some distance from her brothers. We found the place where she had been, but not the family. The husband and wife had quarrelled, and separated, and disappeared; and all the information we could obtain, was a vague story such a child had lived there and had run away; and as nobody in these troublesome
times
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can do no more than look after their own children, this poor thing was left to her fate. Hopeless as it appears, Jaubert is not willing to give up our search. He fancies every brunette he sees is the lost Marie, and only last evening he would have persuaded me, that your black eyed little girl might be this stray scion of the Crève-Cœurs.’
Mrs Reynolds rose and left the room, and did not return till she was sufficiently composed to ask, in an assured voice, ‘What was their object in looking for the girl, if a father did not mean to reclaim her?’
‘He did mean to reclaim and provide for her,’ replied the traveller, ‘and for that purpose I have ample funds in my hands. He only conceded to the old gentleman her remaining in the country for the present.’
‘Had you any direction as to how you were to dispose of her?’
‘Yes, positive orders to convey her to Boston, and place her under the guardianship of a French lady who resides there, a friend of Mr Angely—one Madame Adelon.’
‘But could you find no trace of the child?’
‘Not the slightest.’
‘And you have determined to make no further inquiry?’
‘Why should we? Inquiry is useless, and would but delay to a tempestuous season, Jaubert’s return with the boys.’
Our readers are doubtless sufficiently aware, that the adopted child of our good landlady was the missing child of Monsieur Angely. A few words will be necessary to explain how she became possessed of her.
Mrs Reynolds and her husband were, two years prior to this period, approaching the close of a winter day’s ride. Their sleigh was gliding noiselessly through a dry, new fallen snow, when their attention was arrested by
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the moanings of a child. To stop the horses and search the sufferer from whom the sounds proceeded, was the instinctive impulse of benevolence. They had not gone many yards from the road, when, nestled close to a clump of laurels, they found a little girl, her hands and feet frozen, and nearly insensible. They immediately carried her to the sleigh, and put their horses to their utmost speed; but, as they were none of the fleetest, and the nearest habitation was at several miles distance, a considerable time elapsed before they could obtain the means of restoration, and in consequence of this delay, and of severe previous suffering, it was many weeks before the child recovered. In the mean time, though Mrs Reynold’s residence was not more than thirty miles from the place where she had found the child, no inquiry was made for her. The account she gave of herself sufficiently explained this neglect. She said she had no mother; that her father had left home just after the snows melted and the birds came back; that he had left her and her two brothers, Jean and Avenel, with a woman to take care of them; that when this woman had waited a great while for their father, she grew tired and was cross to them, and then she too went away, and left them quite alone. Then she said they had nothing to eat, and she supposed they were the poor, for the men they called the overseers of the poor took her and her brothers, and separated them, and she was carried a great way off to a woman who was very cross to her, and cross to her own children, and her husband was cross too. One night he came home in a great passion, and he began to whip his wife with his big whip, and his wife beat him with the hot shovel, and she, the child, was scared, ran out of the house, and far up into a wood, to get beyond their cries; and when she would have
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returned, the snow was falling, and she could not find the path, and she had wandered about till she was so cold and tired she could go no farther. Her name, she said, was Angely, and she believed her father was called a Frenchman. The only parental relic she possessed confirmed this statement. It was a locket which she wore suspended at her neck. It contained a lock of hair; an armorial crest was engraven on the back, and under it was inscribed, ‘St Jean Angely de Crève-Cœur.’ This simple story established the conviction, that had been gaining strength in Mrs Reynold’s mind, with every day’s attendance on the interesting child, that they had been brought together by the special providence of God; and most faithfully did she discharge the maternal duties that she believed had been this miraculously imposed on her. The little girl was on her part happy and delighted, and though she sometimes bitterly lamented her father and brothers, yet, as the impressions of childhood are slight, the recollection of them was almost effaced when the mysterious energies of memory were awakened by the sound of a language that seemed to have been utterly forgotten. These events occurred during the revolutionary war, a period of disaster and distress, when a very diligent search for a friendless child was not likely to be made, and as no inquiry ever reached Mrs Reynold’s ear, and as she deemed the foundling an orphan, she had not hesitated to appropriate her. Her name was changed from Marie Angely to Marie Reynolds; and the good woman seemed as secure and happy as any mother, save when she was reminded of the imperfection of her title by the too curious inquiries of the travellers. On these occasions, she was apt to betray a little irritability, and to veil the truth with a slight evasion, as in the instance which excited the suspicion of our sagacious Frenchman.
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Her condition was now a pitiable one. She had the tenderness, but not the rights of a parent. She was habitually pure and upright; but now she was strongly swayed by her affections. She would have persuaded herself, that the abandonment in which she first found the child, invested her with a paramount claim; but the stranger’s story had proved that her father had not voluntarily abandoned her. Then she thought, ‘It cannot be for Mary’s interest, that I should give her up;’ and her mind took a rapid survey of the growing property of which the child was the heir apparent. But she would ask herself, ‘What do I know of the fortune of her father?’ ‘But surely he cannot, he cannot love her as I do.’ ‘Ah I do not know the feeling of a real parent;’ and a burst of tears expressed the sadness of this conviction, and obliged her abruptly to withdraw from the presence of her guests, and leave them amazed at her sudden and violent emotion, while she retired to her own apartment, to implore guidance and support from Heaven. Those who honestly ask for light to point out a way which they would fain to see, and for power to endure a burden from which their nature shrinks, are often themselves astonished at the illumination vouchsafed, and the strength imparted. This was the experience of Mrs Reynolds. She rose from her devotions with the conviction, that but one course remained to her, and with a degree of tranquility, hastened to Mary’s bedroom.
The child was just risen and dressed. Without any explanation to her—she was at the moment incapable of making any—she tied her locket, her sole credential, around her neck, led her down stairs, and placing her hand in Jaubert’s, she said, ‘You have found the child!’ and then retreated to hide the emotion she could not subdue.
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It was fortunate for her, that she was not compelled to witness the gay demonstration of Jaubert’s ecstasies. the graver, but not more equivocal manifestations of his companion’s satisfaction, and the amazement and curiosity of the little girl, who was listening to the explanation of the strangers, with childlike animation, without adverting to her approaching separation from her who had given her the affection and cares of a parent.
But when she came to be severed from this kind friend, she made amends for her thoughtlessness. She clung to her as if nature had knit the bonds that united them, and, amid her cries and sobs, she promised always to remember and love her as a mother. Many have made such promises. Marie Angely kept them.
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Ten years subsequent to the events above narrated, a letter, of which the following is a translation, was addressed by a foreigner in a high official station in this country, to his friend.
‘DEAR BERVILLE—
‘It is, I believe, or should be, a maxim of the true church, that confession of a sin is the first step towards its expiation.
‘Let me, then, invest you with a priest’s cassock, and relieve my conscience by the relation of an odd episode in my history. When I parted from you, I was going with my friend, Robert Ellison, to visit his father, who has a beautiful place on the banks of the Hudson. Young Ellison, as you know, is a thorough republican, and does not conceal his contempt for those of his compatriots, who, professing the same principles, are really aristocrats in their prejudices and manners; who, having parted, and as they pretend voluntarily, with the substances, still grasp at the shadow. To test these false pretensions, and to mortify an absurd pride, he joyfully acquiesced in a proposition I made to him, to lay aside the pomp and circumstances of my official character, and to be presented to his friends without any of the accidental advantages with which fortune has invested me. You will inquire my motive, for you will not suspect me of the absurdity of crusading against the follies of society, the most hopeless of all crusades. No, as our own Moliére says,
C’est une folie, à nulle autre seconde,
De vouloir se méler de corriger le monde.
My motives were then, in the first place, a love of ease, of dishabille; an impatience of the irksomeness of having the dignity of a nation to sustain; and, in the second place, I wished to ascertain how much of the favor lavished on me I should place to the account of the ambassador, and how much I might reserve to my own proper self.
‘You may call this latent vanity. I will not quarrel with you. I will not pretend that I was moved solely by a love of truth, by a pure desire to find out the realities of things; but alas! my dear Berville, if we were to abstract from the web of our motives, every thread tinged with self, would not warp and woof too disappear? Let, then, my motive be what it might, you will allow the experiment required courage.
‘We had some difficulty in settling the precise point at which to gage my pretensions. “Do not claim a drop of noble blood,” said my friend, “it would defeat your purpose. There is something cabalistic in that word ‘noble.’ The young ladies at ____ would at once invest you with the attributes of romance; and the old dowagers would persecute you with histories of their titled ances-
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tors, and anecdotes of lords and ladies that figured in the drawing rooms of the colony. Neither must you be a plain gentleman of the fortune, though that may seem to you a sufficient descent from your high station; but fortune has everywhere her shrines and her devotees. You must be the artificer of your own fortune, a talented young man who has no rank or fortune to be spoken of. What say you to the profession of a painter, a portrait painter, since that is the only branch of the art that gets a man bread in this country.” I acceded without shrinking, secretly flattering myself that my friend either underrated my intrinsic merit, or did the world rank injustice.
‘When we arrived we found a large party of the neighbouring gentry assembled to dine at _____. I was received with great courtesy by the elder Ellison, and with kindness by Madame, on the ground, simply, of being an acquaintance of their son’s. My friend took care to prevent any elation from my reception by saying to me in a low voice, “My father, God bless him, has good sense, good feeling, and experience, and he well knows that the value of gold does not depend on the circulation it has obtained;” and truly if he had known that I bore the impress of the king’s countenance he could not have received me more graciously. There might have been more formality in his reception of the public functionary, but there could not have been more genuine hospitality. He presented me to his guests, and here I was first reminded of my disguise. Instead of the sensation I have been accustomed to see manifested in the lighting up of the face, in the deferential bow, or the blush of modesty, no emotion was visible. No eye rested on me, not a link of conversation was broken, and I was suffered, after rather an awkward passage through the ceremony, to retire to my seat, where I remained, observing, but not
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observed, till dinner was announced. From the habit of precedence, I was advancing to lead Madame to the dining room, when I encountered my friend’s glance, and shrunk back in time to avoid what must have appeared an unpardonable impertinence. I now fell into my modest station in the rear, and offered my arm to an awkward, bashful girl, who I am sure had two left hands by the manner in which she received my courtesy, and who did not honor me so far as to look up to see who it was that had saved her from the mortifying dilemma of leaving the drawingroom alone. I helped my companion from the dish nearest to me, and waited myself till Madame, reminded by her son of her oversight, sent me a plate of soup. I was swallowing this, unmolested by any conversation addressed to me, when my friend’s father said to him, “When have you seen the French ambassador, Robert? I hoped you would have persuaded him to pay us a visit.”
‘“Perhaps he may,” replied my friend, “before the summer is over. He is at present out of the city on some excursion.”
‘“A prodigious favorite is your son with the French ambassador, as I hear from all quarters,” said a gentleman who sat next Mr Ellison.
‘“Ah! is that so, Robert? Are you intimate with Monsieur—?”
‘“He does me the honor to permit my society, sir.” Every mouth was now opened in praise of the ambassador. None of the company had seen him, but all had heard of his abilities, the charms of his conversation, his urbanity, his savoir plaire. “You must be proud of your countryman, M. Dufau?” (this was my assumed name) said my host, with that courtesy that finds a word for the humblest guest.
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‘I said it was certainly gratifying to my national feeling to find him approved in America, but that, perhaps it was not his merit alone that obtained him such distinguished favor; that I had understood he was a great admirer of this country, and though I should do him injustice to say “he praised, only to be praised,” yet I believed there was always a pretty accurately measured exchange in this traffic.
‘“The gentleman is right,” said an old Englishman who sat opposite to me, and who had not before vouchsafed to manifest a consciousness of my existence; “this is all French palaver in Monsieur —. He cannot be such a warm admirer of this country. The man knows better; he has been in England.”
‘I was too well acquainted with English manners to be startled by any manifestation of that conviction which an Englishman demonstrates in every part of the world, that his nation has no equal; but I instinctively defended my countryman, and eager for an opportunity to test the colloquial powers so much admired in the ambassador, I entered the lists with my English opponent, and thus stimulated, I was certainly far more eloquent than I ever had been before, on the history, the present condition, and the prospects of this country. But alas for the vanity of M. Dufau! my host, it is true, gave me all the attention he could spare from the courtesies of the table, but save his ear, I gained none but that half accorded by my contemptuous, testy, and impatient antagonist, who after barking out a few sentences at me, relapsed into a moody silence.
‘I next addressed some trifling gallantries to my bashful neighbour, fancying that she who was neglected by everybody else, would know how to appreciate my attentions; but her eyes were riveted to a fashionable beauty at the upper extremity of the table, and a half a
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dozen “no, sirs” and “yes, sirs,” misplaced, were all the return I could obtain from her. To remain silent and passive, you know, to me, was impossible; so I next made an essay on a vinegar faced dame on my left, far in the wane of life. “If my civilities have been lead elsewhere, in this market,” thought I, “they will at least prove silver or gold.” But here I received my cruelest rebuff; for the lady, after apparently listening to me, said, “I do not understand you.” I raised my voice, but she, determining to shelter the infirmity of age at my expense, replied, “I am not so deaf, sir, but really you speak such broken English, that I cannot understand you.” This was too much, and I might have betrayed my vexation, if an intelligent and laughing glance from my friend had not restored my good humor, and a second reflection, suggesting that it was far more important to the old woman’s happiness that her vanity should remain unimpaired, than it could be to me to have mine reduced, even to fragments, I humbly begged her pardon, and relapsed into a contented silence, solacing myself with the thought, that our encounter was but an illustration of that of the china earthen jars. But I will not weary you with detailing all the trials of my philosophy, but only confess that the negligence of the servants was not the least of them—the grinning self-complacency with which these apes of their superiors signified to me that my wants might be deferred.
‘After all, my humble position would not have been so disagreeable, if I had been accustomed to it. The world’s admiration, like all other luxuries, in the end becomes necessary, and then, too, like other luxuries, ceases to be enjoyed, or even felt, till it is withdrawn and leaves an aching void. If this is Irish, set it down to my broken English.
‘After dinner, I followed the ladies to the drawingroom, and was presented by my friend to Miss —, a reigning beauty. She received me with one of those gracious smiles, that a hacknied belle always bestows on a new worshipper at her shrine. These popular favorites, be it a clergyman, politician, or beauty, are as covetous of the flatteries they receive, as a miser is of gold. No matter how unclean the vessel from which the incense rises; no matter what base alloy may mingle with the precious metal. Have you ever encountered one of those spoiled favorites in the thronged street, and tried to arrest the attention for a moment; to fix the eye that was roving for every tributary glance? If you have, you will understand without my describing it, the distrait manner with which the belle received my first compliments. Even this was not long accorded me, for a better accredited and more zealous admirer than myself appearing, she left me to my meditations, which were not rendered the more agreeable by my overhearing an old lady say, in a voice, which, though slightly depressed, she evidently made no effort to subdue to an inaudible key, “I wonder what possessed Robert Ellison to bring that French portrait painter here! How the world has changed since the Revolution! There is no longer any house where you don’t meet mixed society.” My friend had approached in time to overhear her as well as myself. “The ignorant old fool!” he exclaimed, “shall I tell her that artists are the nobility of every country?”
‘“No,” said I, “do not waste your rhetoric; there is no enlightening the ignorance of stupidity; a black substance will not reflect even the sun’s rays.”
‘Ellison then proposed that I should join a party at whist; but I complained of the heated air of the drawingroom, and, availing myself of an insignificance, I fol-
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lowed the bent of my inclinations, a privilege the humble should not undervalue, and sauntered abroad. The evening was beautiful enough to have soothed a misanthrope, or warmed the heart of a stoic. Its peace, its salutary, sacred voice restored me to myself, and I was ashamed that ‘my tranquility had been disturbed. I contemned the folly of the artificial distinctions of life, and felt quite indifferent to them—when alone.
‘The ground in front of my friend’s house slopes to the Hudson, and is still embellished with trees of the majestic native growth. Where nature has left anything to be supplied by art, walks have been arranged and planted; but carefully, so as not to impede the view of the river, which was now in perfect repose. A sloop lay in the channel, its sails all furled, idly floating on the slumbering surface. While I was wishing my friend were with me, for I am too much of a Frenchman to relish fully even nature, the favorite companion of sentimentalists, in solitude, I saw a boat put off from the little vessel, and row slowly towards the shore. Presently a sweet female voice swelled on the stillness of the night, accompanied by the notes of a guitar, struck by a practised hand. Could any young man’s mercury resist moonlight and such music? Mine could not, and I very soon left behind me all of terra firma that intervened between me and the siren, and ensconced myself in a deeply shaded nook at the very water’s edge, where I could see and hear without being observed. The boat approached the spot where I stood, and was moored at half a dozen yards from my feet; but as my figure was in shadow, and sheltered by a thick copse of hazel bushes, I was perfectly concealed, while, by a flood of moonbeams, that poured on my unsuspicious neighbours, I saw them as plainly as if it were daylight. These were two men, whom I soon ascertained to be the captain
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of the sloop and an attendant, and that they were going to a farm house in the neighbourhood for eggs, milk, &c. The two females were to remain in the boat till their return. The lady of the guitar was inclined to go with them as far as the oak wood on the brow of the hill; but the captain persuaded her to remain in the boat, by telling her there was a formidable dog on the place, which she might encounter. As soon as the captain was gone, her companion, an elderly, staid looking country woman, said to her, “Now, child, as I came here for your pleasure, you must sing for mine. None of your newfangled fancies, but good Old Robin Grey.”
‘“Oh, Robin Grey is a doleful ditty; but anything to reward you for indulging me in coming on shore.”
‘She then sung that touching ballad. The English, certainly the Scotch, excel us as much in the pathos of unembellished nature and truth, as we do them in all literary refinement, ingenuity, and grace. I know not how much of the tribute that gushed from my heart was paid to the poetry and music, and how much to the beautiful organ by which they were expressed, for the fair musician looked herself like one of the bright creations of poetry. I would describe her, but description is cold and quite inadequate to convey an idea of her, and of the scene with which she harmonized. It was one of nature’s sweetest accords; the balmy air, the cloudless sky, the river, reflecting like a spotless mirror the blue arch, the moon and her bright train; my enchantress, the embodied spirit of the evening, and her music the voice of nature. I might have forgotten that I was in human mould, but I had one effectual curb to my imagination; one mortal annoyance. Argus, confound him! had followed me from the house, and it was only by dint of continued coaxing and caressing that I could keep him quiet. Before the ballad was
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finished, however, he was soothed by its monotonous sadness, and crouching at my feet, he fell asleep, I believe. I forgot him. Suddenly “the dainty spirit” changed from the low breathings of melancholy to a gay French air – the very air, Berville, that Claudine, in her mirthful moments, used to sing to us. The transition was so abrupt that it seemed as if the wing of joy had swept over the strings of her instrument. I started forth from my concealment. That was not all. Argus sprang out, too, and barking furiously, bounded towards the boat. The old woman screamed, “There is the dog!” and the young lady, not less terrified. Dropped her guitar, and, unhooking the boat, she seized an oar and pushed it off without listening to my apologies and assurances. In her agitation she dropped the oar, and her companion, still more tremulous than herself, in her attempt to regain it, lost the other, which she had instinctively grasped. As soon as the first impulse imparted to the boat was expended, it scarcely moved at all, and I had leisure to explain my sudden appearance and to say that my dog, far from being the formidable animal they imagined, was a harmless spaniel, who should immediately make all the amends in his power for the terror he had caused. I then directed him to the floating oars. He plunged into the water and brought them to me, but he either did not, or would not understand my wish that he should convey them to the boat, which, though very slowly, was evidently receding from the shore. I then, without farther hesitation, threw off my coat, swam to the boat, and receiving there the oars from Argus’s mouth, I soon reconducted the boat to its haven. There was something enchanting to me in the frankness with which my fair musician expressed her pleasure at the homage I had involuntarily paid to her art, and the grace with which she re-
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ceived the slight service I rendered her. Perhaps I felt it the more for the mortifying experience of the day. I do not care very nicely to analyze my feelings, not to ascertain how much there was of restored self complacency in the delicious excitement of that hour.’
