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1833
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Stories published in 1833.
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A REMINISCENCE OF FEDERALISM
By Miss Sedgwick
‘O shame on men! devil with devil damn’d,
Firm concord holds: men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace: and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife.’
Milton.
A calm observer who has scarcely lived half the age of man, must look back with a smile at human frailty, rather than with a harsher feeling upon the subjects that have broken the world in which he has lived, (be it a little or a great one,) into opposed and contending parties. The stream for a while glides on with an unbroken surface, a snag interposes, and the waters divide, and fret, and foam around it till chance or time sweep it away, when they again commingle, and flow on their natural unruffled union. This is the common course of human passions. The subject in dispute may be more of less dignified; the succession to an empire, or to a few acres of sterile land; the rival claims of candidates for the presidency, or competitors for a village clerkship; the choice of a minister to England, or the minister of our parish; the position of a capital city, or of an obscure meeting house;* [1] the excellence of a Catalani, or of a rustic master of psalmody; a dogma
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in religion or politics; in short any thing, to which, as with the shield in the fable, there are two sides.
Some who have lived to swell the choral song to Adams and Jefferson, and blend their names in one harmonious peal, will remember when the one, in his honest distinction, was a patriot hero, and the other the arch enemy of his country. For myself, having been bred, according to the strictest sect of my political religion, a federalist, I regarded Mr. Jefferson, (whom all but his severest enemies do not now deny, to have been a calm, and at least well-intentioned philosopher,) as embodying in his own person whatever was impracticable, heretical and corrupt in politics, religion and morals. Some impressions of my early childhood which were connected with the subsequent fate of obscure but interesting individuals, have preserved a vivid recollection of those party strifes that should now only be remembered to assuage the heat of present controversies.
I was sent when a very young child, (I am not the hero of my own story, my readers must therefore bear with a little prefatory egotism,) to pass the summer in a clergyman’s family in Vermont, in a village which I shall take the liberty to call Carrington. Whether I was sent there for the advantage of a better school than my own village afforded, or for the flattering reason that governs the disposition of most younger children in a large family, to be got out of the way, the domestic archives do not reveal. Whatever was the motive I am indebted to the fact for some of the most interesting recollections of my life. The first absence from home
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is a period never forgotten, and always vivid. How well do I remember the aspect of that long, broad, and straight street that traversed the village of Carrington, as it appeared to me when I first entered it. The meeting house, with its tall, grenadier looking steeple; the freshly painted school house, the troop of shouting boys springing from its portal; the neat white houses with Venetian blinds, and pretty court-yards and gardens, the dwellings of the physician, the lawyer, and the merchant, the modest gentry of the place; and that, to my youthful vision, colossal piece of architecture, a staring flaming mansion, (I afterwards learned that Squire Hayford was its master,) with pilasters, pillars and piazzas, a balustrade, cupola, and four chimneys! Even then I turned my eyes from this chef-d’oeuvre of rustic art to the trees by the way side, whose topmost boughs in their freshest green, (for summer was still in its youth,) were flushed with the beams of the setting sun. And I eagerly gazed at the parsonage which stood at the extremity of the plain, flanked by an orchard of scrawny neglected apple-trees, its ill-proportioned form, and obtrusive angles sheltered by the most ample elm that ever unfolded its rich volume of boughs. A willow there was too, I remember, that hung its tresses over the old well-curb, for there Fanny Atwood and I have cracked may a ‘last year’s butternut,’ sweeter to us far than the freshest, most flavorous nuts of the south, or any thing else would now be.
It is difficult, in our leveling and disenchanted days, to recal the awe that thirty years ago the puritan clergy of New England inspirited in the minds of children.
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Who is there bred in the land of pilgrims, that has not in his memory an immaculate personage, tall or short but always erect, with a three-cornered cocked hat, long blue yarn stockings drawn over the knee, silver shoe buckles and a silver headed cane, looking stern and unrelenting, as if he embodied the terrors of the law? Who does not remember depressing his voice and checking the ‘little footsteps that lightly pressed the ground,’ as he passed the minister’s house, the domain that seemed to him to shut out all human sympathies, to stand between heaven and earth, a certain purgatory, at least to all youthful sinners?
With such prepossessions I entered Doctor Atwood’s family. The Doctor himself was absent on some pastoral duty when I arrived. I was soon put at my ease by the hospitalities of his social family. How the prejudices of childhood melt away and disappear in the first beam of kindness! A most kind and simple hearted race were the Atwoods. Miss Sally, the oldest, was housekeeper; a bountiful provider of ‘spring beer,’ cherry pies and gingerbread. Man and woman too, and above all a child, is an eating animal. The record of culinary virtues remains long after every other trace of good Miss Sally has faded from my mind. The second sister was Miss Nancy, a ‘weakly person’ she was called, and truly was. I can see her pale serious face now, in which sensibility to her own ailments, and solicitude for those of her fellow mortals, were singularly blended; her slender tall figure, as she stood shaking that vial with contents so mysterious to me, which she called her ‘mixture;’ her hands all veins and chords
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that seemed to have been made to spread plasters. Miss Nancy, in poetic phrase, was a ‘culler of simples.’ She gathered herbs, (for my friend Fanny called them sickness,) for all the village, and administered them too. She could tell with unerring certainty when motherwort would kill, and boneset would cure. Forgive me, gentle reader, (for Miss Nancy could not,) if I have mistaken an alias for a species. In brief, Miss Nancy was one of those prudent apprehensive people peculiarly annoying to children. Her memory was a treasure house of hair breadth escapes and fatal accidents; and her eye would fix upon that imaginative column in the newspapers devoted to the enumeration of such fancy articles as ‘caution to youths;’ ‘fatal sport;’ ‘hydrophobia!’ &c. &c., as a speculator devours the price of stocks. Malvina was the third daughter; I knew little of her, for she was a lady of the shears, and pursued her calling by keeping the even tenor of her way through the neighborhood, making ‘auld claiths look amaist as weel’s the new.’ I should have said that Malvina was among the few who would go through life content with the sphere providence had assigned her, without one craving from that ‘divinity that stirs within;’ limiting her ambition to pleasing the little boys, and satisfying their mammas, and her desires to her well earned twenty-five cents per day. But Malvina married and emigrated. Her husband was, as I have heard, a disciple of Tom Paine, and poor Malvina, who was only adequate to shape a sleeve or collar, began to reason of ‘fate and free will,’ foreknowledge absolute; and afterwards, when she visited her friends, she bewailed their irrational
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views, wondered they could believe the bible! and would have enlightened them with that precious textbook, the Age of Reason, had not Dr. Atwood consigned it forthwith to an auto-d-fé.
The doctor, according to the common custom of New England clergymen, who have an income of four or five hundred dollars a year, had educated several sons at college. One was a thriving attorney and counselor at law, in New York, and two others, (who closed the account of the doctor’s first marriage,) were keeping school, and qualifying themselves for the learned professions. The doctor in middle life, as it is by courtesy called, but long after his sun had declined from its meridian, had married a young and very pretty girl, who, by all accounts, looked much beside her autumnal consort, like a fresh blown rose attached to a stalk of sere and yellow leaves. The human frailty the doctor betrayed in his preference of this lamb of his flock over certain quite mature candidates for his conjugal favor, gave such scandal to his parish that the good man was fain to leave Connecticut, the land of his forefathers, and remove to Vermont, then called the new state, where his domestic arrangements were viewed with more indulgence. His wife, who seems to have had no fault but that one which was mending every day, died in the course of a few years, after having augmented the doctor’s wealth by the addition of one child.
This child was the gem of the family, and a gem of ‘purest ray serene,’ was my little friend Fanny. Fanny Atwood! Writing her name even at this distance of
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time makes my heart beat quicker. Affection has its bright, its immortal names, that will live after the trump of fame is a broken instrument, and the names it has pealed over the world are with all forgotten things. Perhaps I commit a mistake in making Fanny Atwood the heroine of a story. It may be that like those wild flowers she so much resembled, that are so delicate and sweet in their native green wood, but so fragile that they fade and droop as soon as they are exposed to the eye of the sun, and appear spiritless and insignificant when compared with the splendid belles of the greenhouse, on which the art of the horticulturist has been exhausted, so my little rustic favorite may seem tame, and she and her fortunes be derided by the fine ladies, if any such grace my humble tale with a listening ear.
I have known those who have drank of the tainted waters of a city till they confessed that the pure element as it welled up from the green turf, or sparkled in the crystal fountain of a mountain rock, was tasteless and disagreeable! But I know those too, who, though they have mastered the music of Rossini, have yet ears and hearts for wood notes wild. Nature is too strong for art, and those who are accustomed to the refinements of artificial life, may look without a ‘disdainful smile’ on Fanny Atwood as she was when I first saw her; as she continued, the picture of simplicity and all lovable qualities. She had a little round Hebe form. Her neck, chest, shoulders and arms were the very beau ideal of a French dress maker, so fair and fat; her hands were formed in the most delicate mould, and dimpled as an infant’s; her hair was of the tinge between flaxen
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and brown; glossy and wavy. Her mouth bore the signet of the sweet and playful temper that bade defiance to all the curdling tendencies of life, it was certainly the fittest organ for ‘words o’ kindness’ that could be formed. She had a slight lisp; graceful enough in childhood, but happily, as she grew up, it wore off. The line of her nose was sufficiently Grecian to be called so by her admirers, but her eyes, I am compelled to confess, even while I yet feel their warm and gentle beam upon me, were not according to the rule of beauty; they were clear and bright as health and cheerfulness could make them, but they lacked many shades of the violet, and were smaller than the orthodox heroine dimensions. If my bill of particulars fail to present the image of my friend, let my readers embody health, good humor, order, a disinterestedness, considerateness or mindfulness, a quick sympathy with joy and sorrow, in the image of a girl of nine years, and it cannot fail to resemble Fanny Atwood. She would have been a spoiled child, if unbounded love and indulgence could have spoiled her; but she was like those fruits and flowers which are only made more beautiful or flavorous by the fervid rays of the sun. She sometimes tried Miss Sally’s patience by a too free dispensation of the luxuries of her frugal pantry, and Miss Nancy’s by deriding her herb teas, even that ‘sovereignest thing on earth,’ her motherwort; and once, when in the act of raising a dose of the panacea, the mixture, to her lips, she let fall dose, vial and all; accidently, no doubt; but poor Miss Nancy! I think her nerves never quite recovered the shock. However,
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these offences were soon forgiven, and would have been, if magnified a hundred fold, for in the touching language of old Israel, she ‘was the only child of her mother, and her mother was dead.’
I was within a few months of Fanny’s age when we first met, and with the facility of childhood we became friends in half an hour. She had presented me to her two favorites, a terrier puppy and black cat, between whom she had so assiduously cultivated a friendship that she had converted their natural gall into honey, and they coursed up and down the house together to the infinite amusement of my friend, and the perpetual annoyance of the elderly members of the family. Nothing could better illustrate Fanny’s power than the indulgence she obtained for these little pests. Miss Sally prided herself on her discipline of animals, but she was brought to wink at Fido’s misdeeds, suffered him to sleep all day by the winter’s fire, and when she once or twice resolutely ordered him out for the night, she was persuaded by Fanny to get up with her and let him in. And the cat, though Miss Nancy’s aversion, fairly installed herself on a corner of Fanny’s chair, and was thrice a day fed from her plate.
As I have said, Fanny and I made rapid progress in our friendship. She had introduced me to her little family of dolls, which were all patriotic, all of home manufacture, and I had offered to her delighted vision my compagnon de voyage, a London doll; in our eyes the master piece of the arts. We were consulting confidently on some matters touching our respective families, when I heard the lumbering sound of the
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doctor’s chaise, and I felt a chill come over me like that of poor Jack, the bean-climber of aspiring memory, when seated at the giant’s hearth, and chatting with his lady, he first heard the homeward step of her redoubtable lord and master. My prejudices against the clerical order were certainly not dispelled by my first impressions of Doctor Atwood. He wore a thick set fozy wig, cut by a sort of equatorial line around the forehead. His chin was not a freshly mown stubble field, for it was Saturday, and the doctor shaved but once a week. His figure was tall and corpulent, and altogether he presented a lowering and most forbidding aspect to one who had been accustomed to a more advanced state of civilization than his person indicated. I had retreated to the farthest corner of the room, dropped my head and hidden my doll in my handkerchief, when Fanny, to my astonishment, dragging me into notice, exclaimed in the most affectionate tone, ‘Oh, father, how glad I am you have come! I wanted you to see C----‘s doll; she is the most perfect beauty! are you not glad she’s come?’ Now meaning me, not the doll.
The doctor made no reply for a moment, and when he did, he merely said, without a sign of courtesy or even humanity, ‘How d’ye do, child, pretty well?’
‘Father!’ exclaimed Fanny in a tone which betrayed her mortification and disappointment. I shrank away to my seat, abut Fanny remained hovering about the place where her father stood, lost apparently in sullen abstraction. The doctor sat down. Fanny seated herself on his knee, (I wondered she could.) ‘How
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funny your wig looks! father,’ she said, ‘its all awry.’ Then laughing and giving it a fearless twirl, she took a comb from the doctor’s waistcoat pocket, smoothed it down, threw her fat arms round his neck and kissed him first on one check, then on the other, saying, ‘you look quite handsome, now, father!’ Scanty as my literature was, a classical allusion occurred to me; ‘Beauty and the Beast!’ thought I, but far would it have been from the nature of that Beast to have been as dull to the caresses of Beauty as the doctor seemed to Fanny’s. She was evidently perplexed by his apparent apathy; for a moment she laid her check to his, then sprang from his knee and went to a cupboard about ten inches square, made in the chimney beside the fireplace, (an anomaly in the architecture, these puritan cupboards were,) and drew from it a long pipe, filled, lighted, and put it in her father’s lips. He received it passively, smoked it with continued unconsciousness, and when the tobacco was exhausted, threw pipe and all out of the window. Fanny looked at me and laughed, then suddenly changing to an expression of solicitude, she leaned her elbow on the doctor’s knee, looked up in his face, and said in a voice that must penetrate to the heart, ‘what is the matter, father?’
The doctor seemed suddenly to recover his faculties; to come to himself, in the common phrase, and with tears gushing form his eyes, he said, ‘Fanny, my child, poor Randolph’s mother is dead.’
‘Dead, father! What will Randolph do?’
‘Do, Fanny? Replied the doctor, brushing off his tears, ‘why, he will do his duty; no easy matter in the
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poor boy’s case.’ The doctor then proceeded to relate the scene he had just come from witnessing, and which had melted one of the tenderest hearts that ever was in a human frame, uncouth and repelling as that frame was. The facts which will explain the doctor’s emotions are briefly these. There was a certain Squire Hayford residing in Carrington, the proprietor of the stately mansion we have noticed. He was a democrat, according to the classification of that day, and one of the most impassioned order. A democrat in theory, but in his own little sphere as absolute a despot as ever sat on a throne. He was the wealthiest man in Carrington, owned most land, and had most ready money; in short, he was the great man of the place, and, as was happily said on another occasion, ‘the smallest of his species.’ Of all the men I ever met with he had the most unfounded and absurd vanity. His opinions were all prejudices, and in each and all of them he held himself infallible. He was the centre of his world, the sun of his system, which he divided into concentric circles. Himself first, then his household, his town, his county, his state, &c. Fortunately for himself, he had adopted the popular side in politics, and with a character that would have been particularly odious to the sovereign people he made himself an oracle among them. This man had one child, a daughter, a gentle and lovely woman as she was described to me, who some fourteen years before my story begins, had married a Mr. Gordon, from one of the Southern States. It was a clandestine marriage. Squire Hayford having refused his consent, because
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Gordon was a ‘southerner,’ and he held all ‘southerners’ in utter contempt and aversion, and never graced them with any other name than slave drivers, with the addition of such expletives as might give force to the reproach. Gordon was a high spirited man and an ardent lover, and he easily persuaded Miss Hayford to escape from the unreasonable opposition of her father, and transfer her allegiance to him. This was her first disobedience, but disobedience to him was an unpardonable sin in the squire’s estimation, and he permitted his only child to encounter the severest evils, and languish through protracted sufferings, before he manifested the slightest relenting. She lost several children; she became a widow, was reduced to penury, and sacrificed her health in one of our southern cities, in an attempt to gain a livelihood as governess. Her father then sent her a pitiful sum of money, and the information that a small house in Carrington, belonging to him was vacant, and she might come and occupy it if she would. The kindness was scanty, and the manner of it churlish enough; but disease and penury cut off all fastidiousness, and Mrs. Gordon returned to Carrington with her only son Randolph.
Here she languished month after month. The bare necessities of existence were indirectly supplied by her father, but he never spoke to her, and, what affected her far more deeply, he never noticed her son, never betrayed a consciousness of his existence.
Adversity, if it does not sever the ties of nature, multiplies and strengthens them. Never was there a tenderer union than that which subsisted between
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Randolph and his mother, and nothing could have been more natural than Fanny’s exclamation when told of Mrs. Gordon’s death, for it seemed as if the life of parent and child were fed from the same fountain. As my readers are now acquainted with the relative position of the parties, I shall give the doctor’s account to Fanny in his own words. ‘I left the chaise at Mrs. Gordon’s door, my child,’ said he, ‘that Randolph might take her to ride. They had ridden but a short distance when she complained of faintness, and Randolph turned back. She had fainted quite away just as they stopped at their own door. There was a man riding past; Randolph called to him for help. He came and assisted in carrying the poor lady to her bed. When she recovered her senses, she looked up and saw the man; it was her father, Fanny!’
‘Her father! what, that hateful old Squire Hayford?’
‘Yes, my child. Providence brought him to her threshold at the critical moment. When I called for the chaise, I went in. I saw she was dying. Randolph was bathing her head with camphor, and his tears dropped on the pillow like rain. Her father stood a little way from the bed. He looked pale and his lip quivered. Ah, Fanny, my child, death takes hold of the heart that nothing else will reach. When Mrs. Gordon heard my step she looked up at me and said, “I believe I am dying; pray with me once more Doctor Atwood; pray that my father may forgive—that—he—may—” here her voice faltered, but she looked at Randolph, and I understood her, and went to prayer.
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‘But, father, what did Squire Hayford do? you know he swore a horrid oath last independence that he would never hear “Parson Fed* [2] pray again.” ’
‘Yes, yes; Fanny, I remember, and he remembered too, for he walked out of the door and stood in the porch, but I took care to raise my voice so loud that he could not help hearing me. The Lord assisted me, my child; words came to me faster than I could utter them; thoughts, but not my thoughts; words, but not of my choosing, for their pierced even my own heart. When I had done, Squire Hayford came in, walked straight to the bed, and said, “Mary, I forgive you; I wish your troubles may be all at an end, but I am not answerable for your past sufferings; I told you what you must expect when you married that southern beggar.” ’
‘Father,’ exclaimed Fanny, ‘why did you not stop him.’
‘I did long to knock him down, Fanny, and I though Randolph would, for his black eyes flashed fire; but oh, how quick they fell again when his mother looked up like a dying saint as she was, and said, “Father, let the past be past.” ’
‘ “Well,” said he, “so I will; and as I am a man of deeds and not of words, I promise you I will do well by your boy; I will take him home, and he shall be the same as a son to me, provided—” ’
‘Here he paused. I think she did not hear his last word, for her face lighted up, she clasped her hands
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and thanked God for crowning with such mercy her dying hour; then she drew Randolph down to her, kissed him, and said, “now, my son I can die in peace.”
“But,” said her father, “you have not heard me out, Mary. Randolph must give up the name of Gordon for that of Hayford—”’
‘Oh, father,’ interrupted Fanny, ‘he did not, did he?’
‘Let me finish, child. The poor lady at the thought of her son giving up his dead father’s name, heaved a sigh so deep and heavy, that I feared her breath would have gone with it. She looked at Randolph, but he turned away his eye. ‘My dear child,’ she said, ‘it must be; it is hard for me to ask and you to do, but it must be; speak Randolph, say you accept the terms.’
