1 10 3 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/68f58347e550646b36cbf19d6fadcbd7.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=gPClExMVLyGEk7KaarwmifauoHBF1xHN%7EwB2IVe0xYXXjo0c60Vx3n6R5ikNDkfryeOCC4v-jIaXQ-AmIvE2pO0PPnicQ5NtI7zik61rwIsAko4AsRUArA3Eg-4NWUZBeN0CtkDMaVhzPHW7VbEQxjkEi0VYKecIWsANp144Wak0J%7EUQmPXTQFI-ZG%7E0cji0qPsbVukbjmm10WThzxlnkXepLMwSfW65JuRVHvQO8OibRTAdT27Q6H3b3Rte1GWetqzXPWx52Jlnoz5prIoMiTWBsgcVorKaNIzQZ9p2FfULaaMyAzet9Z91G85C%7E0p4cCJU6dJ7hVP%7EjBPBCCTWmg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 51cb66a62bd05ddfe28adee6b0f075d5 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 1833 Subject The topic of the resource Stories published in 1833. 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. 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 [103] 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 [104] 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. [105] 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 [106] 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 [107] 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 [108] 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 [109] 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, [110] 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 [111] 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 [112] 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 [113] 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 [114] 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 [115] 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. [116] ‘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 [117] 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 [118] 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 [119] 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 [120] 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 [121] 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 [122] 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. [123] 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 [124] 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 [125] 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 [125] 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 [127] 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 [128] 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 [129] 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. [130] ‘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 [131] 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 [132] 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 [133] 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 [134] 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 [135] 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 [136] 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; [137] my heart has been wrung. You cover your face. Have I decided wrong?’ ‘Oh, no, no;’ she replied in a voice broken by her emotion. ‘For all the world, I would not that you should have decided otherwise. And yet, is it not very, very hard? I mean for you, Randolph. For myself, I have a pleasant home, and I am happy enough while I can see you every day, and be sure each day that we love one another better than we did the last. Besides,’ she added, looking up with her sunny smile, ‘on some accounts it is best as it is; it would almost break father’s heart to part from me; and, as he says, dear Randolph, when the right time comes, ‘Providence will open up a way for us.’’ ‘Then, Fanny, you approve my decision?’ ‘Approve it, Randolph! I do not seem proud, perhaps; but it would humble me to the very dust to have you think even of acting contrary to what you believe to be right. Oh, if we could only live in a world where it was all love and friendship and no politics!’ Randolph smiled at the simplicity of Fanny’s wish, and expressed, with all a lover’s fervor, his admiration of the instinctive rectitude of her mind. He confessed that he had resolved and re-resolved his grandfather’s proposition, in the hope that he might hit upon some mode of preserving his integrity and securing the bright reward offered him, but in vain. Our lovers must be forgiven if they protracted their walk long after the orthodox hour for barring a minister’s doors. My friend, still the ‘spoiled child,’ [138] found her old sister Sally sitting up for her; and as they crept up their rooms, ‘They say old maids are cross,’ said Fanny, ‘but they don’t know you who say so. You remember, sister, when you used to love to walk by the moonlight, with a certain Mr.⎯⎯⎯?’ ‘Whisht, nonsense, Fanny,’ said our ‘nun demure,’ but she finished the ascent of the stairs with a lighter step, and as Fanny kissed her for good night, she saw that a slight blush had overspread her wan cheek at the pleasurable recollections called up. So true is woman to the instincts of her nature. On the next morning, Randolph was absent, and Mrs. Hunt said, in answer to his grandfather’s inquiries that he had ridden to the next village on business, and had left word that he should return in time for the election. The squire was excessively elated. He was on the point of obtaining a party triumph by the casting vote of his grandson; he should exhibit him for the first time in the democratic ranks, ‘enlisted for the war,’ with the new blown honors of Hampden thick upon him. There are elevated points in every man’s life, and this morning was the Chimborazo of the squire’s. At the appointed hour the rival parties assembled at the meeting house; that being in most of our villages the only building large enough to contain the voters of the town, is, notwithstanding the temporary desecration, used as a political arena. There the rival parties met as (with sorrow we confess it,) rival parties often meet in our republic, like the hostile forces of belligerent nations, as if they had no interest nor sentiment in common. [139] The balloting began. Randolph had not arrived. The squire, though not yet distrustful, began to fidget. He had taken his station beside the ballot box; a station which, in spite of its violation of the courtesies if not the principle of voting by ballot, is often occupied by eager village politicians, for the purpose of peering into the box, and detecting any little artifice by which an individual may have endeavored to conceal his vote. Here stood the squire, turning his eyes from the door where they eagerly glanced in quest of Randolph, to the box, and giving a smile or scowl to every vote that was dropped in. ‘What keeps the parson back?’ thought he, knitting his gristled brows, as he looked at Doctor Atwood, ‘he is always the first to push forward.’ This was true. The doctor’s principles kindly coincided with his inclination in bringing him to the poll, but once having ‘put in his mite,’ as he said, ‘into the good treasury,’ he paid so much deference to his office, as immediately to withdraw from the battle-field. The doctor had controlling reasons for lingering on this occasion. Fanny had acquainted him with Randolph’s determination. The old man was touched with his young favorite’s virtue, and the more (we must forgive something to human infirmity,) that Randolph’s casting vote would decide the election in favor of the federal party. The balloting was drawing to a close, and still Randolph did not appear. The doctor now fully participated the squire’s uneasiness. He took off his spectacles, wiped them over and over again, and strained his eyes up the road by which Randolph was to return. ‘It was not like him to flinch,’ thought the sturdy old man, ‘he is always up to the mark.’ Still, [140] as the delay was prolonged his anxiety increased. ‘Better have come boldly out on their side than sneak off in this fashion. I might have known that no one tainted with this jacobinism could act an upright manly part. He writes well, to be sure; find sentiments, but nothing so namby pamby as sentiment that is not backed up by conduct. Well, well; we are all in the hands of the Lord, and he may see fit yet to turn his heart; poor little Fanny; I’ll throw in my vote and go home to her.’ The doctor gave one last look through the window, and now, to his infinite joy, he descried Randolph approaching. In a few moments more he entered the church. His vote had been a matter much debated and of vital interest to both parties. As he entered, every eye turned towards him, and a general murmur ran round the church. ‘He’ll vote for us!’ and ‘he’ll vote for us!’ passed from mouth to mouth, and as usual the confident assertions were vouched by wagers. Whatever wrestlings with himself Randolph might have had in secret, he was too manly to manifest his feelings to the public eye, and he walked up the aisle with his customary manners, revealing nothing by look or motion to the eager eyes of his observers; though there was enough to daunt, or at least to fluster a man of common mettle, in the well known sound of the doctor’s footsteps, shuffling after him, and in the aspect of the squire standing bolt upright before him; confidence and exultation seeming to elevate him a foot above his ordinary stature. ‘Ha,’ thought he, ‘every man has his price; bait your hook with a pretty girl, and you’ll be sure to catch these boys.’ At this critical moment, Randolph [141] dropped in his vote. It was open, fairly exposed to the squire’s eye, and it bore in legible, indubitable characters, the name of the Federal candidate. The doctor involuntarily grasped his hand, and whispered, ‘You have done your duty, my son, God bless you!’ Words cannot describe either the squire’s amazement or his wrath. Randolph had presumed too far when he hoped that the decency due to a public meeting would compel his relative to curb his passion, till reflection should abate it. It burst forth in incoherent imprecations, reproaches, and denunciations; and Randolph, finding that his presence only served to swell the storm, retreated. The votes were now counted, and notwithstanding Randolph’s vote, and, contrary to all expectation, there proved to be a tie. Some federalist had been recreant. The balloting was repeated. Doctor Atwood had gone, and the democratic candidate was elected by a majority of one. This unexpected good fortune turned the tide of the squire’s feelings. His individual chagrin was merged in the triumph of his party. They adjourned to the tavern to celebrate their victory in the usual mode of celebrating events, by eating and drinking. Excitement had its usual effects on our unethereal squire, and he indulged his stimulated appetite somewhat beyond the bounds of prudence. Even the tiger is said to be comparatively good natured on a full stomach. The squire’s wrath was appeased by the same natural means; and when Hampden was toasted, he poured down a bumper, saying [142] to his next neighbor as he did so, ‘I might have known a fellow with his nonsensical notions would have voted for the man he thought best of.’ The conviviality of our politicians continued to a late hour. Libations were poured out to all the bright champions of their party. The moderns unfortunately swallow their libations. Finally, the squire proposed a parting glass to ‘the confusion and overthrow of all monarchists, aristocrats, federalists, or despots, by whatever name called,’ and in the very act of raising it to his lips, he was seized with an apoplexy, which, in spite of his ‘sound grinders, full pulse, steady gait and grandmother Brown having to lived to ninety,’ carried him off in the space of a few hours, leaving his whole estate real and personal to his legal and sole heir, Randolph Hayford. And how did Randolph bear this sudden reverse of fortune in his favor? This versification, as it truly seemed, of the doctor’s prophecy, that ‘Providence would open up a way for them.’ In the first place, he laid the axe to the root of the Hayford tree, renouncing at once and forever the name, (of which he had so religiously preformed the duties,) and resuming with pride and joy his honored patronymic. He then, by a formal deed of quit claim, relinquished all right and title to the estate, real and personal, and goods and chattels of Silas Hayford, Esquire, in favor of Martha Hunt, said Silas’ sister. Thus emancipated, and absolved from all farther duties and obligations to the name of Hayford, with a character improved and almost perfected by the exact performance of self-denying and painful duties, he [143] began his professional career, depending solely on his own talents and efforts; thank heaven, a sure dependence in our favored country. My sweet friend, Fanny, who seemed to be the pet of destiny, as well as of father, sisters, and friends, was thus indulged in bearing the name of Gordon, to which she so fondly adhered. She was soon transferred to Randolph’s new place of residence, and without breaking her father’s heart by a separation. He having rashly preached an ultra federal sermon on a fast day, that widened the breach between himself and the majority of his parish, so far, that it was impossible to close it without emulating the deed of Curtius. To this the good doctor had no mind, and just then most fortunately (we beg his pardon, his own word is best,) ‘providentially’ receiving a call to vacant pulpit in the place of Randolph’s residence, he once more transferred his home; spent his last days near his favorite child, and at last, in language of scripture, ‘fell asleep’ on her bosom. ---------- [Sedgwick’s notes] [1] This fruitful subject of dispute, has rent asunder many a village society in New England. [2] Federalist. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Reminiscence of Federalism Subject The topic of the resource Federalists and Democrats, partisanship, voting, friendship, courtship. Description An account of the resource 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 An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine M. [By Miss Sedgwick] Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Token, edited by Samuel G. Goodrich. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Boston: Charles Bowen Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1834 [pub. 1833] Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jenifer Elmore, Naomi Lau, Kaylin Ricciardi, Abigail Skinner Relation A related resource 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 A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource 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 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/875d9d83a1487eda7b40ccad9ef0c653.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=l1CnBaW4zV98x%7EVw-57F1AWMyWLgTkYbtNctIf0tqeJRVDqBJEglXNPPopaAPo%7Eb-k4AYmtNpT76AdulcPL25bJm0zISEwi7nle0ufgVljkcbA-8S9KfYMCDRn4mCbQPdyFCi4dohjNerImkZbNTz-YvsWFcfzEr3LPj7OrNW1%7EoXed35FtXLbnVnhOU2NlH6tbsOqCx6KQZpOe74dJzKA8I4MZV8gicdLdRizUaf2%7EOtFdSyLCgdXrWHIJHix1NI3H3I2aCxQwwnuW0mACZbBy3TmNAATV8TSpjMTqLEqHeqcRZdKqG0-syOL6bPf5rnM8rrAt8l5BMGZslmGf7dg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f877a72abc102133526535102341b14e 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 1839 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. [p. 34] THE FALLS OF BASH-PISH: OR, THE EAGLE'S NEST. To the Editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. Two of our friends, who were on a pedestrian tour, called to see us last week. Their way of life is sedentary, and they wisely chose this mode of repairing the waste (I should more deferentially say expense) of mind and body, in their studies. As men of taste, they combined with a plan of exercise the purpose of turning aside from the highway, to see the natural beauties of our romantic county of Berkshire. But on inquiring by the wayside and at the inns, they could obtain no information but that there was a “sightly view” at such a point, or a “fine prospect” descending such a mountain. Of the manifold treasures hidden in our hills they could get no report, and this led thorn to suggest that residents in n country worth visiting should write some account of their surroundings, which should be a sort of guide-book to the explorer. It struck me this was a reasonable species of hospitality, and having just returned from a visit to some falls in our neighborhood, quite unknown to fame, I determined to send to you a copy of the notes I made at the time of the excursion. A description of the favorite haunts in our immediate neighborhood, would be a more literal compliance with the suggestion of our pedestrians, but besides, that in speaking of these domestic lions, I could scarcely divest myself of the partiality resulting from fond associations with such old and familiar friends as Monument-Mountain, the Ice-glen, the Roaring-Brook, the Precipice, &c, the journal to Bash-pish is already written, a resistless argument in its favor. ----- September 11, 1838. A bright, warm September morning. Our party is arranged, and we are on the point of starting for Bash-pish. Every thing is propitious, save that the rain we have so earnestly desired to lay the dust, has not fallen; but what signifies it? with such a party we surely may endure without complain! dust, heat, rain, or any other of the lesser evils that may chance to “light o' our shoulders.” While we have Mrs.----- and the ----- 's with us, we have moral influences that are equivalent to sunshine and showers, and all the life-invigorating and life-restoring powers of the natural world. Our party includes eighteen persons, counting by that respectable designation five school girls. As far as they are concerned, it is sure to be a party of pleasure; for, all the miseries ever heaped on a devoted party of pleasure, so called, could not counteract the joyful sense of escape from music lessons, French, Latin, arithmetic, and all those tasks at which they assuredly sow in tears, if they are hereafter to bear their sheaves rejoicing. But here is our omnibus, a long open wagon, and merry voices are ringing round it; and there is the appendix to this great work, a barouche, in which the more delicate members of the party are to take their turn, with the little unconscious traveller, who, having travelled but four months on this road of life, as yet neither looks backward nor forward. We proceeded down the county road: a soft, and as the travellers among us said, Italian atmosphere, seemed like a transparent veil between us and the mountains, and made them look blue, and hazy, and distant; while every nearer object was clear and defined. The Mountain Mirror on our right, true to its name, reflected like those polished silver plates, anciently used as mirrors, and gave back clearly the image of the sylvan beauties that stood thickly around it; while Scott's pond, on our left, looked as blue as the heaven above it. At Stockbridge a portion of our party were awaiting us, and congratulations poured in upon us on our happy prospects. The clouds that threatened yesterday have vanished—we run no risk in the open omnibus—the wind is westerly, the most trustworthy of winds, and so kissing hands to our God-speeding friends, while one of our party was muttering, as he clambered over the high wheels of the omnibus, “Jual diavolo di Carro!” we proceeded onwards, and next drew up at the inn, in the pretty village of Barrington, where the street is enfolded in the mighty arms of old elms. What beautiful memorials of the departed are the trees they planted, with their roots struck into the earth whence we have all sprung, and their stems mounting heavenward whither we all tend! Some one suggested that the Barrington inn furnished tolerable claret, and it was voted prudent to secure a few bottles for our lunch, to which, in the true vein of travellers, we were looking forward to as the next great event of the day. Our admirable purveyor, A----- , went to procure it. The man who happened to be serving the bar,—for the honor of our county I trust he was not an accredited official of the Barrington inn,—seeing A----- 's blonze, and observing his foreign accent, deemed it an apt occasion for a speculation; and having delivered the claret, said it was two dollars a bottle. “Due scudi!” (two dollars,) exclaimed our friend; “my good sir, the barkeeper asked me but half a dollar for a bottle yesterday.” The man drew in, muttered some apology, and quietly took the tendered half dollar per bottle. Such a circumstance might have been noted down by our [p. 35] travellers abroad, or foreigners here, as characterizing a district; and yet we have passed up and down this good county, for the better part of half a century, without meeting a similar instance—so reliable are the conclusions of generalizing travellers! The drive from Barrington to Sheffield is along a meadow road, and for the most part on the margin of the Housatonick. Green fields and a stream