‘The elderly lady, for lady she must needs be since my fair incognita called her mother, expressed a matronly solicitude about the effect of my wet garments, but I assured her that I apprehended no inconvenience from them, and I begged to be allowed to remain at my station till the return of their attendants. The circumstances of out introduction had been such as to dissipate all ceremony. Indeed, this characteristic of English manners would have as ill fitted the trustful, ingenuous, and gay disposition of my new acquaintance, as a coat of mail her light, graceful person. She sung, at my request, our popular opera airs, with more effect, because with far more feeling, than our best professed artists. She talked of music, and of the poetry of nature, with genius and taste; and she listened with that eager and pleased attention, which is the second best gift of conversation. I should have taken no note of the passage of time but for the fidgeting of the old lady, who often interrupted us with expressions of her concern at the captain’s delay, for which he, quite too soon, appeared to render an account himself. As I was compelled to take my leave, I asked my fair unknown if I might not be allowed to think of her by some more accurate designation than the “Lady of the Guitar.”
‘”My name is”—she replied promptly, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “No—pardon me, your romantic designation better suits the adventure of the night.” I was vexed at my disappointment, but she chased away the shade of displeasure by the graceful playfulness with which she kissed her hand to me as the
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boat pushed off. I lingered on the shore till she had reached the vessel, and then slowly retraced my steps towards the house. I was startled by meeting my friend, for my mind was so absorbed that I had not heard his approaching footstep. “Ah!” he exclaimed, ‘is this your philosophy? turned misanthrope at the first frown from the world?”
‘”My philosophy,” I replied, “has neither been vanquished, nor has it conquered, for I had forgotten all its trials.”
‘My friend evidently believed, notwithstanding my disclaimer, that my vanity required some indemnity for the humiliations it had sustained, and he repeated to me some assuaging compliments from his father, “But,” he concluded, “tell me, have you really turned sentimentalist, and been holding high converse with the stars?”
‘With a most brilliant star,’ I replied, and related my adventure.
‘Ellison’s curiosity was excited, and he proposed we should take our flutes, go out in the barge, and serenade the “Lady of the Guitar.” I, of course, assented, and the next half hour found us floating around the little vessel like humble satellites. We played an accompaniment and sung alternately, he in English, and I in French; but there was no token given that the offered incense was accepted; no salutation, save a coarse one from the captain, who invited us to go “on board and take some grog.” We of course declined his professional courtesy. “Then, for the Lord’s sake, lads,” he said, “stop your piping, and give us a good birth. Sleep, at this time o’ night, is better music than the jolliest tune that ever was played.”
‘Thus dismissed, and discomfited by the lady’s neglect, we resumed our oars and were preparing to return to the shore, when the cabin window was gently rais-
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ed, and our fair incognita sung a sweet little French air, beginning “Adieu, adieu ! ” We remained, sound, motion, almost breath suspended till the song was finished.’
“So sweetly she bids us adieu,
I think that she bids us return,”
said my friend, and we instantly rowed our boat towards the stern of the vessel. At this moment the sash was suddenly dropped, and taking this for a definitive “Good night,” we retired.
‘Now, dear Berville, I have faithfully related the adventures of my masquerade—my boyish pastime, you may call it. Be it so. This day has been worth a year of care and dignity. I shall return to New York in a few days. Till then farewell. Yours,
CONSTANT.’
But though M. Constant professed himself satisfied with his day, there was a lurking disquietude at his heart. He had written to assure himself there was nothing there he dare not express, and yet he had concluded without one alluding to the cause of his self-reproach. He had folded the letter, but he opened it, and added ;—
‘P. S. I did not describe to you my friend’s vexation that the responded song was in French. “Ah!” said he, “I see there is no chance for such poor devils as I, so long as you are neither married nor betrothed.”’
He again closed the letter, and was for a moment satisfied that there could be nothing in the nature of that which he had so frankly communicated that required concealment. He walked to the window and eyed the little vessel as a miser looks at the casket that contains
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his treasure ; then starting from his reverie, he took from his bosom a miniature, and contemplated it steadfastly for a few moments; ‘It is my conscience that reproaches me,’ he said, ‘and not this serene, benign countenance. O Emma ! thou art equally incapable of inflicting and resenting wrong, and shall thy trust and gentleness be returned by even a transient treachery ? Am I so sure of faithfully keeping the citadel that I may parley with an enemy? ’
The result of this self-examination was a determination to burn the letter, and to dismiss forever from his mind the enchantress whose power had so swayed him from his loyalty. But though he turned from the window, resolutely closed the blind, and excluded the moonlight, which he fancied influenced his imagination as if he were a lunatic; though he went to bed and sunk into the oblivious sleep, the spirit was not laid. Imagination revelled in its triumph over the will. He was in France, in beautiful France—more beautiful now than in the visions of memory and affection. He was at his remembered haunts in his father’s grounds ; the ‘Lady of the Guitar’ was with him ; she sang his favorite songs ; he saw her sparkling glance, her glowing cheek, her rich, dark tints,
‘The embrowning of the fruit that tells
How rich within, the soul of sweetness dwells;’
He heard the innocent childlike laugh, that,
—‘without any control,
Save the sweet one of gracefulness rung from her soul.’
Then there was interposed between him and this embodied spirit of his joyous clime a slowly moving figure; a cold, fail, pensive countenance, that had more of sorrow than resentment, but still, though its reproach was gentle, it was the reproach of the stern spectre of con-
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science. He cast down his eyes, and they fell in the word ‘BETROTHED,’ traced in the sand at his feet. The ‘Lady of the Guitar’ was gaily advancing towards him. Another step and her flowing mantle would have swept over the word, and effaced it forever. He raised his hand to deprecate her approach, and awoke ; and while the visions of sleep still confusedly mingled with the recollections and resolutions of the preceding day, he was up and at the window ; had thrown open the blind and ascertained that the vessel still lay becalmed in the stream. That virtue is certainly to be envied, that does not need to be shielded and fortified by opportunity and circumstance. If the vessel had disappeared, the recollections of the evening might have been as evanescent and ineffectual as the dreams of the night; but there it was, in fine relief, and as motionless as if it were encased in the blue waters. In spite of M. Constant’s excellent resolutions, he lingered at the window, and returned there as if he were spellbound. Strange power that could rivet his eyes to an ill shapen little Dutch skipper! But that body did contain a spirit, and that spirit, seemingly as perturbed as his own, soon appeared, moving with a light step to and fro on the deck.
The apartment M. Constant occupied, was furnished, among other luxuries, with a fine spyglass. To resist using this facility for closer communion was impossible; and by its aid he could perceive every motion of the ‘lady of his thoughts,’ almost the changes of her countenance. He saw she was gazing on the shore, and that she turned eagerly to her companion to point her attention to some object that had caught her eye, and at the same moment he perceived it was his friend, who was strolling on the shore. Ellison saw him too, and waved his handkerchief in salutation. M. Constant returned the greeting, threw down the glass, and with-
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drew from the window with a feeling of compunction at his indulgence, as if he had again heard that word betrothed spoken. Why is it that external agents have so much influence over the mysterious operations of conscience? Why is it that its energy so often sleeps while there is no witness to the wrong we commit? ‘Keep thy heart, for out of it are the issues of life.’
After breakfast, Ellison said to M. Constant, ‘I am afraid you find your masquerade dull. Let us beguile the morning by a visit your “Lady of the Guitar.” There is nothing lends such wings to time as a pretty girl. Our guests are a dull concern.’
‘A dull concern, when there is a beauty and a fortune among them!’
‘Yes, a sated belle is to me as disagreeable as a pampered child; as my grandmother’s little pet Rosy, whom I saw the other day, tossing away her sugar plums, and crying “’T is not sweet enough;” and as fortune, though I am neither a philosopher not a sentimentalist, I shall never take the temple of Hymen in my way to wealth; for of all speculations, a matrimonial speculation seems to me the most hazardous, and the most disgraceful. But we loiter. Will you pay your devoirs to our unknown?’
‘I believe not; I have letters to write this morning,’
‘To Emma? Pardon me—I do not mean to pry into your cabinet, but if the letters are to her they may be deferred. She is a dear good soul and will find twenty apologies for every fault you commit.’
‘If they are to her, such generosity should not be abused. No, I will not go. But on what pretext will you?’
‘Pretext indeed! does a pilgrim seek for a pretext to visit my Lady of Loretto, or the shrine of any other saint ? Here comes the gardener with a basket of fine fruit which I have ordered to be prepared, and of which
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I shall be the bearer to the sufferers pent in that dirty sloop this breathless August morning—from mere philanthropy you know. Commend me to Emma, ’ he added gaily; ‘I will bear witness for you that your enthusiasm for this unknown was a mere coup de la lune, and that when daylight appeared you were as loyal, and—as dull as a married man.’
Ellison’s raillery did not render the bitter pill of self-denial more palatable to M. Constant. He turned away without reply, but instead of returning to his apartment he obtained a gun, and inquiring the best direction to pursue in quest of game, he sauntered into a wooded defile that wound among the hills, and was so enclosed by them as not to afford even a glimpse of the river. Here he threw himself on the grass, took a blank leaf from his pocketbook and began a sonnet to constancy, but broke off in the middle; scribbled half a dozen odd lines from the different songs that had entranced him on the preceding evening; sketched a guitar, then rose, and still musing, pursued his way up the defile. The path he had taken led him around the base of an eminence to a rivulet that came frolicking down a hill now leaning and now loitering with the capricious humor of childhood. He traced it to its source, a clear fountain bubbling up from the earth at the foot of a high, precipitous rock. Clusters of purple and pink wild flowers hung from the clefts of the rock, wreathing its bare old front, and presenting a beautiful harmony in contrast, like infancy and old age. The rock and the sides of the fountain formed a little amphitheatre, enclosed and deeply shaded by the mountain ash, the aromatic hemlock and the lofty basswood. This sequestered retreat, with its fresh aspect and sweet exhalations, afforded a delicious refuge from the fierce heat and overpowering light of an August day. M. Constant
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was lingering to enjoy it when his ear caught the sound of distant and animated voices. He started, and for a moment thought himself cheated by the illusions of a distempered fancy ; but, as the sounds approached nearer, he was assured of their reality, and they affected him like the most painful discord, though they were produced by the sweet, clear, penetrating voice of the unknown and the hitherto welcome tones of his friend.
The impropriety of a young girl straying off into such a solitude with an acquaintance of an hour was obvious, but was perhaps more shocking to M. Constant than it would have been to a perfectly disinterested observer. It gave a dreadful jar to his preconceived notions, and contrasted, rudely enough, with the conduct of the preceding night, when the lady had, with such scrupulous delicacy, forborne to show herself on the deck of the sloop. As they drew nearer he thought there was something in the gay, familiar tones of Ellison, disgusting; and the laugh of the lady, which before had seemed the sweetest music of a youthful and innocent spirit, was now harsh and hoydenish. The strain of their conversation, too, for they were near enough to be heard distinctly, while the windings of the path prevented his being seen, though it was graceful chitchat enough, appeared to him trifling and flippant in the extreme. As they came still nearer he listened more intently, for he had a personal interest in the subject.
‘And so, my “Lady of the Guitar,”’ said Ellison, ‘you persist in preserving that scrap of paper, merely, I presume, as a specimen of the sister arts of design and poetry. You are sure those scratches are meant for a guitar, and not a jewsharp, and that the fragment is a sonnet and not a monody?’
‘Certainly it is a sonnet; the poet says so himself. See here—“Sonnet à la Constance.”’
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‘Well, it is certainly in the strain of a “lament.” My friend was in a strait ; what he would do he could not. Constancy is a very pretty theme for a boarding-school letter, but I am afraid the poor fellow will not find his inspiration in this tame virtue ?’
‘Ah ! these tame virtues, as you call them,’ replied the lady, ‘ are the salutary food of life, while your themes of inspiration are intoxicating draughts, violent and transient in their effects.’
‘A very sage lesson, and very well conned. Did your grandmother teach it to you ?’
‘No matter—I have got it by heart.’
‘O those moral New Englanders, they change all the poetry of life to wise saws. Thank heaven you have escaped from them in time to retain some portion of your mercurial nature. But now let me tell you, my sage young friend, that same paper may prove as dangerous where you are going as a match to a magazine. So let me advise you, either keep it quite to yourself, or give it to the winds.’
‘You talk riddles, Mr Ellison; but I will not be quizzed into believing this little castaway scrap of paper can be of any import.’
‘Let me label it for you then, if, as I see, it is to be filed among the precious stores of your pocketbook.’
There was a short pause when the lady, as M. Constant supposed, looking over Ellison’s superscription, read aloud, ‘Love’s Labor Lost,’ and then exclaimed, ‘Pshaw, Robert, how absurd !’ and tore off the offensive label, while he laughed at her vexation.
M. Constant felt that it would be very embarrassing for him to be discovered as a passive listener to this coversation. He had been chained to the spot by an interest that he would gladly not have felt, but which he could not suppress.
[156]
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 ?’
[158]
‘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
[159]
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.
[160]
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
[161]
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
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [By the Author of "Redwood."]
Source
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The Legendary, edited by Nathaniel Parker Willis, 118-61.
Publisher
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Boston: Samuel G. Goodrich
Date
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1828 [pub. 1827]
Relation
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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
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Historical fiction, Romance, French and American relations.
Description
An account of the resource
An historical romance in two parts, focusing first on the Boston childhood of orphan Marie Reynolds/Angely (implied to be the long-lost daughter of a fictionalized Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur), and subsequently on Marie's mysterious meeting with and eventual marriage to a US diplomat.
1777
1787
1827
1839
adoption
Alexander Pope
ambassador
An Essay on Man -Epistle IV
Anna Matilda
As You Like It
Auld Robin Gray
boarding school
Boston
Catskills
class
Comte de Mosloy
constancy
Count Louis-Guillaume Otto
courtship
Death
Della Crusco
disguise
Dogs
Elizabeth Livingston
engagement
France
French
Friendship
General Henry Knox
guitar
Hannah
Hannah Cowley
Hudson River
Huguenot
Hymen
I Samuel 1
inn
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
Jewsharp
Lady of Loretto
Le Misanthrope
letters
Letters from an American Farmer
Lisbon
locket
Lorenzo
Love
Love’s Labour Lost
marriage
Massachusetts
Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur
Moliére
Mothers
music
New York
nobility
Normandy
Orlando
Paris
portrait painter
Providence
Revolutionary War
Robert Livingston
Robert Merry
Romance
Samuel Daniel
Saxon
Shakespeare
shipwreck
sonnets
spy
Tales and Sketches (First Series)
Tauconnuc
The Complaint of Rosamund
The Garland
The Legendary
United States
Xantippes
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/2b91f565073d0b4462101db161921345.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=N6m7kp0bSwsunz5jeIRoh%7E-oq0QQVMqUITW%7EuAsASfWJZGTHtwm362D3WFHXDwmEg0dOraZiAsg4RweQRwU4MfpFa5VDgVkLPb3i8FqRPdHnuAj-dXZSHZ6CTBPF%7EOFV4Qbm1KVyJZbOmu14OyNhhiuvkuYC2LK8cyr%7EKWMuXOJ8wzDXZfRmh7i7v5u4sXeeB2J0W9%7E5K6JvAdDdg6iUyf39ENnxS120fjJScsQNXkCjcsNgKfbU-ONkd3kYrMS5gAaUB8-aL370O-TBO-7kciJIPxOY1QADV40iFSQvGfffhnzJO9qSnIuksenI-mGOIqCDqBq5P3riJQYsAlcnlg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
47eac4d2e188a6c2c969113dc31829e9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1840
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
THE BEAUTY OF SONINBERG. (A LETTER from WIESBADEN.)
_____
By Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, Author of ‘Hope Leslie,’ &c.
_____
MY DEAR J ----: You have often laughed at me for my ‘knack,' as you call it, of picking up stories by the way-side. Certainly my sympathies are not more diffusive than yours, but I am a more patient listener. You have but to listen to get those little personal revelations every one is ready to make, if you but touch the electric chord aright that binds you to your humble fellow-beings.
In going from Brussels to Waterloo a few weeks since, I took a seat on the box beside the coachman—a frank true-hearted looking youth—for the advantage of gaining answers to the questions that are constantly occurring to the traveller in a scene so full of novelty as is every part of the Old World to an American eye. Before he set us down again in Brussels, he had told me a history of personal hopes, projects and disappointments, that with a little skilful spinning would have furnished warp and wool for an octavo volume, with an appendix of ancestral anecdotes that he had better have effaced from the family archives. This will be a pretty good proof to you that I have not foregone my habits in crossing the ocean, but here at Wiesbaden I am cut off from their indulgence by my ignorance of the language. That does not, however, quite isolate me, for by a lavish use of half a dozen words that are common to the English and German, and by gracious tones and a decent kindness in return for the devotedness of the ‘Mädchen’ who attends us, I am so far in favor that I am sure she would confide to me her ‘petite belle histoire’ if she has any. ‘If!’ shame on that hypothetical ‘if!’ No one could hear the gentle tone of my good friend Cristine's voice, or see how easily the unbidden tear comes to her eye,* (her only eye, for in common with a large portion of her country-people she sees but with one,) without being sure that Cristine, though now in the depths of shady forty, might tell as ‘ower true tale’ of her losses. However, the period for the egotism of love is long past, and Cristine, instead of damming up her feelings to fret and wear inwardly, permits them to flow out in all kindly sympathies.