‘Thus pressed, the poor boy spoke, and spoke out his heart, “Do not ask me that, mother;” he said, “give up my dear father’s name! No, never, never.” ’
‘ “My child, you must, you will be destitute; without a home, a friend, a morsel of bread.” ’
‘ “I shall not be destitute, mother, I can work, and is not Doctor Atwood my friend? and besides, mother, I care not what becomes of me when you are gone.” ’
‘ “But I do my son; I cannot leave you so. Oh, promise me, Randolph.” ’
‘ “Do not ask me, mother; I cannot give up the name I love and honor above all others, for that—” ’ I know not what the poor boy might have said, for his mother stopped him. “Listen to me my son,” she said, “my breath is almost spent; you know how I have been punished for one act of disobedience; how much misery I brought on your dear father, on all of us; you may
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repair my fault. Oh, give me peace, promise to be faithful in your mother’s place to her father.” ’
‘ “I will promise any thing, dear mother; I will do any thing but take his name.” ’
‘ “All is useless without that;” her voice sunk to a whisper,--“dear, dear child,” she added, “it is my last wish.” I saw her countenance was changing, and I believe I said, ‘she is going,’ and poor Randolph cried out, ‘Mother, mother, I will do every thing you ask—I promise—’ a sweet smile spread over her face. He laid his cheek to her’s, she tried to kiss him, but her lips never moved again, and in a few moments, my dear Fanny, she was with the saints in heaven.’
Fanny’s tears had coursed down her cheeks as her father had proceeded in his narration. Soon after I heard her repeating to herself, ‘Randolph Hayford, Randolph Hayford; I will never call him any thing but Randolph; but I suppose I shall not often have a chance to call him any thing. That cross of Squire Hayford hates you so, father, he’ll never let Randolph come and see us; he’ll never let him go any where but to some dirty democrat’s.’
I now look back, almost unbelieving of my own recollections, at the general diffusion of the political prejudices of those times. No age nor sex was exempt from them. They adhered to an old man to the very threshold of another world, and they sometimes clouded the serene heaven of such a mind as my friend Fanny Atwood’s.
The rival parties in Carrington were so nearly balanced, that each individual’s weight was felt in the
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scale. All qualities and relations were merged in the political attribute. I have often heard, when the bell tolled the knell of a departed neighbor, the most kind hearted person, say, ‘we’ or ‘they have lost a vote!’ Good Doctor Atwood was as sturdy in his political as in his religious faith. He had a vein of humanity like my Uncle Toby’s, that tempered his judgment in individual cases, but in the abstract I rather think he believed that none but federalists and the orthodox, according to the sound school of the Mathers and Cottons, could enter the kingdom of heaven. With this creed, with an ardent temperament that glowed to the last hour of his life, and with the faculty of expressing pithily what he felt strongly, and without fear or awe of mortal man, he was, of course, loved almost to idolatry by his own party, and hated in equal measure by the rival faction.
I have said that the village street of Carrington traversed a hill and plain. The democrats for the most part occupied the hill. What an infected district it then seemed to me! The federalists, (alas! was it an augury of their descending fortunes?) lived in the vale. The most picturesque object in the village, and one as touching to the sentimental observer as Sterne’s dead ass, was a superannuated horse; a poor commoner, who picked up an honest living by the way side. His walk was as regular as Edie Ochiltree’s, or any other licensed gaberlunzie’s. He began in the morning, and grazing along, he arrived about midday at the end of his tour, he then crossed the street and returned, now
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and then resting his weary limbs in the shadow of a tree planted by the way side. Thus sped his innocent life. It was an edifying sight to see the patience and satisfaction with which he gleaned his scanty portion of the bounties of nature. Jacques would have moralized on the spectacle. The children called him Clover, why, I know not, unless it were an allusion to his green old age. He was a great favorite with the little urchins; the youngest among them were wont to make their first equestrian essays on Clover’s bare back. My friend Fanny’s gentle heart went out towards him in the respect that waits on age. Many a time have I known her to abstract a measure of oats from the parson’s frugal store, and set it under the elm tree for Clover, and as she stood by him while he was eating, patting and stroking him, he would look round at her with an expression of mute gratitude and fondness, that words could not have rendered more intelligible.
Strange as it may seem, even poor Clover was converted into a political instrument. This ‘innocent beast and of a good conscience,’ was made to supply continual fuel to the inflammable passions of the fiery politicians of Carrington. His sides were pasted over with lampoons in which the rival factions vented their wit or their malignity safe from personal responsibility, for Clover could tell no tales. Thus he trudged from the hill, a walking gazette, his ragged and grizzled sides covered with these militant missives, and returned bearing the responses of the valley, as unconscious of his hostile burden, as the mail is of its portentous
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contents. Sometimes, indeed, Clover carried that which was more accordant with his kind and loving nature.
As Fanny had predicted, after Randolph’s removal to the great house, his grandfather prohibited his visits at Doctor Atwood’s, but Fanny often met him in the lagging walk to school, berrying, nutting, and on all neutral ground, and when they did not meet, they maintained a continual correspondence by Clover. The art was simple by which they secured their billetdoux from the public eye, but it sufficed. The inside contained the effusion of their hearts. The outside was scribbled with some current political sarcasm or joke. The initial letter of Randolph’s superscription was always F., Fanny’s G., for she tenaciously adhered to the name of Gordon. The communications were attached by the corners to Clover. I found recently among some forgotten papers one of Fanny’s notes, and childish as it is, I shall make no apology for inserting it verbatim.
‘Dear Randolph—I thank you a thousand times and so does C--, for the gold eagles. There never was any thing in the world so beautiful, I do’nt believe. They are far before the grown up ladies. We shall certainly wear them to meeting next Sabbath, and fix them so every body in the world can see them, and not let the bow of ribbon fall down over them, as Miss Clarke did last Sabbath, cause she has got that old democrat, Doctor Star, for a sweetheart; but I managed her nicely, Randolph. In prayer time when she did not dare move, I whirled round the bow
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so the eagle stood up bravely, and flashed right in Doctor Star’s eyes. I did not care so very much about having an eagle for myself, (though I do now since you have given it to me,) but I thought it very important for C— to wear the federal badge, because her father is a senator in Congress. Father is almost as pleased as we are. I see Clover coming, and I must make haste; poor old fellow! I heard his tread when it stormed so awfully last night, and I got father to put him up in our stable. Was not he proper good? It was after prayers, too, and his wig was off and his knee buckles out. There, they all go out of Deacon Garfield’s to read Clover’s papers. Good bye, dear, dear Randolph. F.A.’
If my readers are inclined to smile at the defects of my heroine’s epistle, they must remember those were not the days when girls studied Algebra, and read Virgil in the original before they were ten years old. Besides, I have not claimed for Fanny intellectual brilliancy. The manifestations of her mind were (where some bel esprits last look for it,) in the conduct of her daily life.
But I am fondly lingering on the childhood of my friend. I must resolutely pass over the multitude of anecdotes that occur to me, to those incidents that are sufficiently dignified for publication.
Eight years flowed on without working any other change in the condition of my friends in Carrington than is commonly effected by the passage of time. Doctor Atwood continued his weekly ministrations, varied only by a slight verbal alteration in his prayer.
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During Mr. Adams’ presidency, he implored the Lord to continue to us rulers endued with the spirit of their station. When Mr. Jefferson became chief magistrate, he substituted ‘give’ for continue. Miss Sally still brewed and baked with her accustomed energy. Miss Nancy by the too lavish consumption of her own nostrums, had lost every thing but her shadow. Squire Hayford was more opinionated and insufferable than ever. Poor old Clover was dead, and at Fanny’s request, had been honorably interred beneath the elm tree, his favorite poste restante. Fanny had preserved the distinctive traits of her childhood, and at seventeen, was as good humored, as simple, as lovely and, (as more than one thought,) far more loveable than when I first knew her.
The sad trials of Randolph’s youth had early ripened his character, and had given to it an energy and self-government that he could have derived alone from the discipline of such circumstances. The lofty spirit of his father had fallen on him like the mantle of an ascending prophet. His mother’s concentrated tenderness had fostered his sensibility, and the influence of her dying hour passed not away with the days of mourning, but stamped his whole after life.
Who has ever lost a friend, without that feeling so natural, that a painter of nature has put it into the mouth of a man lamenting over a dead beast? ‘I am sure thou hast been a merciful master to him’ said I. ‘Alas!’ said the mourner, ‘I thought so when he was alive, but now that he is dead I think otherwise.’
The solution of this universal lamentation and just
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suffering, must be found in the fact that the very best fall far short of the goodness of which their Creator has made them capable. It is in the spirit of expiation that far more deference is paid to the wishes of the dead than the living; and affectionate and devoted as Randolph was to his mother, I doubt if she had lived, that she ever could have persuaded him to the sacrifices and efforts he made for her sake when she was dead. He immediately assumed the name of Hayford, without expressing a regret, even to Fanny; and accustomed as he had been to the control alone of his gentle mother, he submitted without a murmur to the petty and irritating tyrannies of his grandfather. He suppressed the expression of his opinions and surrendered his strongest inclinations at the squire’s command. Never was there a case in which the sanctifying influence of a pure motive was more apparent. The same deference which Randolph paid to his relative, might have been rendered by a sordid dependant, but then where would have been that moral power which gave Randolph an ascendancy even over the narrow and unperceiving mind of his grandfather, and which achieved another and a more honorable triumph.
A Mrs. Hunt, a widowed sister of the squire, presided over the female department of his family. She was a well intentioned woman, a meek and patient drudge, who had been content to toil in his house, year after year, for the poorest of all compensations, presents; the common and wretched requital for the services of relations. Mrs. Hunt had been sustained in her endurance by a largess that now and then fell upon her
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eldest son, and by the hope that ultimately her brother’s fortune would descend to her unportioned children. This hope was suddenly blighted by his adoption of Randolph; and Randolph, of course, became the object of her dislike, and he daily suffered those annoyances and discomforts, which a woman always has in her power to inflict. To these he opposed a respectful department; a mindfulness of her convenience and comfort, and a generous attention to her children, which smoothed her rugged path, and all unused as she was to such humanities, won her heart. It was not long before the good woman found herself going to him, whom she had regarded as her natural enemy, for aid and sympathy in all her troubles.
If I am prosing, my readers must forgive me. It has always seemed to me that we may get the most useful lessons from those who are placed in circumstances not uncommon, nor striking, but to which a parallel may be found in every day’s experience. It is a common doctrine, but one not favorable to virtue, that characters are formed by circumstances. If it be true, my friend Randolph was a noble exception; his character controlled circumstances; and, by the best of all alchymy, he extracted wholesome food out of the materials that might have been poison to another.
His boyish affection for Fanny Atwood had ripened into the tenderest love, and was fully returned, without my friend ever having endured the reserve and distrust that are supposed to be necessary to the progress of the passion. Trials their love had, but they came from without. Doctor Atwood had heard the squire had
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said, ‘the parson might try his best to get his heir for his daughter Fanny; he’d never catch his heir, though he caught Randolph!’ The good doctor was a proud father, and a poor man, and, though it cost him many a heartache, he shut his doors against Randolph.
Meanwhile, the squire’s self complacency (the squire had the art of making every body’s merit or demerit minister to this great end of his being,) in Randolph increased. He was proud of his talents, his scholarship and his personal elegance, though his fac-simile resemblance to his father was so striking, that the squire was never heard to speak of his appearance, except to say, ‘what a crop of hair he has, just like all the Hayfords!’
There was on peculiarity about Randolph, that puzzled his grandfather. ‘The fellow is so inconsistent,’ said he to himself one day, after he had been reviewing his account books; ‘when he has money of his own earning he pours it out like water; gave the widow fifty dollars last week, but he seems as afraid of spending my cash as if I exacted Jews’ usury; quite contrary to the old rule, ‘light come, light go.’ I have footed it right; eight years since Mary died—day after we lost Martin’s election by the parson’s vote; can’t be mistaken; he’s got through college, fitted for the law, and I have paid out cash for him but ninety-nine pounds, five shillings, and three pence, lawful! By George! the widow’s brood has cost me more in that time. Ah! it’s number one after all; is sure of it at last, and that southern blood can’t bear an obligation. Trust me for seeing into a millstone. I can tell him he’ll have to wait; I feel as young as I did thirty years
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ago; sound grinders, good pulse, steady gait. Ten years to run up to three score, and ten may last to eighty. Grandmother Brown lived to ninety and upwards; why should not I? when I quit, am willing Randolph, (wish his name was Silas,) should have it. If it was not for that southern blood he’d be about the likeliest of the Hayfords. All his obstinacy comes from that ‘I’ll not disobey you, sir, and even if I would, Miss Atwood would not marry me without your consent; but be assured, sir, I shall never marry any other!’ We’ll see, my lord; while I can say nay, you shall never marry that old aristocrat’s daughter. Just one-and-twenty now; guess you’ll sing another tune before you are twenty-five. Time to go up to the printing office; wonder if we shall have another Hampden this week; confounded smart fellow that.’
Then looking at his watch and finding the happy hour for country ennuyés, the hour for the mail and daily lounge, had arrived, the squire sallied forth to take his morning walk to the printing office, the village reading room.
There was a weekly journal published in Carrington, the ‘Star’ or ‘Sun,’ I forget which, but certainly the ascendant luminary of the democrat party. There had appeared, recently, in this journal, a series of articles written temperately, and with vigor and elegance, on the safety of a popular government.
The writer advocated an unlimited trust in the sanitive virtue of the people; he appeared familiar with the history of the republics that had preceded ours, and
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contended that there was no reason to infer our danger from their brief existence. He maintained, (and it will now perhaps be admitted with truth,) that distrust of the people was the great error of the federalists; that the prestiges of the old government still hung about them, and that they were committing a fatal mistake in applying old principles to a new condition of things.
These articles were read, lauded and republished. The name of the author was sought, but in vain. Even the printer and the editor, (I believe one person represented both these august characters,) were ignorant, and could only guess that it was a judge—, or lawyer—, the lights of the state. But conjecture is not certainty, and the author still remained the ‘great unknown,’ not only of Carrington, but of the county and state.
The squire returned from his morning lounge with a fresh journal, containing a new article from Hampden, the signature of the unknown author. A fresh newspaper! Its vapor was as sweet as a regale to the little vulgar pug-nose of our village politician as the dews of Helicon to the votaries of the muses. It so happened that Randolph was sitting in the parlor, reading, when the squire came in. ‘Have you seen the paper, this morning, Randolph?’ he asked.
‘No; I have not.’
‘I guess not, I have got the first that was struck off. Another article from Hampden, I understand. He is answered in the Boston Centinel. They own he writes ‘plausibly, ably and eloquently;’ the d—speaks truth for once I guess the Boston chaps find their
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match at last.’ The squire had a habit not peculiar to him, but rather annoying, of reading aloud a passage that either pleased or displeased him, without any regard to the occupations of those around him. His comments, too, were always expressed aloud. He drew out his spectacles and sat down to the paper. His sister, Mrs. Hunt, was sewing in one corner of the room, and Randolph sitting opposite to him, but apparently absorbed in his book. ‘Too deuced cool,’ grumbled the squire, after reading the first passage. ‘Ah, he warms in the harness; not up to the mark, though; I wish he’d give ‘em one of my pealers.’ ‘Good, good; wonder what the Centinel will say to that.’ ‘By George, capital! I could not have writ it better. I would have put in more spice, though.’
‘Ha! as good as the Scripture prophet.’ ‘Listen, Randolph.’ The squire then read aloud. ‘We are aware that prediction is not argument, but we venture to prophesy that in twenty years from this time the federal party will have disappeared. The grandsire will have to explain the turn—’
‘Term, sir,’ interposed Randolph.
‘Yes, yes, term. The grandsire will have to explain the term to the child at his knee. We shall be a nation of republicans, and whenever—’
‘Wherever, sir.’
‘So it is; wherever an American is found, at home or aboard—’
‘Abroad, sir.’ This time there was a slight infusion of petulance in Randolph’s tone, and still more in the squire’s at the repeated interruptions as he proceeded.
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‘At home or abroad, in office or out of it, in high station or low, he will claim to be a Republican, and cherish the title as the noblest and happiest a civilian⎯’
‘Citizen, sir⎯noblest and happiest a citizen can claim.’
‘Confound you, Randolph!” exclaimed the squire, dropping the paper and fixing his eyes on his grandson; ‘how do you know the words before I speak them?’ This was rather an exclamation of vexation than suspicion. Randolph was conscious that in involuntarily interposing to save his offspring from murder he had risked a secret, and he answered the squire’s exclamation with a look of confusion that at once flashed the truth upon his obtuse comprehension. He jumped up, clapped Randolph on the shoulder, exclaiming, ‘You wrote it yourself, you dog, you can’t deny it. It’s a credit to you, a credit to the name. But you might have known I should have found you out. Just like all the Hayfords, keep every thing snug till out it comes with a crack.’
‘I thought all along,’ meekly, said Mrs. Hunt, who had been plying her needle unobserved and unobserving, ‘I thought all along cousin Randolph wrote them pieces.’
‘Now shut up, widow,’ retorted the squire, ‘you did not think no such thing; just like all fore-thoughts, come afterwards. Now, ma’am please to step out; I must have a little private conversation with Mr. Hampden.’
‘Be kind enough before you go, aunt,’ said Randolph, ‘to promise me that you will say nothing of what has
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just passed. I have made no admissions, and I do not wish to be thought the writer of the Hampden articles.’
Mrs. Hunt, of course, promised to be faithful. As soon as she was out of hearing, ‘What does that mean?’ asked the squire. ‘It is all stuff to make a secret of it any longer.’
‘I think not, sir. The articles have far more reputation and influence, (if I may believe they have influence,) than if they were known to proceed from a young man whose name has no authority.’
‘Hoity-toity! who’s got a better name than yours? a’nt willing the Hayfords should have the credit, hey!’ Randolph did not vouchsafe any reply to the squire’s absurd mistake, and after a few moments his gratified vanity regained its ascendancy.
‘The pieces please me,” said he, “though if you had told me you were writing them I could have given you some hints that would have improved them. They want a little more said about men, less of principles. They want fire too; egad, I’d send ‘em red-hot bullets; but they’ll do; you’ve come out like a man, on the right side, and now I believe, what I felt scary about before.’ Here the squire paused, and fixed one of his most penetrating glances upon Randolph. ‘I believe you will vote to-morrow, and vote right.’ Randolph made no reply.
A few words will here be necessary to explain the dilemma in which Randolph was about to be placed. The annual election of a representative to the state legislature was to occur the next day. The rival parties in Carrington were known to their champions to be exactly balanced. There was not a doubtful vote
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except Randolph Hayford’s. He had never yet voted, not having till now arrived at the requisite age. He had not thrown himself into the scale of either party. His opinions were independent, and independently expressed. The squire’s hopes of his vote were very much encouraged by the Hampden articles, but still there were circumstances in this case that made him somewhat apprehensive.
‘Your vote,’ resumed the squire, ‘will decide the election to-morrow.’ Again he paused, but without receiving a reply. ‘I can’t have much doubt which way Hampden will vote, but I like to make all sure and fast. Randolph, I know what scion you want to see engrafted on that tree.’ The squire pointed to the only picture in his house, a family tree, that in a huge black frame stretched its frightful branches over the parlor fireplace. On these branches hung a regiment of militia captains, majors, colonels, sundry justices of the peace; precious fruit all, supported by an illustrious trunk, a certain Sir Silas Hayford, who flourished in the reign of Charles the First. Strange and inconsistent as it may appear with his ultra democracy, never was there a man prouder of his ancestral dignities, or more anxious to have them transmitted, than our village squire.
‘Randolph,’ he continued, assured of success by the falling of Randolph’s eye, and a certain half pleased, half anxious expression that overspread his face. ‘Randolph, I have always said that I never would give my consent to your marriage with that old aristocratic parson’s daughter. But circumstances alter cases. I am a man that hears to reason when I approve of it. I have no
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fault to find with the girl; never heard her speak; believes she’s well enough.’ Randolph bit his lips. How hard it is to hear an idolized object spoken of as if she were of the mass of human kind. ‘To come to the point, Randolph,⎯if you’ll go forward to-morrow like a man, and give in your vote for Martin and make Ross’ scale kick the beam, I’ll withdraw my opposition to this match. Hear me out. I’ll do more for you. I’m pleased with you, Randolph. I’ve just received the money for my Genesee lands. I’ll give you two hundred pounds to buy your law library, and you may go next week to any town in the state you like, and open your office, and be your own man, and take your girl there as soon as you like.’