of water, great or small, will always constitute beautiful scenery; but when that stream has been the play-fellow of your childhood, and has smiled on you through all the chances of life, there seems to be a soul breathed into material things. Some of us needed all this spiritual communion, to endure with christian patience the clouds of dust that enveloped us, even through that “woodland scene, Where wanders the stream with waters of green, As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink, Had given their stain to the waved they drink; And they whose meadows it murmurs through, Have named the stream from its own fair hue.” We trust that the poet from whom we quote, when he shall have cast off the burden, we are sure he unwillingly bears, of a party-paper, will come back to the more genial task of illustrating other points of his native county, as well as he has done "Monument Mountain," and " Green River." Sheffield has far less rural beauty than most of our villages, but it has a compensation in lying in the shadow of the Jahconick, and in having their western horizon defined by the beautiful outline of that lofty mountain. At Sheffield we proved the virtue of a name; for having culled for lunch, a table was spread for us with stacks of eggs, bread and butter, cakes, pies, &c, besides a smoking quarter of lamb—in short, a fair country meridian dinner, for which, being called a lunch, we paid only eighteen cents each! At Sheffield, some slight indications that we were a party of pleasure appeared; for all such seem to share the curse that fell on Seged, when he devoted nine days to happiness. There were various signs of fatigue, restlessness, and anxiety. Some were lolling on the beds—others stretched on the floor—some bewailing the dust—and others noting mares' tails and mackerels' hicks, that promised we should at least have no dust to complain of after to-day. But what are we to do with rain in our uncovered ark? “Wait till the rain comes,” wisely says one of us, who never sees any evil in the future, and bears every present evil so lightly, that to her it seems to have neither form nor weight. From Sheffield, in spite of various guide-boards, inviting us to shorter and better routes, we adhered to that which follows the course of our favorite river, that now, though it has lost nothing of the grace of the infant, is dilating into a breadth that ranks it among rivers in our land of mammoth waters. It is, in this dry time, somewhat in the condition of the sixth age, its bed being a world too wide for its shrunk sides. Well may it linger, and turn, and double on its track, like a good spirit loving the smiles it makes; for, in some sort, it is the creator of this scene of abundance, beauty, and contentment. But oh, the dust! the dust! we can hardly see our fellow travellers through the clouds between us; and feel that farthest from them is best. We have now left the county of Berkshire, and entered the state of Connecticut; and in passing over a high hill to the village of Salisbury, we stopped on a summit, called, I believe, Prospect Hill; but where in this country of farstretching views, of valley and upland, is there a hill that might not be so designated? From this hill we first saw the two lovely lakes that lie cradled in the valley, separated only by a strip of terra firma, wide enough for a carriage road. Mrs.----- gave them the fitting name of the Twins; and the curious little hill on the right, whose natural inequalities present to the eye the image of terraces, battlements, and turrets, she called Castle-Hill. There is much use in associating names with points of a landscape; besides that, that seems hardly to have an individual existence which has no name. They serve as a sort of “open sesame” to the memory; and when afterwards we hear them, they, and their dependencies, and surroundings, pass before us almost as vividly as when the eye first rested on them. There is good sense as well as good taste, in giving a name that is obviously descriptive—it stands some chance of being generally adopted. Our people do not readily change the homely designations of “Great Pond,” and “Little Pond,” for the fine and foreign names bestowed by amateurs. The west was mottled with clouds which reflected the last rays of twilight, when we drove up to one of the two inns in the old village of Salisbury. Our arrival produced a change in the little dwelling, like setting the wheels of a factory in motion. All the energies of the landlady, who, her husband being absent, has double duty to perform, are put in motion. Here are twenty persons to be fed without any previous preparation for such an onslaught; twenty persons to be accommodated with lodging and all its accessaries, and some among them habituated to whatever there is of refinement and elegance in the country; but luckily there are half a dozen girls, in their teens, easy material for stowing, who will sleep soundly on feathers, straw, or a bare floor, and be sure of a merry waking after; and all of us have learned Touchstone's true philosophy, "When we were at home we were in a better place, but travellers must be content.” A party of pleasure must be poorly fitted for their vocation, if they cannot convert the incommodities of a narrow inn into materials for laughter. After a due investigation, it was settled that Mrs.----- , and her tail of girls, should take possession of the ball-room; that Mrs.----- , her nurse, and child, should have a little nest of rooms, some ten feet square—a strange penning up for one what last year at this time was fêted in lordly palaces, the cynosure of all eyes. To M., and F., and F., was assigned the only carpetted apartment as compensation for their French couches, psyches, mirrors, dressing-rooms, bathing-rooms, &c at home; and I sent two of my young handmaidens to secure apartments for the rest of us at the inn over the way. They returned, charmed with their success. They had engaged for the gentlemen the refinement of separate apartments, and for the four of us that remained, “such a delightful room—so Saxon.” I had some misgivings as to the quality termed Saxon; but what was my dismay, on retiring to my quarters, to find a townhall, (called by courtesy, ball-room,) built by the good citizens of Salisbury for their civil assemblings. By the feeble glimmerings of our lamp, I perceived at the upper [p. 36] extremity of the apartment, some fifty feet long, an orchestra, which the fervid imaginations of my young purveyors had, I presumed, converted into a dais. The room was illuminated by eight windows with not even a paper curtain—nothing but the dark scarlet bombazet demi-curtain, which seems the favorite ensign of our country inns. Beside the windows, there is a door opening on to a piazza, large enough to have afforded egress and ingress to all the gods of our Saxon fathers, and quite in character for their impartial hospitalities: it had no fastenings to exclude volunteer guests. And further, this " delightful Saxon" apartment had a sanded floor, which, as my young companions chose to course up and down its fifty of length, was rather unfriendly to the sweet offices of sleep. But in spite of this—in spite of the windows rattling in their casements—in spite of a rising northeaster—of the blowing open of the door, and the pelting in of the rain, a king might have envied our sound sleep on the teamsters’ beds of this “delightful Saxon” apartment! Such wonderful transmuters are exercise and fatigue, of straw-beds and coarse coverings into down and fine linen. Wednesday morning.—The winds are howling, and the rain driving, and our strolling company must be housed for the day. Picturesque travellers, we must make our own pictures. Shadows are always ready, and it will be strange, if with the bright spirits around us, we cannot put in our own lights. Half a dozen propositions are already afloat for the amusements of the day. “Shall we get Mrs.----- to read Shakespeare to us?” or “shall we prepare for waltzes and tableaux?” It is agreed that the blonzes of our Milan friends will make charming costumes for the girls, and the scarlet curtains will work up admirably into bandit gear—it will be the first real service the detestable things ever rendered. In the meantime, I have set my merry girls and our Italian cavalieri to sweeping the sand off the floor. A----- is decorating it with a series of family portraits he has discovered, evidently painted by some unlucky tinto, who had no other mode of furnishing the quid pro quo; for the landlord has sat for three portraits— once with folded hands, then reading, and then meditating; and the landlady is presented in the vanities of a most versatile wardrobe. Our Italian friends seem to produce strange perplexity in the minds of our entertainers. The woman who waited on our little party at breakfast, came to me after it was over, saying, in a most apologetic tone, “I am afraid you can't understand me any better than I can you;” and my assurance that I was her countrywoman, brightened her countenance with the first perception that we were not all outlandish folk. The floor is swept. A----- has crossed the brooms as trophies over the door—some are tossing B----- in a blanket—others gallopading, and the rest waltzing with the family portraits! We shall have no lack of amusement. At eleven, the whole party assembled at the upper inn, where a centre-table having been tastefully arranged by the young ladies, so as to give a most civilized aspect to the apartment, we gathered round it. Our amateur artists busied themselves with finishing up the sketches of the previous day. The girls cajoled the landlady out of her knitting work, and sat most demurely at it. Our Italian scholars translated English into Italian poetry; and one of our foreign friends improvised verses in his own language, till, by common consent, each individual occupation was abandoned, and every eye and ear was devoted to Mrs.----- , while she read to us the first scenes in the Merchant of Venice. I doubt if a theatrical representation of Shakespeare, with all the aid of scenic effect, and dramatic illusion, can equal such a reading of the play as Mrs.-----‘s. The acted play is necessarily cut down and garbled, and nine-tenths of what remains is travestied by bad actors; but, read by Mrs.