I just saw her in a position to illustrate this gracious disposition. She was standing on the platform of the well before the Duke of Nassau's new palace. She had filled her tub with water, and with the aid of a friend (these people by a sort of general social compact always interchange this kind office) had placed it on her head. My attention was arrested by seeing Cristine, who is no dawdler—no loiterer—stopping to listen to this friend, and as I came near enough to see her friend's face, I thought I too would have stood with the tub of water on my head, or up to my throat in the fountain, if necessary, to listen to the earnest speech of this peasant girl who had one of the sweetest faces I ever saw—and her whole heart was in it. I think she cannot be more than nineteen, but I will ask Cristine, and perhaps she will tell me some particulars of the girl's history, for Cristine, like all sympathizers, likes to tell as well as to hear. If I were a painter, I would paint them just as I saw them, the well and all. The girl in the peasant's dress, the dark blue woollen full petticoat fluted from top to bottom as neatly as a French frill, the close boddice, and the snow-white chemise sleeves. Her hair was (as is every creature’s of woman-kind’ in Germany) long,
[p. 235]
thick, and neatly combed and braided. But that of this gifted girl is longer and thicker than I have often seen, and of a rich full brown, darker than the national hue. She had, in common with other peasant-girls, a black silk cap covering just the back of the head, made of ribbon and with half a dozen streamers, or rather ends, for they only hang over the back of the neck. Cristine's friend's cap had a trifle of embroidery, and was garnished with beads; indeed I remarked in her whole dress an attention to becomingness that indicated a village beauty—a dressing for the world's eye, or, I should rather think, from a certain symptomatic ‘careless desolation’ in her manner, that the eye, for which she employed the limited art of the toilette, was all the world to her. She stood with her hand on Cristine's shoulder. I hardly knew which countenance I liked the best. The peasant-girl was evidently absorbed in some precious interest of her own at stake, while Cristine's honest kindly face expressed that entire unconsciousness of self and sympathy with another, that I fancy must characterize an angel's. I stood rivetted, gazing at them till Cristine caught my eye; and as I, unluckily, reminded her of the waiting mistress and home, and her diverse forgotten household duties, she murmured over and over again “Ja—ja—ja—wohl”, (“Yes—yes—yes—sure) and hastened homeward; and her friend too left the well.
This stone-well is to me the most interesting of the locales of this pretty town of Wiesbaden; an aqueduct brings to it from the Taunus Hills (a distance of a league and a half) an abundant supply of pure, soft and wholesome water. There is a stone column in the centre, surmounted by a lion grasping the arms of Nassau. The water rises within this column, and pours through ever-flowing pipes into a large reservoir. This is surrounded by a rudely carved curb, and a platform. Standing on this platform and leaning against the curb, you may see the maidens of Wiesbaden at all hours of the day, gossipping while their tubs are filling. Innocent gossip it is I am sure, from their sweet, low-toned voices and perennial good humor. Why is it, dear J--, that a well is linked with our poetic associations? Is it because it recalls home, and the thought of home unseals the fountain of poetry in the soul? Or is it because a well is a common feature in these Oriental stories that first awakened the poetic powers of our imaginations? The scene of the first love- story we probably ever read, the sacred story of Isaac and Rebecca's courtship, is, you know, at a well. Whether the well owes its immaterial beauty to all these sources I cannot say, but I never see one—whether it be like our own most rustic structures, composed of a single curb-pole and old oaken bucket, or like that which we went to see among the Carisbrook lions, or like that beautiful one of stone I saw the other day (still in perfection) among the ruins of Marksburg, or like this of Nassau–with- out seeing for the moment much more than the eye can see, and hearing more than the ear can hear. I listened for an instant, and then quickened my steps after Cristine.
By the way, I wonder no one has ever thought to drill young ladies into a graceful gait, by making them walk with burdens on their heads. I do not see but the German ladies go shooling and shambling along much in the fashion of other ladies, while the peasant-girls with large market-baskets piled with vegetables, or tubs of water containing three or four pails full, walk with a true, light step, and a quiet grace that a fine lady might envy, but could scarcely equal. I overtook Cristine, before she reached our door steps. I communicated my desire to know her friend's story, and she was willing enough gratify it, but I could comprehend but one word—and that word one which every woman would understand as, Falstaff knew the heir apparent, ‘by instinct’—“Liebehaber”—“Ah! a lover in the case, Cristine. Then I understand why the spoke so eagerly and you listened so patiently. # # #
I have just returned from a walk to the Weeping Oak. Its name indicates its peculiarity. It stands a little off the high road to Schwalbach, in advance of a wood of dwarf pines, and seems a fit type of the monarch of a fallen dynasty. The bark and boughs have the characteristic ruggedness and nodosity of the oak; and there is something touching in the drooping of the magnificent old limbs. It affects you like seeing an old man in sorrow and tears, and if you were ever inclined to believe the fanciful theory that gives to every tree a spirit, I am sure the old oak would persuade you to this faith.
I set off alone, and passing the Koch-brunnen, where these boiling waters are forever steaming up from their great cauldron, I turned into the Acacia walk, and out of it as soon as I could; for there is something in this long formal walk between pretensionary little trees, that are so trimmed as to look like barber's poles with a bushy wig on top, that is particularly disagreeable to me. At the foot of the Geisberg is a station for asses. Here these miserable animals, whose sad destiny in this world, it seems to me, must have some unforeseen compensation, stand all day awaiting the pleasure of the Wiesbaden visiters. I wish I could sketch them for you, with their grotesque calico housings, and their attendants, men and boys, in their dark blue blouses, lounging round them. Even these ass-drivers, the lowest class of hacks, importunate by profession, here partake the national good manners, and never importune you. If a look expresses a wish for them, they spring to your service, but they do not beset you with offers. So, thinking me probably no wiser than I should be for walking when I might ride, they let me pass, unmolested, up the Geisberg ascent.
The name of Wiesbaden—meadow-baths—describes its position. It is a little interval in the lap of the hills, and the Geisberg is one of the prettiest of the elevations that surround it. In our country, where, if we would have a rural walk, we must scramble over fences, and think ourselves fortunate if we can find a foot-path skirting a ploughed field, we can have no idea of the facilities an old country furnishes for this blessed recreation. Here there are no enclosures, no fences or hedges, and however devious your taste may be, you are sure of finding a path to wander whither you will.
I turned from the high road and wound round a plantation attached to an agricultural school. Orchards were on the slopes below me, and bits of rich green in the valley, while on the opposite hills the many colored crops were spread out much like pattern silks in the shop window. From the town rose up the vapor that is always steaming up from the boiling springs; and as I mounted higher, my eyes caught the spires of Mayence, and the gleaming Rhine, and away went my thoughts with it to the sea, and over the sea, and I had forgotten Wiesbaden and all that belong to it, till I found myself again on the high road, and not alone there. A sturdy young man passed me with the pack on his back which denotes the pedestrian traveler. He seemed wholly occupied with his own emotions, and though after passing me he often turned, stopped and looked back, he was evidently unconscious of my presence. His eyes saw only what his heart was full of, and, as he frequently passed his hand over his eyes as if to clear his vision, I came to the natural conclusion that he was leaving his home—that seeming to me, just now, the saddest circumstance of life. The traveller was attended by a little terrier dog, who seemed to me not quite to have made up his mind whether he would attend his master or not, for every now and then he turned and retraced his steps toward Wiesbaden, with his nose to the ground and his tail down, stopping and looking first toward the traveller and then toward his home, as if he were not sure which was the right way to pursue, having a divided love, or a divided duty, which is as bad. I pitied him. Presently he sprang up on a hillock by the read-side, cocked up his ears, then wagged his tail, vehemently, barked and darted into the wood. The traveller stopped, looked after him and shook his head, as much as to say–Well! you have made up your mind at last, poor fellow!". But presently he appeared again, issuing from a foot-way which, cutting through the pine wood on our left, entered the high road between me and the traveller. The dog was followed by the peasant girl I had seen at the well. An exclamation of surprise burst from the young man. I was too far off to hear what they said, and if I had heard I could not have understood. But their action was in a universal language. I saw she had followed for a last farewell, and that farewell seemed impossible. They walked on together, her hand upon his shoulder and his arm around her waist. The poor little dog seemed frantic with joy. He had now everything he desired in life. He ran first on one side, then on the other, barking, wagging his tail, jumping first on to his master then on to his mistress, till, neither noticing him, he ran along side looking wistfully in their faces as if saying, “Now you are together, what in the world can you be sorry for?” At that moment, I doubt not, they could have envied the dog's nature and thought it a happiness to look neither before nor behind them.
I followed slowly after them till they reached the oak—the weeping oak I mentioned to you. There they stopped, and as they stood leaning against the old trunk, and in the deep shadow of its drooping branches, I thought how much stronger, firmer, more resisting is the true love of two pure hearts than even this old tree that has stood here for centuries. That will perish at last; true love never. It was a broad stretch of imagination to suppose the love of these young people of this
[p. 236]
high nature, but never mind; I honestly give you my thoughts as they came, and if you had seen these humble lovers, you would not have wondered that they embodied my abstraction of true love.
I saw this was to be the parting place. I was near enough to hear the girl's sobs, and I turned away, ashamed to be an unpermitted though an unseen spectator. I walked very slowly, and for five minutes, (it seemed to me half an hour,) I did not look again. When I did look the lover was gone, and the girl was sitting on the little embankment formed by a trench that has been dug round the oak. Her face was buried in her lap, and one arm was round the little dog, whose paws were on her knees and his head lying disconsolately against her.
I came straight home, unconscious by what way, and the moment I reached my own room, I rang the bell for Cristine, and keeping K---- by me for an interpreter, I told what I had just seen.
“Poor Grettel; poor Grettel!” she ejaculated as I proceeded; “God help her!” and when I finished she wiped away the shower of tears that had poured over her face, and smiling, said, “Never mind, Grettel has done right, and das ist besser!” ‘That is better,’ is a favorite phrase of Cristine's, and she always employs it when she wishes to express to me her entire satisfaction.
I will not set down all the particulars of my rather circumlutory conversation with Cristine, since I can very briefly tell the few circumstances explanatory of the love-scene I witnessed. It seems that Grettel lives at Soninberg, a most picturesque old village about two miles from here, close nestled under the ruins of the old castle of that name. She is the only child of her mother, a poor blind old woman, a widow who has no support comfort or solace under Heaven but Grettel.—Grettel is the Beauty of Soninberg, but as Cristine assured me, so discreet is her conduct that the old people say it is just as well her mother should be blind, for Grettel wants no eye to watch her. And she bears her honors so meekly that the prettiest girls of Soninberg are content Grettel should be first.
“But what will Grettel care for that,” said Cristine, “now Johanne is gone'.”
This Johanne, it seems, is a worthy youth who has served his apprenticeship with Leising, (our host,) a master builder here. He is a steady youth and a good workman, and having completed his term of service, including the itinerary year which is a part of every German artisan's education*[*] he was just about to set up for himself, when an unexpected course of duty and worldly advantage opened upon him, and overset all his castles in the air, beside the happy humble home which he fancied he had founded upon a rock, when Grettel promised to be its mistress.
Johanne, it seems has an uncle who went many years ago to America, and who is now a wealthy man in New-York.—He has written to Johanne that if he will come to America with his three young and orphan brothers, he will pay their passage, and take charge of their education and establishment there. For himself, Johanne said, he would not have given the offer a second thought—but the little boys! he stood in the place of a father to them, and he had no right to refuse.
“Oh! why,” he asked, “should their uncle, who had forgotten them so many years, just now remember them?”—The ‘why’ is easily told. He had lost his only son, and was too far advanced in life to hope to repair the loss.
The next thing to be done, after Johanne had made up his own mind, Cristine said, was to pursuade Grettel to go with him. “Johanne knew this would not be right, but men wereso used to having every thing their own way, that to pleasure themselves they were ready to pull down the walls God had set up.”
“Surely, surely,” Grettel said, “God would never forgive her if she forsook her old blind mother; and if in His mercy He should forgive her, she would never forgive herself!”
Johanne urged that her mother was very old—that she could live but a little while-and he must live a life-time without Grettel; that the neighbors could be kind to the old woman; that she would have a florin a month from the poor's box, beside many a casual gift when she was known to be quite alone; that his first earnings should be sent to her succor. He even went so far as to get the consent of a kind-hearted dame that the old woman should be removed to her house. Some of the neighbors, too, feeling it to be a very hard case for the lovers, joined their entreaties to Johanne's, and promised Grettel they would do all in their power for her mother. But as Cristine again and again assured me, the good child never ſaltered, and “das ist besser,” said the honest creature.
“Never, never will I bring tears from her blind eyes,” said Grettel. “God gave me to her, and till he separates us, I will not leave her.”
No arguments, no entreaties made her waver. The generous girl would not even permit her mother to know the sacrifice she was making, and when the old woman remarked that Grettel's step was heavy and her voice sickly, and begged her to take some odious nostrum, Grettel swallowed it and said nothing. “And then, when Johanne saw how good she was, he loved her better than ever, and before he went away, he said she had done right, and he did not deserve her. And for my part,” concluded Cristine, “if any man on earth gets Grettel, I think it will be more than he deserves.” By the way, our friend Cristine has contracted rather an humble opinion of the deserts of mankind; and, as often happens with ancient maidens, her charities for them contract as her sympathies with her own sex expand.
It is, as Cristine says, “a hard case.” Grettel has but obeyed the strong law of nature in setting her affections on one who, according to that law, should supersede father, mother and home, and when I think on the ease, social dignity and competence that reward the children of toil in our happy land, and see what a life of privation and hardship she must endure in this mouldering village of Soninberg, the sacrifice appears to me much greater than she knows it to be. However, she is, after all, rather to be envied than pitied. Strait and narrow is the way of self-denial, and she has entered therein—and obscure and unknown as she is, she will be one of ‘the few’ who, having resolutely chosen her duty for her law, will be rewarded with more than all the glory of this world; or even than all its love, which is a good deal more seducing.
----------
Our detention at Wiesbaden, dear J–, gives us an opportunity of seeing the strange chances of human life exemplified in the story of our poor friend of Soninberg. It is ten days since the parting at the Old Oak. When Cristine came into our room this morning, she looked haggard and sorrowful, and instead of her usual cheerful “Gutten Morgen,” she muttered something about “God's time and our time never coming together;" and before this first of Cristine's murmurings at Providence was interpreted to me, the cause of it was fully explained by her telling us that Grettel's mother was dead.
“If her poor dark life had ended but ten days ago,” Cristine said, “all would have been well enough, but now Johanne was on the sea, and who could reach him there? But it is I only, ladies, that am wicked enough to think of all this: Grettel grieving only that her mother has gone from her and thinks but of that. Grettel let the old woman believe that Johanne had gone to Frankfort to work at his trade, and was a comfort to her to think that he was just waiting to earn money enough to come back and marry Grettel. Oh! It made my heart beat as though it would come out of me when the old woman, in her last strength, rose up from her pillow and said, “Grettel, give my love and my blessing to Johanne; he is a good boy, and you will be a happy wife, and God send you as good a child for your old age as you have been to me—light to my heart when all other light was gone—God be thanked I have had you to the last—to the last.’—She sank back and did not speak again, and poor Grettel fell on her knees and said, “God be praised that I am here!’ And so I try to say to,” added Cristine in conclusion, “but indeed had it pleased God so, it would seem to work better round that the old body should have died ten days ago. But it's too late now, and so it does not signify; and poor Grettel must go on as I have done, working for others and caring for others—it's a lonesome life, ladies.”
Christine sighed deeply. It was a moment when the harness of life was galling, and though I felt how truly the poet’s words applied to her,
“With cheerful heart, and purpose pure,
So—our onward way is sure,’
I shall take a happier moment to enforce their consoling moral.
[p. 237]
I have elsewhere, my dear J----, described to you the various rural “Gast-hauser,' (guest-houses,) eating-gardens, and multiplied walks, provided about this place for the recreation of the Wiesbaden visitors. If you would lose yourself in a romantic solitude, you have but to go up the lovely valley of the New-Thal, to the forest of the New-Berg, where, in the green arched walks you will meet no one, not even such as should be found
‘In their assigned and native dwelling-place.’
Or you may mount to the old Roman water-tower, and see all these hills with their wavy outlines sloping down to Wiesbaden, and hung with vines and grain of every color, and in the distance the Rhine (its very name giving charm to the scene) for many a mile. Or if you have a town taste, and like the ‘sweet security of streets,’ you may promenade up and down the long walks in William street, where from the broad shadows of the double row of sycamores you may look out on the sunny pavement, the hotels, museum, &c., opposite to you, and the traveling post-equipages that are entering and leaving Wiesbaden, and to which it must take a long time to accustom an American eye, so that the horses without blinders, looking round as if they were on the point of speaking to you, the frightful distance between the wheel-horses and leaders, and the mystery of the safe guiding of the immense machine that comes lumbering on after him by the one postillion, shall cease to be a matter of curiosity.
Or if you like to hide yourself while you hear the din of the world all around you, you can go to the dark walks behind the colonnade. Or if you prefer ‘happy human faces,’ where there seems nothing but the spirit God has given them to make them happy, stray up the Acacia walk. There on the wooden seats you will see groups of the Bourgeois—men, women and children—looking as if they had not an anxiety or care on earth. But probably you, like myself and most of the world here, would prefer, day after day, and evening after evening, to all other resorts, the garden of the Cur-Saal. This garden, or rather pleasure-ground, occupies the whole interval between the hills from the centre of Wiesbaden to the village of Soninberg. The valley gradually narrows for two miles, and finally closes at the rocks on which the old castle of Soninberg was erected. The garden is a part of the Duke's private domain, and is kept in ducal order. You enter on each side of the Cur-saal, a public building about 300 feet long, where there are splendid apartments devoted to gambling all day and all night, excepting two or three times a week, when the roulette tables give place to music and dancing. Passing through a wood of catalpas, (unless you prefer going through the Cur-saal, and seeing the gentlemen and ladies standing round the table, losing and winning gold with apparent unconcern) you find a plot of ground behind the Cur-saal, occupied by tables and chairs, and coteries of Germans and English, regaling on Rhenish wines, coffee, cake and ices. I turned my back on all this, as usual, last evening, and took the way to Soninberg, skirting along the piece of artificial water—a clear large mirror to reflect the fine-dressed gentlemen and ladies and the far better dressed flowers that are flourishing round its brim. These gentlemen and ladies, by the by, seem to me to be travestied by a stately pair of white swans and a family of ducks that live on this water; the swans pompously sailing back and forth without an object in life, apparently, but to show off their beautiful forms and dress; and the ducks whirling and turning, and gabbling, and feeding—always feeding. But I am ashamed of an ill-natured thought here, where every living thing contributes to the cheerfulness of the scene.
Flowers, and choice ones too, are in profusion; for besides the rich fringe of geraniums, roses, pinks, myrtles and other precious plants around the edge of the water, you are constantly passing plots of heart's ease, astres, hydrangeas, strips of roses, and plantations of splendid dahlias. The walks are as intricate and multiplied as the space admits. As the valley narrows they diminish in number, and finally end in one which follows the windings of a little brook, too wide for you or me to leap, dear J----, but which H----, or any other active boy would think it no feat to jump over. It is this little brook, murmuring with a voice as soft and low as a German woman's, that gives the peculiar charm to this walk to Soninberg. The scenery is tame enough; indeed you see nothing but the garden, and the hills that slope to it. But the water is natural; it has a familiar home look and sound; and the tree (willows, locusts and poplars) and the clematis that hangs over them, and the clusters of bright red berries, all seem to have grown there at their own will and pleasure. For more than two miles, you follow the windings of the stream, and then as you approach the ruins of Soninberg, the valley has come to an end, and you mount the side of the hill.