‘Good Heaven!’ exclaimed Randolph, ‘you can offer nothing more; the world has nothing more to tempt me.’ And he left the room in a state of agitation in which the squire had never before seen him. The squire called after him,— ‘Take time to consider, Randolph. To-morrow morning is time enough for your answer.’
In the course of evening, Randolph met Fanny Atwood. Whether the meeting was accidental, I cannot pretend to say. It would seem to have been disobedience in my friend to have kept up her intercourse with Randolph after the doctor had shut his doors upon him. But Fanny well knew there was nothing beside herself, the doctor loved so well as Randolph; nothing that in his secret heart he so much desired as to see them united, and that his resolute and rather harsh procedure in excluding Randolph from his house had been a sacrifice of his own inclinations to his
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honest pride. This being the state of matter, it cannot appear strange that Fanny should be willing to meet him when ‘with rosy blush,
‘Summer eve is sinking;
When on rills that softly gush,
Stars are softly winking;
When through boughs that knit the bower,
Moonlight gleams are stealing.’
Or at any of those times and places which nature’s and our poet had appointed to tell, ‘Love’s delightful story.’
The lovers took a sequestered and favorite walk to a little waterfall at some distance from the village. Here, surrounded by moonlight, the evening fragrance and soft varying and playful shadows, they seated themselves on the fallen trunk of a tree, one of their accustomed haunts.
When they first met, Fanny had said, ‘So Randolph, your secret is out at last.’
‘Out! is it?’
‘Pshaw, you know it is. Your grandfather hinted it at the post office, and the town is ringing with it.’
‘I am sorry for it. I was aware that my grandfather knew it, but I have seen nobody else to-day. Has your father heard it, Fanny?’
‘Yes; finding it was out, I told him myself. Dear father! he both laughed and cried.’
‘Cried!’
‘Yes; you know that is no uncommon thing for him to do. He was grieved that you had to come out on the democratic side, for you know he thinks a democrat next to an infidel; but then he was pleased to find you could write such celebrated articles. He has said all
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along that they had more sense and reason in them than could be distilled from every thing else written by the democrats. Now he is amazed, he says, that a boy, (you know he calls every one a boy that is not forty,) should write so wisely, and above all, so temperately.’
‘Ah, my dear Fanny, adversity, though a ‘stern rugged nurse’ she be, enforces a discipline that makes us early wise. Heaven grant that her furnace may not be heated so hot as to consume instead of purifying.’
‘What do you mean, Randolph? you are very sad this evening. Are you not well? You are not troubled about this secret. I thought you looked very pale; what has happened to you?’
Randolph kissed the hand that Fanny in her earnestness had lain on his, ‘My dearest Fanny,’ he replied, ‘since you have exchanged those vows with me that pledge us to ‘halve our sorrows as well as double our joys,’ you have condemned yourself to trials too severe for your sweet and gentle spirit.’
‘Randolph, if my spirit is sweet and gentle, it can the better bear them; and besides, nothing can be a very, very heavy trial that I share with you. But tell me quick what it is? I am sure I shall think of some way of getting rid of it.’
Randolph shook his head, and then related his morning’s conversation with his grandfather. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you see the cruel predicament in which I am placed. You, my beloved Fanny, the object of my fondest hopes, all that makes life attractive and dear to me, are placed within my grasp; an honorable career is opened to me, escape from the galling thralldom of my
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grandfather’s house, from the perpetual annoyance of his vulgarity, his garrulity, jealousy, and petty tyrannies; and this, without the slightest deviation in the spirit or even the letter from my promise to my dying mother.’ Randolph paused. Fanny watched every motion of his countenance with breathless expectation; she could not speak; she did not know what remained to be said, but she ‘guessed and feared.’ He proceeded. ‘But the price, Fanny, the price I am to pay for these ineffable blessings! I must give my vote to an unprincipled demagogue, and withhold it from an honest man. I must sacrifice the principles that I have laid down to govern my conduct. They may be stigmatized as juvenile, romantic, and fantastical; as long as I believe them essential to integrity, I cannot depart from them without a consciousness of degradation. My moral sense is not yet dimmed by the fumes of party, and it seems to me as plain a proposition as any other, that we ought only to support such men and such measures as are for the good of the country, and the whole country. It seems to me, that no man enlists under the banner of a party without some sacrifice of integrity. My grandfather says to me, in his vulgar slang, ‘between two stools you will fall to the ground. Be it so. It will be ground on which I can firmly plant my foot, and look up to heaven with consciousness that I have not offended against the goodness that made me a citizen of a country destined to be the greatest and happiest the world ever saw, provided we are true to our political duties. Dearest Fanny, do not think I am haranguing and not feeling. God knows I have had a sore conflict;
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my heart has been wrung. You cover your face. Have I decided wrong?’
‘Oh, no, no;’ she replied in a voice broken by her emotion. ‘For all the world, I would not that you should have decided otherwise. And yet, is it not very, very hard? I mean for you, Randolph. For myself, I have a pleasant home, and I am happy enough while I can see you every day, and be sure each day that we love one another better than we did the last. Besides,’ she added, looking up with her sunny smile, ‘on some accounts it is best as it is; it would almost break father’s heart to part from me; and, as he says, dear Randolph, when the right time comes, ‘Providence will open up a way for us.’’
‘Then, Fanny, you approve my decision?’
‘Approve it, Randolph! I do not seem proud, perhaps; but it would humble me to the very dust to have you think even of acting contrary to what you believe to be right. Oh, if we could only live in a world where it was all love and friendship and no politics!’
Randolph smiled at the simplicity of Fanny’s wish, and expressed, with all a lover’s fervor, his admiration of the instinctive rectitude of her mind. He confessed that he had resolved and re-resolved his grandfather’s proposition, in the hope that he might hit upon some mode of preserving his integrity and securing the bright reward offered him, but in vain.
Our lovers must be forgiven if they protracted their walk long after the orthodox hour for barring a minister’s doors. My friend, still the ‘spoiled child,’
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found her old sister Sally sitting up for her; and as they crept up their rooms, ‘They say old maids are cross,’ said Fanny, ‘but they don’t know you who say so. You remember, sister, when you used to love to walk by the moonlight, with a certain Mr.⎯⎯⎯?’
‘Whisht, nonsense, Fanny,’ said our ‘nun demure,’ but she finished the ascent of the stairs with a lighter step, and as Fanny kissed her for good night, she saw that a slight blush had overspread her wan cheek at the pleasurable recollections called up. So true is woman to the instincts of her nature.
On the next morning, Randolph was absent, and Mrs. Hunt said, in answer to his grandfather’s inquiries that he had ridden to the next village on business, and had left word that he should return in time for the election. The squire was excessively elated. He was on the point of obtaining a party triumph by the casting vote of his grandson; he should exhibit him for the first time in the democratic ranks, ‘enlisted for the war,’ with the new blown honors of Hampden thick upon him. There are elevated points in every man’s life, and this morning was the Chimborazo of the squire’s.
At the appointed hour the rival parties assembled at the meeting house; that being in most of our villages the only building large enough to contain the voters of the town, is, notwithstanding the temporary desecration, used as a political arena. There the rival parties met as (with sorrow we confess it,) rival parties often meet in our republic, like the hostile forces of belligerent nations, as if they had no interest nor sentiment in common.
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The balloting began. Randolph had not arrived. The squire, though not yet distrustful, began to fidget. He had taken his station beside the ballot box; a station which, in spite of its violation of the courtesies if not the principle of voting by ballot, is often occupied by eager village politicians, for the purpose of peering into the box, and detecting any little artifice by which an individual may have endeavored to conceal his vote. Here stood the squire, turning his eyes from the door where they eagerly glanced in quest of Randolph, to the box, and giving a smile or scowl to every vote that was dropped in. ‘What keeps the parson back?’ thought he, knitting his gristled brows, as he looked at Doctor Atwood, ‘he is always the first to push forward.’ This was true. The doctor’s principles kindly coincided with his inclination in bringing him to the poll, but once having ‘put in his mite,’ as he said, ‘into the good treasury,’ he paid so much deference to his office, as immediately to withdraw from the battle-field.
The doctor had controlling reasons for lingering on this occasion. Fanny had acquainted him with Randolph’s determination. The old man was touched with his young favorite’s virtue, and the more (we must forgive something to human infirmity,) that Randolph’s casting vote would decide the election in favor of the federal party. The balloting was drawing to a close, and still Randolph did not appear. The doctor now fully participated the squire’s uneasiness. He took off his spectacles, wiped them over and over again, and strained his eyes up the road by which Randolph was to return. ‘It was not like him to flinch,’ thought the sturdy old man, ‘he is always up to the mark.’ Still,
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as the delay was prolonged his anxiety increased. ‘Better have come boldly out on their side than sneak off in this fashion. I might have known that no one tainted with this jacobinism could act an upright manly part. He writes well, to be sure; find sentiments, but nothing so namby pamby as sentiment that is not backed up by conduct. Well, well; we are all in the hands of the Lord, and he may see fit yet to turn his heart; poor little Fanny; I’ll throw in my vote and go home to her.’ The doctor gave one last look through the window, and now, to his infinite joy, he descried Randolph approaching. In a few moments more he entered the church. His vote had been a matter much debated and of vital interest to both parties. As he entered, every eye turned towards him, and a general murmur ran round the church. ‘He’ll vote for us!’ and ‘he’ll vote for us!’ passed from mouth to mouth, and as usual the confident assertions were vouched by wagers. Whatever wrestlings with himself Randolph might have had in secret, he was too manly to manifest his feelings to the public eye, and he walked up the aisle with his customary manners, revealing nothing by look or motion to the eager eyes of his observers; though there was enough to daunt, or at least to fluster a man of common mettle, in the well known sound of the doctor’s footsteps, shuffling after him, and in the aspect of the squire standing bolt upright before him; confidence and exultation seeming to elevate him a foot above his ordinary stature.
‘Ha,’ thought he, ‘every man has his price; bait your hook with a pretty girl, and you’ll be sure to catch these boys.’ At this critical moment, Randolph
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dropped in his vote. It was open, fairly exposed to the squire’s eye, and it bore in legible, indubitable characters, the name of the Federal candidate. The doctor involuntarily grasped his hand, and whispered, ‘You have done your duty, my son, God bless you!’
Words cannot describe either the squire’s amazement or his wrath. Randolph had presumed too far when he hoped that the decency due to a public meeting would compel his relative to curb his passion, till reflection should abate it. It burst forth in incoherent imprecations, reproaches, and denunciations; and Randolph, finding that his presence only served to swell the storm, retreated.
The votes were now counted, and notwithstanding Randolph’s vote, and, contrary to all expectation, there proved to be a tie. Some federalist had been recreant. The balloting was repeated. Doctor Atwood had gone, and the democratic candidate was elected by a majority of one.
This unexpected good fortune turned the tide of the squire’s feelings. His individual chagrin was merged in the triumph of his party. They adjourned to the tavern to celebrate their victory in the usual mode of celebrating events, by eating and drinking. Excitement had its usual effects on our unethereal squire, and he indulged his stimulated appetite somewhat beyond the bounds of prudence.
Even the tiger is said to be comparatively good natured on a full stomach. The squire’s wrath was appeased by the same natural means; and when Hampden was toasted, he poured down a bumper, saying
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to his next neighbor as he did so, ‘I might have known a fellow with his nonsensical notions would have voted for the man he thought best of.’ The conviviality of our politicians continued to a late hour. Libations were poured out to all the bright champions of their party. The moderns unfortunately swallow their libations. Finally, the squire proposed a parting glass to ‘the confusion and overthrow of all monarchists, aristocrats, federalists, or despots, by whatever name called,’ and in the very act of raising it to his lips, he was seized with an apoplexy, which, in spite of his ‘sound grinders, full pulse, steady gait and grandmother Brown having to lived to ninety,’ carried him off in the space of a few hours, leaving his whole estate real and personal to his legal and sole heir, Randolph Hayford.
And how did Randolph bear this sudden reverse of fortune in his favor? This versification, as it truly seemed, of the doctor’s prophecy, that ‘Providence would open up a way for them.’
In the first place, he laid the axe to the root of the Hayford tree, renouncing at once and forever the name, (of which he had so religiously preformed the duties,) and resuming with pride and joy his honored patronymic. He then, by a formal deed of quit claim, relinquished all right and title to the estate, real and personal, and goods and chattels of Silas Hayford, Esquire, in favor of Martha Hunt, said Silas’ sister.
Thus emancipated, and absolved from all farther duties and obligations to the name of Hayford, with a character improved and almost perfected by the exact performance of self-denying and painful duties, he
[143]
began his professional career, depending solely on his own talents and efforts; thank heaven, a sure dependence in our favored country.
My sweet friend, Fanny, who seemed to be the pet of destiny, as well as of father, sisters, and friends, was thus indulged in bearing the name of Gordon, to which she so fondly adhered. She was soon transferred to Randolph’s new place of residence, and without breaking her father’s heart by a separation. He having rashly preached an ultra federal sermon on a fast day, that widened the breach between himself and the majority of his parish, so far, that it was impossible to close it without emulating the deed of Curtius. To this the good doctor had no mind, and just then most fortunately (we beg his pardon, his own word is best,) ‘providentially’ receiving a call to vacant pulpit in the place of Randolph’s residence, he once more transferred his home; spent his last days near his favorite child, and at last, in language of scripture, ‘fell asleep’ on her bosom.
----------
[Sedgwick’s notes]
[1] This fruitful subject of dispute, has rent asunder many a village society in New England.
[2] Federalist.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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A Reminiscence of Federalism
Subject
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Federalists and Democrats, partisanship, voting, friendship, courtship.
Description
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The narrator recounts the partisan divide between Federalists and Democrats in a New England town by reminiscing about a childhood friend, and her suitor's coming of age.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick]
Source
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The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich.
Publisher
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Boston: Charles Bowen
Date
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1834 [pub. 1833]
Contributor
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Jenifer Elmore, Naomi Lau, Kaylin Ricciardi, Abigail Skinner
Relation
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Collected in Catharine Sedgwick, Tales and Sketches. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835: pp. 9-43. Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 1, edited by Nina Baym, pp. 1017-38. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
"Hymn to Adversity" (1782)
"Il Penseroso" (1645)
1833
1834
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
Acts 7.60
Angelica Catalani
anonymous publication
aristocracy
As You Like It
ballots
Beauty and the Beast
Chimborazo
clergy
coming of age
Cotton Mather
courtship
Curtius
Death
death-bed promise
Democrat
Edie Ochiltree
elections
Federalism
Gioachino Rossini
Helicon
herbalist
Increase Mather
inheritance
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jacobin
Jews
John Adams
John Cotton
John Milton
Judges 11:34
lampoons
Laurence Sterne
lawyer
letters
Love
marriage
New England
newspapers
Norton Anthology of American Literature
Paradise Lost
partisan
pseudonym
Puritans
second wives
Shakespeare
Sir Walter Scott
sisters
Southerners
spinster
Tales and Sketches -First Series
The Age of Reason (1794)
The Antiquary (1816)
The Token
Thomas Gray
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine
Tristam Shandy
Uncle Toby
Vermont
Virgil
widowers
William Cullen Bryant
-
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4acd7d0e4681a080424927351f219d03
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
1847
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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“Truth Versus Fiction.”
________
By Miss C. M. Sedgwick.
________
[p. 1]
“Are you writing for the December number of the Columbian Magazine?” asked a certain dear friend of mine, who came into my room just as I was sitting down to my desk yesterday.
“Yes, I shall begin this morning, if you do not prevent me.”
“Don’t flare up, my dear; I have no intention of preventing or hindering you. Have you a subject?”
“Yes; I was thinking of founding a little story upon the remarkable exploit of our village amazons the other day, but if you have anything better to suggest, my alms-basket is at your feet; I shall be grateful to you for any aid to my invention.”
“I do not expect your gratitude. I know there are no people more tenacious of the old proverb, “many hands spoil the broth,” than you writers. I was about—very modestly—to make a suggestion. You are going to write a story for the magazine; the country is drugged with stories.”
“No more of that, ‘if you love me, Hal.’”
My friend proceeded: “Suppose you abandon fiction for once.”
“Why—my story is founded on fact.”
“Rather a small foundation,” interposed one of those fair young amazons, whose brave deeds I would fain have illustrated. “Your foundations are like city lots; so narrow that you are compelled to run your structure far up into the air.”
“I have, at least, one advantage,” I replied. “This sort of structure does not betray its want of solidity.”
“Perhaps not,” resumed my friend, “but the unreality weakens the impression; so soon as an article is found to be ‘a leetle mixed,’ to borrow our Western friend’s expression, the adulterating matter violates the whole. But to come to the point, it seems to me that at this closing and solemn season of the year, it would be well to intersperse the stories of a magazine with something better adapted to the December of our lives.”
“But will our public take broth and biscuit, when all sorts of piquant preparations are got up for them by the cunning artistes of such works?”
“Try them. The late Mathew Carey, himself a doer of good, proposed that records of virtue in private life should be made. Such records might do something in this imitative world to stimulate the zeal of profitable emulation, or at least to awaken our confidence and hope in humanity. Pardon me if I repeat that however strong the assurance may be of a fact foundation, there is always uncertainty attached to a fictitious narrative. I speak for myself; on my mind there is all the difference in the effect of a real and an imaginary character that there is in the landscape of this morning—distinct, clear and defined in this brilliant sunshine—and that of yesterday, exaggerated and dimmed by the floating mist.”
I sighed over my craft, but I could not but acknowledge that there was justice in my friend’s criticism. My thoughts turned to those tenants of our new made graves to whom he had alluded; persons of no eventful history nor very marked character, but whose example, for that very reason, might better harmonize with general experience. They were hidden in their lowly estate and, like the lakes deep set in the bosom of our hills, they were a serene mirror of Heaven. And now that with the leafy veil that shrouded these, their natural types, their veil of life has fallen, it is fitting
[p. 2]
that the beam of their pure lives should extend beyond the very narrow limit of their mortal career.
The brilliant examples of those eminent men and women, whose biographies are trumpeted through the world, are not adapted to the every day’s wants of a medium condition. What have the wives of our American citizens, or those of our village artizans and country farmers, in common with Madame de Stael, Madame de Genlis, the mistresses of Louis Fourteenth, or even the “eminent women of England?”
Our home productions are better suited for our home market, and we believe there are women in our towns and villages whose domestic, unconscious virtues, not elicited or set off by uncommon circumstances, would be far more edifying to the million than the blazonry of great real names, or the possible perfection of imaginary characters. But the true story must be told, and this remains to be done by some master hand. Our humbler task is to record a few traits in the characters of two of our village maidens who have fallen with the falling year.
Harriet Gale was known among her own set as a quiet, kind-hearted, industrious girl, who performed her duties well and said nothing about them. They were to her the allotted work of life and she did them cheerfully, without any apparent thought of difficulty in the task or merit in its accomplishment. Two or three years since she was invited to live with a sister who was well established somewhere in the vast West.
She found a happy and exciting home there and was delighted with her improved condition. It must be confessed that our emigrants from New England, in their earnest struggle for the good things of this life, sometimes forget the commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Their thoughts are on their fair fresh fields, standing thick with corn, and they do not, like Joseph, remember the old man whom they may have left straitened at home. Our friend Harriet did remember him. Her father is aged, and hearing that her presence and filial ministry were becoming important to him, she did not hesitate for a moment to sacrifice her agreeable position to his comfort and, “true to the kindred points of Heaven and home,” she returned to him.
There is too little sympathy between youth and age; it is difficult to make activity and repose harmonize. The stream of love and care, sacrifice and benefaction, naturally runs down from parent to child, and to this order of nature the parent’s love is generally adequate. But when, as sometimes toward the close of life, the stream is to be turned and the child is to minister to the parent, the exigence requires an extraordinary virtue in both. The child’s mid-day must be somewhat dimmed, if not obscured—the parent’s chill twilight must be warmed and brightened—each must conform to the other.