----- , Shakespeare is truly interpreted, and every word delivered in a voice that is the most effective, as well as the most delicious organ of the soul. That voice, with her electrifying eye, and her miraculous variety of expression, breathe a living spirit into the written words, and each character appears before you in its individuality and completeness; not only the intellectual Portia, the cool, subtle and avenging Shylock, but the grave and generous Antonio, the sagacious Gratiano, &c. &c.—such characters as on the stage, are either automatons or buffoons. But Mrs.----- , who seems in the versatility of her talents as well as in her genius, to be “near of kin” to her great master, had no sooner closed her book than she sprang up stairs into the ball-room, to teach L----- a gavot, and finding in a corner of the room an old crimson banner, belonging to the citizen-soldiers of Salisbury, and a sort of helmet-cap that had probably graced their commander, she donned the one and flourished the other, impersonating an heroic chieftainess, who might have appropriated the words of Clorinda— “Son pronta ad ogni impresa; L'alte non temo, e l' umili non sdegno." Here is the summons to dinner. How has the rainy morning been charmed away! It is a pity that metaphysicians instead of scoffing at the theories of philosophers older than themselves, and striking out new systems to be scoffed at in their turn, do not observe the minds around them, and the laws that govern them. Here is our kind little landlady who has been perfectly happy all the morning in the satisfaction she was preparing for her guests. How cheerfully she has performed the multifarious labors of housewife, cook, and maid of all work, crying " anon, anon!" to every one's bidding, and casting her smiles like sunbeams beyond the clouds that were scudding before her. The odor of a turkey roasting for dinner, (a rare dainty at this season in these country parts,) acted as a charm against fatigue and disquietude of every sort. The dinner hour came—the turkey was served—the hungry guests sat down to dinner. It was a moment of honest triumph to the good woman—a, moment when the little vanities of the housewife were dignified by the benevolence of the woman. But, alas! night is next to day; and not more dismal is the change from light to darkness, than the vanishing of the poor hostess' smiles, when she saw the strongest, skilfullest hand among us laboring in vain to separate the joints of the ancient gobbler, who, though the father of generations, she had undoubtedly brought to a most untimely end. The poor woman, for the first time that day, sat down. All the toils of the day—all the runnings to and fro, were accumulated at this moment. Hope had cheated her into unconsciousness of her burdens, and at [p. 37] the touch of disappointment she sunk under them. Now our metaphysical result is, that there are certain powers of the mind, which, brought into action, abridge labor even more than spinning-jennies. After dinner we fell into an argument on the tendencies of the Catholic religion, to prolong the dominion of absolute governments. F----- earnestly contending against it in spite of his sixteen years in the dungeons of Spielberg, which we might have expected would have prejudiced him in favor of our argument. Thursday morning.—We sent through a pelting rain, a mile and a half, for a fiddler, ensconced him in the orchestra, lighted up our tin chandelier and began dancing, though we had but one cavalier who did not declare himself hors de combat. Fortunately two wandering stars suddenly rose above the dreary horizon of our young damsels. The one was a young man who introduced himself as Hermann Hinklinkcr, a German student, and his companion, a Count Catchimetchikoff, a Pole. They both spoke English well. The German student was a sort of admirable Crichton. He seemed an universal genius, and whatever he was called upon to do he did marvellously well. His eye was that of an inspired poet, and his countenance, conversation and manners, had the witching charm that belongs to the knight of bower and hall. As if by instinct he selected the lady of our fair company, who has been presented at foreign courts, and might grace an epic poem, and having called in vain on our rustic fiddler for various dances foreign, he gracefully joined a quadrille, a country dance, and Virginia reel, and danced with as much glee as if they were the dances of his own land and fondest associations. His companion, the Polish Count with the unpronounceable and almost unwritable name, was boyish and unpractised, but he had the freedom of a seemingly happy nature, and a certain air of the wellborn and well-nurtured, that was pleasing. At half past nine oar dancers had exhausted their superfluous activity, and we adjourned to the little parlor where our wondrous student sang German, Italian, French, and English with equal facility, and with an expression that waked all the soul within us; and that, perhaps, is the prosaic interpretation of what the poet means by "creating a soul under the ribs of death." The young Polish prince sang an accompaniment, that at least showed long practice, with his more accomplished friend. Our hostess sent us in a refection of cakes and peaches, and we separated at twelve, bidding our strange visitants “good night,” as if they were of us. Who were they? Whence came they? Is it possible that their advent was connected with the disappearance of two of our party, Mrs.----- and Miss -----, who left us after tea, and did not appear again till this morning? It is still raining, and has rained all night, as it did upon the drowning unbelievers of Noah's time. The wind is still east, and our pictorial party will probably go home again without either seeing Canaan falls, the lakes, or Bash-Pish. Ten o'clock.—Good, as well as evil, comes unlooked for. The wind has changed—the clouds are breaking away—the carriages are ready—Ho! for Canaan falls! Our friend, R. A----- , has joined us. This is his home, and he has undertaken hospitably to show us the beauties to which he is native, and which he rightly appreciates, and unostentatiously enjoys. The rain has done us nothing but good—it has laid our enemy, the dust, quietly at our feet—washed the trees—greened the fields—and brimmed every little brook, so that this seems the land of fresh and gushing streams. The elements had ceased their hostility, and air, earth and water, were ministering to our enjoyment, when, lo! on descending a hill, we came upon a stream that had overflowed its banks and flooded the road for a long distance. We stopped lo take counsel of an old resident, who assured us there was no danger, and those among us who were as brave as the Duke of Marlborough—that is, who feared nothing where there was nothing to fear—proceeded, in spite of the outcries of sundry of our juveniles, who were suddenly pervaded with a sense of Falstaff’s alacrity in sinking. After all it was but one of Andrew Marvel's dangers, and only served to add one to the pictures laid up in our memories; for it was a pretty sight to see the omnibus' horses dashing into the water, and to watch their passage, as they were now nearly hidden by the light foliage, that almost embowered the narrow road and now emerged from it. At Canaan falls we rejoined, by appointment, some dear friends who had come from home with us, and who, during the rainy day, had enjoyed a welcome that might have been envied by him, who boasted that his kindest welcome was at an inn. Canaan falls have long been known as furnishing valuable water privileges, and as being the location of profitable furnaces, but being far from the grand routes, they have been little visited by amateurs, and few of this dainty body probably know that there is a fall of sixty feet in the Housatonic. Human beauties have their “handsome days,” and so have the beauties of inanimate nature, if that can be called inanimate that breathes harmony, and speaks to the soul. Never, I am sure, were these falls seen in a more becoming light. The river was filled by the rains of the previous night, and literally verified what was said in another sense, by our good woman of the inn, when she told me “the falls were well worth seeing—there had been a great addition to them.” “What, more water?” “Oh no, more furnaces!” And, in truth, furnaces are not very bad “additions.” They certainly are far less offensive accessories to falls than factories, which are so upright, so freshly painted, and so full of windows. Whether it is that Ketch's marvellous pencil has redeemed a furnace from all utilitarian and anti-picturesque associations, so that you cannot see one without thinking of the young page Fridolin, and his beautiful mistress; or that there is something that harmonizes with trees, rocks, and water, in these buildings, that always look old, brown, dingy, and ominous, with their glowing fires gleaming through their port-holes. Some of our party who had seen Schaffhausen, were struck by a resemblance of these to those celebrated falls, and had the courage to pronounce them little less beautiful. I shall not attempt to describe them. Painting even is an ineffective presentment of a water-fall; and words, without the spell of genius, cannot conjure up to the imagination the motion and force of the river, as it rushes over the precipice—the rocks above, that seem in vain to have tried to repel and obstruct its passage—the pretty islands— the steep banks, with their dark cedars—the rustic bridge below—the long stretch of the river, and the far distant hills that bound the horizon, and all touched [p. 38] with a light that would have set an artist or a poet off into ecstasy. But the majority of our caravan were neither artists nor poets; so after running up and down the bank, to the bottom and the top of the fall, wondering, admiring, and exclaiming as much as could be reasonably expected, we returned to enjoy a very nice lunch, in a degree that could not have been exceeded by poets or artists. En passant, we commend, as in duty bound, the nice inn at Canaan falls to the wayfarer, where he will be sure of finding that rarity, fresh eggs fresh, and cakes and pastry most skilfully compounded. We had yet a drive of five miles in extent round Furnace lake to Salisbury, and then a tour round Salisbury lakes, so called—par excellence. The views returning, of upland and lowland, were most beautiful. We were driven to the summit of a hill whence we saw all the Salisbury world and the glory thereof. We passed a rill that our rainy day had swollen into what appeared a mountain torrent, and finally passing round the lower margin of Furnace lake, reached our inn at three o'clock. The day was still unclouded, and as the shadows were lengthening, every hour added lo the beauty of the scenery, so that the eye, not satisfied, as it is never satisfied with such seeing, our party, excepting Mrs.