Soninberg was one of the fortified castles of the Middle Ages. It must have occupied an important position, commanding the only pass from the upper to the lower valley.—The remains are still extensive. Arches and fragments of wall are standing at many hundred yards' distance from the Keep, and other masses of masonry in good preservation on the height. You can hardly imagine anything more picturesque in its way than this old village of Soninberg, with its little angular rookeries of rough beams and plaster all huddled together under the protecting shadow of the castle, like a brood of frightened chickens under the wing of their mother. Some of these little dwellings are niched in an angle of the old wall; others in part built of its fragments. Here a street runs under a narrow stone arch of the old fortification; there it passes the simplest of all rustic bridges over the very little stream that gladdens the garden, and here it ends against the mouldering chapel of the castle.
These abodes of extremest poverty have at this moment a beauty and luxury that our gentlemen with their hot house graperies might envy. Between the lower and upper windows there is a grape vine in a regular festoon, and pendent from it just now (for it is a most fortunate season for the vine growers) bunches of grapes so full and beautiful that they could never seem ‘sour grapes,’ even to those who could not get them! A rich drapery,’ is it not, for these poor cottages? and some counterbalance for the luxuries of space and pure air which the poorest of our country poor enjoy. But I have forgotten in the village, that I am drawing near to the ruins, and am admonished by the rose color on the evening clouds that there is no time to loiter.
I passed through the great arched way where I suppose the port-cullis was, and ascending a steep acclivity by the side of a wall overgrown with wild plants, I went round the tower and through the labyrinthine walk, which has been formed by the Duke's order I suppose, of hawthorn and clematis, and which is a very simple and excusable bit of pretty petitesse amid these grand old ruins. I smiled at seeing here and there a table arranged with a circular seat. I do not believe the Germans could be tempted to go where there was not a table on which to set a bottle of their precious Rhenish, and half a dozen social glasses. After rambling around till I was tired, I seated myself at a projecting point, a good look-off; but instead of looking off I looked up, and directly above, seated on the ground and leaning her head against a broken wall, I saw my pretty peasant girl, Grettel. She had come here to think her own thoughts, I suppose, drawn by the mysterious sympathies of Nature that even the most uncultivated feel at some moments of their lives. And here, soothed by their maternal influence, she had fallen asleep. Her knitting-work, the ‘idlesse’ of every German woman, had dropped from her hand and lay on her lap. The delicate white flowers of a clematis that fringed the broken wall, shaded her cheek, and to complete the picture (for with the rose-colored clouds above mentioned it was a picture that might have tempted Cole's Heaven-loving pencil) the little terrier-dog was sleeping at her feet. Suddenly he awoke, raised his head, and cocked up his ears. His manner quickened my senses, and I fancied I heard a quick footstep behind a wall which intervened between me and the path. Grettel was still sleeping. A smile played on her lips. I thought she had forgotten her sorrows and was dreaming of Johanne, and I would have muzzled the little dog if I could, when he sprang up, barked and bounded off. Grettel awoke, and to a reality better than any bliss of dreams, for at the next instant I saw her in Johanne's arms.
We leave Wilsbaden to-morrow, but not till the last act in this drama of my peasant girl is played out. I have just seen Cristine in her gala dress, and with a truly fête-day face, prepared to go to Grettel's wedding, and to-morrow the happy pair set off for their home in the New World.
It seems that the good school-master of Soninberg, who, if he did not think with Helóise that letters were invented for the love-stricken maiden, was eager to make them subserve her use—at the moment of the death of Grettel's mother, wrote to Johanne at Hamburg. It had so happened that Johanne, ‘by the good will of Providence,’ as Cristine says, had failed in getting there at the time he intended, and was awaiting the sailing of an American ship. The letter reached him, and in Cristine's favorite phrase, ‘das ist besser;’ that is to say, all has ended as well as if Cristine's kind and loving heart had arranged the catastrophe.
__________
[Sedgwick’s notes]
* One is painfully struck on first going to the Continent with the prevalence of diseases of the eye among the lower classes. In an infant Charity School I visited at Wiesbaden, I think out of a hundred at least ten had diseased eyes. The women live out of doors, their babies in their laps or on the ground beside them. Bonnets are not worn by females of the lower orders of any age; there is therefore no protection for the eyes.
* [*] There is a law throughout Germany, requiring the artisan, when he has finished his apprenticeship to travel a year from city to city (visiting, if he pleases, Paris and London,) in order to improve himself in his art. When he arrives in a German town, he goes to the
herberg, a tavern kept for artisans, and there, after reporting himself to the police, finds employment. This is an admirable provision tending to facilitate the diffusion of the arts, and the enlargement of the artist's knowledge out of his art.
Dublin Core
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Title
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The Beauty of Soninberg. A Letter from Wiesbaden.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Germany, travel, love and devotion.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator writes a letter describing her travels in Germany, and recounts a love story about a beautiful young woman in the town of Soninberg.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, Author of 'Hope Leslie' &c.]
Source
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The Evergreen (May 1840), pp. 234-37.
Publisher
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New York: J. Winchester
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1840
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Format
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Document
Language
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English
"God Soul and World"
1840
aqueduct
artisans
As You Like It
beauty
blindness
Carisbrook lions
Dogs
donkeys
Duke of Nassau
eye-disease
Falstaff
filial piety
Frankfurt
Geisberg
Germany
Goethe
Héloïse
Isaac
Kursaal Gardens
letters
Marksburg
Mothers
New York
old maid
Old World
peasants
Rebecca
Rhine
Schwalbach
servant
Shakespeare
Soninberg
Taunus Hills
The Evergreen
Thomas Cole
tourism
Travel
wells
Wiesbaden
-
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1f3337d28b37d64bd8a5fe27ef712f9d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1827
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
SATURDAY NIGHT.
_________
[p. 146]
Ellen and Charles, two good and happy children, had just been undressed, and were jumping into bed, when their mother came into the room where they were. “Oh, come, mother,” they both cried in the same breath, “and lie down by us, and tell us a story.”
“Lie my side,” said Ellen.
“Oh no, lie my side,” said Charles.
“I cannot do both,” said their mother.
“Then come between us,” said Ellen; “that is the fairest way.”
“Yes, that is the fairest way,” said Charles; and both the children moved, and left a good place for their mother between them.
“Do, mother,” said Ellen, “tell us a fairy story—you know I delight in fairies—now dancing over the flowers, without even bending their slender stems; and now hiding away in acorn cups. Oh! I wish I had lived in fairy-land. I should so have liked to have had a magic lamp, or a ring for a talisman, that would have pinched my finger when I did wrong.”
“Pooh, Ellen!” exclaimed Charles, “you know there is no such place in reality, as fairy-land—is there mother?”
“I know that, as well as you do, Charles; but
[p. 147]
then there is no harm in talking of it, as if there were. That you call one of the pleasures of the imagination—don’t you mother?”
Ellen’s mother smiled, and said, “yes my dear; but when you are wishing for such a fairy gift as the wonderful ring you spoke of, do not forget that God has given you some thing much more wonderful, to you when you do right, and when you do wrong.”
“You mean my conscience, mother,” said Ellen; for her mother had so often spoken to her of conscience, that she very well knew what she meant.
“Now Ellen,” said Charles, is a beseeching tone, “don’t interrupt mother again; and do, mother tell me a story of a lion or a panther, or a faithful dog. A faithful dog, like that you read about in your Natural History, Ellen, is worth a sea full of fairies.”
“Fairies live in the green wood, Charles, and not in the sea,” said Ellen, a little hurt at Charles’ contempt for her favourites.
“To-night I shall not tell you about either beasts, or fairies,” said their mother.
“Oh it is Saturday night!” exclaimed Ellen; “I had forgotten that. A Bible story then—I am sure I think the story about Joseph, or that about Isaac, or the Prodigal Son, or Lazarus and his sisters, as interesting as a fairy story.”
“They are a hundred times more interesting,” said Charles.
Ellen’s mother was glad to find that the true and instructive histories to find that the true and instructive histories from the good book interested her children as much as those stories were contrived to delight them. “My dear chil-
[p. 148]
ren,” she said “I shall not tell you a story from the Bible, to-night; but relate an anecdote (which, you know, means a short story,) of some little children of our acquaintance. “There are two children, who have a great and kind Friend, who is always taking care of them, whether they are awake, or asleep.”
“I suppose you mean their mother,” said little Charley, who was always impatient to get at the story.
“No, my love. This Friend gave them their father and their mother.”
“Oh you mean God!” whispered Ellen.
Her mother did not reply to her, but proceeded—“This bountiful Friend has given to them, the most beautiful and wonderful gems in the world; worth as Charles would say, a whole sea full of diamonds.”
“Gems, what are gems, mother?” asked Charles.
“Precious jewels, my dear. Those I am speaking of are very small, but so curiously formed, that as soon as the casket which contains them is opened, there is immediately painted on them a beautiful picture of all the objects towards which they are turned. If a landscape, like that you see every morning from your chamber window, there appear on the gems those beautiful mountains, that rise one above and beyond another; the mist that curls up their sides, as if, Ellen, to hide troops of your tiny fairies behind its silvery curtain; the bright lake which glitters in the depth of the valley, and which you call the mountain mirror, Ellen; the large orchards, with their trees, gracefully
[p. 149]
bending with their ruddy and golden fruit; the neat house opposite us, with its pretty curtain of vines hanging over the door, and rose bushes clustering about the windows.”
“What, mother!” exclaimed Charles, “all these things painted on a little gem?”
“Yes, Charles, all. The high mountain, and the rose-bushes, every leaf and bud of them; and then, if the gems are turned towards the inside of the house, the landscape disappears, and all the furniture is painted on them, and the perfect pictures of their friends: not such pictures, as you see done by painters, looking grave and motionless; but smiling, speaking, and moving.”
“Oh, mother, mother!” exclaims Ellen, this is a fairy story after all.”
“Are there, in reality, any such gems?” asked Charles; who did not like that the story should turn out a fairy story.
“There are, my dear Charles;” and the same Friend, who gave the children these gems, has given to them, many other gifts, as wonderful. He has given to them an instrument, by which they can hear the music of the birds, the voices of their friends, and all other sounds; and another, by which, they enjoy the delicious perfume of the flowers; the fragrance you so often spoke of, Ellen, when the fruit-trees were in blossom; and the locust trees in flower, and the clover in bloom.”
“Oh what a generous Friend that must be,” said Charles, “to give such valuable presents, and so many of them! Are there any more, mother?”
“Yes, Charles, more than I could describe to you, if I were to talk till to-morrow morning;
[p. 150]
there is a very curious instrument, by which, they can find out the taste of every thing that is to be eaten; and another, that by just stretching out their fingers, they can tell whether a thing is smooth or rough, hard or soft.”
“Why, I can tell that with my fingers!” exclaimed Charles.
“Yes, my dear,” said his mother, “and cannot you taste, by putting food in your mouth? And is there not an instrument set in your head, by which, you can hear?”
“My ear, mother?” asked Charles.
“Yes, my child, your ear.”
And do you mean the eyes, by those wonderful gems?” asked Ellen.
“Yes.”
But, I am sure there is no painting in the eyes.”
“Yes, Ellen, every object you behold, is painted upon the part of the eye, called the retina; but that you cannot understand now; and you must let me go on with my anecdote of the two children. When they arose in the morning, they found that their Friend had taken such good care of them, when they slept, that they felt no pain; that their limbs were all active; and they could every moment receive pleasure from the precious gems, and instruments I have mentioned. They, both looked out of the window, and exclaimed “What a beautiful morning!” The little girl turned her gems towards her multiflora, now full of roses, and glistening with dew-drops, and she clapped her hands, and asked her brother, if he ever saw anything so beautiful; and he turned his gems to a
[p. 151]
pair of humming-birds, that were fluttering over the honeysuckle, and thrusting their tiny pumps into the necks of the flowers, and as their bright images shone on his gems, he shouted, “Did you ever see anything so handsome?”
“You mean, mother,” said Charles, “that he looked at the humming birds, when you say he turned his gems?”
“Yes, my dear; and when he heard the pleasant humming they make with their wings, it was by the instrument set in the head, which you call the ear. There was not a moment of the day, but the children enjoyed some good thing, their Friend had given to them. They learned their lessons, by using the memories He had given to them; the books they read, delighted them, because their Friend had given to them minds by which they understood them. They loved their parents, and relations, and companions, because their Friend had given them affections.”
“It seems to me,” interrupted Charley, “that Friend gave them every thing. It must be God, you mean, mother; for I know he gives us every thing we have.”
“Yes, my dear Charley; and I am sorry to say, these two children neglected their Friend. They had often been told by their mother never to get in bed without first kneeling and thanking him for all his gifts; but they did not think of him. They used and enjoyed the gifts, but they sometimes forgot the Giver.”
Ellen laid her head on her mother’s bosom. “Mother,” she said, “you mean us.”
“My dear Ellen,” replied her mother, “your
[p. 152]
conscience is like the ring, in the fairy tale. Yes, I did mean you and Charles. I was sorry, when I came into the room, to-night, to see you getting into bed, without saying your prayers. God has given you a voice, to speak my children. Your dog, Stumah, Charles, cannot speak, to thank God for anything he receives, but you can.”
“And I will,” said the good little boy; ashamed that he had been ungrateful and thoughtless. “Come, Ellen; we’ll jump up, and say our prayers; and,” he added, in a whisper; “we’ll speak for Stumah, too.”*
* This reply of the child is true.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Saturday Night
Subject
The topic of the resource
Teaching children to appreciate the gifts of the five senses and God.
Description
An account of the resource
A mother tells her children a bedtime story about a mysterious Friend who gives children precious gifts, and teaches a lesson about gratitude and prayer.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
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Stories for Young Persons, 146-52.
Publisher
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Harper & Brothers
Date
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1840
Contributor
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Heather Harman, Nicole Wheatley, D, Gussman
Relation
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Originally published "by Stockbridge S." in the Juvenile Miscellany, [edited by Lydia M. Child] (January 1827): 31-39. Collected in A Short Essay to Do Good, 18-24, 1828
Language
A language of the resource
English
1827
1840
bible
children
Dogs
fairies
God
Joseph
Juvenile Miscellany
Lazarus
Mothers
Stories for Young Persons
the five senses
the Prodigal Son
-
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f993435fae157841b6f55ff2f3841f64
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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1831
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1831.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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BERKELEY JAIL.
By the Author of Hope Leslie.
None are all evil.
Byron.
The circumstances of the following story, though they transpired within the last thirty years, are already nearly forgotten, or are only accurately remembered by those who are passing into the ranks of the shadowy existence – ‘the oldest inhabitant,’ by whom they are transmitted in the prosing winter’s tale, to the thirsty ears of boys and girls. I have diligently collected the particulars, partly from the records of the judicial proceedings in Berkeley county, partly from tradition, and partly from memory – for the events formed an epoch in my quiet childhood, similar to that which might be made by an earthquake, an inundation, the eruption of a volcano, or any other interruption of the silent process of nature.
[14]
Within a township which I shall take the liberty to call Shelburne, stood, and still stands, a little removed from the village, and on the brow of a hill kindly sloping to the south, a mansion, which thirty years since was occupied by Colonel Vassal, and for almost a century preceding was in the possession of his ancestors. The projecting upper story marks the period of its erection to have been when Shelburne was a frontier settlement, and the houses were thus constructed to facilitate their defense against the Indians. It has the marked physiognomy of the pilgrim architecture – the upright roof, dormant windows, and door posts carved with hollyhocks and full blown roses, all as perpendicular and rectangular as the unbending proprietor of a century since. Its little antique court yard, with its scragged peach trees half hidden by overgrown lilac bushes – its superannuated damask rose bushes and high box borders, are quite enough to throw a modern horticulturist into a fever, but they were the pride and delight of Colonel Vassal. Beyond this boundary, nature, then and now, though now somewhat more adorned, smiles around the mansion in free unspoiled beauty. Elms of magnificent growth, the sugar maple with its masses of dense foliage, and mountain ashes with their palmy clusters of bright scarlet berries, indi-
[15]
cate the taste and refinement of the early proprietors; and the bright little stream, which winds and sparkles through the meadows that repose at the foot of the hill, seems to send up, from its wooded and fragrant banks, the homage of nature, a spontaneous tribute to the senses of its legitimate lord.
Colonel Vassal was a gentleman of the old school, and would have continued so, if he had lived to the present day of ‘don’t care’ and slipshod manners, for he had the essence of gentlemanliness in his spirit – delicacy, self-sacrifice, and an instinctive care of the feelings of every human being. He might have been a little overdoing and ennuyant in his courtesies, but the spirit went with the letter. The Colonel served in the French war, and the laurels he then won in the service of the mother country probably strengthened his ties to it, for his loyalty, though pure as gold, was not, when the revolutionary war broke out, found to be a transmutable metal, that could be fused into patriotism. To have opposed the current of what, in his honest judgment, the Colonel deemed rebellion, would at Shelburne have been madness, as well as folly. He therefore maintained a strict neutrality as to any overt acts, and gently floated down the troubled current of the times, now and then slightly molested by hot-headed partisans,
[16]
but generally protected by the sentiment which his strict honour, his kind-heartedness, and generosity could not fail to inspire.
His estate, however, suffered the common deterioration of property at the time, and unfortunately he was not bred to any business, nor gifted with that art which, in the language of the country, makes the most of a shilling. His keen neighbours would have ‘scorned to take the advantage’ of the Colonel’s uncalculating temper, but he was always sure to give it to them. Year after year his income was reduced and his capital abated, till, as was happily said by my friend in a similar case, ‘nobody could guess how his family was clothed and fed, but by supposing that the habit of eating, drinking, and wearing clothes was, like all other habits, when once fixed, not to be shaken off.’ This original solution of a common mystery did not entirely explain the enigma of the Colonel’s subsistence in his accustomed style. He had an old family servant who bore the nursery appellation of Mammy, and who was fully as devoted to the Colonel, in affection and effort, as Caleb, that prince and flower of servingmen, was to the master of Ravenswood, and far more ingenious in the arts of saving and twisting and twining, than any thing of mankind ever was or ever will be. The wants of Colonel
[17]
Vassal’s household were few; its numbers, alas! were reduced. Death had removed his wife, and child after child, till only one remained, Fanny Vassal, the last hope – the sweet and sufficient solace of her father. She was
‘The gentle and beautiful –
The child of grace and genius.’
There was a thriving young attorney in Shelburne by the name Levi Carter. He might have sat for the admirable picture of Gilbert Glossin, Esq. If he never committed equal atrocities, it was because a kind Providence saved him from equal temptation and convenient opportunity. He belonged to the large and detestable class of number one people, who think, hope, desire, plan and act only for themselves, and who are alone restrained, in the promotion of their interests, by the coarse fear of the law of the land. This man ‘fell in love’ – we use the current, much abused phrase – with Fanny Vassal. His wooing of course was the subject of village gossip, and the popular opinion went in favour of his success. A remarkable expression of dissent from this opinion from one Sam Whistler, an Indian game seller, was reported to Carter – “Miss Fanny marry Levi Carter!