“I thought it a privilege,” said Harriet to me, when first I made her acquaintance a few weeks before her death, “to come home and do what I could for father.”
“Father is always kind and always cheerful--he never lets anything worry him, come what will, and he has had enough to make other men disappointed and fractious--poor old man! I am afraid he will miss me! I said to him this morning, father, I don’t know who will keep your accounts and mend your pens when I am gone.”
“He did not answer me. He could not; but he will give up. I know he will—he is used to it!”
Here was no exaggeration of her importance—no selfish or egotistic fear that she should be forgotten.
Harriet had a step-mother, a name that is for the most part a signal for the revolt of the affections—a relation that enlists all the mean jealousies, selfishnesses and asperities that beset domestic life, and in truth is so involved in difficulties that few seem to think it worth while to struggle against its tendencies.
“It seems,” said Miss Gale to me, with a sweet smile, “when mother (her step-mother) enters into that door as if an angel entered my room. She has made this room seem to me like the gates of Paradise. I have many kind hands to smooth my pillow, but there is no hand like mother’s!”
I would abstain from the published praise of living worth, but I cannot forbear saying that there must have been an equal fidelity in both parties to make this happiness. God’s servants are the only true alchymists—they alone turn the baser metals to gold.
There are few of the relations of life that produce the happiness of which He who “set the solitary in families” has made them capable. How many barrels or half tilled fields are there in domestic life. We cease to wonder at the abuses of the conjugal relation—that relation most beset with difficulties and most liable to abuse—when we see parents and children, brothers and sisters, fail to reap the golden harvest of which their Heavenly Father has sown their fields at broad cast.
I saw Harriet Gale when she was fast sinking away with consumption. She was so cheerful and manifested so hearty an interest in all the village concerns, that I took it for granted that, like many persons in that disease, she was deluded as to its progress, and I was taken by surprise when our kind village dress-maker having sent her word she was prevented coming to watch with her, by some fancy dresses which must be finished for a fancy ball to be given on the next evening (the 4th of July), she said, “Well, I don’t envy them; death
[3]
looks pleasanter to me than life ever did. I have enjoyed living too!” she added, with a sweet smile.
How few there are who on such an occasion would not have indulged in some lamentation over the frivolity of the world, in which, alas! for poor human nature, a drop of pharisaical self-complacency would have mingled. Harriet Gale’s pure spirit was like those healthy atmospheres that disinfect whatever they embrace.
It was on the same eve of our festival of independence that, raising her feeble head and looking through the window at the stars, she said, “It is a clear night and I think we shall have a pleasant day to-morrow. I hope so, for it is a pity to have so many people disappointed.”
Such cheerful and gentle sympathies are rarely felt in the midst of suffering (Miss Gale’s was extreme at this time), and they are therefore more impressive than strong and bold, expressions of religious triumph.
She used no threadbare phrases to express her feelings, nor seemed for a moment to think there was anything unusual about them. Her face and tones were uniformly quiet and cheerful. She said to me with her habitual and never to be forgotten smile, “My happiest hours have been in this room!”
“But you have suffered here extremely,” I replied.
“Yes,” she answered, “but god is good, and if it were better that I should be removed with less suffering, I certainly should be.”
Harriet Gale had been from her early youth a member of the Methodist church; and her familiar friends looked upon her death but as the fitting conclusion to the Christian fidelity of her life.
Those strangers who were admitted to the privilege of seeing her in the last extremity, for the first time, saw how it was that the sting of death was taken away, and heard, mingling with her sweet tones, ‘It is I--be not afraid.’
‘The Lord taketh pleasure in his people. He will beautify the meek with salvation.’
________
It is but two Sundays since the body of another of these meek servants of their Lord was reverently borne into our beautiful little church and set down before the chancel, while her pastor interpreted the occasion to our hearts and held before us the instruction of her life and the consolation of her death.
She had endured a life-time of invalidism by bending like a reed before the relentless blast. For many years she had supported herself and contributed to the support of her family with her needle, and by doing, that worst paid of all labor, plain sewing. To “stitch, stitch, stitch,” was the business of her life, and it was done with such fidelity and completeness that her employers became her friends. She never brought reproach or self-reproach upon herself by unpunctuality. Her work when done was well done; so well that I believe it would be difficult to estimate the amount of comfort she has produced by her humble ministry. No seam of hers ripped, no button came off, no string was wanting. Thus a world of petty vexation was saved—a world of that chafing and fretting that makes up so much of the friction of life.
She was free from an infirmity very common among our people who, while they sell their services, soothe their pride, wounded by the implied inferiority, by telling you, with no thought of abating the money compensation but making a little more than the thing is worth, that they will do it to oblige you. Thus ‘to accommodate you’ you are permitted to board in a family at the highest price going, you have the ‘privilege’ of hiring a horse, or buying a turkey, or purely to oblige you, your sewing is done. Our friend was quite above this sort of cant. She wanted employment and she was grateful for it, and so the relation between her and her employer had its reciprocal blessing.
She knew the value of her moderate gains. They secured to her independence and gave a comfortable aspect to her family. Some years ago the price of sewing in our village was considerably advanced and it was recommended to her to raise her prices. “No,” she said, “I am quite satisfied with the provision my good God has made for me.”
Her pale face and attenuated form told the story of her life of bodily suffering, but that pale face was lighted up with contentment, patience, and cheerfulness, so that to her seemed already accomplished the promise to the faithful, ‘They shall be like Him for they shall see Him as He is.’ She saw her Father in her God.
Not long before her death a subscription paper was offered to her for money to adorn our burial pace. She cheerfully rose on her bed and wrote her name for the last time, saying, “It is pleasant for me to think that I shall be laid to rest in that beautiful place.”
Her life so gradually and gently faded away that neither she nor her friends were aware of the diminution of her light till it was nearly extinct. Then, when a loving and devoted sister told her she had not many hours to live, she asked to be left for a little while to herself. And when that sacred communion, which words could but imperfectly have interpreted, was over, she sang with a low but sustained voice a part of the hymn beginning
Could I but read my title clear
To mansions in the skies.
“How beautiful it is to die,” she said, and while the words were passing from her lips her soul
[p. 4]
realized its holy vision and passed from the dead body to eternal life.
So lived with sweet patience and so died with sublime faith our village seamstress--Harriet Greenleaf.
“Around thy earthly tomb let roses rise, an everlasting Spring, in memory of that delightful fragrance which was once from thy mild manners quietly exhaled.”
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
Truth Versus Fiction
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heroism and virtue in everyday life.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator is encouraged to abandon fiction and to write about real life, and tells the stories of two village women who passed in the previous year.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Columbian Magazine, [edited by John Inman and Robert A. West] Vol. 7 (January 1847): 1-4.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1847
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Charlene Avallone, L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1847
4th of July
Consumption
daughters
Death
domesticity
fathers
fiction
filial duty
God
humility
invalid
labor
Louis XIV
Madame de Genlis
Madame de Stael
Mathew Carey
Methodist
New England
non-fiction
sewing
step-mother
submission
suffering
Ten Commandments
The Columbian Magazine
virtue
West
-
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b994c2435d4abe172fcb67bb2b97d2e8
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
1856
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 WHITE HILLS IN OCTOBER
[p. 44]
OUR town friends who fly from the heat, and dust, and menacing diseases, and insupportable ennui of their city residence, during the moths of July and August, may have an escape, but they have little enjoyment. We admire the heroism with which they endure, year after year, the discomforts of a country hotel, or the packing in the narrow, half-furnished bedrooms and rather warm attics of rural lodging-houses, and the general abatement and contraction of creature-comforts, in such startling contrast to the abounding luxuries of their own city palaces. But they are right; the country, at any discount, is better, in the fearful heats of July and August, than the town with its hot, unquiet nights and polluted air. Any hillside or valley in the country, and a shelter under any roof in or upon them, with the broad cope of heaven above, (not cut into patches and fragments by intervening walls and chimney-tops,) and broad fields, and grass, and corn, and woodlands, and their flowers, and freshening dews and breezes, and all Nature’s infinite variety, is better than every appliance and contrivance for battling with the din, the suffocation, and unrest of city life.
Yes, our city friends are right in their summer flights from
“The street,
Filled with its ever-shifting train.”
But they must not flatter themselves that their mere glimpse of country life, their mere snatch at its mid-summer beauty, the one free-drawn breath of their wearied spirit, is acquaintance with it. As well might one who had seen Rosalind, the most versatile of Shakspeare’s heroines, only in her court-dress at her uncle, the duke’s ball, guess at her infinite variety of charm in the Forest of Ardennes. Nature holds her drawing-room in July and August. She wears her fullest and richest dresses then; if we may speak flippantly without offense to the simplicity of her majesty, she is then en pleine toilette. But any other of the twelve is more picturesque than the summer months. Blustering March, with its gushing streams tossing off their icy fetters—changeful April, with its greening fields and glancing birds—sweet, budding, blossoming May—flowery June—fruitful September—golden, glorious October—dreary, thoughtful November; and all of winter, with its potent majesty and heroic adversity.
But let our citizens come to our rural districts—the more, the better for them! Only let them not imagine they get that enough which is “as good as a feast.”
This preamble was naturally suggested by our autumnal life in the country, and by a recurrence to a late delightful passage through the White Hills of New-Hampshire.
“That resort of people that do pass
In travel to and fro,”
during the intense months of July and August, we found in October so free from visitors, that we might have fancied ourselves the discoverers of that upland region of beauty, unparalleled, so far as we know, in all the traveled parts of our country. And for the benefit of those who shall come after us, for all who have their highest enjoyment, perhaps their best instruction, in Nature’s Free School, we intended to give some brief notices of our tour, in the hope of extending the traveling season into October by imparting some faint idea of the startling beauty of this brilliant month in the mountains; but what we might have said was happily superseded.
At a little inn, in a small town, after we came down from the “high place,” we met a party of friends who had preceded us along the whole route by a day.
A rain came on, and we were detained together for twenty-four hours. We agreed to pass the evening in a reciprocal reading of the brief notes of our journey. It came last to the turn of my friend, a very charming young person, whom I shall take the liberty to call Mary Langdon. She blushed and stammered, and protested against being a party to the contribution. “My only record of the journey,” she said, “is a long letter to my cousin, which I began before we left home.”
“So much the better,” we rejoined.
“But,” she said, “ it has been written capriciously, in every mood of feeling.”
“Therefore,” we urged, “the more variety.”
At last, driven to the wall, she threw a nice morocco letter-case into my lap, saying: “Take it and read it to yourself, and you will see why I positively can not read it aloud.”
So we gave up our entreaties. I read the letter-journal after I went to my room. The reading cheated me of an hour’s sleep—perhaps because I had just intensely enjoyed the country my friend described; and in the morning I begged Miss Langdon’s permission to publish it. She at first vehemently objected, saying it would be in the highest degree indelicate to publish so much of her own story as was inextricably interwoven with the journey.
“But, dear child,” I urged, “who that reads our magazines knows you? You will be on the other side of the Atlantic in another month, and before you return this record will be forgotten, for alas! we contributors to monthlies do not write for immortality!”
“But for the briefest mortality I am not fitted
[p. 45]
to write,” she pleaded. I rather smiled at the novelty of one hesitating to write for the public because not fitted for the task, and (thinking of “the fools that rushed in”—there is small aptness in the remainder of the familiar quotation) I continued to urge, till my young friend yielded, on my promising to omit passages which related to the private history of her heart—Mary Langdon not partaking that incomprehensible frankness or child-like hallucination which enables some of our very best writers, Mrs. Browning, for instance, to impart, by sonnets and in various vehicles of prose and verse, to the curious and all-devouring public those secrets from the heart’s holy of holies that common mortals would hardly confess to a lover—or a priest.
It is to our purpose, writing, as we profess to do pour l’utile, that our young friend indulged little in sentiment, and that, being a country-bred New-England girl, she conscientiously set down the coarser realities essential to the well-being of a traveler—breakfasts, dinners, etc.
But before proceeding to her journal, I must introduce my débutante, if she who will probably make but a single appearance before the public may be so styled.
Mary Langdon is still on the threshold of life—at least those who have reached threescore would deem her so, as she is not more than three-and-twenty. The freshness of her youth has been preserved by a simple and rather retired country-life. A total abstinence from French novels and other like reading has left the purity and candor of her youth unscathed by their blight and weather-stain. Would that this tree of the knowledge of evil—not good and evil--were never transplanted into our New World! Beware, ye that eat of it; your love of what is natural and simple will surely die.
Mary Langdon’s simplicity is that of truth, not of ignorance. Her father has given her what he calls “a good education”—that means, he says, that “she thoroughly knows how to read, write, and cipher, which,” he rather tartly adds, “few girls brought up at French boarding-schools do.” As might be suspected from the practical ideas in her narrative, our young friend has had that complete development of her faculties which arises out of the necessities of country-life in its best aspects.
Mary Langdon is called only pretty, but her prettiness is beauty in the eyes of her friends and lovers; and then she is so buoyant, so free of step and frank of speech, that while others are slowly winding their way to your affection, she springs into your heart.
With due respect to seniority, we should have presented Mr. Langdon before his daughter. On being called on for his journal, he said he “ was not such a confounded fool as to keep one for any portion of his life.” He “should as soon think of crystallizing soap-bubbles. He had dotted down a few memoranda as warnings to future travelers, and we were welcome to them; though he thought we were too mountain mad to profit by them, if indeed any body ever profited by any body’s else experience!” The fact was, the dear old gentleman had left home in a very unquiet state of mind. He hated at all times leaving his home, abounding in comforts—he detested travel even under what he termed “alleviating circumstances.” He was rather addicted to growling. This English instinct came over with his progenitor in the May Flower, and half a dozen generations had not sufficed to subdue it. But Mr. Langdon’s “bark is worse than his bite.” In truth his ‘bite’ is like that of a teething child’s, resulting from a derangement of sweet and loving elements.
We found our old friend’s memoranda so strongly resembling the grumbling of our traveling cousins from over the water, that we concluded to print it so portions of it, in order to illustrating the effects of the lights or shadows that emanate from our own minds. Providence provides the banquet; its relish or disrelish depends on the appetite of the guest. But to Mary Langdon’s letter, which, as it was begun before she left home, bears its first date there:
“LAKE-SIDE, 28th Sept., 1854.
“MY DEAR SUE,--I have not much more to tell you than my last contained. Carl Hermann left our neighborhood last week, determined to return by the next steamer to Dusseldorf. We were both very wretched at this final parting. But as I have often seen people making great sacrifices to others, and then losing themselves, and letting others lose all the benefit of the sacrifice, by the ungracious manner of it, I summoned up courage, and appeared before my father calm and acquiescing, and (you will think me passionless, perhaps hard-hearted) I soon became so. I read over and over again your arguments, and I confess I was willing to be persuaded by them. But, after all, my point of sight is not yours, and you can not see objects in the proportions and relations that I do. You say I have exaggerated notions of filial duty—that I have come to mature age and ripe judgment, and that I should decide and act for myself—that in the nature of things the conjugal must supersede the filial relation, and that I have no right to sacrifice my life-long happiness to the remnant of my father’s days; and above all, I am foolish to give in to his prejudices, and—selfishness,’ you added, dear, and did not quite efface the word. Though I see there is much reason in what you say, I have only to reply that I can not marry with my father’s disapprobation. I can not and I will not. Our hearts have grown together. God forms the bond that ties the child to the parent, and we make the other; and it shows human work—being often fragile, sometimes rotten. Susy, you lost your parents when you were so young, that you can not tell what I feel for my surviving one. Since my mother’s death and the marriage of Alice, he has lived in such dependence on me, that I can’t tell what his life would be if I were to leave him: and I will not. You tell me this is unnatural, and a satisfactory proof to you that I do not love Carl. Oh, Sue!— ”
[pg. 46]
Here must be our first hiatus. We can only say that the outpouring of our young friend’s heart satisfied us that beneath her serene surface there was an unfathomable well of feeling, and that her friend must have been convinced that
“Love’s reason is not always without reason.”
The letter proceeds: “I very well know that my father is prejudiced, Sue, but old men’s prejudices become a part and parcel of themselves, and they can not be cured of them. My father’s do not spring from any drop of bitterness, for he has not one; nor from egotism, for he has none of it; but, as you know, his early life was in Boston, and his only society is there, and he he naturally partakes the opinions of his contemporaries, who, the few surviving among them, deem all foreigners interlopers, outside barbarians, strangers intermeddling with that liberty, equality, and pursuit of happiness which is their exclusive birth-right; or rather, I suspect, that in their secret souls they regard the theories of their revolutionary fathers as a Utopian dream. A foreign artist above all is, in my father’s eye, a mere vagrant, who neither deserves nor can attain a local habitation or a name; and thus my poor Carl, with divine gifts, and habits of industry that would make the fortune of a mere mechanic, is thrust aside.”
Here Mary Langdon begins the narration of her journey, and here we give notes, a few specimens from her father’s memoranda, that our readers may have the advantage of seeing the same objects from different points of sight, premising that our old friend’s memoranda were scanty, and repeating that we give but specimens. We smile at his petulance more in love than ridicule. We are not fond of showing it off, and only do so in these brief extracts to substantiate our opinion that his traveling temper showed him near of kin to English tourists, who seem to make it a point to turn their plates bottom side upward.
The father and daughter both record the same facts. The one shows the rights and beautiful side of the tapestry, the other the wrong one. Strange that any eye should make the fatal mistake of dwelling on the last rather than the first!
“On Monday, 2d of October,” proceeds Mary Langdon in her letter to her cousin, “we came into Boston, to take the two o’clock train for Portland. We had three hours upon our hands, which we pleasantly filled up by visits to a studio and picture-shop; and finally, our mortal part, having given out while we were feasting the immortal, we repaired to a restaurateur’s. We groped our way into a little back room in School Street, where, if we did not find luxury or elegance, we did what met our reasonable wants-- wholesome fare and civility.*…..
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* EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
2nd October, Anno Domino, 1854. Left my comfortable lowland home for unknown parts, and known regions of snow and ice. The Lord willing, I am sure of one pleasure—coming home again!
“We had three mortal house on our hands this morning in Boston. I called on my dear old friends, the survivors of the _____ family. Not one of them, they told me, has yet risked life in a rail-car. Wisdom is not extinct!
“Called on respected Widow A-----. Could not see much of Sally -----, my old sweetheart, about her; but we got upon old times, and the color came to her pale, furrowed cheek. Women never forget—loving souls! She gave me a nice lunch—pickled oysters, etc. and a glass of old Madeira. Meanwhile the girls were ranging round studios (?), good lack! and picture-shops. This rage for ‘Art” has come in with the foreign tongues since my time. Picked them up at a restaurant. What a misnomer! A dainty place of refreshment to be sure; a little parlor behind a shop, with herds rushing in and herds rushing out!
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“The passage to Portland was dusty but brief, and we arrived there in time to see its beautiful harbor, while the water reflected the rose-tints on the twilight clouds. We, as advised, eschewed the hotel, and were kindly received at a Miss Jones’s, a single woman, who so blends dignity with graciousness, that she made us feel like invited guests. One might well mistake the reception of the hostess for the welcome of a friend. Her table has an American variety and abundance with the nicety of English appointments. Her house is a model. Its quiet and completeness reminds one of that classic type of comfort, an English inn. The house, with its high repute, was the inheritance of two sisters from their mother, of whom we were told an anecdote which may be apocryphal, but which would harmonize with the bonhomie of Sir Roger de Coverley. The old lady closed her patriarchal length of days serenely; and when she was dying, she requested that the order of her household should be in no wise disturbed by the event of her decease, but that ‘the gentlemen should play their evening game of whist as usual!’*…..
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*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Came by rail to Portland, in peril of life and limb. Stirred up with fifty plebieans treading on your toes and jostling your elbows. This modern improvement of cattle-pens over a gentleman’s carriage with select and elect friends, and time to enjoy a beautiful country, is the ‘advance of civilization!’ Travelers now are prisoners under sentence of death- their keeper being called a conductor. Oh! I cry with my old friend Touchstone, ‘when I was at home, I was in a better place!’ Heaven grant me his philosophy to add, “Travelers must be content.’