----- and myself, set off for the lakes. Opposite the inn there is a very green field, and this field is traversed by a little stream, that is, I believe, the outlet of the lake on Mount Rhiga; at any rate its birthplace is on that high mountain, and as it flows through this fresh bit of meadow land, it retains its free and joyous mountain character. There is always in the sound of running water a voice of invitation; and Mrs.----- and myself, having no heart to resist such a bidding, passed through an open barn, which afforded us the readiest access to the meadow, and then strolled along the margin of the brook to a clump of sycamores, from whose roots the earth had been so washed away as to afford a good seat, and their clean white stems a far better support than our perpendicular country chairs. The trees along this brook are not the willows and light shrubbery that usually affect our water courses, but groups of noble oaks, elms, maples, and sycamores, (the original growth I believe,) disposed as if they were planted by the most skilful artist—and were they not? “If this were in England,” said Mrs.-----, reverting to her English associations, “it would make the fortune of our innkeeper. There we have a large class who haunt such places. That barn would be removed, or rather it would never have been placed there, and the little aid that nature needs to give it all the attraction it is capable of, would not have been spared; but in your country the supplies that nature yields to physical wants is all you get from her. There are a few individual exceptions; but for the most part those of your people who can afford the luxury of travelling, throng the watering places; they go in herds, and must eat, drink and live, in crowds. To love and enjoy nature, requires a certain degree and kind of cultivation, which your people have not.” In spite of the amour-propre, which one instinctively extends so far as to embrace one's own people, I could not but admit that there was much justice in my friend's strictures. The denizens of our cities, who, for the most part, make up that class that can indulge in the luxury of travelling, and summer excursions, do not spend their short holiday in exploring their country and making acquaintance with its lonely solitudes—and why should they? We must be content to let people be happy in their own way. There are no daily papers at Bash-pish or Canaan falls—no prices-current—no reports from the stock market—and the most irresistible French dresses, or (as one of my fashionable friends styles them) even the most romantic French dresses, and the most perfect "loves of capes," would be worse than wasted there. But, as I urged to Mrs.----- , is there not a much larger class in our country, than the privileged aristocracy of any land can furnish, sufficiently educated to relish the beauties of nature? A love of nature, amounting to a passion, is innate with a few—but a very few. With the greater part it needs to be awakened and cultivated. In the eager pursuit of the first necessaries of existence, this love or taste has been neglected among us; but it is precisely one of those pleasures that suits the mass of our people, for it is rational, most moral, and unexpensive. Nature exhibits her pictures without money and without price. Her show-rooms are every where open without respect to persons, seasons, or hours. And are there not at this moment, scattered in our secluded places and retired villages, numbers who quietly and unostentatiously enjoy the festival nature has spread, and who are getting that 'wisdom' which “Is a pearl with most success Sought in still water, and beneath clear skies?” And are there not prisoners pent in our cities, who hunger and thirst after the green meadows and misty mountain tops? With the shadows, we again all gathered at our head quarters, and passed the evening in representing a secret meeting of the Carbonari. One of our Italian friends, who, for the project cherished in these meetings, had suffered sixteen years in the dungeons of Spielberg, showed us the mode of inaugurating a new member of the society; and different members of our party, being instructed in their official duty, regularly initiated a young black-eyed girl into the secrets of membership. We went early to bed, to prepare for the fatigues of the next day. Little did we know what preparation was necessary. Pity that one cannot take in an extra quantity of rest, as Dalgetty did of provant! Friday morning—after being joined by Miss----- and her brother, our Salisbury friend, well fitted to be our guide and companion, and indeed furnished to every good work, we began the ascent of Mount Rhiga, on our way to Bash-pish, which was to be the crowning point of our excursion. The road begins alongside the little brook aforesaid, and continues its delightful companionship for four miles to the summit. There is but just space enough between the brook and the close set trees for a road. The branches of the trees often stretch over and interweave above your head. The flowers of the season, the gentians, asters, and golden rod, were thick set and blooming among the turf, and the long ferns hung over like green plumes. “This,” said Mrs.----- , as she marked the laurels planted all along the roadside, “must be paradise in June; it is just such a drive as our noblemen obtain in their parks [p. 39] at almost unlimited expense and trouble." As we wound upward, we had glorious glimpses into the open world we were leaving behind us, of hill-side and valley; but there was one point at which we stopped and remained for some moments in breathless admiration. Here there was a wide, deep and wooded chasm between us and another eminence, that presented a semicircular front like the wall of an amphitheatre—but an amphitheatre built by an Almighty architect. The trees grew over the side of this mountain so close that they looked absolutely packed with a surface resembling a rich turf, and giving the appearance, I have remarked, of a green wall. The greater portion of our company, the hale and the merciful ones, had alighted from our vehicles to walk up the mountain. A----- , who either perceived that I was lagging, or wishing to provide a picturesque variety, struck a bargain with a butcher's boy, who was wending his way up the mountain with supplies for Rhiga, and having huddled the meal into the back part of the little wagon, he placed me, with my pilgrim's staff, on a board that served for a seat in front, where I figured as a vender of beef and tallow. The Doctor soon overtook us, another type of civilization, with his symbols, a sulkey, and a leathern sack, containing the torments of social existence for those that enjoyed few its benefits. After passing the furnaces of Mount Rhiga, (called Mount Raggy by the natives,) we came upon a lake, four miles in extent, with the Katskills for a background. Oh how beautiful that lake and those blue summits were, when we returned at twilight—mountain, lake, and skies, all glowing with the “last steps of day!” From Rhiga we drove over a very comfortable mountain road seven miles to Mount Washington, and were again in our own county of Berkshire. By the way I had a little chat with the Doctor, and was congratulating him on his ride, embracing these far stretching and sublime views, when, in reply, directing my observation to a point in the Katskills, he said, "My father was killed there felling a tree, and left me, with several other children, orphans, in a log-hut hard by. I always see the place when I pass this way, and it is a dreary ride to me.” There was much food for thought in this; but turning from the proof that the mind gives its own hue to the outward world, I remembered to have heard that this gentleman and his brother were eminent in their profession, and I thanked Heaven that the stream of life, in our land, runs to prosperity, even though its beginning be in a log-hut on the Katskills. We stopped at a farm house in the village of Mount Washington, where we deposited our youngest traveller, with her nurse, and three of our little girls, who we thought incompetent to the labor before us—and having secured three riding horses for the least strong among us, the rest proceeded, under the guidance of an old mountaineer, through woodland and ploughed land towards Bash-pish. The distance was not more than two miles and a half; no frightful achievement for the poorest walker among us—but the ground was broken and rugged, and when two miles were accomplished we had to descend a precipitous hill, where there had been a road, now only to be marked by the heaps of stones from which the earth had been swept during the late furious rains. After much fatigue we did get down without breaking our necks or dislocating our bones; but if “faciiis descensus averni,” what the ascent would be we hardly dared to think—and think of any future evil we could not, while we were lured on by the music of the water-fall, which came up from the depths like the song of a siren. ----- Here ended my journal. We were perfectly exhausted with fatigue when we arrived at our Salisbury inn, at eight in the evening—and the next morning, before starting for home, I had only time to bring up my notes to where I have ended. But what signifies it? I could not have described that most graceful of all the waterfalls I have ever seen—that treasure which Nature seems to have hidden with a mother's love, deep in the bosom of her hills. We were afterwards told that we did not, after all, see what was grandest—that we should have approached on the other side, where the access was easy, and gone to the rocky breast-work,* at the summit of the hill, whence we should have looked off a sheer precipice of three hundred feet into the ravine through which the water passes away. I believe it, for the fall as we saw it was no more sublime than a child in its wildest frolics, or a fawn gamboling through the glades of its woodland home. If any of my readers have been good-natured enough to follow me thus far, finding my story without an end, they may deem me guilty of an impertinence in publishing the journal of a home excursion, which has neither a striking point nor a startling incident. But if I should lead any to seek the healthy pleasures within their reach, which will cost them no great expense of time or money, I shall be content. In spite of the old ballad which gravely tells us that “to travel is great charges,” as you know, in every place, we spent five days, and saw and enjoyed all that I have, perhaps too tediously, detailed, for less than the amount of a week's board at a watering place. *It is from this rock, where eagles’ eggs have been found, that the place obtained the name of Eagle's Nest. Bash-pish is the corruption of a name given by some Swiss settler. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Falls of Bash-Pish, or The Eagle's Nest Subject The topic of the resource Tourism, nature, the Berkshires, Bash-Pish Description An account of the resource Sedgwick shares the notes of her excursion with a party of friends to see the falls at Bash-pish, and reflects on the benefits of traveling to experience the beauty of nature. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Southern Literary Messenger [edited by T. H. White], Jan. 1839, pp. 34-39. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1839 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Relation A related resource "The Falls of Bash-Pish: Or, the Eagle's Nest," By Miss C. M. Sedgwick, New-Yorker, 26 January 1839, pp. 290-93. "Gerusalemme Liberata" "Green River" "Monument Mountain" 1839 Antonio Barrington Bash Bish falls Bash-Pish Berkshires Canaan Falls Carbonari Catholicism Clorinda Connecticut Eleuterio Felice Foresti Fridolin of Säckingen furnaces German Housatonic inns Italian Jahconick journal Kaatskills Merchant of Venice Mount Rhiga Mount Washington picturesque Polish Portia Salisbury Saxon Schaffhausen Seged Shakespeare Sheffield Shylock Southern Literary Messenger Spielberg fortress Stockbridge Torquato Tasso Touchstone tourism travel writing William Cullen Bryant https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/b5170ace0a5e71f14a241266bff9a4f7.pdf?Expires=1777507200&Signature=abFozaEQdQfLh2SBFVX8YBrFF9kzuNJHiZhIschhfB%7Ezek3Q16RrmckEtWu-ohJGwpbXNw7amAU9OnLIJM80Vtw4r%7EwWN4dfHQUR8iJ-vNKpTWDLDzeiTx8axUCEe1pPYXr4XKTJqN8GEVYO9fYONcgIg6O9uH2VJgCQyA34TUkyTFJdJc2S9c8V--yQUTsCq4HbdTLMSoyrqMVkve1tEGMa7at1qCVoGDwJhyakpxRb7VGZIyhWJEN-imjjq5f5kIZMGCKLjKX7egwjQiF0E-ZiX2zPSgby41%7EQocuRiUducH36Whcmb0-vzvv8WMt1INRahhZJettVUvihS5LyEg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 38fe14cdc1357de75d3c600d0affdbbe 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 1832 Subject The topic of the resource Stories published in 1832 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. “Country Pleasures” by Miss Sedgwick Mr. Astley, a gentleman residing in New York, --whether last year, or twenty years ago, I am not bound to tell,--had one child, Lucy, a little girl ten years old. Mr. Astley had been very unfortunate in the loss of an only son; and one year after that event, the death of Lucy’s mother had bereft him of all that was very near or dear to him, excepting this child, in whom his affections were now fearfully concentrated. Lucy’s health, too, had suffered from the diseases incident to childhood, and perhaps from anxious tenderness of her father, the zeal of her physician, and the watching of her nurses. She looked like a delicate flower that the first rude blast must sweep from its parent-stem. The loss of her little playfellow had affected her spirits. She missed her mother too, every hour in the day; and though it is not common for children to look back on the past, poor Lucy could not help it. Every desire and feeling that rose in her bosom reminded her of her mother; for to her she had gone to tell every want, every joy, and every sorrow. The nursery, where her mother always sat ready to join in the sports of her children, to assist their studies, or settle their little disputes, seemed now like a tomb to poor Lucy; and though it was filled with books and toys of every description, Lucy would sit there without the power of occupying or amusing herself. “Do take a book, Lucy,” said her kind nurse, Mary: “Here is this beautiful Arabian Nights, with the large pictures.” “There is no pleasure in reading it now,” replied Lucy. “I can’t go to mamma to explain it.” “Well then, Lucy, take these nice painted bricks, and build you a castle.” Lucy complied, for she hated to be sulky; and when it was done, she burst into tears, saying, “Oh, poor Willie! if he were only here to toss it over, and build another.” The nurse gently put away the bricks, drew out the table, and placed on it some paper, brushes, and a paint-box that had been bought for Lucy’s amusement; for she had not yet taken lessons in drawing. Lucy attempted a bunch of flowers, but soon pushed away the paper, saying she could do nothing now. The nursery was shut up, and another apartment of the large house fitted up for Lucy and her nurse; but still her health and spirits did not return. Her father was advised to send her into the country for the summer; but his business kept him in the city, and he had not resolution to part with her. He hoped that short excursions would revive her. He took her often to Rockaway, and Staten Island, and sent her almost every afternoon to the beautiful walks of Hoboken. Still poor Lucy remained pale and spiritless. At last, the physician advised Mr. Astley so earnestly to send her for two or three months into the country, that he became alarmed, and consented. She was sent to her aunt Ames, in Massachusetts. I am obliged to tell my young readers some particulars that I had rather not communicate; but it is perhaps best they should know what a mixed material human character is. Generosity is sometimes found with much selfishness; and a person who has lived a long while without manifesting it may, if addressed in the right way, or by the right person, be found capable of this noble quality. Though Lucy’s father was by no means an avaricious man, he set a high value on his wealth. He lived in expensive style, and gave on all common occasions of giving; but the truth that he was merely God’s steward, and bound to apply the fortune in his hands to the best uses for others, as well as himself, seemed not to have occurred to him. When his son died, he felt more than ever the insecurity of every earthly possession, and endeavoured to secure his property from the mischances that might befall it. Might it not have been the design of Heaven in removing his only son, that he should open his heart and his doors to the unportioned children of others? We must go back a few months in our story. Lucy’s aunt Ames was the only sister of her mother. Both sisters were born to fortune and delicately bred. Mrs. Ames’ husband was a man of integrity and wit—a man of the soundest judgement I have ever known, in other people’s affairs; his own he fatally mismanaged; and finally, when but a remnant of their property remained, he sent his wife and boys to live on a farm in Massachusetts, while he went forth full of admirable plans and plausible projects to seek his fortune. Mrs. Ames suffered the changes in her condition without repining. If she had ceased to hope for much, she desired little, and seemed to regret nothing but that she had not the means to educate her boys. Liston, the eldest, was obliged to work on the farm. He had early shown a talent for painting. When he was but four years old, he drew on his slate his father’s dog, Argus, (the dog then twice the size of the artist,) saying as he did so, “Ah! Argy, I can do it all but the wagging of your tail.” As he grew older, his passion for the art increased to such a degree that he had little interest in any other study or pursuit. His tasks done,--he did them, for he was a most dutiful child,--he was sketching his mother, his brothers, his dog, his cat, the mountains, the trees, the clouds, the fences, the old well, the broken horse-block; nothing was too high or too humble for Liston’s pencil. “The best thing you could do with that boy, Mrs. Ames,” said a friend, who had been looking over Liston’s drawings, “is to send him to live with his uncle Astley, to be bred to the profession of painting.” Mrs. Ames, whatever she thought, merely replied, “I could not ask such a favour of Mr. Astley.” “Nothing ask, nothing have,” said her adviser; and the conversation was dropped. Was it not strange that Mr. Astley did not endeavor to supply society to his daughter by taking into his family one of her cousins? I have often wondered at seeing persons who had large and half-fulfilled houses, neglect those charitable hospitalities that would cost them so little, and do so much good to others. We have much to wonder at in this world of ours, with the evil that is done, and the good that is not done! After much hesitation, and much anxiety, lest Mr. Astley might think she meant indirectly to ask his aid, Mrs. Ames addressed a letter to him, stating Liston’s decided taste and talent for painting; and requesting Mr. Astley to show some specimens which she enclosed to a judicious artist, and if they should be approved, to tell her if he knew any mode by which Liston could support himself while he was acquiring the art. In a few days, she received the following reply:-- “My dear Sister, “I send you back the specimens, which you will perceive I have not opened, as I feared I would not be able to do them up so neatly again, and I have no curiosity in such matters. “I did not think it worth while to trouble an artist to look at them, as I am decidedly against Liston entering on the business. It is a beggarly profession to all but those who are at the head of it; which he would have a slender chance of being. I advise you by all means to enter him in the mercantile line. A country store is as good a place as can be for beginning. Remember me to Liston and your other boys. As the nephews of my dear and lamented wife, their welfare will always interest me. I enclose $20, which you will do me the favour to use for them; and believe me. “Your affectionate brother, R. Astley.” Had Mrs. Ames been a proud, or an impetuous woman, she might have thrown the letter and the bank-note into the fire; but she was gentle, reasonable, and thoroughly