[18]
when ye see the innocent lamb seek the company of the fox, and the pretty dove mate with the hawk, then ye’ll see Miss Fanny the wife of Levi Carter!” This speech happened to be repeated on the very morning after Carter received a decided negative from Miss Vassal, and a positive refusal from the Colonel, who was never positive before, to interpose his influence. As there is neither proportion nor distinctness in minds where there is no principle of truth or justice, Carter blended the miserable author of this petty offence, with the more dignified objects of his mean and malignant resentment. It was the first link in a chain that led to fatal consequences. Carter’s pretensions had passed and were forgotten by every one but himself, when the curiosity of the villagers of Shelburne was more powerfully exercised by the arrival of a nephew of Colonel Vassal, a captain in the corps of royal engineers, who was stationed somewhere in the wilds of Canada, and who, having obtained leave of absence for a winter to travel to the States, had come to Shelburne to pay his uncle a visit. It was no wonder to those who had seen, known and loved Fanny Vassal, that her cousin, having seen her, should grow indifferent about seeing any thing else in all our United States; nor was it a
[19]
marvel that after knowing the frank, warm-hearted and accomplished young soldier, she, like the gentle Miranda, should have
‘No ambition to see a goodlier man.’
Before the winter was over, with more love than prudence, they were united.
As Fanny could not or would not leave her father, it had been settled that Captain Vassal should return to Canada early in the spring, dispose of his commission, and come back to seek his fortune in the United States. He went, and, in attempting to cross one of the Canadian rivers on the ice, he was drowned. Poor Fanny! Her heart was too tender, and her love too concentrated to endure the shock. In a few months she was borne to the village church yard: but her memory lived; it lived in the increased kindness of the Colonel’s friends; in the patient grief written on his monumental face; in an infant boy; the memorial of her sufferings, and the heir of his mother’s wealth – the love of all that loved her.
As the infant expanded into boyhood, no eye but his grandfather’s and mammy’s could discern in him any resemblance to the blond beauty of his mother. His high bold forehead, black curling hair, bright restless eye lit with the fires of his ardent spirit, unfolded the dawn of a mind that promised a bright
[20]
futurity. He had nothing of the quiet acquiescent temperament of his old relative, but he had strong affections, and they were developed by his intercourse with him. He often put his little hands to the tasks of aiding his grandfather in cherishing a rose bush that had been planted by his mother. Everything else in the court yard grew in wild luxuriance, or died unheeded. This was pruned and watered and trained, as if instinct with her sweet spirit. His mother’s guitar hung beside the fireplace, and Charles would watch the old man has he leaned his head against it and his white lock fell over its broken strings, and silently creep into his lap and lay his head on his bosom, and this express the deep and almost mystical sympathy that united them, and which made him feel (to borrow the expression of the beautiful deaf mute, whose life has recently fallen a sacrifice to her filial tenderness) as if his heart grew close to his parent’s.
Time passed on, and has brought us, somewhat slowly, to Charles’s fourteenth year, and the incidents of the boy’s life which may indicate subsequent greatness. The same principle that stirs a feather impels a planet.
I must remind my readers, before exposing my young hero to the chastisements of a woman’s tongue,
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that Mammy was of the privileged order of faithful old servants; that she had to strain every nerve to maintain a decent appearance and that she was often at her wit’s end, to keep the wheels of her little empire in motion.
It was Monday afternoon, and she had just put the last flourish on her well scoured and sanded kitchen floor, when Charles entered, with a string of game in one hand and a gun in the other, his shoes and pantaloons bearing ample tokens of his having been
‘Over hill, over dale
Thorough bush, thorough briar.’
He was followed by a lean, hungry dog, who, by keeping close to the heels of his principal and dropping his head and tail, indicated that he was aware of the fearful presence into which he had ventured. Mammy’s tongue always sounded as quick as an alarm bell; “What, under the canopy, Charles, does this mean? – stop, see how you are tracking the floor! your new pantaloons on too! Get out, you hound!” she continued, giving the expecting dog a blow with her broom-stick that sent him howling out of the house.
“Oh hush, Mammy,” replied Charles, in a deprecating
[22]
voice, “Sam is on the steps: here, Biter, here!” the dog bounded in again. “Now, Mammy, don’t scold, indeed I forgot to scrape my feet – there now,” he added, rising on his tiptoes, leaning over the old woman’s shoulder, and giving a hearty smack to her withered cheek – “there now, Mammy, we are friends again, are we not?”
An affectionate kiss is a panacea to old and young. The muscles of Mammy’s face relaxed, and her voice softened, as she replied, “Yes, Charlie, friends; but do drive out that nasty dog.”
“Excuse me, Mammy, I can’t; you must give him a bone, and draw a mug of cider for Sam.”
“A bone, child – high! the last bone in the house is as clean as the fatted calf’s; and a mug of cider for Sam, indeed! no, it is a shame and a sin to give cider to a drunken Indian.”
“Oh, hush, Mammy, hush, for pity’s sake. Look here – do you see these ducks? – elegant, are they not?”
“They are plump; they’ll do the Colonel’s heart good, poor old gentleman; he has had no more stomach for his victuals to-day than a teething baby.”
“Then remember, Mammy, we could not have got them but for Sam; and these partridges – beauties, as fat as butter – and four of them.”
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“Did Sam kill them all?”
“No, indeed, I killed one; but the best of it all is, that as we were coming across the bridge we met Mr. Carter.”
“Did you? the black-hearted fellow!”
There was no neutral ground in Mammy’s mind for Mr. Carter; he never passed it without a shot.
“Well, he stopped and told Sam he had met him just in time; that he had company at his house, and wanted his game. ‘Turn round, Sam,’ said he, ‘and carry it to my house, and I’ll give you a dollar for it, and a glass of brandy into the bargain.’”
“What a shame to tempt the poor creater with brandy,” interrupted Mammy, with a most virtuous nod. “Well, what did Sam say, Charlie?”
“He shook his head.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, indeed! ‘Why you rascal,’ says Mr. Carter, ‘you don’t expect to get more than a dollar? well, well, I must have it, so go along with it, and I’ll give you a dollar and a half.’
“ ‘Squire,’ says Sam, looking up in his keen way, you know, Mammy – ‘Squire, all the money you have in the world can’t buy my game.’”
“Good, good!” exclaimed Mammy.
“ ‘What do you mean, fellow?’ says Mr. Carter.
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‘I mean, Squire, to give the game to your betters – it’s for the Colonel.’ ”
“Well said, Whistler!” exclaimed Mammy, and setting down her broom, on which she had hitherto rested, she brought forth a bit of cold lamb which she had husbanded for the Colonel’s supper, cut it from the bone, which she threw to Biter, called Sam into her kitchen, set him down to her freshly scoured table, and in spite of her high principles, that a moment before had been stern enough for the head of a ‘Temperance Society,’ she filled and twice refilled the mug with cider.
Sam, or Sam Whistler (for Sam, as well as Cicero, had his descriptive cognomen), was a full-blooded Indian, I believe of the Seneca tribe. How he came to be a lopped branch from the parent tree was not known; the only soil he loved or honoured was that in which it grew. Accident probably threw him in his childhood among the whites, and the chains with which habit binds, even the most lawless, kept him there. But though in the heart of a civilized community, he adopted none of its usages. His tall and finely moulded figure was habited in a half savage costume. His crownless and almost brimless hat was banded with the skin of a rattlesnake, and trophied with the plumage of his last game. His outer garment
[25]
was a demi-coat, demi-blanket, fastened at the waist with a wampum belt, and his feet (when shod at all) were shod with a motley article compounded of moccasin and shoe. His home was a hut far in the depths of a wood that supplied the town of Shelburne with fuel. This hut was the resort of all those outlaws and vagrants that hand on the skirts of civilized society, as birds of prey hover over a cultivated land. Whistler honoured by observance the conjugal notions of his people, and, in the number and succession of his wives, his establishment rivalled the wigwam of a western chief. For the rest, he had the common vices so generously communicated by the whites to the vanishing race, in exchange for their broad lands and bright streams. He sustained his numerous consumers by hunting, fishing, basket and broom making, and such other little arts as did not, in his estimation, degrade him to the level of civilization. Towards the whites he had the sense of wrong that pervades his people,
‘And though the voice of wrath a sacred call
To pay the injuries of some on all.’
The Colonel and his little household were among the few exceptions to this deep-seated and cherished sentiment. The Colonel was a magistrate, but he had not one spark of the Brutus in his kindly nature, and, as his more astute neighbours thought, he
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had often been culpably remiss in suffering Whistler’s petty offenses to pass without judicial investigation. Whistler felt his obligation to the Colonel’s long suffering, and besides, he gratefully remembered that Miss Fanny, always generous and pitiful, had, during a rigorous winter, sent provisions and blankets to his wives, subjects far without the pale of the charities of the good matrons of Shelburne. Whistler never forgot this kindness, and he returned it in many a tribute from flood and field to the Colonel’s table, and in instructing Charles, or, as he called him, his young ‘Eagle of Delight,’ in all the mysteries of fishing and woodcraft, so that before the boy was twelve years old, he knew the haunts of the game, and the lurking places of the trout, the shyest of the finny race, better than the oldest sportsman in the country.
Whistler’s lasting and effective gratitude was one of the lights that relieved the dark shadows of his character. There was another – a feeling of innate and indestructible superiority, which at times imparted dignity to his expressions and loftiness to his bearing, when there seemed to come from his soul revelations of a noble origin and high destiny, and he forgot himself and almost made others forget his actual squalid condition.
Carter, by all legal shifts, by
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buying up notes and bonds and mortgages, acquired, at a cheap rate, a title to Colonel Vassal’s landed property, and claims beyond to a considerable amount. On the day following his encounter with Whistler, and, as was afterwards adjudged at all the tea-tables and lounging-places in Shelburne, impelled by the sting his pride then received – it is the last drop that makes the cup run over – he sent a deputy sheriff to Colonel Vassal’s with a writ, commanding the officer in the usual form ‘to attach the real and personal estate of the defendant, and for want thereof to take his body.’ He probably expected that the Colonel would apply to his neighbours for bail, and he well knew they would not permit the venerable old man to suffer the indignity of being put within the limits of the county jail, which was eight miles distant from Shelburne. But the Colonel was now broken down by age and infirmities, the habit of his mind was passive submission, and he thought nothing but literal compliance with the requisitions of the law. He seemed stunned and bewildered, but he betrayed no emotion. Once, indeed, he asked for Charles, and on being told that he was gone to the next village, he muttered, “Thank God – poor boy!” He seemed quite deaf to the cries and remonstrances of Mammy, who treated
[28]
the sheriff, who most unwillingly executed his office, as if he were a highway robber. There was a strange mixture of consciousness and inanity in the Colonel’s preparations to accompany the sheriff. He took down poor Fanny’s guitar, blew the dust away that had settled under the chords, and passed his trembling fingers over them. Alas! the resemblance of its unmeaning and discordant sounds to that nicer instrument which seemed suddenly to have been crushed, struck even Mammy’s coarse perceptions. “It’s as shattered as his mind,” she murmured. “Take it, Mammy,” he said, “and put it in your chest,” and turning to the sheriff he added with a faint smile, “I believe it would be of no use to Mr. Carter, it would not sell.” He then combed down his thin gray hairs in his customary way before putting on his hat, and said, in his usual manner, “Farewell, Mammy; take care of my boy, and look after every thing, and mind and tell David to put Lightfoot in the chaise and come for me before dark.” It was already nearly dark, and a cold October evening. David, an old family servant, had been dead many a year, and Lightfoot and the old chaise, long, long before, had passed into other hands, and Mammy, as she listened to these senseless orders, wept aloud. “Oh, it’s broke him all to pieces!”
[29]
she exclaimed: “it will kill him, I’m sure of it!” She was right. A predisposition to paralysis, combining with the effect of the shock and the unwonted exposure to the evening air, proved fatal, and before the next morning the good old man was released from his accumulated burden of age and grief. His body was brought back to his home, and the good people of Shelburne assembled, almost en masse, to testify their respect for his innocent life and sympathy for his sad death. Carter knew too well how to play his part, to be absent from this assembly, though when he met glances from of detestation from many an eye, and his ears caught but half-suppressed curses from many lips, he felt that there were sharper punishments than the laws can inflict. Then, as now, in many New England villages, the office of bearer retained its original import, and was no sinecure. Hearses were an unknown luxury. The young and the vigorous preceded the coffin, and alternately bore it on their shoulders. The procession was formed, Mammy and Charles walking next the body. Their honest grief neither feared observation, nor thought of it. Charles forgot that it was not manly to cry, and Mammy forgot every thing, but that she was following to the grave the beloved old master in whose service her hair had grown gray.
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Not far from them, and parallel to the line of the procession stalked along Sam Whistler, followed by his dog Biter. It was the first time he had ever been seen participating in any ceremony or usage of the villagers, and their feelings were touched by this extraordinary tribute to the Colonel’s memory. It was evident that Whistler felt the awkwardness of his conspicuous and novel position; he sometimes bounded forward, in a sort of Indian half trot, to the head of the procession, then fell back to the rear, but for the most part he was near Charles, and it was manifest that the living divided with the dead the honour of his presence. The procession halted. The bearers were to be changed, and Carter advanced with others to assure his portion of the burden. He had just raised his hands to transfer the coffin to his shoulder, when Whistler sprang forward, pushed him aside, and placing his own shoulder under the coffin, muttered, “The murderer touch the murdered? – no! no!”
Carter was compelled to submit to the indignity; altercation would only have rendered his dishonour more glaring, and he slunk back, angry and mortified, to his former station.
Death in this instance, as in others, did one of its appointed offices; it awakened active kindness for the
[31]
bereaved. A friend of Colonel Vassal, soon after his death, procured a midshipman’s commission for Charles, and Mammy found a happy home, having in her own energies the abundant means of independence.
As may be supposed, Carter did not forget the humiliation he had endured on the day of the funeral. His mind was like bad liquor which has no purifying principle, and never works itself clear. He wreaked his resentment upon Sam by every species of legal annoyance, and it must be confessed that the poor outlaw afforded him opportunities for frequent inflictions, within the letter of the law. Sam, for the most part, nourished his resentment in silence, but once or twice he had been betrayed into saying, that “the Squire had best take care, or he would have the worst of it.” Hostilities had been growing more serious for some weeks, and Carter, to whom Sam’s threats had been reported, began to feel some forebodings of Indian revenge, that suggested to him the policy of driving him away. Accordingly he seized upon Sam’s next offence as a pretext, and availing himself of some obsolete puritanical by-law, he sent a constable to Sam’s forest-hut to warn him, as a public nuisance, to leave the town of Shelburne within twelve hours; in case of his failure to obey the mandate,
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his hut would be pulled down over his head, and burnt to the ground. It happened that when this mandate arrived, Whistler had just procured an unusual quantity of spirits for a vigil, which was to be kept on the occasion of the burial of an infant child. The grave was not far from the hut, and a panic just then pervading the country about the ‘resurrection men,’ Sam, with a guest, one Ira, a mulatto, had determined to secure the safety of the little defunct. As soon as the man of the law had performed his duty and departed, the women (always ‘tim’rous beastie’) counselled a temporary removal. Ira, too, who was a bird of passage that deemed a perch on one bough just as good as another, advocated the policy of a retreat. Whistler heard them through, and then, after taking a deep draught from his jug, said, “Ye may all go, like scared pigeons; I’ll not budge a foot – ‘pull down my hut!’ – what care I? Let them that live under broad roofs and sleep on soft beds fear. Carter, and all his race to back him, can’t harm me. Let them strike down the poles that shelter us; there are more in the forest; and if there were not, do I fear to lay my head on the bare-ground? – the earth is my mother. Do I fear the storms? – they are kinder than those that have driven my people beyond the great waters No, no; ye may all go, but I will not move while one clod of
[33]
earth is here for my foot to stand upon. If the fire on my hearth-stone is put out, Carter shall repent it.”
Whistler’s resolution, as is often the case when a resolution is found to be immovable, was applauded. The women opened their steaming cauldron. The rude but savoury supper was served. The jug was freely passed. Whistler’s thirst was made insatiate by his roused passions, and the next day when Carter’s emissaries arrived on the spot, they found him laying across his child’s grave, in a state of brutal intoxication. Ira was near him, not quite unconscious, though his brain was completely muddled. The women had prudently absconded with their children. The hut, then, according to the legal warrant, was raised to the ground, and fire set to the dry poles.
On the same day Carter went out, as usual, to take his afternoon walk. He stopped on a little eminence that overlooked the long tract of wood that skirted Shelburne on the eastern side, and in whose depths Whistler’s hut had been sheltered. It was a cloudless, finely tempered summer’s afternoon. The air was freighted with the fragrance of the coming evening. The shadows were stealing over hill and valley, leaving here and there bright patches of sunshine. The matrons were sitting at their doors in
[34]
their clean caps and calicoes, with their infant broods about them. The farmers were driving home their last creaking loads from their rich meadows. Little rustics were hieing to the village with their baskets of wild berries, and the happy boys were whistling home from pasture after their cows. But it was not this sweet picture of ‘country contentments’ that arrested Carter’s eye, or touched his sordid spirit. He had paused on that eminence to gaze on the light blue smoke that rose from the ruins of poor Whistler’s dwelling, and curled over the wood as if some instinct made it linger there. It was a feeling, as paltry as malignant, that made him exult in a triumph over such an enemy. Had he been at that moment inspired with one hour’s prescience, how would his exultation have been changed to fear and dread and horror. In one hour his body was found on that spot a reeking corpse. A cap identified as Ira’s, and Whistler’s well known basket were found near him, and suspicion, or rather belief, immediately fixed on these persons as the perpetrators of the crime; and though there might have been some who, in their secret souls, thought Carter had not suffered very far beyond his deserts, yet murder excites a universal sentiment of horror and desire of retribution, and all united in a vigorous pursuit of the supposed offenders. They were found
[35]
together and both taken, and, before the close of the following day, were lodged in Berkeley county jail.
Ira appeared, like common criminals, eager for life, and anxious to obtain the best counsel. He denied in public, and to his lawyer in private, any participation in the murder of Carter. He denied also any knowledge of the means by which he came to his death. He did not intimate any suspicion of Whistler, but he asserted that they were separated during the afternoon of the murder, and he accounted plausibly for their being found together the next day. After some faltering he said, in explanation of his cap being found near the body, that it fitted Sam as well as it did himself, leaving it to be understood, without saying so, that the cap had been worn by Sam.
Whistler neither confessed nor denied the fact of the murder. When examined before the officers of justice he reserved a dogged silence, excepting repeated expressions of exulting, savage satisfaction in Carter’s death. When asked to select counsel for his trial, he refused, saying, “He knew no right white people had to try him, and if they would do it, they might have it all their own way.” Counsel was then assigned him by the court, and to the gentleman who undertook the hopeless task of defending him, he preserved the same obstinate silence and indifference.
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The prisoners were confined in the same cell, and it was observed that Ira was sycophantic in his devotion to Whistler, while Whistler treated him with a kind of churlish contempt. Ira was like one under the influence of strong fear, watchful of every word and motion, strictly decorous and respectful; while Whistler showed no other feeling than that yawning, snarling weariness which a wild animal manifests when imprisoned in a cage.
Ira was first put on trial. It was proved that Carter had come to his death by a single discharge of one gun, and Ira was acquitted. After the verdict was pronounced, he seemed mainly anxious not to be reconducted to Whistler’s cell for a moment, and nervously fearful of again seeing him.