“Portland. Rather a nice house is this Miss Jones’s. Old-fashioned neatness and quiet. But what would our English traveler say to the lady bestowing her own company, unasked, and that of her guest, upon us! Bad butter spoiled my tea and breakfast. The girls did not notice it. Young folks have no senses.”
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“Tuesday. Miss Jones’s morning face was as benign as her evening countenance. No lady could have administered hospitality with more refinement. Just as the door of the carriage that was to convey us to the station was closing, it was reopened, and a rough-hewn, but decent country body was shoved in by the driver, who muttered something about there being no other conveyance for her. My father looked a little awry, not with any thought of remonstrating -- no native American would do that -- but he was just lighting his after-breakfast cigar, and he shrunk from the impropriety of smoking in such close quarters with a stranger who bore a sem-
[pg. 47]
blance of the sex to which he always pays deference.
“‘I hope, Madam,’ he said, ‘a cigar does not offend you?’
“ ‘La! no, sir,’ replied our rustic friend good-naturedly, ‘ I like it.’
“My father’s geniality is always called forth by the touch of a cigar.
“ ‘Perhaps, Madame,’ he said, with a smile at the corners of his mouth, ‘you would try one yourself?’
“ ‘I would,’ she answered, eagerly, and grasped the cigar my father selected, saying, ‘thank ye kindly. I s’pose I can light it at the end of yours?
“ My dear, fastidious father heroically breasted this juxtaposition, and the old lady, unconscious of any thing but her keen enjoyment of the unlooked-for been, smoked away vigorously. Dear Alice, who never loses sight of her duty to wrest a possible mischance from any human being, rather verdantly suggested, ‘that the cigar might make her sick.’
“‘Mercy, child! I am used to pipes.’
“That I had already inferred from her manner of holding the cigar. She was soon pressed by the usual necessity engendered by smoking, and half rising from her seat, it was too evident that she mistook the pure plate-glass for empty space. My father let down the glass as if he had been shot; but she, nowise discomposed, even by our laughing, merely said, cooly
“ ‘Why, I did not calculate right, did I?”
“There are idiosyncrasies in Yankeedom—there is no doubt of it! Arrived at the cars, our close companionship, and our acquaintance too, ended, except that the woman’s husband, for she had a husband, some Touchstone whose ‘humor’ it was to ‘take that no other man would,’ asked me to put my window down, for his ‘wife was sick!’ But as I had just observed the good woman munching a bit of mince pie, I thought that coming so close upon the cigar might possibly offend her stomach more than the fresh untainted air, so I declined, as courteously as possible, with the answer I have always ready for similar requests, ‘that I keep my window open to preserve the lives of the people in the car.’ ‘That’s peculiar!’ I heard her murmur; but her serenity was nowise discomposed, either by my refusal or her ‘sickness.’ Surely the imperturbable good nature of our people is national and ‘peculiar!’*…..
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*EXTRACT FROM MR.LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Happy illustration, from a smoking old woman this morning, of the refinements of railroad travel!”
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“By the way, there were notices posted up in these cars, which reminded us that we were near the English Provinces, and under their influence. The notices ran thus: ‘Gentlemen are requested not to put their feet on the cushions, and not to spit on the floor, and to maintain a respectable cleanliness, the conductors are required to enforce these requests.’ Must we wait for the millennium to see a like request and like enforcement pervade our tobacco-chewing country? We found ourselves surrounded by intelligent people of the country habitués, who gave us all the local information we asked, told us when we came to Bryant’s Pond, and that the poor little shrunken stream, that still brawled and fretted in its narrowed channel, was the Androscoggin.
“At Gorham, but seven miles from the ‘Glen-House,’ we left the cars and found a wagon awaiting passengers. ‘The houses are all closed,’ was the pleasant technical announcement of our driver; and he added, cheerfully,
“’The weather has been so tedious that it was burst the bubble on Mount Washington.’
“‘The “bubble!” what the deuce does the man mean?’ exclaimed my father. I perceived that it was a bit of slang wit upon ‘out-of-season’ people, to terrify them with the ‘bulb’ having burst, and so I told my father. He solemnly replied that he did not in the least doubt the fact! And as we went on slowly making the ascent, he looked ‘sagely sad;’ dear Alice, as her happy temper is, was ‘bright without the sun.’*…..
“My father made a few and faint responses to our exclamations of delight at the light wreath of mist that floated far down the mountains, and the massive clouds that dropped over their summits, so that our imaginations were not kept in abeyance by definite outlines. The air was soft, and our steeds, as if considerate of our enjoyment, prolonged it by crawling up the long ascent. We came into the ‘Glen House’ with keen appetites—a needful blessing we thought—when Mr. Thompson, the host, with solemn mien informed us he ‘was not prepared for company in October—we must expect port and beans.’ł …..
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*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“We were pitched into an open wagon at Gorham—Scottish mist—rain impending—chilled to my very vitals. The driver tells us the bulb’s already burst on Mount Washington. Continuous ascent. Not a meadow, an orehard, or a garden, but dreary mountains shrouded in fog.
ł “Found the Glen House ‘closed,’ which means that all the comfortable rooms are dismantled and shut up, that you must take such fare as mine host pleases (‘pork and beans’ he promises), thank him for ‘accommodating’ you, and pay summer prices. Oh, ‘what fools we mortals are!”
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“Oh, my poor father’s blank face! Yet blanker when we were ushered into a parlor where, instead of the cracking wood fire we had fancied indigenous in these mountains, we found one of those black ‘demons’ that have taken out of our life all the poetry of the ‘hearthstone.’ But courage! We can open the stove door and get a sparkle of light and life!
“10 p.m. Before finishing my day’s journal I must tell you, ‘pour encourager les autres’ who may risk the ‘closed houses’ of October, that our host did better than he promised. Our dinner was served in a cozy little room, as neatly as a home dinner; it was hot, which a hotel dinner, in the season, never is; and that the threatened ‘pork and beans’ turned into tender fowls, fresh eggs, and plentiful accessories of vegetables and pies. William, our wagon-driv-
[pg. 48]
er, was metamorphosed into a waiter, and performed his part as if he were ‘native to the manner.’*…..
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*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Dinner turned out better than I expected; but where but in a Yankee tavern would one suffer the infliction of a mince pie in October?”
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“The cloudy evening has closed in upon us early. We have eluded its tediousness by reading aloud ‘The Heir of Redcliffe,’ a charming book, which teaches more irresistibly than the ordained preacher the virtues of forgiveness and self-sacrifice. These Christian graces are vitalized in the lives of Guy and Amy. Amy does right with so much simplicity and so little effort, that one feels as if it were easy to do it; and as my task is much easier than hers as the lover is less dear than the husband, I will try. You think me cool; I do not feel so. I start and tremble at this howling wind—it reminds me that Carl is on the ocean.
“I was here startled by seeing that my father was observing me.
“ ‘My child,’ he said, ‘you are shaking with cold,’ (not ‘with cold,’ I could have answered). ‘These confounded stoves,’ he added, ‘keep one in an alternate ague and fever. Come, waltz round the room with your sister, and get into a glow.’
“So, singing our own music, we waltzed till we were out of breath, and Alice has seated herself at picquet with my father, who has a run of luck, ‘point! seizième! and capote!’ which puts him into high good humor—and I may write unmarked. Carl was to write me once more before his embarkation, but I can not get the letter till my return, and I have not the poor consolation of looking over the list of the steamer’s passengers and seeing the strange names of those who would seem to me happy enough to be in the same ship with him; and yet, what care they for that! Poor fellow! he will be but sorry company. I find support in the faith that I am doing my duty. He could not see it in that light, and had neither comfort for himself nor sympathy for me. I almost wish now, when I think of him in his desolation, that I could receive the worldly philosophy my old nurse offered me when, as Carl drove away, she came into my room and found me crying bitterly. She hushed me tenderly as she was used to do when I was a child; and when I said,
‘‘Hannah, it is for him, not for myself, I feel!’
‘‘Oh! that’s nothing but a nonsense, child,’ she said. ‘Men ain’t that way; they go about among folks and get rid of feelings; it’s women that stay at home and keep ‘em alive, brooding on ‘em!’
“Why should I thus shrink from a consequence I ought to desire? But perhaps it will be easier as I go on, if it be true that
‘Each goodly thing is hardest to begin;
But entered in a spacious court they see
Both plain, and pleasant to be walked in.’
“Wednesday Morning. My father happened to cast his eyes across the table as I finished my last page, and he saw a tear fall on it. Throwing down his cards he said,
“ ‘Come, come, children! it’s time to go to bed;’ and stooping over me, he kissed me fondly and murmured: ‘Dear, good child! I can not stand it if I see you unhappy.’
“He shall not see me so. I have risen to-day with this resolution. The rain has been pouring down all night, but at this glorious point of sight, directly under Mount Washington, we are equal to either fate—going on or staying. Mr. Thompson has again surprised us with a delicious breakfast of tender chicken, light biscuit, excellent bread, fresh eggs, and that rarest of comforts at a hotel—delicious coffee, with a brimming pitcher of cream. We wondered at all these things, usually the result of a feminine genius, for we have not heard the flutter of a petticoat in the house till we saw our respectable landlady gliding through the room. We learned from her that she was the only womankind on the diggings. Every thing is neatly done, so we bless our October star for exempting us from the careless and hurried service of the Celtic race. While it rains, we walk on the piazza, enjoying the beautiful and ever-varying effects of the clouds as they roll down the mountains, and roll off; like the shadows on our human life, dear Susan, that God’s love does both send and withdraw.
“The Glen House is on the lowest ridge of the hill that rises opposite to Mount Washington, which, as its name indicates, stands head and shoulders above the other summits—having no peer. Madison and Monroe come next, on the left, and then Jefferson, who appears (characteristically?) higher than he is. In a line with Mount Washington, on the other side, are Adams, Clay, etc. These names (excepting always Washington) do not, with their recent political associations, seem quite to suit these subline, eternal mounts, but as time rolls on, the names will grow to signs of greatness, and harmonize with physical stability and grandeur. Jefferson’s head seems modeled after a European pattern. It runs up to a sharp point, and wants but accumulated masses of ice to be broken into Alpine angles. My father says there are other passes in the mountains more beautiful than this; none can be grander…..
“My father has been most sweet and tender to me to-day. Whenever he lays his hand upon my head, it seems like a benediction. And Alice is so kind, projecting future pleasures and sweet solaces for me. You know how I love her little girl. To-day, while we were walking, she heard me sigh, and putting her arm around me, she said: ‘Will you let Sarah come and pass the winter with you and father?’ I trust my look fully answered her. I can not yet talk even with her as I do on paper to you—a confidential implement is a pen…..
“We have all been walking, in the lowering
[p. 49]
twilight on the turnpike, which is making by a joint stock company, up Mount Washington. The road, by contract, is to be finished in three years; the cost is estimated at $63,000. The workmen, of course, are nearly all Irishmen, with Anglo-Saxon heads to direct them. The road is, as far as possible, to be secured by frequent culverts, and by Macadamizing it, from the force of winter torrents. But that nothing is impossible to modern science, it would seem impossible to vanquish the obstacles to the enterprise—the inevitable steepness of the ascent, the rocky precipices, etc. We amused ourselves with graduating the intellectual development of the Celtic workmen by their answers to our questions.
“ ‘When is the road to be finished?’
“ ‘And, faith, Sir, it must be done before winter comes down below.’
“ ‘The next replied, ‘When the year comes round.’ And another: ‘Some time between now and never.’
“ ‘Friend,’ said I to one of them, ‘have you such high mountains in Ireland?’
“ ‘That we have, and higher—five miles high!’ Paddy is never over-crowed.
“ ‘Straight up?’ I asked.
“ ‘By my faith and troth, straight up, it is.’
“ ‘In what part of Ireland is that mountain?’
“ ‘In county Cork.’
“ ‘Of course, in county Cork!’ said my father, and we passed on through the debris of blasted rocks, stumps of uprooted trees, and heaps of stone, till we got far enough into the mountain to feel the sublimity of its stern, silent solitude, with the night gathering its shroud of clouds about it, and we were glad to pick our way back to our cheerful tea-table at Mr. Thompson’s. We had a long evening before us, but we diversified it (my father hates monotony, and was glad of ‘something different,’ as he called it) by bowling—my father pitting Alice against me. She beat me, according to her general better luck in life.”*…..
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*EXTRACT FROM MR.LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Walked out this afternoon amidst precipices and uprooted trees, where Paddies, the plague of our Egypt, are making a road to the summit of Mount Washington, that men, women, and much cattle may be dragged up there, and there befogged.”
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“ Thursday Morning, 6th October. – The weather still uncertain, but more beautiful in its effects on these grand mountains in their October glory, than I can describe to you. They are grand—Mount Washington being higher than Rhigi and Rhigi and Pilatus are majestic, even in the presence of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau. The rich coloring of our autumnal foliage is unknown in Europe, and how it lights up with brilliant smiles the stern face of the mountains! Even when the sun is clouded, the beeches that skirt the evergreens look like a golden fringe, and wherever they are they ‘make sunshine in a shady place.’ The maples are flame-colored, and, when in masses, so bright that you can scarcely look steadily on them; and where they are small, and stand singly, they resemble (to compare the greater to the less) flamingos lighted on the mountain side. There is an infinite diversity of coloring—soft brown, shading off into the pale yellow, and delicate May-green. None but a White of Selborne, with his delicately defining pen, could describe them. While we stood on the piazza admiring and exclaiming, the obliging Mr. Thompson brought out a very good telescope, and adjusted it so that our eyes could explore the mountains. He pointed out the bridle-path to the summit of Mount Washington. Various obstacles have prevented our attempting the ascent. If my father would have trusted us to guides, there are none in October, nor trained horses, for as the feed is brought from below, they are sent down to the lowlands as soon as the season is over. Besides, the summits are now powdered with snow, and the paths near the summits slippery with ice; and though I like the scramble and the achievement of attaining a difficult eminence, I much prefer the nearer, better defined, and less savage views below it.*
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*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Thursday. Sitting by a window where I see nothing but these useless mountains. Slept little, and when I slept, haunted by slides, torrents, and all dire mischances. Waked by a gong! Rain and sunshine alternately, so that no mortal can tell whether to go or stay,” etc.
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“ Guided by our good landlord, my eye had followed the path past two huge out-standing rocks, which look like Druidical monuments, to the summit of Mount Washington, where I had the pleasure of descrying and announcing the figure of a man. My father and Alice both looked, but could not make it out. I referred to Mr. Thompson, and his accustomed eye confirmed the accuracy of mine. Mr. Thompson was much exercised with conjectures as to where the traveler came from. He had seen none for the last few days in the mountains except our party, and he naturally concluded the man had made his ascent from the Crawford House. My eye seemed spell-bound to the glass. I mentally speculated upon the character and destiny of the pilgrim who, at this season, and alone, had climbed these steeps. My imagination invested him with a strange interest. He had wandered far away from the world, and above it. There was something in his mind—perhaps in his destiny—akin to the severity of this barren solitude. The spell was broken by a call from my father: ‘Come, Mary! are you glued to that glass?’ he exclaimed. ‘The rain is over, and we are off in half an hour.’ And so we were, with Thompson, Junior, for our driver—one of our young countrymen who always makes me proud, dear Susan, performing well the task of your inferior, with the capacity and self-respect of your equal. Long live the true republicanism of New-England!
“My father had been rather nettled in the morning by what he thought an attempt, on the part of Mr. Thompson to take advantage of our dependence, and charge us exorbitantly for con-
[p. 50]
veying us thirty-three miles, to the Mountain-Notch;’ but, on talking the matter over with our host, he found that his outlay, with tolls, and other expenses, was such that he only made what every Yankee considers his birthright—‘ a good business’—out of us. So my father, being relieved from the dread of imposition, was in happy condition all day, and permitted us, without a murmur of impatience, to detain him, while we went off the road to see one of the two celebrated cascades of the neighborhood. It was the ‘Glen-Ellis Fall.’ We compromised, and gave up seeing the ‘Crystal Fall,’ a half a mile off the road on the other side; and enjoyed the usual consolation of travelers on like occasions of being told that the one we did not see was far best worth seeing. However, I hold all these wild leaps of mountain streams to be worth seeing, each having an individual beauty; and advise all who may follow in our traces, to go to the top and bottom of ‘Glen Ellis.’
“I have often tried to analyze the ever-fresh delight of seeing a water-fall, and have come to the conclusion that it partly springs from the scramble to get at the best and all the points of view, setting the blood in the most sluggish veins to dancing; for as you know, ‘Tout depend de la maniѐre que le sang circule.’ I can not describe to you the enjoyment of this day’s ride. As heart to heart, my father’s serenity answered to my cheerfulness and rewarded it. Our cup was brimming and sparkling. There was a glowing vitality in the western breeze that blew all the clouds from our spirits, and shaped those on the mountain sides into ever-changing beauty, or drove them off the radiant summits. We laughed, as the vapor condensing into the smallest of hail-stones, came pelting in our faces as if the elements had turned boys, and threw them in sport! What may not Nature be to us – play-fellow, consoler, teacher, religious minister! Strange that any one wretch should be found to live without God in the world, when the world is permeated with its Creator!
“Our level road wound through the Pinkham woods in the defiles of the mountains, and at every turn gave them to us in a new aspect. It seemed to me that the sun had never shone so brightly as it now glanced into the forest upon the stems of the white birches—Wordsworth’s ‘Ladies of the Wood’—and shone on the Mosaic carpet made by the brilliant fallen leaves. We missed the summer-birds, but the young partridges abounded, and, hardly startled by our wheels, often crossed our path. We saw a fox, who turned and very quietly surveyed us, as if to ask who the barbarians were that so out of season invaded his homestead. One of us—I will not tell you which, lest you discredit the story—fancying, while the wagon was slowly ascending, to make a cross-cut on foot through some woodland, saw a bear—yes, a bear! face to face! and made, you may be sure, a forced march to the highway. The mountaineers were not at all surprised when we recounted what we fancied a hair-breadth ‘scape; but quietly told us that ‘three bears had been seen in that neighborhood lately, but bears did no harm unless provoked, or desperately hungry.’ It was not a very pleasant thought that our lives depended on the chances of Bruin’s appetite.
“This meeting with the fox—the Mercury of the woods—and with the bear—the hero of many a dramatic fable – would, in the forests of the Old World, and in prolific Old World fancies, have been wrought into pretty traditions for after-ages. I might have figured as the
‘Forsaken, woeful, solitary maid,
In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed,’
set on by the ramping beast! And for the knight, why, it would be easy to convert the wanderer I descried on the summit of Mount Washington, into a lover and a deliverer, whose ‘allegiance and fast fealty’ had bound him to our trail. But, alas! there is no leisure in this material age for fancy-weaving; and all our way was as bare of tradition or fable as if no human footstep had impressed it, till we came to a brawling stream near ‘Davis’s Crossing,’ which we were told was called ‘Nancy’s Brook.’ We heard various renderings of the origin of the name, but all ended in one source—man’s perjury and woman’s trust. A poor girl, some said, had come with a woodsman, a collier, or tree-feller, and lived with him in the mountains, toiling for him, and singing to him, no doubt,
‘When she his evening food did dress,’
till he grew tired, and one day went forth and did not come back—and day after day she waited, but her Theseus did not return, and she was starved to death on the brink of the little brook that henceforward was to murmur her tragic tale. The sun was set behind the ridge of Mount Willard, when we reached the ‘Willey Slide,’ and Alice and I walked the last two miles to the Mountain Notch. Just after we alighted from the wagon, and while we were yet close to it, at a turn in the road I perceived a pedestrian traveler before us, who, seeming startled by the sound of our wheels, sprang lightly over the fence. I involuntarily withdrew my arm from Alice’s, and stood still, gazing after him for the half-instant that passed before he disappeared in the forest.
“‘Are you frightened?’ said Alice; ‘this is a lonely road. Shall I hail the wagon?’