disciplined; and after the first sharp pang of disappointment had subsided, she said, “It is possible that Mr. Astley judges better than I do. I ought not to have expected he would enter into our views. At any rate, poor Liston shall not have the mortification of knowing that his sketches were never looked at;” and she carefully locked them in her desk. It was not long after this that Mr. Astley wrote to request she would receive Lucy and her nurse for a few weeks. She answered him that nothing could gratify her so much as to have Lucy with her; but she strongly advised against the nurse being sent, as she thought an entire change of life would be best for her niece. Mr. Astley perceived the good sense of this suggestion; and accordingly the nurse was ordered, after leaving Lucy with her aunt, to return immediately to New-York. It was a bitter parting. The kind nurse doated on Lucy, and Lucy thought she must be miserable without her, who had supplied all her wants, even to the brushing of her hair, and tying up her shoe-strings. “Oh dear, Mary,” said she, “what shall I do without you? who will dress me in the morning, and fix me for dinner? and put me to bed? Do tell aunt I can’t go to sleep without a light in my room; and do not ask her, as father told you, to have a fire made for me to dress by, of damp mornings; and do tell her I am afraid of dogs, and horribly afraid of cats;--oh, Mary, what shall I do!” The nurse soothed and promised; but poor Lucy was left with the conviction that she must be miserable till she saw her again. It so happened, that just at the time of Lucy’s visit, Mrs. Ames’ sons were all absent from home, excepting Liston; who was usually employed on the farm during the day; and of course Lucy was left very much alone with her aunt. On the day of the nurse’s departure, Mrs. Ames in vain tried to interest the poor girl. Her aunt proposed a walk. Walking, Lucy said, tired her. Her aunt brought to her all her boys’ store of books; some Lucy had read, and some she did not care to read. Her aunt proposed her beginning a little fancy-work on muslin; Lucy said she had never loved to work since her mother died; and hiding her starting tears, she turned her back to her aunt, sat down at the window, the picture of despair, for half an hour; then complained of a violent head-ache, and got a bottle of Cologne and some drops her nurse had left for her; and asking her aunt if she might write a few lines to Mary, (the nurse,) she wrote the following; on which might be easily seen the traces of her tears. “Oh, Mary, I am dreadfully homesick! Pray ask father to come next week. I am sure the country will not agree with me, for I have a miserable head-ache already. I have forgotten which box of pills you told me to take first; pray send me word by the first mail, for you known the doctor wished me to be particular about taking them; though aunt don’t seem to think it of any consequence. She says she thinks country air is the best medicine for me. She is very, very kind to me; but I cannot be happy, for all that. Now, Mary, don’t you for the world tell papa, or any body, what I am going to tell you; for I don’t suppose aunt can afford any thing better. We had nothing for dinner to-day but boiled eggs and bread and butter!! I am afraid I shall starve to death. Give my love to papa, but do not show him this letter. Only beg him to come for me as soon as possible.” Before Lucy had quite finished her letter, she heard her cousin Liston’s pleasant voice calling her. She threw her paper into her trunk, and ran down stairs. He had brought her home a nest with two young blackbirds. A sportsman had shot the mother-bird, and Liston told her he had brought them home to her care, and she must be their foster-mother. He fixed them snugly in a basket, which was to be placed out of the cat’s reach; and he instructed Lucy how to take care of them. Lucy was delighted. Above all things she said she had desired to see the wild, little living birds, in a real nest; and now she should rear them herself, and see for herself if all she had heard of their instinct was true; and she sat, with the basket on her lap, watching them till it was quite dark, and they had lain their heads under their wings, and were fast asleep. She then covered them with wool, that they might not miss the warmth of their mother brooding over them; ate a hasty but very hearty supper, (as the abundant country tea was called;) for she was anxious to see Liston prepare the mother-bird (that he had brought home for that purpose) for stuffing. The next day she had not time to finish the letter; nor the next; nor the next; and at last, when reminded by her aunt that she had promised her father should hear once a week, she added the following “Postscript.—My dear Mary, I have a great deal to tell you, but I shall leave it for a letter to papa. You need not speak to the doctor about the pills, for I do believe aunt was right about the country air. I have not felt a head-ache since the day you went away. For pity’s sake do not say a word about aunt’s dinners. To be sure, they are very different from ours; but I eat twice as much as I did at home, and it tastes forty times as good. Give my love to papa. Oh, above all, don’t hurry his coming for me. In great haste, dear Mary, your affectionate and grateful friend, Lucy.” I think my young readers would prefer to have Lucy’s own account of her country pleasures. I have therefore copied the letter she wrote to her father. “My dear Papa,--you wished me to write to you every thing that occurred to me, and especially about my health. I have not thought of it this three weeks, only when my belts pinched me; and aunt has been kind enough to let them out. I have delightful walks with aunt; and sometimes Liston is with us; but he is at work most almost all day, and it is only in the evening he can do what he chooses. Then he stuffs birds, and mounts them, and draws and paints, and reads poetry to me; and now for the first time I enjoy that which describes nature; for Liston teaches me to observe where it is true, and where it is not. I think Mr. Bryant must have lived in this part of the country; for, as Liston says, his poetry is like a mirror, in which you see these very mountains, and trees, and flowers, reflected. There is a beautiful piece about the death of the flowers, in which he says: ‘The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the briar-rose and the orchids died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland glade and glen.’ “Now, papa, as you love truth, just observe how true the poetry is. Yesterday afternoon we were walking; the air was soft, and had that sweet smell of the wild woods, that comes from the fallen leaves. The mountains, and the hollows among them, looked blue, and smoky, and far off; the golden-rod and the asters were as bright as summer flowers, and the fringed gentian ‘With its sweet and quiet eye Looked through its fringes to the sky’ I gathered my hands full of these flowers—I repeated to aunt the poetry that describes them; and I felt grateful to the poet, who had made these wild flowers seem as if they were giving me the welcome of friends to their home on the hill-side. Last night ‘fell the frost from the clear cold heaven’ and the flowers are blighted black, and shriveled in ‘glad and glen.’ Still there is beauty, and, as Liston says, a ‘visible poetry’ in the woods; such as I never dreamed of when I was shut up in the city. The keen frost has suddenly turned the leaves to glowing and glorious colours. I cannot describe them; but if you were here I should say, ‘See, papa, just below those bare flinty crags of the mountain, see the young oaks a bright red; then masses of evergreen; a towering pine there; and there slender graceful tameracks: and oh, see where the sun’s rays slanting from that dark cloud dance along the tops of that long line of maples. The foliage of other trees turns of one colour; but that of the maple is yellow, orange, crimson, red, scarlet, purple, and bronze. Some of the branches appear as if every leaf had been dipped in sun-set dyes; and others seem as if the edge of the leaves had been crimsoned or gilded by some careful hand. “It is as Liston says, the maple is among trees like trout among fish, and swans among birds—most beautiful in dying. But I am tiring you. I forget that which is so beautiful to me can be dull to you. I now feel what little Lizzy said after she came back to New-York: ‘Oh, we have but one battery here, and it is all battery in the country.’ We have such a variety of pleasures; Liston makes friends of every thing, even of bees and wasps; at least, friends of the first, and acquaintance of the last. He has opened some wasps’ cells, to show me some little spiders that the wasps had enclosed in these prisons, to be food for their young. I must tell you two anecdotes of Liston’s bees. “Liston has several hives, and Mr. Davis, who lives on the next farm to aunt’s, has several more. One of Mr. Davis’ swarms came and made war on one of Liston’s. They fought desperately, for two or three days; at last Mr. Davis’ swarm submitted; but the curious part of it is, that the conquerors made slaves, or as Liston calls them, helots of their captives, and the poor creatures were compelled to convey their whole store of honey to the hives of their vanquishers. The other story is more pleasing: for, as Liston says, I hate to see that even bees can be, like men, cruel and oppressive. Liston examined one of his hives some weeks since, and found the bees had made very little honey—not enough he thought to last them through the winter—and so thought the bees; for they went to the woods, and struck a bargain with some wild bees, whom Liston observed working with his bees, and after days they all disappeared. Liston examined the hive, and found they had carried off every particle of honey. He believes they, finding their provision was like to fall short, agreed with the wild bees to join stocks. What a long letter I have written! Farewell, dear papa. Give my love to Mary, and tell her I am no longer a drone in the hive, but as busy and happy as she would wish me. “Your affectionate daughter, Lucy.” “My dear Papa,--I remember once reading a true story of the Caliph Abdelrahman, who was one of the greatest and richest of all the Caliphs of Bagdad. He had an immense retinue of slaves, dressed in gold and gems. His palace was hung with tapestry of silk, embroidered with gold. Among other beautiful things, he had a large tree of solid gold, spreading into branches, and covered with gold and silver birds. There was machinery, so arranged that the leaves moved as if stirred by the wind, and the birds sang. In short, this Caliph had every thing that riches could procure; and when he died a paper was found in his closet, on which he had written: ‘Riches, honor, power, and pleasure have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation I have diligently numbered the happy days that have fallen to my lot; the amount to fourteen!’ “Poor Caliph Abdelrahman! In all your life, you had not half so many happy days as I have had since I came to aunt Ames’! And yet here are no riches, no slaves, no gems, no gold trees, and silver birds. But here are kind hearts,--the kindest in the world,--and minds taught to perceive the wisdom and goodness that appear in God’s works. Liston makes every thing interesting. His dog and his cat seem to have more character than most of men. “I suppose it is because we observe them narrowly, and because Liston cultivates all their faculties. Argus, the dog, seems to hear Liston’s footstep when he is returning home, at the distance of half a mile, and runs half frantic with joy to meet him. If Liston reproves him, nobody can console him; he will not eat, nor even wag his tail, till his master receives him into favour again. But the best thing of all is to see his friendship for the cat. Argus had been gone for two days, and when he returned he fawned over Juno, and licked her face as lovingly as if they had been born friends. Liston says he does not believe there is any natural enmity between men or beasts but what may be overcome. Our cat, Juno, is a most sagacious and, as Liston says, loyal cat. Would you believe it, papa,--if she takes any mice, or other prey, when her master is absent, she hides it till he returns—does not disturb a hair of it; and when he comes in she lays it at his feet; and after he has patted and stroked her, she drags it away into some dark corner and devours it,* as cats will. “Last year Liston had a pair of grey squirrels quite tame, who used to leap on his head and shoulders, and feed from his hand; most amusing little pets they were. Liston named them Robin Hood and Little John. They built them a cunning little house of leaves on the maple trees before the door, and they hid their winter store of nuts in different parcels. Liston says it was curious to observe the accuracy of their memories. After the snow fell, they would go precisely to the places where they had deposited their nuts, brush off the snow, and bring them to their leafy house. When the spring came, the little rogues, like Robin Hood and little John of old, preferred the revels of the merry green wood, and they scampered off; but every now and then they come to pay their liege-lord a visit. Oh, dear papa, aunt is to me what the green wood is to the squirrel; and my visit is almost finished! Do not think I shall be sorry to go home to you; but how shall I ever again live without Liston? Our big house will seem very solitary after being where we can talk to one another from one end of the house to the other—the advantage of this old rickety house, as Liston says. Old and rickety it may be; but I am sure no palace was ever pleasanter. My love to Mary, and tell her I wish she could live in the country, so that she might be sure of being far happier than the Caliph Abdelrahman. “Your affectionate child, Lucy.” My friend Lucy was a more faithful correspondent than most young ladies of her age, and I have still another letter of hers to present to my young readers, which I hope they will have the patience to read. “Dear Papa, --I send you with this letter a picture which Liston has been painting, and which he says I must tell you is a present from myself! Do write me by the next mail, and tell me if you think the picture like me; and how you like the bird, and Argus; and if Juno does not look very funnily with my necklace on; and if you do not think my black prince” (the name Lucy had given her blackbird) “is a most graceful little fellow. Poor Liston; I have found out that he is not so perfectly happy as I supposed. *As some of my readers may doubt the accuracy of Lucy’s statement, I assure them that this anecdote is literally true, of a well trained favourite, as well as the other particulars she relates of Liston’s squirrels, &c. Her cousin Liston is a friend of mine, who has La Fontaine’s power of making animals almost as interesting as his own species. He very seldom paints now; and aunt says it is because he is so fond of it that if he indulges himself he cannot relish any other employment. I asked aunt why he did not go to N. York and learn painting for a profession. For a good while she did not give me any satisfactory answer; but I teased her, till she told me he could not support himself there while learning. Oh, papa! the thought came into my head like a flash, how pleasant it would be to have Liston live with us! And as to his support, I am certain you would rather give him that, than not. Since my dear brother is gone, should not his vacant place be filled, and that which he cannot now enjoy be given to another? If we have Liston with us, he will make all our days happy days. He is better than all the gold and gems of the Caliph of Bagdad. Do please let me know very soon how you like the plan. I have not hinted it to Liston, for I wish him to think it first comes from you; and so I am sure it would, if you knew Liston as well as I do, and had not so much business to think of. I am afraid Liston would not like to go, if he knew I had asked you to invite him. In haste, dear papa, for I am going walnutting. Oh, how pleasant to hear the nuts rattle down, when Liston throws a club among the branches. In haste, “Your affectionate Lucy.” The picture Lucy sent was a sketch of herself—her pretty blackbird perched on her hand, and picking a seed from off her rosy lip; Argus and Juno were playing at her feet. This pacquet met with a kinder fate than the one sent by Mrs. Ames. Though done up in the neatest manner, Mr. Astley opened it, and the next day wrote the following letter to Lucy:-- “My dear child,--I have received your letter and the picture. The picture surprised me. The drawing is beautiful; and the portrait precisely like you, except that my pale sickly little girl appears as ruddy and fat as a Hebe. Heaven grant your cousin has not flattered you. The hope of seeing you looking as healthy as your picture does, has already given me one of your Sultan’s happy days. I sent Liston’s picture to Mr. -----, whom I took upon as our first artist. I asked him to give me his honest opinion of the boy’s talent, and also to inform me on what terms he would give him the necessary instruction to fit him for his profession. You will like to see his answer, and I hear transcribe it for you. “’Mr. ---- presents his compliments to Mr. Astley, and informs him that he would not receive his nephew for ten thousand dollars. The boy would take the bread out of Mr. ------‘s mouth. “’Seriously, my dear sir, send the lad to me as soon as possible; no time is to be lost. As to terms, I can scarcely fail to be his debtor; for all the instruction I can give will be more than remunerated by the aid he can give me in my pictures. I shall be proud of such a pupil.’ “Now, my dear Lucy, this gratifies me. I like to have young men pay their own way; it inspires them with an honorable feeling of independence, and a sense of the value of time and talent. You are right, my child; when it pleased God to take my boy, I should have given the portion thrown back upon my hands to another. Liston shall have a home with us. I will take care of his necessary expenses. If he make you happy, my dear Lucy, he will far more than repay me; for he will give us what the Caliph Abdelrahman could not buy with all his wealth.” Inclosed in Lucy’s letter was a very kind one to Mrs. Ames, from Mr. Astley, apologizing for the neglect with which he had, on a former occasion, treated her views for Liston, and closing with a proposal that he should be sent to town with Lucy; and that Mrs. Ames, her other boys being disposed of at school, should pass the winter at his house. Perhaps my young readers have yet to learn, that it is far more difficult for a generous and delicate person to receive a favour with grace, than to bestow one. Mrs. Ames could do both. One month had not passed away before she was happily established in Mr. Astley’s house; and Liston was pursuing the profession, now happily within his grasp, with the avidity and joy that belong to talent and diligence united. Lucy did not forget her mother, but she constantly felt that the friend next dearest was with her. Neither did she forget her beloved brother; but his spirit of love and cheerfulness seemed restored to her in her cousin. Gloom was banished from the house, and the sweet music of quick footsteps and happy voices resounded there. My young friends, had the Caliph Abdelrahman employed his wealth to make others happy, would he not himself have enjoyed more than fourteen happy days? Dublin Core 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 Country Pleasures Subject The topic of the resource Country versus city life. Description An account of the resource The narrator writes of a little girl, Lucy, who recently lost her mother and brother to death. Her father sends her to live with her aunt and cousin for a year in the country. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine M. Miss Sedgwick Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <em>Juvenile Miscellany</em> [edited by Lydia M. Child] (May and June 1832): 111-34. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1832 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource L. Damon-Bach, Meghan Smith Relation A related resource Collected in <em>Stories for Young Persons</em>, 125-41, 1840. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Document "The Death of the Flowers" "To the Fringed Gentian" Arabian Nights Bees Blackbirds Caliph Abdelrahman cats Country Depression Dogs Hoboken Juvenile fiction Juvenile Miscellany letters Little John Massachusetts New York City Painting poetry Robin Hood Rockaway Sketching squirrels Staten Island Wildlife William Cullen Bryant