When this was reported to Whistler, he laughed scornfully, shook his head, and said, “Ira is half white.”
When Whistler was put to the bar and asked the usual question, ‘guilty or not guilty?’ he rose, stretched out his arm and answered, “I’m glad he’s killed; if that’s being guilty, make the most on’t.” No other answer could be obtained from him. The trial proceeded. The impression of his guilt was so fixed, that scarcely any testimony could have saved him, and there was none in his favour. All the
[37]
circumstances of his long existing feud with Carter were remembered and related; his repeated threats of vengeance, and various other unfavorable particulars, which the ingenious reader will recollect. As if to remove the least shadow of doubt of his guilt, a prisoner, who had been in the same cell with Ira and Whistler, testified that he heard Sam say, in a low emphatic whisper, to Ira’s wife (who had been permitted to visit her husband), ‘I killed him.’
The jury, without leaving their box, gave their verdict of guilty. Some said the prisoner was asleep when it was pronounced. It was certain that his eyes were closed, and that there was not on his countenance the slightest indication of sensation.
When asked by the court if he knew any reason why sentence of death should not be pronounced on him, he started, and asked fiercely, “What good would it do me if I did? No! no! I have but one thing to say – send for one of my own people to hang me; I want no white fingers to make a button of my neck.”
All were shocked at the poor wretch’s obduracy, but there were many persons of the neighbourhood who had known him a great while, and had kindly feeling towards him. Making allowance for the provocations he had received, for the habits of his life, and for the principle of revenge which
[38]
he considered virtue, they would have rejoiced in his pardon. One of these persons, a man respected through the country for his wisdom, as well as humanity, told Sam that he would head a petition to the governor for his life. “Thank ye, thank ye kindly,” replied Whistler, for the first time softened; “but I don’t wish it; they have carried matters so far now, I would not take a pardon from them.” The project was therefore abandoned.
There was one individual that, like the Duke of Argyle’s follower who prayed ‘the Lord stand by our side right or wrong,’ hoped from the first to the last that Whistler, guilty or not guilty, would get clear. This individual was our friend Mammy; but her feelings as well as some important circumstances, will be best conveyed in her own simple language, in a letter addressed to Charles Vassal.
‘To Mr. Charles Vassal Midshipman on board the United States Ship -----.
‘My dear Charlie: – These few lines, you will know, come from your old Mammy, though, owing to my failing sight, I cannot write so straight and sightly as formerly.
‘I trust these will find you safe returned from the East or West Indies – which is it? I know they are different places, though I never can remember
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which is which. I enjoy but poor health lately, partly owing to worrying about Whistler. I can’t forget his trouble was ’casioned by his friendship for our family (Mammy always identified herself with the Vassal family), and it seems, Charles, it does, as if every thing that tried to prop up the old stricken tree was blasted. It is now two months since I wrote you about the trial, and his last day draws nigh, being one fortnight from next Friday. Poor Whistler! he has some bright spots in his heart – some places where you may say the sun breaks through the clouds; witness his often kindness to the Colonel, his love for you, Charlie, and his lifting the sods after your poor mother was buried, to lay a pair of moccasons on the coffin. It was an Indian notion, but did not it betoken a kind o’ human feeling? Well, I have done what I could to make the time pass away for him, and if I had done wrong, the Lord forgive me. You well know Charlie, I am an enemy to all spirituous liquor, and neither take it, nor willingly give it to others; but poor Whistler! Lord sakes it’s Indian natur! It was solitary for him, that was used to roaming the sweet wild woods, to be shut up in a stench cell! He needed the comfort and forgetfulness of it; and as to preparing for eternity, I’m sure I wish for it as much as the members can; but la me! he’ll never
[40]
do that in a reg’lar way. He does not care one straw for all the minister says, but he has some soaring thoughts of his own – religious I don’t dare to call them, though it does seem as if the Almighty had breathed them into his soul – where else could he get them, Charlie? – he an Indian – and the life he has led.’
Mammy’s letter was broken off, and the remainder bore the date of the following day.
‘Since writing the above, dear Charlie, I had a chance to go to see Whistler, and thinking he might have some message to you, I left my letter till I came back – it was well I did! He was glad to see me, and soon asked the jailor to leave us alone together. I told him your ship was daily expected. You remember the low deep sound he makes when any thing touches his heart-spring; twice he repeated it, then patted Biter – they have let his dog stay with him – then he looked up in my face and said, in the softest voice I ever heard from him, ‘I would die content if I could see him once more – if he would but come and stand by me at the last.’
“Ah!’ said I, “Charlie’s stout-hearted, but so pitiful, I misdoubt he could not bear it.’
“Ogh!’ said he, ‘I am sure he can stand it, if I can live through it.’ I smiled, and he said scornfully, ‘Do you think it’s the death struggle I speak of? – no, I fear not that; but to have my hands tied behind me, and to be stared and gaped at, like a caged bear, by the troops of men, and women too – shame to them.’
‘And now, Charles, I have that to tell you that will make you both glad and sorrowful; and I would not tell it till the last, least my hand should be too much shaken to write the above. Whistler said to me,
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‘Do you think it would be a pleasure to the boy to believe I did not kill Carter?’ ‘Lord sakes, yes,’ says I, ‘indeed would it.’ Then he made me lift up my hand, as they do in court, and swear not to tell to any one but you what he should say. Then, Charlie, he laughed out and said, ‘I no more killed Carter than you did, mammy.’ I cannot repeat his exact words, but it seems that after the hut was burnt, and Sam came a little to himself, Ira would have persuaded him to go off, but he would not move, and then Ira said he would take his gun and Sam’s basket, and shoot some game to sell in the village for liquor. Neither of their heads was yet clear from what they had taken. Well, as Ira was on his way to the village he met Carter; some high words passed between them; Carter struck Ira with his cane, and Ira mad, and his brain still muddy, instantly discharged his gun into the poor
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creatur. ‘I asked Sam, why he had not told this before.’ ‘Why should I?’ said he: ‘it was me that Carter wronged, not Ira; it was I that hated Carter, not Ira; it was I that shouted when heard he was killed, not Ira. No, no, I was the murderer here,’ he said, knocking on his breast, ‘and if either must die for it, it should be me.’ Now don’t this remind you of St. Paul’s words, ‘the Gentiles having not a law are a law unto themselves?’ I asked him if it were true that he had said, ‘I killed him?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but who was it to, and what did it mean? Ira’s wife came to our cell, and begged him to turn state’s evidence against me. She made me mad, and I told her I killed him. She well knew what I meant for she always called Ira I!’
‘Now you see, dear Charles, how the whole matter stands, and I pray the Lord speed my letter and to bring you here in due time for the awful day. Yours, till death.
‘Mammy – otherwise ZILPAH THRIFT.’
Mammy’s prayers, seconded by a well appointed mail establishment, were effectual. Charles received her letter in due time, and using all diligence arrived at the shire-town of Berkeley county on the night preceding the day appointed for Whistler’s execution. Mammy was already there, and, firm in the faith of
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her favourite’s arrival, she had engaged rooms for him and for herself in the tavern, which was an appendage to the jail, and, kept by the jailor, was already thronged by the county people, who had flocked in to be in readiness for the rare and favourite spectacle of a public execution.
How strong and scared are the ties knit in childhood! They strained over Charles’s heart as he threw his arms around Mammy, and hugged the faithful old creature to his bosom, with the fond feeling of his earliest years. His grandfather – the home of his childhood – all its pleasures, never to be repeated rose to his recollection. Mammy suffered her rising feelings to overflow in words, and after wiping her eyes and clearing her voice, “Ha, Charlie, how you are grown? She said; “taller than I! – and goodness me! handsomer than ever.” Then passing her hand over his midshipman’s coat, “It beats the world – why you look like a reg’lar.” Then espying his dirk, “You don’t wear this all the time? – a’nt you afraid you’ll run it into somebody? – ha! how nat-ral that smile is! – Oh if the Colonel could have lived to see you! – Poor Whistler, Charles!”
The current of her emotions had now borne them both to the point of the chief interest. Charles shut and locked the door, and a confidential conversation
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ensued, in the course of which he ascertained, in answer to one of his first and most anxious inquiries, that it was customary for one individual or more, to pass the last night in the cell of the condemned; and on applying soon after to the jailor, and stating his interest in the prisoner, he obtained permission to keep this sad vigil.
The jailor in due time conducted him to the cell, and having removed that bars and bolts, “Hush-hark,” he whispered, “the minister is at prayer – Ah, he’s come to! – this is the first time the hardened fellow has let any one pray with him.” Charles eagerly peeped through the crevice of the door – a lamp was standing on the floor before the clergyman, who was engaged in loud and earnest intercessions, while the subject of the prayer, heedless or scornful, was pacing up and down the narrow cell whistling an Indian hunting air, and followed at every turn by Biter. “The castaway!” muttered the jailor. The clergyman finished, and Charles sprang forward, pronouncing the prisoner’s name. Biter was instantly crouching at his feet and licking his hands. Whistler stood as if he were transfixed. He then tossed back the wiry locks that hung over his face, dashed off the gathering tears, suppressed his choking sobs, and, as if ashamed that nature had mastered and betrayed
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him, he threw himself on his straw and buried his face in his blanket. Such is the omnipotent power of the electric chain, which, proceeding from him ‘who is love,’ communicates a celestial spark to every spirit, however ignorant, however degraded. The Indian was obdurate and impassive, his heart was stone, while he looked only on those whom he hated, but it melted within him at the first sound of the voice, at the first glance of the eye he loved. For an instant the dreary cell, the jailor, the galling hand-cuffs – all forms and modes of punishment were forgotten; a blessed vision floated before him; he scented the fresh sweet woods; he trod on the soft ground; he heard the singing of the birds and the hunter’s cry. But it was momentary. The calenture passed at the first sound of the clergyman’s voice, who continued his ministrations by reading some appropriate passages of scripture, and concluded with a feeling exhortation. The jailor wept audibly. Charles covered his face, but Whistler gave no intimation that he listened. The clergyman at last rose to depart; he beckoned to Charles – “My young friend,” he said, “you seem to have some influence over this hardened man, use it for the good of his soul, so soon to be called before the judgment seat; I leave my bible and psalm book with
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you.” Charles bowed; but, his conscience reproaching him with something like hypocrisy in this implied assent, he said, “I respect the offices of religion; you, sir, have done your duty, I shall endeavour to do mine.”
The young midshipman’s manner, more perhaps than his words, struck the clergyman as equivocal, but it was not till the following day that he was able clearly to interpret both.
Though the jailor, in his double capacity of innkeeper and jailor, had enough to do on that memorable evening, he found time twice to revisit the prisoner’s cell, much to our young friend’s annoyance; but when, after midnight, he again appeared, Charles could not, or did not conceal his displeasure.
“It is too hard,” he said, “that this poor fellow must have his last rest broken in this way.”
“Soft and fair, young man, I must do my duty,” replied the officer of justice, and he reconnoitered the cell, first surveying the prisoner, who stretched and yawned on his pallet, and looking up scowling, as if he had been unkindly waked. He then approached the grated window; Charles’s heart throbbed as if it would have leaped from his bosom, and a tremulous motion of the blanket that covered the Indian might have been seen, but not a word, not a sound escaped
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either. The jailor passed the light over the bars, he grasped on with his hand. Charles felt every droop of blood within him rush to his head, but it tingled again at his finer ends as the jailor said, half to himself, half to Charles, “All’s right, all’s right. When the house got still, I mistrusted I heard a strange noise, but I was mistaken, it’s pretty safe trusting people, be they ever so young and daring, where the blacksmith has done the carpenter’s work.”
“Thank you for your hints,” retorted Charles proudly. “When may we expect the honour of another visit?”
“Betimes, betimes,” was the only reply; and betimes he reappeared. It was an hour before the day dawned. Charles met him at the door. “Oh!” he said imploringly, “do not wake him now; be merciful, and give him one more hour.”
The jailor said he did not “wish to be unmerciful, but that there was a great deal to be done, to get every thing in handsome order for the procession.” But when he looked in and saw the prisoner apparently sleeping sweetly and profoundly, he added, “Well, well, poor fellow! I can be doing something else for one hour,” and again he withdrew.
Punctual to the moment, in one hour precisely he returned – but to what an altered scene! The
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prisoner was gone! – the severed bars lay on the floor, with files and other instruments that had been used to detach them, and our young conspirator stood in the center of the cell; his arms folded, with an air of bold satisfaction at the success of his efforts, while his heart beat with the secret fear that those efforts must at last prove vain. The jailor stood for an instant riveted, then shouted an alarm, and seized Charles by the collar.
“Hands off!” cried Charles, repelling him. “I know my duty, and I will follow you; lock me up where you please, but do not touch me.” There was not time to be lost in parleying or contending. The jailor conveyed Charles to the nearest vacant apartment, which happened to overlook the street in front of the jail. Charles took his station at the grated window, and, breaking through a pane of glass, he remained there, all eye and ear, to get what intimation he might of the fugitive’s peril or reapprehension, which, calculating the little time he had in advance of his pursuers, Charles scarcely hoped could be avoided.
The jail, the whole village, rang with cries of alarm. Men and women came pouring out, half awake and half dressed. The high sheriff was among them, and he immediately directed the pursuit.
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“Let every house, every hiding place in the neighbourhood be searched,” he cried, “he cannot yet have cleared the village.” The jailor ran off with half a score of men; but, halting for a moment, he said, “Mr. Sheriff – there are holsters sleeping in the barn; had they not best be called and sent off on horseback?” The sheriff immediately assented, by directing they should be waked and bidden to lead out their horses and take orders.
They shortly appeared, and a little in advance of the rest, and leading a high-mettled horse, was a tall fellow, extremely thin, with gray pantaloons, boots, a gray cloth round-about buttoned tight to his throat, a check neckcloth, a mass of dark curling hair, bushy whiskers, and a cloth cap. At the first glance at this man, Charles exclaimed “Heaven preserve us!” But who, that had not witnessed the putting on of the disguise, could have suspected that the person who so coolly led up the horse, and stood with such firmness even within the sheriff’s grasp, was the very felon over whom the sentence of death, suspended by the slightest thread, still hung? “And there is Biter too!” half articulated Charles, as his eye fell on the dog, who in the joy of recovered freedom was running hither and yon, with his nose to the ground, shaking his ears, wagging his tail, and snuffing up the fresh
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smell of dewy earth. “Oh, Biter! Why could not I make you stay with me? every body knows his dog. Good heaven Whistler! why don’t you turn your face from the sheriff?”
“Which way shall I go, sir,” asked Whistler of the sheriff. “Ha, “ thought Charles, “I should not know his voice myself.” “Go west, my good fellow,” replied the sheriff; “you have the best horse, and Sam will most like to take that direction. Give notice of his flight to the people on the road. Take a circuit, and come in by the north. You must all be in before night.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Whistler, and mounted his horse, but so unskillfully (for he was as ignorant of horsemanship as his brethren of the wild west) that Charles thought “every body must see the Indian now,” when a new alarm reached him. Mammy appeared on the steps, and thinking, in her blind zeal, that she was delaying the pursuit, screamed at the top of her voice, “Stop that fellow, he is on my horse.”
“Oh Mammy,” murmured Charles, “you have ruined all.” Whistler halted, faced about, and asked the sheriff in the most composed voice, “if he should get another horse?”
The sheriff turned to Mammy, “Do not be
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unreasonable, my good woman,” he said; “the man is to return to-day, and I will be answerable for your horse.”
“But he’s a hired horse sir,” pertinaciously persisted Mammy, “and besides, who knows that fellow that’s on him?”
Charles lost his patience and his self-possession, and screamed through the broken window, “Let him go, Mammy.”
But even this imprudence did not put Whistler off his guard. He gave one glance to Charles that spoke volumes, and then, assuming a look as simple as Mr. Slender’s, he said, “La, old mother, every body hereabouts knows me; I don’t live six miles off; my name is John Smith.”
“Thank heaven, “ thought Charles, “he remembers the name I gave him.” Mammy saw she could effect no farther delay, and muttering, “I suppose the high sheriff must do as he likes, but mind, you sir, don’t you ride that horse fast,” she returned with a heavy heart into the house.
Whistler ventured one more glance at Charles. He even ventured more, for as he again turned the horse’s head he whistled, loud and shrill, one bar of the tune Charles had most loved in their merry greenwood rambles. He then rode off sharply, followed
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by Biter, and soon turning out of the main street to a due west course, disappeared from sight.
All day the pursuit was maintained by foot and horse, but at evening the pursuers returned without any tidings of the fugitive. All returned save the rider of Mammy’s horse, and his absence was explained to the wondering community the next morning, by the appearance of the good steed at his stable door in Shelburne. A full brown wig and whiskers were bound around his neck and well secured by a silk handkerchief marked with the initials C.V. The secret was now out, and there being no vindictiveness towards the fugitive among the kind-hearted people of Berkeley county, there was a prevailing satisfaction in his hair-breadth scape, and a general admiration of the zeal and ingenuity of his young preserver. This was greatly augmented by the belief, disseminated by Charles’s friends and Mammy’s gossips, of Whistler’s innocence of the alleged crime, a belief shortly after substantiated by Ira’s death-bed confession. Charles remained in durance till a statement of the affair, accompanied by a petition for his full pardon, signed by half the entire population of Berkeley county, could be forwarded to the governor. An answer of grace was returned, accompanied by a very proper and severe reprimand
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of the presumption of a youth of fifteen, who had had the hardihood to oppose his opinion to the verdict of twelve honest men, and thereupon to counteract the judicial sentence of the law.
But presumption is the sin of youth. Charles was forgiven his, and, it may be, loved the better for it. Whistler was never again heard of, unless a singular and affecting interview that occurred, many years after, between an Indian who came in a canoe, with a dog blind and decrepit with age, to Perry’s fleet on lake Erie, and a gallant officer who had earned laurels in celebrated victory of the preceding day, revealed the fugitive from BERKELEY JAIL.
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
Berkeley Jail
Subject
The topic of the resource
Prison, Loyalty, Love, Native Americans
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator recounts the story of the Vassal family, whose only surviving member and an old family servant rescue a Native American man, held for the murder of a local white property owner.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>The Atlantic Souvenir</em>, Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1831: 13-53
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Carey and Lea
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1831
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Shawn Riggins, Ciara Freeman, D. Gussman
Language
A language of the resource
English
1831
alcoholism
Atlantic Souvenir
Brutus
Byron
Cicero
civilization
Dogs
Gilbert Glossing
Indians
loyalty
Miranda
mulatto
Native Americans
orphans
Prison
public execution
revenge
sailors
savagery
Seneca tribe
servants
temperance
vanishing race
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/586320d73c995b63356b88ec8c491dd0.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=v5FfmHkRmwigBxvlfjl3gGpQliFZPK78uiQlAI6etxBCZ1UO-EixE9JjO-3oMMlBNDSRM6eUP0FBEZnmPhxY1Ii%7Err9gEqBGqfiifv5E4FuNRUkmJsqkN0YiEOnj6nDXDFfVashZO-Xm7IjuedNcUrsQj3FwUB-XwOWPjP8yXbtM%7EhT4mq2HlCcjmuPtwjuJ0Re2buSdloqrTs1e3xd43%7EtqFzTEALe6vIE0Q2qD9X23f2%7E-cTN56JQrNLDmxfN0fGj5UjrL50G3cNBYDQHgSNvtbSRvvrtaTrRTGE222avdbqMoBZf1zs55mp1c9JoBGD9TslHoQnncQxdPOp-8SQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
8c9f93ccbb7e090aa61f362f898b849d
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
1828
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
Dogs.