“ ‘Oh! no,’ I replied.
“ ‘But,’ she urged, ‘this may be some fugitive from justice.’
“ ‘Nonsense, Alice; don’t you see by his air that he is a gentleman?’
“ ‘No,’ she saw nothing but that ‘he was light of foot, and anxious to escape observation.’
“I had seen more; I had seen his form who henceforward is to me as if he had passed the bourne whence no traveler returns; or, what is more probable, my imagination had lent to the figure the image that possesses it. Alice—she is a cautious little woman—was continually looking back, from fear, I from hope; but we saw
[p. 51]
nothing more of the traveler. The apparition had spoiled our walk. The brief twilight of October was shortened by the mountain-walls on either side of the road. We had no time to look for the cascades, and fantastic resemblances animals and human profiles that we had been forewarned to observe on the hillsides. The stars were coming out, and the full moon—indicated by the floods of light behind Mount Webster when we passed the ‘Notch’ and came upon the level area where the ‘Crawford House’ stands. Here we found my father, already seated in a rocking-chair, by a broad hearth-stone and a roaring, crackling fire. And beside these cheering types of home-contentments, he had found a gentleman from the low country, with whom he was already in animated discourse. The stranger was a fine, intelligent, genial-looking person, who proved to be a clergyman whom Alice had once before met at the Flume House. He is a true lover of Nature, and explorer of Nature’s secrets—a geologist, botanist, etc.; and he most wisely comes up to the high places, at all seasons, whenever he feels the need of refreshment to his bodily and mind’s eye. Perhaps he finds here an arcana for his theology, and I am sure that, after a study here, he may go home better able, by his high communing, to inform and elevate the minds of others. No teachers better understood the sources and means of mental power and preparation than Moses and Mohammed; and their studies were not in theological libraries, but in the deepest of nature’s solitudes.
“Perhaps our friend has no direct purpose beyond his own edification in his rambles in the mountains. He is familiar with every known resort among them, and most kindly disposed to give us thoroughfare travelers information. He made for us from memory a pencil-sketch of the peaks to be seen from Mount Willard, with their names. We verified them to-day, and found the outline as true as if it had been daguerreotyped. An observation so keen, and a memory so accurate are to be envied.
“This house, at the Mountain Notch is called the Crawford House. The Old Crawford House, familiar to the pioneer travelers in this region, stands a few rods from it, or rather did, till the past winter, when it was burned, and its site is now marked by charred timbers. Old Crawford’s memory will live, as one of these eternal hills bears his name. He actually lived to a good old age, and for many years in rather awful solitude here, and at the last with some of the best blessings that wait on old age—‘respect, and troops of friends.’ His son, whose stature, broad shoulders, and stolid aspect bring to mind the Saxon peasant of the Middle Ages, is driver in the season and sportsman out of it. He stood at the door this morning as we were driving off to the Falls of the Ammonoosuck, with his fowling-piece in hand, and asked leave to occupy a vacant seat in the wagon. My father was a sportsman in his youth—some forty years ago; his heart warms at the sight of a gun, and besides, I fancy he had some slight hope of mending our cheer by a brace of partridges, so he very cheerfully acquiesced in Crawford’s request. Alice and I plied him with questions, hoping to get something out of an old denizen of the woods. But he knew nothing, or would tell nothing. The ‘tongues in trees’ were far more fluent than his. But even so stony a medium had power afterward to make my heart beat. I was standing near him at the end of the Falls, and away from the rest, and I asked him (Sue, I confess I have been either thinking or dreaming of that ‘fugitive’ all night!) if he had seen a foot-traveler pass along the road the last evening or this morning? ‘No; there was few travelers any way in October.’ He vouchsafed a few more words, adding: ‘It’s a pity folks don’t know the mountains are never so pretty as in October, and sport never so smart.’ Was there ever a sportsman the dullest, most impassive, but he had some perception of woodland beauty? While we were talking, and I was seemingly measuring, with my eye, the depth of the water, as transparent as the air, my father and sister had changed their position, and come close to me. ‘Oh!’ said the man, ‘I recollect—I did see a stranger on Mount Willard this morning, when I went out with my gun; he was drawing the mountains: a great many of the young folks try to do it, but they don’t make much likeness.’ Perhaps this timely generalization of friend Crawford, prevented my father and Alice’s thoughts following the direction of mine. I know this myth is not Carl Hermann—it is not even possible it should be—and yet, the resemblance that, in my one glance, I had fancied to perceive to him and the coincidence of the sketching, had invested friend Crawford with a power to make my cheeks burn and my hands cold as ice. I stole off and looked at the deep, smooth cavities the water had welled in the rocks; but I did not escape my sister’s woman’s eye. ‘Mary dear,’ she whispered, when she joined me, ‘you are not so strong as you think yourself.’ Dear Susan, if I am not strong, I will be patient. Patience, you will say, implies a waiting for something to come. Well, let it be so. Can a spark of hope live under the ashes I have heaped upon it?.....
“The rocks are very beautiful at these Falls of the Ammonoosuck. The stream, which never here can be a river, is now, by the unusual droughts of the summer, shrunk to mere rill; but even now, and at all seasons, it must be worth the drive to see it. Worth the drive! A drive anywhere in these hills ‘pays’—to borrow the slang of this bank-note world—for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly saw young partridges in our path, nearly as tame as the chickens of the basse-cour. The whir-r-ing of their wings struck a spark from our sportsman’s eye, and—a far easier achievement—startled the blood in my father’s veins. The instinct to kill game is, I
[p. 52]
believe, universal with man, else how should it still live in my father, who, though he blusters like Monkbarns, is very much of an Uncle Toby in disposition? He sprang from the wagon, borrowed Crawford’s gun, and reminding Alice and me so much of Mr. Pickwick that we laughed in spite of our terror lest he should kill—not the partridge, but himself; but luckily, he escaped unharmed—and so did the bird! Crawford secured two or three brace of them in the course of the morning’s drive. I fear we shall relish them at breakfast to-morrow, in spite of our lamentations over their untimely loss of their pleasant mountain-life. I asked our driver how they survived the winter (if haply they escaped the fowler) in these high latitudes? ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘they had the neatest was of folding their legs under their wings and lying down in the snow.’ They subsist on berries and birchen-buds—dainty fare, is it not?
“We found a very comfortable dinner awaiting us, which rather surprised us, as our landlord, Mr. Lindsay—a very civil, obliging person, and a new proprietor here, I believe, had promised us but Lenten entertainment; but ‘deeds, not words,’ seems the motto of these mountaineers. In the afternoon we drove up Mount Willard –
‘Straight up Ben-Lomond did we press’—
but our horses seemed to find no difficulty for themselves, and we no danger in the ascent. I shall not attempt to describe the view. I have never seen any mountain prospect resembling that of the deep ravine (abyss), with its convex mountainsides; the turnpike-road looking like a ribbon carelessly unwound, the only bit of level to be seen, and prolonged for miles. The distant mountains that bound the prospect you may see elsewhere, but this ravine, with the traces of the ‘Willey Slide’ on one side of it, has no parallel. Don’t laugh at me for the homeliness of the simile—it suggested a gigantic cradle. Here, as elsewhere, we were dazzled by the brilliancy of the October foliage, and having found a seat quite as convenient as a sofa—though, being of rock, not quite as easy—we loitered till the last golden hue faded from the highest summit; and we should have staid to see the effect of the rising moon on the summits contrasting with the black shadows of night in the abyss, but my father had observed that our driver had neglected the precaution of blanketing his horses, and as a mother is not more watchful of a sucking child than he is of the well-being of animals, it matters not whether they are his own or another’s, he begged us to sacrifice our romance to their safety. Alice and I walked down the mountain; it was but a half-hour’s easy walk……
“I have forborne talking with Alice on the subject that haunts me. I know I have her sympathy; and that should satisfy me. But this evening, as we were returning, she said: ‘Did you feel any electric influence as we sat looking at the view Crawford’s ‘stranger’ sketched this morning?’ ‘I thought of Carl,’ I honestly answered, and turned the subject. Alas! Sue, when do I not think of him! …..
“Profile House: Saturday Evening. We have again, to-day, experienced the advantage of these open mountain vehicles, so preferable to the traveling-jails called stage-coaches, which always remind me of Jonah’s traveling accommodations. Again, to-day, we have been enchanted with the brilliancy of the foliage. It is just at the culminating point of beauty, and I think it does not remain at this point more than three or four days when you perceive it is a thought less bright. Why is it that no painting of our autumnal foliage has succeeded? It has been as faithfully imitated as the colors on the pallet can copy these living, glowing colors; but those who have best succeeded—even Cole, with his accurate eye and beautiful art—has but failed. The pictures, if toned down, are dull; if up to Nature, are garish to repulsiveness. Is it not that Nature’s toning is inimitable, and that the broad o’erhanging firmament, with its cold, serene blue, and the soft green of the herbage, and brown of the reaped harvest-field, temper, to the eye the intervening brilliancy, and that, within the limits of a picture, there is not sufficient expanse to reproduce these harmonies?”…..
“Saturday Evening. We have driven some 23 miles—from the Mountain Notch to the Franconian hotel to-day. The weather has been delicious. The drive has been more prosaic, or approaching to it, than we have before traveled in this hill-country. This October coloring would make far tamer scenery beautiful; but I can fancy it very bleak and dismal when
‘Blow, blow November’s winds:’
whereas here, at the ‘Franconian Notch,’ you feel, as it were, housed and secured by Nature’s vast fortresses and defenses. The ‘Eagle’s Cliff’ is on one side of you, and Mount Cannon (called so from a resemblance of a rock on the summit to a cannon) on the other; and they so closely fold and wall you in that you need but a poetic stretch of the arms to touch them with either hand; and when the sun glides over the arch in the zenith above—but a four hours’ visible course in mid-winter—you might fancy yourself sheltered from the sin and sorrow that great eye witnesseth. You will accuse me, I know, dear, rational friend, of being ‘exalte,’ (vernacular, cracked,) but remember, we are alone in these inspiring solitudes, free from the disenchantment of the eternal buzzing of the summer swarms that the North gives up, and the South keeps not back.
“We were received at the Profile House with a most smiling welcome by Mr. Weeks, the pro tem. host, who promises to make us ‘as comfortable as is in his power,’ and is substantiating his promise by transferring his dinner-table from the long, uncarpeted dinner-saloon, with its fearful rows of bare chairs and tables, to a well-furnished home-looking apartment, where a fire-place worthy of the Middle Ages, is already brightened with a hospitable fire. The
[p. 53]
great rambling hotel is vacant, and its silence unbroken, save by the hastening to and fro of our willing host, who unites all offices of service in his own person, and the pattering of his pretty little boy’s feet—the little fellow following him like his shadow, and, perchance, running away from other shadows in this great empty house. The little fellow makes music to my ear. There is no pleasanter sound than the footsteps of a child ……
“I left Alice dressing for dinner. I think Alice would perform the ceremonial of a lady if she were shipwrecked in a desert island, and my father awaiting dinner. Dear father is never the pleasantest company at these seasons, when ‘time stands still withal,’ or rather, to him keeps a snail’s fretting pace. Well, I left them both and went down to the Lake—a short walk—to greet the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ as they prosaically call the wonderful head at the very summit of the headland cliff, upreared on high over the beautiful bit of water named ‘The Old Man’s Punch-bowl.’ The nomenclature of our country certainly does not indicate one particle of poetry or taste in its people. There are, to be sure, namesakes of the Old World, which intimate the exile’s loving memories, and there are scattered, here and there, euphonious and significant Indian names, not yet superseded by ‘Brownvilles’ or ‘Smithdales,’ but for the most part, one would infer that pedagogues, sophomores, and boors had presided at the baptismal font of the land. To call that severe Dantescan head, which it would seem impossible that accident should have formed, so defined and expressive is its outline, like the Sphinx, a mystery in the desert—to call it the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ is irreverence, desecration; and this exquisite little lake, lapped amidst the foldings and windings of the mountains, whose million unseen spirits may do the bidding of the heroic old Prospero who presides over it; to call this gem of the forest a ‘punch-bowl’ is a sorry travesty! I paid my homage to him while his profile cut the glowing twilight, and then sat down at the brim of the lake. Dear Susan,
‘The leaning
of the close trees o’er the brim,
had a sound beneath their leaves;’
and I will borrow two lines more to help out my meaning;
‘Driftings of my dream do light
All the skies by day and night.’
But truly, it is mere drift-wood, not fit even to build a ‘castle in the air.’ I was startled from my musing by a rustling of the branches behind me, and I turned, expecting – not to see a bear or a fox, but my fancies incorporate. The leaves were still quivering, but I saw no apparent cause for so much disturbance—I probably had startled a brace of partridges from their roost. They brought me back to the actual world, and I came home to an excellent dinner, which I found my father practically commending.
“Sunday. My father has brought us up to so scrupulous an observance of the Puritan Sabbath, that I was rather surprised, this morning, by his proposition to drive over to the Flume. His equanimity had been disturbed by finding one of the horses that had brought us here, seemingly in a dying condition. He was one of the ‘team’ that had taken us on to Mount Willard, and my father had then prophesied that he would suffer from the driver’s neglect to blanket him. He was in nowise comforted by the verification of his ‘I told you so!’ but walked to and fro from the stable, watching the remedies administered, and vituperating all youth as negligent, reckless, and hard-hearted! I think it was half to get rid of this present annoyance that he proposed the drive to the Flume, saying, as he did so: “These mountains are a great temple, my children; it matters not much where we stand to worship.’ We stopped for a half-hour at a little fall just by the roadside, called by the mountain-folk ‘The Basin,’ and by fine people, ‘The Emerald Bowl’—a name suggested by the exquisite hue of the water, which truly is of as soft and bright a green as an emerald. The stream has curiously cut its way through a rock white and smooth, and almost polished by its friction, which overhangs the deep, circular bowl like a canopy, or rather, like a half-uplifted lid, its inner side being mottled and colored like a beautiful shell. The stream glides over the brim of its sylvan bowl and goes on its way rejoicing. We loitered here for a half-hour watching the golden and crimson leaves that had dropped in, and laid in rich mosaics in the eddies of the stream.
“The morning was misty, and the clouds were driven low athwart the mountains, forming, as Alice well said, pedestals on which their lofty heads were upreared. No wonder that people in mountains and misty regions become imaginative, even superstitious. These forms, falling, rising, floating over the eternal hills, susceptible of dazzling brightness, and deepening into the gloomiest of earth’s shadows, are most suggestive to a superstitious dreamer.
“I shall not attempt, my friend, to describe this loveliest of all five-mile drives, from the ‘Profile House’ to the Flume under the Eagle’s Cliff, and old Prospero, and beside his lake, and the ‘Emerald Bowl,’ and then finished by the most curious, perhaps the most beautiful passage we have yet seen in the mountains,‘The Flume’—thus called probably from a homely association with the race-way of a mill.
“The ravine is scarcely more than a fissure, probably made by the gradual wearing of the stream. I am told the place resembles the Bath of Pfeffers, in Switzerland; that world’s wonder can scarcely be more romantically beautiful than our Flume. The small stream, which is now reduced to a mere rill by the prolonged droughts, forces it way between walls of rock, upheaved in huge blocks like regular mason-work. Where you enter the passage, it may be some hundred yards wide, but it gradually contracts till you may almost touch either side with
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your outstretched arms. I only measured the height of the rock walls with my eye, and a woman’s measure is not very accurate—it may be one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet. Tall trees, at the summits, interlace, and where they have fallen, bridge the passage from one side to the other. Rich velvety mosses cover the rocks like a royal garment, and vines, glittering in their autumnal brightness, laid on them like rich embroidery, so that we might say, as truly as was said of the magnificence of Oriental nature, that ‘Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ But how, dear Susan, am I to show the picture to you? The sun glancing on the brilliant forest above us, and the indescribable beauty of the shrubs, golden and crimson, and fine purple, that shot out of the crevices of the rocks! It is idle to write or talk about it; but only let me impress on you that this enchanting coloring is limited to the first days of October. I am afraid it may be said of scenery as has been said of lover’s tête-a-tête talks, that it resembles those delicate fruits which are exquisite where they are plucked, but incapable of transmission. As my father can never enjoy any thing selfishly, he was particularly pleased with the nice little foot-path won from the mountain-side, and the frequent foot-bridges, that indicate the numbers that have taken this wild walk before us. My father fancies he enjoys our security from the summer swarms, but his social nature masters his theories.
“Alice and I were amused this morning, just at the highest access of our enthusiasm, while we stood under a huge rock wedged in between the two walls, on looking back to see my father sitting on a bench, arranged as a point of sight, not gazing, but listening profoundly—his graceful person and beautiful old head inclined in an attitude of the deepest attention—to a loafer who had unceremoniously joined us, and who, as my father afterwards rather reluctantly confessed, was recounting to him the particulars of his recent wooing of a third Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Brown. And when we returned to our quarters at the Profile House and came down to dinner, we met our landlord at the door, his face even more than usually effulgent with smiles.
“‘There has a lady and gentleman come in,’ he said, ‘and your father has no objection to their dining at table with you.’
“His voice was slightly deprecatory. I think he did not quite give us credit for our father’s affability, Of course, we acquiesced, and were afterwards edified by our brief acquaintance with the strangers—a mother and son, who had come up from the petty cares of city life for a quiet ramble among the hills—to find here
‘A peace no other season knows.’
“The mother wears widow’s weeds, and has evidently arrived at the ‘melancholy days.’ As we just now sat enjoying our evening fire, ‘My hearthstone,’ she said, ‘was never cold for seventeen years; but there is no light there now. My children are dispersed, and he who was dearest and best lies under the clods! My youngest and I hold together—I can not let him go.’ The loving companionship of a mother and a son who returns to her tenderness the support of his manly arm, never shrinking from the shadows that fall from her darkened and stricken heart, or melting those shadows in his own sunny youth—is one of the consoling pictures of life. This poor lady seems to have the love of nature, which never dies out. It is pleasant to see with what patience her son cared for the rural wealth she is amassing in her progress through the hills, the late flowers, and bright leaves, and mosses, though I have detected a boyish, mischievous smile as he stowed them away…..
“We had something approaching to an adventure this evening on Echo Lake, the loveliest of all these mountain lakes, and not more than half a mile from our present inn, the Profile House. Our dear father consented to go out with us, and let Alice and me, who have been well trained at that exercise in our home lake, take our turns with him in rowing. This lake is embosomed in the forest, and lies close nestled under the mountains, which here have varied shape and beautiful outline. It takes its name from its clear echoes. We called, we sang, and my father whistled, and from the deep recesses of the hills our voices came back as if spirit called to spirit, musical and distinct. You know the fascination there is in such a scene. The day had continued misty to the last; the twilights at this season are at best short, and while my father was whistling, one after another, the favorite songs of his youth, we were surprised by nightfall. My father startled us with
“ ‘Bless me, girls, what are you about?’
“It was he who was most entranced.
“ ‘I can not see our landing-place!’”
“Neither, with all possible straining, could our younger eyes descry it. We approached as near the shore as we dared, but could go no nearer without the danger of swamping our boat, when suddenly we perceived a blessed apparition—a white signal—made quite obvious in the dim light by a background of evergreens. We rowed toward it with all our might, wondering what kind friend was waving it so eagerly. As we approached near the shore it suddenly dropped and hung motionless, and when we landed we saw no person and heard no footstep. I untied the signal, and finding it a man’s large, fine linen handkerchief, I eagerly explored the corner for the name, but the name had evidently just been torn off. Strange! We puzzled ourselves with conjectures. My father cut us short with:
“ ‘’Tis that young man at the hotel. Young folks like this sort of thing.’
“But it was not he; we found him reading to his mother, who said she was just about sending him to look after us.”
Thus abruptly ended Mary Langdon’s journal-
[p. 55]
letter. The reason of its sudden discontinuance will be found in our own brief relation of the experience of the following morning, (Monday,) which we had from all the parties that partook in it.
Our friends were to leave the Profile House on Monday, on their return to the lowlands, to go from there to the Flume House, visit “the Pool,” and then down to the pretty village of Plymouth, in New Hampshire.