William Russel resides in one of our Massachusetts villages. He has recently been to New York; and on the evening after his return, while his brothers and sister were arranging their new toys, he began to describe, as well as he was able, the wonders he had seen in the great city. The toys were soon forsaken to listen to him—John’s stag-hunt was but half set up—Anne’s city looked as if an earthquake had tumbled down churches and houses in hopeless ruin—Mary’s doll was permitted to remain half-dressed—and even little Bess, the baby, caught the spirit of listening, ceased to jingle her silver bells, and , in sympathy with the rest, fixed her eager eye on William.
“Of all that I saw in the city of New York,” proceeded William, “that which pleased me most, was the learned dog, Apollo.”
“That is exactly like you, William,” exclaimed little Mary—“You always seem to care more about dogs, than any thing else.”
“Not one half so much as I care about you, Mary,” said the affectionate boy, kissing his sister’s round, red cheek.
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Mary’s eyes sparkled—she threw her arm over her brother’s shoulder, “Well, tell us all about Apollo, Will,” she said.
William then went on to recount the wonderful performances of this most wonderful of all speechless animals—“Apollo,” he said, “is a Greek by birth,--like many other heroes, a native of the celebrated city of Athens; but he is owned, and has been educated, by an Englishman.”
“Educated, William!” exclaimed John—“a dog educated!—that is a good one!”
“Yes educated, or taught, if you like that better, John,--and if you will please to listen, instead of laughing, you will find that your education had been going on a long time, before you knew as much as Apollo does. When he was exhibited, a circular piece of baize was spread on the floor, and twenty six cards placed around its edge, with the alphabet printed on one side of them, and numbers, up to twenty-six, on the other. The spectators encircled the baize. They were requested, by Apollo’s master, to ask him to spell any name, that occurred to them. Several names were put to him, which he invariably spelt right.”
“Could he speak?” asked Mary.
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“Oh! no—no Mary—I never heard of but one dog, that could speak—a dog belonging to a peasant of Misnias; and he could pronounce but twenty-five words.”
“A dog speak!” said Mary, shaking her head incredulously—“that I never will believe.”
“Neither should I believe it, Mary, but papa read me the account, which is by Leibnitz, a great philosopher, who saw the dog,--and I had rather believe a dog could speak, than that a great man would give a false report. But though my dog Apollo cannot speak, he makes himself perfectly understood. For instance, if I say ‘Apollo, spell Mary!’ He walks slowly round the cards—stops before M a r y , and puts his nose down to each; or, if you choose, he will bring them, and lay them at your feet.”
“Ah, but Mary is a very, very short name; do you believe he could spell Alexander?” asked the little girl.
“Yes—I put that to him myself, and several other names; but he astonished me still more when he came to his arithmetic.”
“Arithmetic!” exclaimed John—“well, if a dog can learn arithmetic, I hope I shall have a little more patience with it.”
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“Yes, arithmetic. He will multiply, or subtract, any number within twenty-five. For instance, you ask him, ‘Apollo, how much is five times four?’ and he will bring you the card, on which twenty is printed. Or, if you say ‘Apollo, add together three times five, and subtract six,’ he will bring you the card, on which nine is printed.”
“Oh!” said John, “he could not know all that. It is a mere trick. I dare say his master makes him some private sign.”
“Ah John, as a gentleman said at the show, to get rid of one difficulty, you make a greater. Many of the spectators were watching the master, and they could not perceive the least communication between him and the dog; so the dog, to see these signs, which you suppose, must have had keener wits than any of us. He did many other things; but they did not appear so wonderful to me, because they were uniform answers to certain questions, which might have been often repeated to him. For instance, he would tell the capitals of all our States, and of the countries of Europe:--where he was born—his age—the places he had visited, &c. He had even made acquaintance with the stars; could tell you the
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names of the planets, their distance from one another; and from the earth—the time they take to make their revolutions round the sun; and, in short,” continued William, smiling, “he is quite a Newton among dogs.”
After the children had exhausted their inquiries and expressions of admiration, William asked his mother if she did not think that, at some future time, there would be schools for dogs, as there were now for children. His mother thought no. “Men,” she said, “teach one another. One race of boys educated, teaches the next; but God, in denying speech to dogs, has denied them the power of transmitting their knowledge. Apollo, learned as he is, cannot impart his knowledge to another dog;--and it is not probable that man will ever make it his business to teach inferior animals, since such knowledge could be of no use after it ceased to be a curiosity. But, my children, we ought to be very glad to see the art of man employed on any other powers in dogs than the power of destruction. How much pains have been taken to train this interesting and useful animal to pursue and destroy other animals. In England, our mother country, dogs have been trained to fight, and tear bulls, for
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the amusement of the people. This disgusting sport was called bull-baiting. Even queens forgot the gentleness of their sex so far, as to be present at these sports. Queen Mary entertained a French ambassador, for two days successively, with an exhibition of this kind, only fit for Hottentots—and was herself present.”
“Perhaps, mamma,” said William, “these horrid spectacles made her cruel; for that Mary was the queen who put to death so many of her own subjects that she was called ‘bloody Mary!’”
“Yes, William, such sports would certainly have a tendency to confirm a cruel disposition. You will find that most kind-hearted people are kind to animals. He who treats his horses and cows with care and tenderness, will not neglect his wife and children.”
“You agree with the poet Cowper, mamma. Do you remember those lines you once pointed out to me:
‘The heart is hard in nature, and unfit
For human fellowship, as being void
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike
To love and friendship both, that is not pleased
With sight of animals enjoying life.’”
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“Yes, my dear—and I thank you for remembering them. Cowper is a case in point himself. He was one of the most tender-hearted men that ever lived; and the history of his three little pet hares, Tiny, Puss, and Bet, which he has told so beautifully himself, and which you have all read, is a proof of his love of animals. But we were speaking of the cruelties taught to dogs. Do you know, William, that formerly blood-hounds were trained to pursue malefactors? This might be excused, on the ground that murderers and robbers deserved no mercy; but no apology can be made for the French of St. Domingo, one of the West India islands. Their slaves rebelled, and, determined to be free, carried on a war against their masters, by which they finally obtained their liberty. During this contest, the French trained blood-hounds to pursue and devour the negroes. I will read you the description of this mode of training the dogs, as it is given in the Encyclopedia.” William’s mother took down the book, and read the following extract:--
“In training the hounds to this inhuman pursuit, they are confined in a kennel, sparred like a cage, and sparingly supplied with the
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blood of other animals. The figure of a negro, in wicker-work, stuffed with blood and entrails, was occasionally exhibited in the upper part of the cage: the dogs struggled against their confinement, and as their impatience increased, the effigy was brought nearer and nearer, while their usual subsistence was gradually diminished. At length the figure was resigned to them; and while voraciously tearing it up, and devouring its contents, they were encouraged by the caresses of their keepers. Thus their hatred to black, and their love to white men, were, at the same time, excited. When their training was complete, they were sent out to the chase. The miserable negro had no means of escape; he was hunted down, and torn to pieces; his wife and children, perhaps, sharing his misfortune. This, however, was not the full extent of the calamity. The dogs frequently broke loose, and infants were devoured in an instant form the public way—sometimes the proceeded to the neighbouring woods, and surprising a harmless family of labourers, at their simple meal, tore the babe from the breast of its mother, or devoured the whole party, and returned with their jaws drenched in gore.”
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The children were loud in their expressions of indignation at these base cruelties; and, turning from them to the more agreeable subject of Apollo, they again discussed his accomplishments.
“After all, mother,” said Mary, “though I should like of all things to see Apollo, and I know I should admire him, yet I never could love him so much as I do poor Clara’s little dog, Foot.”
“No, my dear—because though talents, in man, woman, child, or dog, may excite our admiration, it is goodness that touches our hearts. Your eyes are wide open with wonder when you hear of Apollo; but the other day, when you witnessed the fidelity of Foot, they were moistened with tears of sympathy and tenderness.”
“Tears! Did we shed tears, mother?” asked Mary. “I am sure my feelings were pleasant.”
“They were indeed, Mary; but some of our pleasantest feelings bring tears to our eyes.”
That our young readers may understand what were the pleasant feelings, that brought tears to the eyes of these good children, we must tell the story of Clara, and her dog Foot.
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Clara, or rather Clary, (for I would give the accustomed sound to her name) is a poor girl in our village, who has suffered from epileptic fits; which, for the time, suspend her faculties, and have gradually impaired them, till she has become, in country phrase, quite “underwitted.” She leads, for the most part, an idle, vagrant life, straying about the field, gathering fruits, and collecting roots, and wildflowers. She may be seen every day, sauntering through our village-street, in rain, snow, and driving wind, heedless of the weather, excepting in the bitterest cold of winter, when she steals to some kindly hearth, and putting to the fire her feet, which appear half frozen through her torn shoes, she looks up with a vacant smile, and says, like Shakespeare’s fool, “poor Clary’s a-cold.”
Her little terrier dog, Foot, is always by her side—the only living thing that seems to love her—the only one she loves. When she ploughs through the deep snows, he follows, jumping and frisking, and half buried at every plunge;--and through the dismal rains, the poor fellow appears, still performing his forlorn duty, his head drooping, and his tail curled close to his legs. But in the fine, bright summer days, Foot has his pleasures too.
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When Clary is marching under the shade of the beautiful maples, that line our street—her torn frock trailing on the ground—her calico bonnet hanging back from her weather-beaten face—her alms-basket dangling on her arm,--and her knitting, (her constant occupation) in her hands, little Foot appears full of life and spirits. Every child in the street knows Foot—all respect his devoted friendship for Clary, (for true friendship, even in dogs, is beautiful,) and every little girl and boy gives him a kind word, or caress, or perchance a bit of gingerbread from the school-basket. Even the dogs—and there is an uncommon population of that race in our village—even the dogs bound towards little Foot with kind salutations, while he returns their greeting with a frolicksome play, and a short, joyous bark. But that which is most worthy of record about Foot, and that which excited the admiration of our young friends, yet remains to be told.
Poor Clary is sometimes seized with her fits by the road-side. During the paroxysms, and the long sleep, which sometimes succeeds them, Foot never quits her side. I saw him on one of these occasions, his paws placed on her arm, looking intently in his poor mistress’
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face, and yelping most piteously. “What,” thought I, “must be the tenderness of that Great Being, who has put such compassionate feelings into the breast of this little dog!”
Foot sometimes renders Clary essential service. Once, when she was returning from the fields, with a basket of fine strawberries, she sat down to rest herself, and was seized with a fit. A boy was passing, with an empty basket. He espied Clary’s beautiful strawberries, he saw she was unconscious, and he was tempted to steal them. He knew it was wicked to steal, and that this was cruel stealing,--but the pleasure of gratifying his appetite with the delicious fruit, was uppermost in his mind. He stole softly towards the strawberries, and was just emptying them into his own basket, when Foot sprang on him, grasped his coat between his teeth, and held him fast. The boy in vain tried to beat him off—he snarled, and threatened to bite him, but did not quit his hold. The boy then thought of screaming for help, but then whoever came to his relief, would be a witness of his disgrace. He stood, for a few moments, pondering in silence—then stooped down, poured the pilfered strawberries again into Clary’s basket, and placed it
[42]
close to her side. When he had thus repaired his fault, Foot quietly released his prisoner, and returned to his mistress’ side. To the honor of the boy, it should be told, that he afterwards related the story himself; and said, that no spoken reproof—no whipping, ever made him suffer so much as the shame he felt, when he compared his dishonesty with the fidelity of this little brute.
I have often thought, when I looked on Clary and Foot, that there was no creature which walked on the earth, for whom God had not provided some pleasure. The possession of this little dumb friend, seems, in some measure, to be a compensation to Clary for her misfortunes. I thought so last week, when I went to her mother’s house, on a sorrowful occasion. She has been the most afflicted woman in our village; and last week, her husband, an industrious, hard-working man, died, after a few hours’ sickness. When I entered their miserable dwelling, I found that some kind neighbours had already been there, and the poor man was decently laid out, in an inner room. His son, a boy ten years old, who, a short time before, had his arms crushed in a mill, and afterwards amputated, sat by him, weeping bitterly; the mother, a poor paralytic,--one half of her body dead,
[43]
was attempting to hush a famishing, crying baby; a little girl, the image of gentleness and patience, but pale, and emaciated with disease, and deformed with dropsy, lay on a ragged coverlet, in the middle of the floor. Clary sat on the door-stone, caressing Foot, in happy unconsciousness of the misery around her. Her eye rested on me for a moment, while I sat feeding the baby, and she seemed to notice the tears I dropped on the helpless little thing, as if she half understood my emotion; but presently turning again to Foot, and renewing her play with him, she said, with one of her strange, vacant laughs, “But you and I have pleasant times, for all—don’t we, Foot?”
I will not write out the moral of my story; for I well remember when I was a child, how I hated those formal morals to Aesop’s fables; how I thought them a dead weight, which almost crushed the life out of the pleasant story that went before them; and beside, I do not doubt my readers have sagacity enough to perceive, that little Mary preferred Foot, on account of his affection and fidelity, and we hope, that like her, they will always set the qualities of the heart above the faculties of the mind—goodness above genius.
Stockbridge. S.
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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Dogs
Subject
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Dogs, dog-training, cruelty to animals, loyalty, goodness versus genius..
Description
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After an older brother tells his younger siblings all about an extraordinary dog he encountered in New York City, his mother criticizes animal cruelty and reminds them of the fidelity and goodness of dogs.
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Sedgwick, Catharine M.
"Stockbridge S."
Source
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<em>The Juvenile Miscellany</em> [edited by Lydia Maria Child], (March 1828): 30-43
Date
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1828
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L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman
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Reprinted as <em>The Sagacity of Dogs.</em> Boston: Marsh & Capen, 1828. Collected in <em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, 153-63, 1840.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
Animal Cruelty
Bloodhounds
Dog Fighting
Dogs
Fidelilty
Goodness
Juvenile fiction
Juvenile Miscellany
Mothers
Siblings
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/b5170ace0a5e71f14a241266bff9a4f7.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=YsWb9oXMwUo5u8OuTfoQgiXJF-I9vFq4eocNam3bok2U6zFAf3SRfymHKDhw9ghMDCV5E3lkSgnVs8aiJjqRoNzqV51N13JS9fxrM7YjOPzbGyaWLLsE-ObekbckLdSZabvcWFtioEn8HvefLsZdQxhQmwkt%7E86MhgG9W1H6cEgqE42QZwHB1S8OkQ%7EFvciadCD9uwZxo8FCaAImCLp-wLUyj3swn-PpB8RwwANbbBPuocvOH2g03FmzDGfRxJcNaA3jRXyfLzUbPopOouCCCq5E9H2o2WZveOxCLyvRQwO4G4k%7E9fJoKIzfgaGmIVGK0XemKEwZXq5nojx1SR540A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
38fe14cdc1357de75d3c600d0affdbbe
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Title
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1832
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Stories published in 1832
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“Country Pleasures” by Miss Sedgwick
Mr. Astley, a gentleman residing in New York, --whether last year, or twenty years ago, I am not bound to tell,--had one child, Lucy, a little girl ten years old. Mr. Astley had been very unfortunate in the loss of an only son; and one year after that event, the death of Lucy’s mother had bereft him of all that was very near or dear to him, excepting this child, in whom his affections were now fearfully concentrated. Lucy’s health, too, had suffered from the diseases incident to childhood, and perhaps from anxious tenderness of her father, the zeal of her physician, and the watching of her nurses. She looked like a delicate flower that the first rude blast must sweep from its parent-stem. The loss of her little playfellow had affected her spirits. She missed her mother too, every hour in the day; and though it is not common for children to look back on the past, poor Lucy could not help it. Every desire and feeling that rose in her bosom reminded her of her mother; for to her she had gone to tell every want, every joy, and every sorrow.
The nursery, where her mother always sat ready to join in the sports of her children, to assist their studies, or settle their little disputes, seemed now like a tomb to poor Lucy; and though it was filled with books and toys of every description, Lucy would sit there without the power of occupying or amusing herself. “Do take a book, Lucy,” said her kind nurse, Mary: “Here is this beautiful Arabian Nights, with the large pictures.” “There is no pleasure in reading it now,” replied Lucy. “I can’t go to mamma to explain it.” “Well then, Lucy, take these nice painted bricks, and build you a castle.” Lucy complied, for she hated to be sulky; and when it was done, she burst into tears, saying, “Oh, poor Willie! if he were only here to toss it over, and build another.” The nurse gently put away the bricks, drew out the table, and placed on it some paper, brushes, and a paint-box that had been bought for Lucy’s amusement; for she had not yet taken lessons in drawing. Lucy attempted a bunch of flowers, but soon pushed away the paper, saying she could do nothing now.
The nursery was shut up, and another apartment of the large house fitted up for Lucy and her nurse; but still her health and spirits did not return. Her father was advised to send her into the country for the summer; but his business kept him in the city, and he had not resolution to part with her. He hoped that short excursions would revive her. He took her often to Rockaway, and Staten Island, and sent her almost every afternoon to the beautiful walks of Hoboken. Still poor Lucy remained pale and spiritless. At last, the physician advised Mr. Astley so earnestly to send her for two or three months into the country, that he became alarmed, and consented. She was sent to her aunt Ames, in Massachusetts.
I am obliged to tell my young readers some particulars that I had rather not communicate; but it is perhaps best they should know what a mixed material human character is. Generosity is sometimes found with much selfishness; and a person who has lived a long while without manifesting it may, if addressed in the right way, or by the right person, be found capable of this noble quality. Though Lucy’s father was by no means an avaricious man, he set a high value on his wealth. He lived in expensive style, and gave on all common occasions of giving; but the truth that he was merely God’s steward, and bound to apply the fortune in his hands to the best uses for others, as well as himself, seemed not to have occurred to him.
When his son died, he felt more than ever the insecurity of every earthly possession, and endeavoured to secure his property from the mischances that might befall it. Might it not have been the design of Heaven in removing his only son, that he should open his heart and his doors to the unportioned children of others?
We must go back a few months in our story. Lucy’s aunt Ames was the only sister of her mother. Both sisters were born to fortune and delicately bred. Mrs. Ames’ husband was a man of integrity and wit—a man of the soundest judgement I have ever known, in other people’s affairs; his own he fatally mismanaged; and finally, when but a remnant of their property remained, he sent his wife and boys to live on a farm in Massachusetts, while he went forth full of admirable plans and plausible projects to seek his fortune. Mrs. Ames suffered the changes in her condition without repining. If she had ceased to hope for much, she desired little, and seemed to regret nothing but that she had not the means to educate her boys. Liston, the eldest, was obliged to work on the farm. He had early shown a talent for painting. When he was but four years old, he drew on his slate his father’s dog, Argus, (the dog then twice the size of the artist,) saying as he did so, “Ah! Argy, I can do it all but the wagging of your tail.”