Mary and her sister were early, and having a spare half-hour before breakfast, went down to take a last look at Prospero and his “bowl.’ There they found a crazy, old, leaky boat, with a broken oar, and Mary, spying some dry bits of board on the shore, deftly threw them in and arranged them so that she and her sister could get in dry-shod. Alice looked doubtfully at the crazy little craft and hung back—the thought of husband and children at home is always a sedative—but her eager sister overcame her scruples, and they were soon fairly out from shore in deep water. They went on, half-floating, half-rowing, unconscious of the flying minutes. Not so their father, who after waiting breakfast “an eternity,” (as he said, possibly some five minutes!) came to the lake to recall them. Just as he came within fair sight of them, for they were not two hundred yards from him, the boat suddenly began whirling round—a veering wind rushed upon them. The poor father saw their dilemma, and could not help them. He could not swim. He screamed for help, but what likelihood that any one should hear or could aid him! Alice prudently, sat perfectly still. The oar was in Mary’s hand—she involuntarily sprang to her feet—her head became giddy, not so much, she afterward averred, with the whirling of the boat, as with the sight of her poor old father, and the sense that she had involved Alice in this peril. She plunged the oar into the water in the vain hope by firmly holding it of steadying the boat; but she dropped it from her trembling hand, and in reaching after it, she too dropped over into the water, and in her struggle she pushed the boat from her, and thus became herself beyond the possibility of her sister’s reach. Her danger was imminent—she was sinking. Her father and sister shrieked for help, and help came! A plash in the water, and a strong man, with wonderful preternatural strength and speed, was making his way toward Mary. In one moment more he had grasped her with one hand. She had still enough presence of mind not to embarrass him by any struggles, and shouting a word of comfort to Alice, he swam to the shore and laid Mary in her father’s arms. He then returned to the boat, and soon brought it to shore. There are moments of this strange life of ours not to be described—feelings for which language in no organ. While such a moment sped with father and daughters, their deliverer stood apart. The father gazed upon his darling child, satisfying himself that “not a hair had perished,” but she was only “fresher than before;” and, as he afterward said, “fully recovering his wits,” he turned to thank the preserver of his children. He was standing half concealed behind a cluster of evergreens.
“Come forward, my dear fellow,” he said; “for God’s sake, let me grasp your hand!”
He did not move.
“Oh! come,” urged Mr. Langdon. “Never mind your shirt-sleeves; it’s no time to be particular about trifles.”
Still he did not move.
“Oh, come! dear—Carl,” said Mary, and her lover sprang to her feet.
What immediately followed was not told me, but there was no after coldness or reluctance on the part of the good father. His heart was melted and fused in gratitude and affection for his daughter’s lover. His prejudices were vanquished, and he was just as well satisfied as if they had been overcome by the slower processes of reason and conviction.
The truth was, the old gentleman was not to be outdone in magnanimity. Mary’s filial devotion had prepared him to yield his opposition, and he confessed that he had, in his own secret counsel with himself, determined to recall Hermann at the end of another year, if he proved constant and half as deserving as his foolish girl thought him. “But Prospero,” he said, “had seen fit to take the business into his own hands, and setting his magic to work, had stirred up a tempest in his punch-bowl to bring these young romancers together.”
But by what spell had he conjured up the lover at the critical moment?
Hermann confessed that not being able to get off in the steamer of the 29th, he had delayed his embarkation for ten days, and the magic of love—the only magic left to our disenchanted world—had drawn him to the White Mountains, where he might have the consolation—a lover only could appreciate it—of breathing the same atmosphere with Mary, and possibly of seeing her, unseen. Thus he had stood on the summit of Mount Washington, when, by some mysterious magnetism, Mr. Thompson’s telescope had been pointed to it. He was the “fugitive from justice” at Willy’s Slide, the ambitious artist on Fort Willard, and the friend whose signal had brought them safely to port on Echo Lake!
Hermann’s arrangements for pursuing his studies in Europe were not disturbed. The good father was in the most complying temper. He consented to have the wedding within this blessed month of October, and graciously granted the prayer of the young people that he would accompany them in their year’s visit to Europe.
“Mary and I are already wedded,” said he to me, with a smile of complete satisfaction; ‘we only take this young fellow into the partnership.”
It was a bright day in the outer and inner world when we parted. And thus ended our October visit to the White Hills of New Hampshire, but not our gratitude to Him who held us
“In his large love and boundless thought.”
[p. 56]
If our friend Mary has imperfectly sketched the beauty of the Mountains, she has exaggerated nothing.
We hope our readers, though perchance o’er-wearied now, may make the complete tour of these lovely places, including, as it should, the enchanting sail over Lake Winepescago, the beautiful drive by North Conway, and the ascents of Kiersarge, Chiconea, Mount Moriah, and the Red Mountain.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The White Hills in October
Subject
The topic of the resource
Star-crossed lovers, filial piety, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, off-season tourism.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator presents the journal of a trip to the White Mountains by Mary Langdon, a young American woman, who has just ended a relationship with her German lover due to her father's disapproval. A mysterious stranger appears at a significant moment and changes the young woman's fortunes.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [published anonymously]
Source
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Harper's New Monthly Magazine [edited by Alfred A. Guernsey] (December 1856): 44-56.
Date
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1856
Contributor
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Margaret Erickson, D. Gussman
Relation
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The Continental Monthly [by C. M. Sedgwick] (October 1862): 423-44.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
1856
Ammonoosuck
Boston
cigars
daughters
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
fathers
filial piety
German
Glen Ellis Fall
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
hiking
hotels
hunting
immigration
inns
Irish
journal
Love
marriage
Mayflower
Mohammed
Moses
Mount Rhigi
Mount Washington
Mount Webster
Nancy's Brook
Nature
New England
New Hampshire
Pickwick
Portland
Prospero
railroad
restaurants
Rosalind
rowing
Shakespeare
sisters
The Heir of Redcliffe
Theseus
tourism
Travel
waterfalls
White Mountains
Wordsworth
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Dublin Core
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1844
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SUSY’S COW
BY MISS C. M. SEDGWICK.
The old and worldly may learn a great lesson by observing how much contentment a child gets out of a few possessions. A canary bird, a kitten, a little white mouse, will give a little girl as much real enjoyment as one of the grazing dukes of England gets from his uncounted flocks and herds.
One of my favorite twilight walks is over a grass-grown road, that, leading by a few scattered habitations through a mountain pass, is little frequented. Just on the verge of the mountain, in one end of a rickety old house, lives the widow Ely and her daughter Susan. There is a little garden-patch near the house—some peonies and rose-bushes, and round the door a few decayed apple-trees. The place looks comfortable, protected as it is by the well-wooded mountain side from the cold winds, and with the sun playing on the hop-vine that twines about the criss-cross threads passed and re-passed before the window. The widow Ely is as poor as a sensible, industrious woman can well be in New England. She is very feeble, and can earn little; but that little is so well managed, that she and Susan live independently of charity. The ladies who are mistresses of the Beacon street palaces, would as soon think of begging as Mrs. Ely.
In my evening walks towards Mrs. Ely’s, I have often met Susan, driving home her cow; sometimes, unconscious that I observed her, holding the animal’s tail, whisking it on one side and the other, beating time to an artless tune she was singing. Sometimes she ran alongside her favorite, patting her and discoursing with her. “Hold up your head, old lady!” she would say; “there’s a nicer mess for you than common at home. Mother and I had corn for dinner, and we saved all the odds and ends for you. Come, trot on, dearie—mother is waiting. Poor old soul! how low-spirited you are! I don’t think Deacon Bonton is half fair to put you in that old eaten-up pasture. It sets your teeth on edge to look at it.”
“Susy,” said I one day, overtaking her, “do you think the old cow understands you?” Susan blushed a little at finding herself overheard; but we were old friends, and she answered me frankly, “I don’t know that she understands every word, but she has a feeling when I talk to her,—I’m sure she has. Now just look, ma’am, when I stop and pat her, how she stops and looks round at me, and puts her head up to my face,—poor Mooly!—there, you see! She loves me better than anybody in the world does, except mother. Oh, we have proper good times, coming home from pasture,—Mooly and I do.”
“Does she give much milk, Susy?”
Susan’s voice fell a little, as she replied, “No, ma’am,—not so much as some cows do. But that is all the fault of the pasture,—I know it is!”
“Why don’t you get better pasture for her?”
“Mother can’t afford to, ma’am. Sometimes she has talked of selling her; but I felt so dreadfully, she would not.”
This summer, times are harder with Mrs. Ely. She had a long illness last winter, and a long bill to pay to the doctor. She is a woman that, as she herself truly says, can’t sleep quietly upon a debt. A few days since, I called at her door, and was just turning round the lilac bush that on one side encloses her door-step, when I was stopped by hearing Susan say, in a mingled tone of sorrow and surprise,
“Why, mother,—you have n’t sold her, in earnest, mother?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Is she gone?”
“Yes.”
“It is not fair.” There was a sense of injustice evidently mingling with Susan’s grief. “Have not I,” she continued, “picked and sold berries enough to pay for her pasturing all summer? I think you might have spoken to me about it, mother. Why did n’t you?”
“Because I could not bear to, Susy. I knew you would feel so bad.”
Susan was much mollified by finding that her mother had tried to save her feelings, instead of disregarding them; and when her mother said, “Now do hush, child, and wipe away your tears, and listen to me, and I will tell you all about it,” she was tranquillized. I, too, wanted to hear all about it; but I felt as if I had no longer a right to listen unseen; so I presented myself, and, after exchanging greetings with Susan and her mother, I begged her to proceed, and comfort Susan if she could.
“Susan,” she said, “can’t feel worse than I do about parting with the cow. My father gave her to me when I was married,—she was a heifer then. My husband died two years after, and, for the first eight years of Susan’s life, that cow more than half supported us. There was not a better cow for milk in the town.”
“Nor half so good a one for company,” interrupted poor Susy. “Oh, how lonesome we shall be!”
“Yes, we shall feel kind of lonesome,” said the mother; and I observed she turned away, to wipe a tear from her cheek. “But we must be rational, Susy. The old cow has fallen off in her milk the last two years, and I could not make her profitable as I used to do.”
“Profitable!” echoed Susan, “you would not think of selling me, mother, because I was not profitable.”
“O hush, Susy! Poor folks can’t humor their feelings like rich ones. To come to the real truth of the matter, I had no way of paying the doctor, but by selling the cow. And now I have the money to pay him, and I feel as if I had done my duty; and if you will only stop crying, Susan, and own you think I have done right, I shall feel better and happier than I have done all summer.”
Susan tried her best for resignation. She began to see that her mother was right, and before I left the house she had dried her eyes, and said “she supposed mother knew best, but it was cruel hard.”
The story of Susy’s cow is not quite ended. It was purchased by a gentleman in the next town to ours, seven miles from the widow Ely’s. A boy was sent to drive the cow to its new owner. She was known to be near calving, and he was desirous to have her at home before the calf was born.
The cow seemed very unwilling to leave her old haunts. She was continually turning back, and, when about half way to her journey’s end, she got away from her driver, and he could not manage to change her course; so he returned to his employer, and the next morning a man was sent with him.
The cow was found on the edge of a swamp, near Mrs. Ely’s, and from there driven to her new quarters. The stupid man who drove her did not find out that she had calved during the night. This was soon afterwards ascertained, and search was made in the swamp for the poor little lost calf, but no calf could be found.
All the day of her arrival—the next night, the following day, and the second night, the cow continued the most piteous moaning, such as cows make when their young are taken from them. The neighborhood was disturbed. People were kept awake in their beds; some of them pitied her, thinking there was a wailing in her cries that sounded like human love; and some wished her to the deuce.
Towards the second morning, the cries ceased; and when the time came for the cow to be fed, she was missing. Again a messenger was despached for her. She had been seen, by the earliest stirrers on the road, going towards her old home, and bellowing as she went. Nothing more could be heard of her till the messenger reached the widow’s, and there, in her little yard, was the cow and her calf—the widow rubbing, with some medicinal ointment, the poor animal’s bag, and Susy alternately patting the mother and calf, and repeating again and again, “I always said she knew as much as folks!” while the old cow, if she did not talk, expressed, as plainly as words could, her perfect satisfaction. It was a picture that Fisher should have painted. And it seems to me an instance of the force of the maternal instinct in a dumb animal, that deserves recording. The cow, after a separation of forty-eight hours from her calf, returned to the swamp, and there, in its intricacies, found her still living, and went with her to her best friends.
The cow was the same day taken to her new owner, and the calf tenderly conveyed in a wagon beside her. There is a rumor about the village, that the purchaser of the cow has been told the story of Susy’s fondness for her, and that his kind heart is so much touched by the animal’s faithful love for her young, which seems to justify Susan’s opinion of her remarkable character, that he has intimated an intention of presenting the calf, at some future day, to the good little girl.
We hope that our young friends will be touched by this true story (we vouch for its truth without color or exaggeration) of a brute animal’s devotion to its young. We have often wondered to see boys, and even men, abuse cows—kick them, and throw stones at them. A cow is one of Heaven’s rich gifts to man. She not only gives us milk,—pure and agreeable food to sustain life,—but from her we derive the luxuries of cream, butter and cheese,—luxuries so abundant, that we have almost come to consider them as necessaries. Not a pie, pudding or cake comes upon the table, but the cow has contributed one component part to it. These generous supplies she gives us. Be grateful to her, then, as a benefactress, and consider well her gentleness, patience, intelligence and affection, and you will not laugh at our little friend Susy for calling her company, nor be surprised when you are told that she is held sacred by some nations in India.
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Title
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Susy's Cow
Subject
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Mothers and daughters, cows, humane treatment of animals, poverty.
Description
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A widowed mother must sell her daughter's beloved cow in order to pay for medical care. The cow demonstrates devotion to its calf and the daughter.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
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The Boys and Girls' Library [edited by Mrs. Colman]
Publisher
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Boston: T. H. Carter & Co.
Date
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1844
Contributor
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Robin Cadwallader, D. Gussman
Relation
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Collected in The Boys' and Girls' Annual, Boston: T. H. Carter and Company, n.d., and in Stories for Children [edited by Robin Cadwallader], 1-12, RMTK Books, 2016.
Language
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English
1844
Animal Cruelty
animals
Boys and Girls' Library
Cows
daughters
doctors
humane treatment of animals
India
Juvenile fiction
Mothers
Mrs. Colman
New England
poverty
sacred cow
widows
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d1b3fcd22f7faa30a09169e8e7bdeebc
Dublin Core
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Title
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1830
Subject
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Stories published in 1830.
Document
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Glory and gain the industrious tribe provoke.--Pope.
The little secluded and quiet village of H. lies at no great distance from our “literary emporium.” It was never remarked or remarkable for anything, save one mournful preeminence, to those who sojourned within its borders — it was duller even than common villages. The young men of the better class all emigrated. The most daring spirits adventured on the sea. Some went to Boston; some to the south; and some to the west; and left a community of women who lived like nuns, with the advantage of more liberty and fresh air, but without the consolation and excitement of a religious vow. Literally, there was not a single young gentleman in the village — nothing in manly shape to which these desperate circumstances could give the form and quality and use of a beau. Some dashing city blades, who once strayed from the turnpike to this sequestered spot, averred that the girls stared at them as if, like Miranda, they would have exclaimed —
“What 1st? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form: — But 'tis a spirit.”
A peculiar fatality hung over this devoted place. If death seized on either head of a family, he was sure to take the husband; every woman in H. was a widow or maiden; and it is a sad fact, that when the holiest office of the church was celebrated, they were compel led to borrow deacons from an adjacent village. But, incredible as it may be, there was no great diminution of happiness in consequence of the absence of the nobler sex. Mothers were occupied with their children and housewifery, and the young ladies read their books with as much interest as if they had lovers to discuss them with, and worked their frills and capes as diligently, and wore them as complacently, as if they were to be seen by manly eyes. Never were there pleasanter gatherings or parties (for that was the word even in their nomenclature) than those of the young girls of H. There was no mincing — no affectation — no hope of passing for what they were not — no envy of the pretty and fortunate — no insolent triumph over the plain and demure and neglected, — but all was good will and good humour. They were a pretty circle of girls — a garland of bright fresh flowers. Never were there more sparkling glances, — never sweeter smiles — nor more of them. Their present was all health and cheerfulness; and their future, not the gloomy perspective of dreary singleness, for somewhere in the passage of life they were sure to be mated. Most of the young men who had abandoned their native soil, as soon as they found themselves getting along, loyally returned to lay their fortunes at the feet of the companions of their childhood.
The girls made occasional visits to Boston, and occasional journeys to various parts of the country, for they were all enterprising and independent, and had the characteristic New England avidity for seizing a “privilege;” and in these various ways, to borrow a phrase of their good grandames, a door was opened for them, and in due time they fulfilled the destiny of women.
We spoke strictly, and a la lettre, when we said that in the village of H. there was not a single beau. But on the outskirts of the town, at a pleasant farm, embracing hill and valley, upland and meadow land ; in a neat house, looking to the south, with true economy of sunshine and comfort, and overlooking the prettiest winding stream that ever sent up its sparkling beauty to the eye, and flanked on the north by a rich maple grove, beautiful in spring and summer, and glorious in autumn, and the kindest defence in winter; — on this farm and in this house dwelt a youth, to fame unknown, but known and loved by every inhabitant of H., old and young, grave and gay, lively and severe. Ralph Hepburn was one of nature's favourites. He had a figure that would have adorned courts and cities; and a face that adorned human nature, for it was full of good humour, kindheartedness, spirit, and intelligence; and driving the plough or wielding the scythe, his cheek flushed with manly and profitable exercise, he looked as if he had been moulded in a poet's fancy — as farmers look in Georgics and Pastorals. His gifts were by no means all external. He wrote verses in every album in the village, and very pretty album verses they were, and numerous too — for the number of albums was equivalent to the whole “female” population. He was admirable at pencil sketches; and once with a little paint, the refuse of a house painting, he achieved an admirable portrait of his grandmother and her cat. There was, to be sure, a striking likeness between the two figures, but he was limited to the same colours for both; and besides, it was not out of nature, for the old lady and her cat had purred together in the chimney corner, till their physiognomies bore an obvious resemblance to each other. Ralph had a talent for music too. His voice was the sweetest of all the Sunday choir, and one would have fancied, from the bright eyes that were turned on him from the long line and double lines of treble and counter singers, that Ralph Hepburn was a note book, or that the girls listened with their eyes as well as their ears. Ralph did not restrict himself to psalmody. He had an ear so exquisitely susceptible to the “touches of sweet harmony,” that he discovered, by the stroke of his axe, the musical capacities of certain species of wood, and he made himself a violin of chestnut, and drew strains from it, that if they could not create a soul under the ribs of death, could make the prettiest feet and the lightest hearts dance, an achievement far more to Ralph's taste than the aforesaid miracle. In short, it seemed as if nature, in her love of compensation, had showered on Ralph all the gifts that are usually diffused through a community of beaux. Yet Ralph was no prodigy; none of his talents were in excess, but all in moderate degree. No genius was ever so good humoured, so useful, so practical; and though, in his small and modest way, a Crichton, he was not, like most universal geniuses, good for nothing for any particular office in life. His farm was not a pattern farm — a prize farm for an agricultural society, but in wonderful order considering — his miscellaneous pursuits. He was the delight of his grandfather for his sagacity in hunting bees — the old man's favourite, in truth his only pursuit. He was so skilled in woodcraft that the report of his gun was as certain a signal of death as the tolling of a church bell. The fish always caught at his bait. He manufactured half his farming utensils, improved upon old inventions, and struck out some new ones; tamed partridges — the most untameable of all the feathered tribe; domesticated squirrels; rivalled Scheherazade herself in telling stories, strange and long — the latter quality being essential at a country fireside; and, in short, Ralph made a perpetual holiday of a life of labour.
Every girl in the village street knew when Ralph's wagon or sleigh traversed it; indeed, there was scarcely a house to which the horses did not, as if by instinct, turn up while their master greeted its fair tenants. This state of affairs had continued for two winters and two summers since Ralph came to his majority and, by the death of his father, to the sole proprietorship of the “Hepburn farm,” — the name his patrimonial acres had obtained from the singular circumstance (in our moving country) of their having remained in the same family for four generations. Never was the matrimonial destiny of a young lord, or heir just come to his estate, more thoroughly canvassed than young Hepburn's by mothers, aunts, daughters, and nieces. But Ralph, perhaps from sheer good heartedness, seemed reluctant to give to one the heart that diffused rays of sunshine through the whole village.
With all decent people he eschewed the doctrines of a certain erratic female lecturer on the odious monopoly of marriage, yet Ralph, like a tender hearted judge, hesitated to place on a single brow the crown matrimonial which so many deserved, and which, though Ralph was far enough from a coxcomb, he could not but see so many coveted.
Whether our hero perceived that his mind was becoming elated or distracted with this general favour, or that he observed a dawning of rivalry among the fair competitors, or whatever was the cause, the fact was, that he by degrees circumscribed his visits, and finally concentrated them in the family of his Aunt Courland.
Mrs. Courland was a widow, and Ralph was the kindest of nephews to her, and the kindest of cousins to her children. To their mother he seemed their guardian angel. That the five lawless, daring little urchins did not drown themselves when they were swimming, nor shoot themselves when they were shooting, was, in her eyes, Ralph's merit; and then he was so attentive to Alice, her only daughter — a brother could not be kinder. But who would not be kind to Alice? she was a sweet girl of seventeen, not beautiful, not handsome perhaps, — but pretty enough — with soft hazel eyes, a profusion of light brown hair, always in the neatest trim, and a mouth that could not but be lovely and loveable, for all kind and tender affections were playing about it. Though Alice was the only daughter of a doting mother, the only sister of five loving boys, the only niece of three single, fond aunts, and, last and greatest, the only cousin of our only beau, Ralph Hepburn, no girl of seventeen was ever more disinterested, unassuming, unostentatious, and unspoiled. Ralph and Alice had always lived on terms of cousinly affection — an affection of a neutral tint that they never thought of being shaded into the deep dye of a more tender passion. Ralph rendered her all cousinly offices. If he had twenty damsels to escort, not an uncommon case, he never forgot Alice. When he returned from any little excursion, he always brought some graceful offering to Alice.
He had lately paid a visit to Boston. It was at the season of the periodical inundation of annuals. He brought two of the prettiest to Alice. Ah! little did she think they were to prove Pandora's box to her. Poor simple girl! she sat down to read them, as if an annual were meant to be read, and she was honestly interested and charmed. Her mother observed her delight. "What have you there, Alice?" she asked, "Oh the prettiest story, mamma! — two such tried faithful lovers, and married at last ! It ends beautifully: I hate love stories that don't end in marriage."
"And so do I, Alice," exclaimed Ralph, who entered at the moment, and for the first time Alice felt her cheeks tingle at his approach. He had brought a basket, containing a choice plant he had obtained for her, and she laid down the annual and went with him to the garden to see it set by his own hand.
Mrs. Courland seized upon the annual with avidity. She had imbibed a literary taste in Boston, where the best and happiest years of her life were passed. She had some literary ambition too. She read the North American Review from beginning to end, and she fancied no conversation could be sensible or improving that was not about books. But she had been effectually prevented, by the necessities of a narrow income, and by the unceasing wants of five teasing boys, from indulging her literary inclinations; for Mrs. Courland, like all New England women, had been taught to consider domestic duties as the first temporal duties of her sex. She had recently seen some of the native productions with which the press is daily teeming, and which certainly have a tendency to dispel our early illusions about the craft of authorship. She had even felt some obscure intimations, within her secret soul, that she might herself become an author. The annual was destined to fix her fate. She opened it — the publisher had written the names of the authors of the anonymous pieces against their productions. Among them the found some of the familiar friends of her childhood and youth.
If, by a sudden gift of second sight, she had seen them enthroned as kings and queens, she would not have been more astonished. She turned to their pieces, and read them, as perchance no one else ever did, from beginning to end — faithfully. Not a sentence — a sentence! not a word was skipped. She paused to consider commas, colons, and dashes. All the art and magic of authorship were made level to her comprehension, and when she closed the book, she felt a call to become an author, and before she retired to bed she obeyed the call, as if it had been, in truth, a divinity stirring within her. In the morning she presented an article to her public, consisting of her own family and a few select friends. All applauded, and every voice, save one, was unanimous for publication — that one was Alice. She was a modest, prudent girl; she feared failure, and feared notoriety still more. Her mother laughed at her childish scruples. The piece was sent off, and in due time graced the pages of an annual. Mrs. Courland's fate was now decided. She had, to use her own phrase, started in the career of letters, and she was no Atalanta to be seduced from her straight onward way. She was a social, sympathetic, good hearted creature too, and she could not bear to go forth in the golden field to reap alone.
She was, besides, a prudent woman, as most of her countrywomen are, and the little pecuniary equivalent for this delightful exercise of talents was not over looked. Mrs. Courland, as we have somewhere said, had three single sisters — worthy women they were — but nobody ever dreamed of their taking to authorship. She, however, held them all in sisterly estimation. Their talents were magnified as the talents of persons who live in a circumscribed sphere are apt to be, particularly if seen through the dilating medium of affection.
Miss Anne, the oldest, was fond of flowers, a successful cultivator, and a diligent student of the science of botany. All this taste and knowledge, Mrs. Courland thought, might be turned to excellent account; and she persuaded Miss Anne to write a little book entitled “Familiar Dialogues on Botany.” The second sister, Miss Ruth, had a turn for education (“bachelor's wives and maid's children are always well taught”), and Miss Ruth undertook a popular treatise on that subject. Miss Sally, the youngest, was the saint of the family, and she doubted about the propriety of a literary occupation, till her scruples were overcome by the fortunate suggestion that her coup d'essai should be a Saturday night book entitled “Solemn Hours,” — and solemn hours they were to their unhappy readers. Mrs. Courland next besieged her old mother. "You know, mamma," she said, "you have such a precious fund of anecdotes of the revolution and the French war, and you talk just like the “Annals of the Parish,” and I am certain you can write a book fully as good."
"My child, you are distracted! I write a dreadful poor hand, and I never learned to spell — no girls did in my time."
"Spell! that is not of the least consequence — the printers correct the spelling."
But the honest old lady would not be tempted on the crusade, and her daughter consoled herself with the reflection that if she would not write, she was an admirable subject to be written about, and her diligent fingers worked off three distinct stories in which the old lady figured.
Mrs. Courland's ambition, of course, embraced within its widening circle her favourite nephew Ralph. She had always thought him a genius, and genius in her estimation was the philosopher's stone. In his youth she had laboured to persuade his father to send him to Cambridge, but the old man uniformly replied that Ralph was a smart lad on the farm, and steady, and by that he knew he was no genius. As Ralph's character was developed, and talent after talent broke forth, his aunt renewed her lamentations over his ignoble destiny. That Ralph was useful, good, and happy — the most difficult and rare results achieved in life — was nothing, so long as he was but a farmer in H. Once she did half persuade him to turn painter, but his good sense and filial duty triumphed over her eloquence, and suppressed the hankerings after distinction that are innate in every human breast, from the little ragged chimneysweep that hopes to be a boss, to the political aspirant whose bright goal is the presidential chair.
Now Mrs. Courland fancied Ralph might climb the steep of fame without quitting his farm; occasional authorship was compatible with his vocation. But alas! she could not persuade Ralph to pluck the laurels that she saw ready grown to his hand. She was not offended, for she was the best natured woman in the world, but she heartily pitied him, and seldom mentioned his name without repeating that stanza of Gray's, inspired for the consolation of hopeless obscurity. :
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,”
Poor Alice's sorrows we have reserved to the last, for they were heaviest. “Alice,” her mother said, “was gifted; she was well educated, well informed; she was everything necessary to be an author.” But Alice resisted; and, though the gentlest, most complying of all good daughters, she would have resisted to the death — she would as soon have stood in a pillory as appeared in print. Her mother, Mrs. Courland, was not an obstinate woman, and gave up in despair. But still our poor heroine was destined to be the victim of this cacoethes scribendi; for Mrs. Courland divided the world into two classes, or rather parts — authors and subjects for authors; the one active, the other passive. At first blush one would have, thought the village of H. rather a barren field for such a reaper as Mrs. Courland, but her zeal and indefatigableness worked wonders. She converted the stern scholastic divine of H. into as much of a La Roche as she could describe; a tall wrinkled bony old woman, who reminded her of Meg Merrilies, sat for a witch; the school master for an Ichabod Crane; a poor half wilted boy was made to utter as much pathos and sentiment and wit as she could put into his lips; and a crazy vagrant was a God-send to her. Then every “wide spreading elm,” “blasted pine,” or “gnarled oak,” flourished on her pages. The village church and school house stood there according to their actual dimensions. One old pilgrim house was as prolific as haunted tower or ruined abbey. It was surveyed outside, ransacked inside, and again made habitable for the reimbodied spirits of its founders.
The most kind hearted of women, Mrs. Courland's interests came to be so at variance with the prosperity of the little community of H., that a sudden calamity, a death, a funeral, were fortunate events to her. To do her justice she felt them in a twofold capacity. She wept as a woman, and exulted as an author. The days of the calamities of authors have passed by. We have all wept over Otway and shivered at the thought of Tasso. But times are changed. The lean sheaf is devouring the full one. A new class of sufferers has arisen, and there is nothing more touching in all the memoirs Mr. D'Israeli has collected, than the trials of poor Alice, tragi-comic though they were. Mrs. Courland's new passion ran most naturally in the worn channel of maternal affection. Her boys were too purely boys for her art — but Alice, her sweet Alice, was preeminently lovely in the new light in which she now placed every object. Not an incident of her life but was inscribed on her mother's memory, and thence transferred to her pages, by way of precept, or example, or pathetic or ludicrous circumstance. She regretted now, for the first time, that Alice had no lover whom she might introduce among her dramatis personse. Once her thoughts did glance on Ralph, but she had not quite merged the woman in the author; she knew instinctively that Alice would be particularly offended at being thus paired with Ralph. But Alice's public life was not limited to her mother's productions. She was the darling niece of her three aunts. She had studied botany with the eldest, and Miss Anne had recorded in her private diary all her favourite's clever remarks during their progress in the science. This diary was now a mine of gold to her, and faithfully worked up for a circulating medium. But, most trying of all to poor Alice, was the attitude in which she appeared in her aunt Sally's “solemn hours.” Every aspiration of piety to which her young lips had given utterance was there printed. She felt as if she were condemned to say her prayers in the market place. Every act of kindness, every deed of charity, she had ever performed, were produced to the public. Alice would have been consoled if she had known how small that public was; but, as it was, she felt like a modest country girl when she first enters an apartment hung on every side with mirrors, when, shrinking from observation, she sees in every direction her image multiplied and often distorted; for, notwithstanding Alice's dutiful respect for her good aunts, and her consciousness of their affectionate intentions, she could not but perceive that they were unskilled painters. She grew afraid to speak or to act, and from being the most artless, frank, and, at home, social little creature in the world, she became as silent and as stiff as a statue. And, in the circle of her young associates, her natural gaiety was constantly checked by their winks and smiles, and broader allusions to her multiplied portraits; for they had instantly recognized them through the thin veil of feigned names of persons and places. They called her a blue stocking too; for they had the vulgar notion that everybody must be tinged that lived under the same roof with an author. Our poor victim was afraid to speak of a book — worse than that, she was afraid to touch one, and the last Waverley novel actually lay in the house a month before she opened it. She avoided wearing even a blue ribbon, as fearfully as a forsaken damsel shuns the colour of green.
It was during the height of this literary fever in the Courland family, that Ralph Hepburn, as has been mentioned, concentrated all his visiting there. He was of a compassionate disposition, and he knew Alice was, unless relieved by him, in solitary possession of their once social parlour, while her mother and aunts were driving their quills in their several apartments.
“Oh! what a changed place was that parlour! Not the tower of Babel, after the builders had forsaken it, exhibited a sadder reverse; not a Lancaster school, when the boys have left it, a more striking contrast. Mrs. Courland and her sisters were all “talking women,” and too generous to encroach on one another's rights and happiness. They had acquired the power to hear and speak simultaneously. Their parlour was the general gathering place, a sort of village exchange, where all the innocent gossips, old and young, met together. “There are tongues in trees,” and surely there seemed to be tongues in the very walls of that vocal parlour. Everything there had a social aspect. There was something agreeable and conversable in the litter of netting and knitting work, of sewing implements, and all the signs and shows of happy female occupation.
Now, all was as orderly as a town drawing room in company hours. Not a sound was heard there save Ralph's and Alice's voices, mingling in soft and sup pressed murmurs, as if afraid of breaking the chain of their aunt's ideas, or, perchance, of too rudely jarring a tenderer chain. One evening, after tea, Mrs. Courland remained with her daughter, instead of retiring, as usual, to her writing desk. — "Alice, my dear," said the good mother, "I have noticed for a few days past that you look out of spirits. You will listen to nothing I say on that subject; but if you would try it, my dear, if you would only try it, you would find there is nothing so tranquillizing as the occupation of writing."
"I shall never try it, mamma."
"You are afraid of being called a blue stocking. Ah! Ralph, how are you?" — Ralph entered at this moment. — "Ralph, tell me honestly, do you not think it a weakness in Alice to be so afraid of blue stockings?"
"It would be a pity, aunt, to put blue stockings on such pretty feet as Alice's."
Alice blushed and smiled, and her mother said — "Nonsense, Ralph; you should bear in mind the celebrated saying of the Edinburgh wit — “no matter how blue the stockings are, if the petticoats are long enough to hide them."
"Hide Alice's feet! Oh aunt, worse and worse!"
"Better hide her feet, Ralph, than her talents— that is a sin for which both she and you will have to answer. Oh! you and Alice need not exchange such significant glances! You are doing yourselves and the public injustice, and you have no idea how easy writing is."
"Easy writing, but hard reading, aunt."
"That's false modesty, Ralph. If I had but your opportunities to collect materials" — Mrs. Courland did not know that in literature, as in some species of manufacture, the most exquisite productions are wrought from the smallest quantity of raw material — " There's your journey to New York, Ralph," she continued, "you might have made three capital articles out of that. The revolutionary officer would have worked up for the “Legendary;” the mysterious lady for the “Token;” and the man in black for the “Remember Me;” — all founded on fact, all romantic and pathetic."
"But mamma," said Alice, expressing in words what Ralph's arch smile expressed almost as plainly, "you know the officer drank too much; and the mysterious lady turned out to be a runaway milliner; and the man in black — oh! what a theme for a pathetic story! — the man in black was a widower, on his way to Newhaven, where he was to select his third wife from three re commended candidates."
"Pshaw! Alice: do you suppose it is necessary to tell things precisely as they are?"
"Alice is wrong, aunt, and you are right; and if she will open her writing desk for me, I will sit down this moment, and write a story — a true story — true from beginning to end; and if it moves you, my dear aunt, if it meets your approbation, my destiny is decided."
Mrs. Courland was delighted; she had slain the giant, and she saw fame and fortune smiling on her favourite. She arranged the desk for him herself; she prepared a folio sheet of paper, folded the ominous margins; and was so absorbed in her bright visions, that she did not hear a little by-talk between Ralph and Alice, nor see the tell-tale flush on their cheeks, nor notice the perturbation with which Alice walked first to one window and then to another, and finally settled herself to that best of all sedatives — hemming a ruffle. Ralph chewed off the end of his quill, mended his pen twice, though his aunt assured him “printers did not mind the penmanship,” and had achieved a single line when Mrs. Courland's vigilant eye was averted by the entrance of her servant girl, who put a packet into her hands. She looked at the direction, cut the string, broke the seals, and took out a periodical fresh from the publisher. She opened at the first article — a strangely mingled current of maternal pride and literary triumph rushed through her heart and brightened her face. She whispered to the servant a summons to all her sisters to the parlour, and an intimation, sufficiently intelligible to them, of her joyful reason for interrupting them.
Our readers will sympathize with her, and with Alice too, when we disclose to them the secret of her joy. The article in question was a clever composition written by our devoted Alice when she was at school. One of her fond aunts had preserved it; and aunts and mother had combined in the pious fraud of giving it to the public, unknown to Alice. They were perfectly aware of her determination never to be an author. But they fancied it was the mere timidity of an unfledged bird; and that when, by their innocent artifice, she found that her opinions could soar in a literary atmosphere, she would realize the sweet fluttering sensations they had experienced at their first flight. The good souls all hurried to the parlour, eager to witness the coup de theatre. Miss Sally's pen stood emblematically erect in her turban; Miss Ruth, in her haste, had overset her inkstand, and the drops were trickling down her white dressing, or, as she now called it, writing gown; and Miss Anne had a wild flower in her hand, as she hoped, of an undescribed species, which, in her joyful agitation, she most unluckily picked to pieces. All bit their lips to keep impatient congratulation from bursting forth. Ralph was so intent on his writing, and Alice on her hemming, that neither noticed the irruption; and Mrs. Courland was obliged twice to speak to her daughter before she could draw her attention.
"Alice, look here — Alice, my dear."
"What is it, mamma? something new of yours?”
"No; guess again, Alice."
"Of one of my aunts, of course?"
"Neither, dear, neither. Come and look for yourself, and see if you can then tell whose it is."
Alice dutifully laid aside her work, approached and took the book. The moment her eye glanced on the fatal page, all her apathy vanished — deep crimson overspread her cheeks, brow, and neck. She burst into tears of irrepressible vexation, and threw the book into the blazing fire.
The gentle Alice! Never had she been guilty of such an ebullition of temper. Her poor dismayed aunts retreated; her mother looked at her in mute astonishment; and Ralph, struck with her emotion, started from the desk, and would have asked an explanation, but Alice exclaimed — "Don't say anything about it, mamma — I cannot bear it now."
Mrs. Courland knew instinctively that Ralph would sympathize entirely with Alice, and quite willing to avoid an explanation, she said — "Some other time, Ralph, I'll tell you the whole. Show me now what you have written. How have you begun?"
Ralph handed her the paper with a novice's trembling hand.
"Oh! how very little! and so scratched and interlined! but never mind — “c'est le premier pas qui coute.”
"While making these general observations, the good mother was getting out and fixing her spectacles, and Alice and Ralph had retreated behind her. Alice rested her head on his shoulder, and Ralph's lips were not far from her ear. Whether he was soothing her ruffled spirit, or what he was doing, is not recorded. Mrs. Courland read and re-read the sentence. She dropped a tear on it. She forgot her literary aspirations for Ralph and Alice — forgot she was herself an author — forgot everything but the mother; and rising, embraced them both as her dear children, and expressed, in her raised and moistened eye, consent to their union, which Ralph had dutifully and prettily asked in that short and true story of his love for his sweet cousin Alice.
In due time the village of H. was animated with the celebration of Alice's nuptials: and when her mother and aunts saw her the happy mistress of the Hepburn farm, and the happiest of wives, they relinquished, without a sigh, the hope of ever seeing her an AUTHOR.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"Cacoethes Scribendi"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Women writers, love and marriage, village life.
Description
An account of the resource
A young woman is embarrassed when her writing is published by her family without her knowledge.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>The Atlantic Souvenir</em>. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Lea, 17-38.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1830
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
J. Robinson
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Also collected in: <em>Stories of American Life</em>, vol. 3, Ed. Mary Russell Mitford (London, 1830), pp. 162-186.<br /><em>Tales and Sketches</em>. By Miss Sedgwick. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835), pp. 165-181.<br /><em>Provisions: A Reader from 19th-Century American Women</em>. Ed. Judith Fetterley. Bloomington, (Indiana UP, 1985) pp. 49-59. <br /><em>The Norton Anthology of American Literature</em>, Vol. I, Ed. Nina Baym. (New York: Norton, 1998) pp.1007-1017.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
annuals
art
authorship
blue stocking
Boston
Disraeli
domestic duties
genius
Ichabod Crane
James Crichton
marriage
music
New England
New Haven
New York
North American Review
piety
Shakespeare
Sheherazade
Tasso
The Tempest
Waverley