As he grew older, his passion for the art increased to such a degree that he had little interest in any other study or pursuit. His tasks done,--he did them, for he was a most dutiful child,--he was sketching his mother, his brothers, his dog, his cat, the mountains, the trees, the clouds, the fences, the old well, the broken horse-block; nothing was too high or too humble for Liston’s pencil. “The best thing you could do with that boy, Mrs. Ames,” said a friend, who had been looking over Liston’s drawings, “is to send him to live with his uncle Astley, to be bred to the profession of painting.” Mrs. Ames, whatever she thought, merely replied, “I could not ask such a favour of Mr. Astley.” “Nothing ask, nothing have,” said her adviser; and the conversation was dropped.
Was it not strange that Mr. Astley did not endeavor to supply society to his daughter by taking into his family one of her cousins? I have often wondered at seeing persons who had large and half-fulfilled houses, neglect those charitable hospitalities that would cost them so little, and do so much good to others. We have much to wonder at in this world of ours, with the evil that is done, and the good that is not done! After much hesitation, and much anxiety, lest Mr. Astley might think she meant indirectly to ask his aid, Mrs. Ames addressed a letter to him, stating Liston’s decided taste and talent for painting; and requesting Mr. Astley to show some specimens which she enclosed to a judicious artist, and if they should be approved, to tell her if he knew any mode by which Liston could support himself while he was acquiring the art.
In a few days, she received the following reply:--
“My dear Sister,
“I send you back the specimens, which you will perceive I have not opened, as I feared I would not be able to do them up so neatly again, and I have no curiosity in such matters.
“I did not think it worth while to trouble an artist to look at them, as I am decidedly against Liston entering on the business. It is a beggarly profession to all but those who are at the head of it; which he would have a slender chance of being. I advise you by all means to enter him in the mercantile line. A country store is as good a place as can be for beginning. Remember me to Liston and your other boys. As the nephews of my dear and lamented wife, their welfare will always interest me. I enclose $20, which you will do me the favour to use for them; and believe me.
“Your affectionate brother, R. Astley.”
Had Mrs. Ames been a proud, or an impetuous woman, she might have thrown the letter and the bank-note into the fire; but she was gentle, reasonable, and thoroughly disciplined; and after the first sharp pang of disappointment had subsided, she said, “It is possible that Mr. Astley judges better than I do. I ought not to have expected he would enter into our views. At any rate, poor Liston shall not have the mortification of knowing that his sketches were never looked at;” and she carefully locked them in her desk.
It was not long after this that Mr. Astley wrote to request she would receive Lucy and her nurse for a few weeks. She answered him that nothing could gratify her so much as to have Lucy with her; but she strongly advised against the nurse being sent, as she thought an entire change of life would be best for her niece.
Mr. Astley perceived the good sense of this suggestion; and accordingly the nurse was ordered, after leaving Lucy with her aunt, to return immediately to New-York.
It was a bitter parting. The kind nurse doated on Lucy, and Lucy thought she must be miserable without her, who had supplied all her wants, even to the brushing of her hair, and tying up her shoe-strings. “Oh dear, Mary,” said she, “what shall I do without you? who will dress me in the morning, and fix me for dinner? and put me to bed? Do tell aunt I can’t go to sleep without a light in my room; and do not ask her, as father told you, to have a fire made for me to dress by, of damp mornings; and do tell her I am afraid of dogs, and horribly afraid of cats;--oh, Mary, what shall I do!”
The nurse soothed and promised; but poor Lucy was left with the conviction that she must be miserable till she saw her again. It so happened, that just at the time of Lucy’s visit, Mrs. Ames’ sons were all absent from home, excepting Liston; who was usually employed on the farm during the day; and of course Lucy was left very much alone with her aunt. On the day of the nurse’s departure, Mrs. Ames in vain tried to interest the poor girl. Her aunt proposed a walk. Walking, Lucy said, tired her. Her aunt brought to her all her boys’ store of books; some Lucy had read, and some she did not care to read. Her aunt proposed her beginning a little fancy-work on muslin; Lucy said she had never loved to work since her mother died; and hiding her starting tears, she turned her back to her aunt, sat down at the window, the picture of despair, for half an hour; then complained of a violent head-ache, and got a bottle of Cologne and some drops her nurse had left for her; and asking her aunt if she might write a few lines to Mary, (the nurse,) she wrote the following; on which might be easily seen the traces of her tears.
“Oh, Mary, I am dreadfully homesick! Pray ask father to come next week. I am sure the country will not agree with me, for I have a miserable head-ache already. I have forgotten which box of pills you told me to take first; pray send me word by the first mail, for you known the doctor wished me to be particular about taking them; though aunt don’t seem to think it of any consequence. She says she thinks country air is the best medicine for me. She is very, very kind to me; but I cannot be happy, for all that. Now, Mary, don’t you for the world tell papa, or any body, what I am going to tell you; for I don’t suppose aunt can afford any thing better. We had nothing for dinner to-day but boiled eggs and bread and butter!! I am afraid I shall starve to death. Give my love to papa, but do not show him this letter. Only beg him to come for me as soon as possible.”
Before Lucy had quite finished her letter, she heard her cousin Liston’s pleasant voice calling her. She threw her paper into her trunk, and ran down stairs. He had brought her home a nest with two young blackbirds. A sportsman had shot the mother-bird, and Liston told her he had brought them home to her care, and she must be their foster-mother. He fixed them snugly in a basket, which was to be placed out of the cat’s reach; and he instructed Lucy how to take care of them.
Lucy was delighted. Above all things she said she had desired to see the wild, little living birds, in a real nest; and now she should rear them herself, and see for herself if all she had heard of their instinct was true; and she sat, with the basket on her lap, watching them till it was quite dark, and they had lain their heads under their wings, and were fast asleep. She then covered them with wool, that they might not miss the warmth of their mother brooding over them; ate a hasty but very hearty supper, (as the abundant country tea was called;) for she was anxious to see Liston prepare the mother-bird (that he had brought home for that purpose) for stuffing.
The next day she had not time to finish the letter; nor the next; nor the next; and at last, when reminded by her aunt that she had promised her father should hear once a week, she added the following
“Postscript.—My dear Mary, I have a great deal to tell you, but I shall leave it for a letter to papa. You need not speak to the doctor about the pills, for I do believe aunt was right about the country air. I have not felt a head-ache since the day you went away. For pity’s sake do not say a word about aunt’s dinners. To be sure, they are very different from ours; but I eat twice as much as I did at home, and it tastes forty times as good. Give my love to papa. Oh, above all, don’t hurry his coming for me. In great haste, dear Mary, your affectionate and grateful friend,
Lucy.”
I think my young readers would prefer to have Lucy’s own account of her country pleasures. I have therefore copied the letter she wrote to her father.
“My dear Papa,--you wished me to write to you every thing that occurred to me, and especially about my health. I have not thought of it this three weeks, only when my belts pinched me; and aunt has been kind enough to let them out. I have delightful walks with aunt; and sometimes Liston is with us; but he is at work most almost all day, and it is only in the evening he can do what he chooses. Then he stuffs birds, and mounts them, and draws and paints, and reads poetry to me; and now for the first time I enjoy that which describes nature; for Liston teaches me to observe where it is true, and where it is not. I think Mr. Bryant must have lived in this part of the country; for, as Liston says, his poetry is like a mirror, in which you see these very mountains, and trees, and flowers, reflected. There is a beautiful piece about the death of the flowers, in which he says:
‘The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the briar-rose and the orchids died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland glade and glen.’
“Now, papa, as you love truth, just observe how true the poetry is. Yesterday afternoon we were walking; the air was soft, and had that sweet smell of the wild woods, that comes from the fallen leaves. The mountains, and the hollows among them, looked blue, and smoky, and far off; the golden-rod and the asters were as bright as summer flowers, and the fringed gentian
‘With its sweet and quiet eye
Looked through its fringes to the sky’
I gathered my hands full of these flowers—I repeated to aunt the poetry that describes them; and I felt grateful to the poet, who had made these wild flowers seem as if they were giving me the welcome of friends to their home on the hill-side. Last night ‘fell the frost from the clear cold heaven’ and the flowers are blighted black, and shriveled in ‘glad and glen.’ Still there is beauty, and, as Liston says, a ‘visible poetry’ in the woods; such as I never dreamed of when I was shut up in the city. The keen frost has suddenly turned the leaves to glowing and glorious colours. I cannot describe them; but if you were here I should say, ‘See, papa, just below those bare flinty crags of the mountain, see the young oaks a bright red; then masses of evergreen; a towering pine there; and there slender graceful tameracks: and oh, see where the sun’s rays slanting from that dark cloud dance along the tops of that long line of maples. The foliage of other trees turns of one colour; but that of the maple is yellow, orange, crimson, red, scarlet, purple, and bronze. Some of the branches appear as if every leaf had been dipped in sun-set dyes; and others seem as if the edge of the leaves had been crimsoned or gilded by some careful hand.
“It is as Liston says, the maple is among trees like trout among fish, and swans among birds—most beautiful in dying. But I am tiring you. I forget that which is so beautiful to me can be dull to you. I now feel what little Lizzy said after she came back to New-York: ‘Oh, we have but one battery here, and it is all battery in the country.’ We have such a variety of pleasures; Liston makes friends of every thing, even of bees and wasps; at least, friends of the first, and acquaintance of the last. He has opened some wasps’ cells, to show me some little spiders that the wasps had enclosed in these prisons, to be food for their young. I must tell you two anecdotes of Liston’s bees.
“Liston has several hives, and Mr. Davis, who lives on the next farm to aunt’s, has several more. One of Mr. Davis’ swarms came and made war on one of Liston’s. They fought desperately, for two or three days; at last Mr. Davis’ swarm submitted; but the curious part of it is, that the conquerors made slaves, or as Liston calls them, helots of their captives, and the poor creatures were compelled to convey their whole store of honey to the hives of their vanquishers. The other story is more pleasing: for, as Liston says, I hate to see that even bees can be, like men, cruel and oppressive. Liston examined one of his hives some weeks since, and found the bees had made very little honey—not enough he thought to last them through the winter—and so thought the bees; for they went to the woods, and struck a bargain with some wild bees, whom Liston observed working with his bees, and after days they all disappeared. Liston examined the hive, and found they had carried off every particle of honey. He believes they, finding their provision was like to fall short, agreed with the wild bees to join stocks. What a long letter I have written! Farewell, dear papa. Give my love to Mary, and tell her I am no longer a drone in the hive, but as busy and happy as she would wish me.
“Your affectionate daughter, Lucy.”
“My dear Papa,--I remember once reading a true story of the Caliph Abdelrahman, who was one of the greatest and richest of all the Caliphs of Bagdad. He had an immense retinue of slaves, dressed in gold and gems. His palace was hung with tapestry of silk, embroidered with gold. Among other beautiful things, he had a large tree of solid gold, spreading into branches, and covered with gold and silver birds. There was machinery, so arranged that the leaves moved as if stirred by the wind, and the birds sang. In short, this Caliph had every thing that riches could procure; and when he died a paper was found in his closet, on which he had written: ‘Riches, honor, power, and pleasure have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation I have diligently numbered the happy days that have fallen to my lot; the amount to fourteen!’
“Poor Caliph Abdelrahman! In all your life, you had not half so many happy days as I have had since I came to aunt Ames’! And yet here are no riches, no slaves, no gems, no gold trees, and silver birds. But here are kind hearts,--the kindest in the world,--and minds taught to perceive the wisdom and goodness that appear in God’s works. Liston makes every thing interesting. His dog and his cat seem to have more character than most of men.
“I suppose it is because we observe them narrowly, and because Liston cultivates all their faculties. Argus, the dog, seems to hear Liston’s footstep when he is returning home, at the distance of half a mile, and runs half frantic with joy to meet him. If Liston reproves him, nobody can console him; he will not eat, nor even wag his tail, till his master receives him into favour again. But the best thing of all is to see his friendship for the cat. Argus had been gone for two days, and when he returned he fawned over Juno, and licked her face as lovingly as if they had been born friends. Liston says he does not believe there is any natural enmity between men or beasts but what may be overcome. Our cat, Juno, is a most sagacious and, as Liston says, loyal cat. Would you believe it, papa,--if she takes any mice, or other prey, when her master is absent, she hides it till he returns—does not disturb a hair of it; and when he comes in she lays it at his feet; and after he has patted and stroked her, she drags it away into some dark corner and devours it,* as cats will.
“Last year Liston had a pair of grey squirrels quite tame, who used to leap on his head and shoulders, and feed from his hand; most amusing little pets they were. Liston named them Robin Hood and Little John. They built them a cunning little house of leaves on the maple trees before the door, and they hid their winter store of nuts in different parcels. Liston says it was curious to observe the accuracy of their memories. After the snow fell, they would go precisely to the places where they had deposited their nuts, brush off the snow, and bring them to their leafy house. When the spring came, the little rogues, like Robin Hood and little John of old, preferred the revels of the merry green wood, and they scampered off; but every now and then they come to pay their liege-lord a visit. Oh, dear papa, aunt is to me what the green wood is to the squirrel; and my visit is almost finished! Do not think I shall be sorry to go home to you; but how shall I ever again live without Liston? Our big house will seem very solitary after being where we can talk to one another from one end of the house to the other—the advantage of this old rickety house, as Liston says. Old and rickety it may be; but I am sure no palace was ever pleasanter. My love to Mary, and tell her I wish she could live in the country, so that she might be sure of being far happier than the Caliph Abdelrahman.
“Your affectionate child, Lucy.”
My friend Lucy was a more faithful correspondent than most young ladies of her age, and I have still another letter of hers to present to my young readers, which I hope they will have the patience to read.
“Dear Papa, --I send you with this letter a picture which Liston has been painting, and which he says I must tell you is a present from myself! Do write me by the next mail, and tell me if you think the picture like me; and how you like the bird, and Argus; and if Juno does not look very funnily with my necklace on; and if you do not think my black prince” (the name Lucy had given her blackbird) “is a most graceful little fellow. Poor Liston; I have found out that he is not so perfectly happy as I supposed.
*As some of my readers may doubt the accuracy of Lucy’s statement, I assure them that this anecdote is literally true, of a well trained favourite, as well as the other particulars she relates of Liston’s squirrels, &c. Her cousin Liston is a friend of mine, who has La Fontaine’s power of making animals almost as interesting as his own species.
He very seldom paints now; and aunt says it is because he is so fond of it that if he indulges himself he cannot relish any other employment. I asked aunt why he did not go to N. York and learn painting for a profession. For a good while she did not give me any satisfactory answer; but I teased her, till she told me he could not support himself there while learning. Oh, papa! the thought came into my head like a flash, how pleasant it would be to have Liston live with us! And as to his support, I am certain you would rather give him that, than not. Since my dear brother is gone, should not his vacant place be filled, and that which he cannot now enjoy be given to another? If we have Liston with us, he will make all our days happy days. He is better than all the gold and gems of the Caliph of Bagdad. Do please let me know very soon how you like the plan. I have not hinted it to Liston, for I wish him to think it first comes from you; and so I am sure it would, if you knew Liston as well as I do, and had not so much business to think of. I am afraid Liston would not like to go, if he knew I had asked you to invite him. In haste, dear papa, for I am going walnutting. Oh, how pleasant to hear the nuts rattle down, when Liston throws a club among the branches. In haste,
“Your affectionate Lucy.”
The picture Lucy sent was a sketch of herself—her pretty blackbird perched on her hand, and picking a seed from off her rosy lip; Argus and Juno were playing at her feet. This pacquet met with a kinder fate than the one sent by Mrs. Ames. Though done up in the neatest manner, Mr. Astley opened it, and the next day wrote the following letter to Lucy:--
“My dear child,--I have received your letter and the picture. The picture surprised me. The drawing is beautiful; and the portrait precisely like you, except that my pale sickly little girl appears as ruddy and fat as a Hebe. Heaven grant your cousin has not flattered you. The hope of seeing you looking as healthy as your picture does, has already given me one of your Sultan’s happy days. I sent Liston’s picture to Mr. -----, whom I took upon as our first artist. I asked him to give me his honest opinion of the boy’s talent, and also to inform me on what terms he would give him the necessary instruction to fit him for his profession. You will like to see his answer, and I hear transcribe it for you.
“’Mr. ---- presents his compliments to Mr. Astley, and informs him that he would not receive his nephew for ten thousand dollars. The boy would take the bread out of Mr. ------‘s mouth.
“’Seriously, my dear sir, send the lad to me as soon as possible; no time is to be lost. As to terms, I can scarcely fail to be his debtor; for all the instruction I can give will be more than remunerated by the aid he can give me in my pictures. I shall be proud of such a pupil.’
“Now, my dear Lucy, this gratifies me. I like to have young men pay their own way; it inspires them with an honorable feeling of independence, and a sense of the value of time and talent. You are right, my child; when it pleased God to take my boy, I should have given the portion thrown back upon my hands to another. Liston shall have a home with us. I will take care of his necessary expenses. If he make you happy, my dear Lucy, he will far more than repay me; for he will give us what the Caliph Abdelrahman could not buy with all his wealth.”
Inclosed in Lucy’s letter was a very kind one to Mrs. Ames, from Mr. Astley, apologizing for the neglect with which he had, on a former occasion, treated her views for Liston, and closing with a proposal that he should be sent to town with Lucy; and that Mrs. Ames, her other boys being disposed of at school, should pass the winter at his house.
Perhaps my young readers have yet to learn, that it is far more difficult for a generous and delicate person to receive a favour with grace, than to bestow one. Mrs. Ames could do both. One month had not passed away before she was happily established in Mr. Astley’s house; and Liston was pursuing the profession, now happily within his grasp, with the avidity and joy that belong to talent and diligence united. Lucy did not forget her mother, but she constantly felt that the friend next dearest was with her. Neither did she forget her beloved brother; but his spirit of love and cheerfulness seemed restored to her in her cousin. Gloom was banished from the house, and the sweet music of quick footsteps and happy voices resounded there.
My young friends, had the Caliph Abdelrahman employed his wealth to make others happy, would he not himself have enjoyed more than fourteen happy days?
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Country Pleasures
Subject
The topic of the resource
Country versus city life.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator writes of a little girl, Lucy, who recently lost her mother and brother to death. Her father sends her to live with her aunt and cousin for a year in the country.
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>Juvenile Miscellany</em> [edited by Lydia M. Child] (May and June 1832): 111-34.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1832
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
L. Damon-Bach, Meghan Smith
Relation
A related resource
Collected in <em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, 125-41, 1840.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
"The Death of the Flowers"
"To the Fringed Gentian"
Arabian Nights
Bees
Blackbirds
Caliph Abdelrahman
cats
Country
Depression
Dogs
Hoboken
Juvenile fiction
Juvenile Miscellany
letters
Little John
Massachusetts
New York City
Painting
poetry
Robin Hood
Rockaway
Sketching
squirrels
Staten Island
Wildlife
William Cullen Bryant