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1826
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MODERN CHIVALRY.
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BY THE AUTHOR OF REDWOOD.
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“But when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or the body---and when the hour of death comes, that comes to high and low---Oh, my leddy, then it is’na what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune for others, that we think on maist pleasantly.”---Heart of Midlothian.
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THE assertion that a tale is founded on fact, is a pious fraud of story tellers, too stale to impose on any but the very young, or very credulous. We hope therefore, not to be suspected of resorting to an expedient that would expose our poverty without relieving it, when we declare that the leading incidents of the following tale are true—that they form, in that district of country where some of the circumstances transpired, a favourite and well authenticated tradition—and that our hero boasts with well-earned self-complacency, that there is no name better known than his from ‘Cape May to the Head of Elk.’ That name, however honourable as it is, must be suppressed, and we here honestly beg the possessor’s pardon for compelling him, for the first time in his life, to figure under false colours.
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In the year 1768, an American vessel lying in the Thames and bound to Oxford, a small sea-port on the eastern shore of Maryland, was hailed by a boat containing a youth, who, on presenting himself to the captain, stated that he had a fancy for a sailor’s life, and offered his services for two years, on the simple condition of kind treatment. The captain, though himself a coarse illiterate man, perceived in the air and language of the lad indications of good breeding, and deeming him some disobedient child, or possibly a runaway apprentice, declined receiving him. But William Herion, as he called himself, was so earnest in his solicitations, and engaging in his manners, and the captain, withal, in pressing need of a cabin-boy, that he waved his scruples, quieted his conscience with the old opiate that it was best not to be more nice than wise, and without inquiring too curiously into the boy’s right of self-disposal, drew up some indentures, by which he entitled himself to two years’ service.
The boy was observed for the first day to wear a troubled countenance. His eye glanced around with incessant restlessness, as if in eager search of some expected object. While the ship glided down the Thames, he gazed on the shore as if he looked for some signal on which his life depended, and when she passed Gravesend, the last point of embarkation, he wept convulsively. The captain believed him to be dis-
[7]
turbed with remorse of conscience; the sailors, that these heart-breakings were lingerings for his native land, and all hinted their rude consolations. Soothed by their friendly efforts, or by his own reflections, or perhaps following the current of youth that naturally flows to happiness, William soon became tranquil, and sometimes even gay. He kept, as the sailors said, on the fair weather side of the captain, a testy, self-willed old man, who loved but three things in the world—his song, his glass, and his own way.
All that had been fabled of the power of music over stones and brutes, was surpassed by the effect of the lad’s melting voice on the icy heart of the captain, whom frty years of absolute power had rendered as despotic as a Turkish Pacha. When their old commander blew his stiffest gale, as the sailors were wont to term his blustering passions, Will could, they said, sing him into a calm. Will of course became a doting piece to the whole ship’s company. They said he was a trim built lad, too neat and delicate a piece of workmanship for the stormy sea. They laughed at his slender fingers, fitter to manage threads than ropes, passed many jokes upon his soft blue eyes and fair round cheeks, and in their rough language expressed Sir Toby’s prayer, that “Jupiter in his next commodity of hair, would send the boy a beard.” In the main Will bore their jokes without flinching, and returned them with even measure; but sometimes when they verged to rudeness, his rising blush or a tear
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stealing from his downcast eye, expressed an instinctive and unsullied modesty, whose appeal touched the best feelings of these coarse men.
The ship made a prosperous voyage, and in due time arrived off the American coast. It is a common custom with sailors to greet the first sight of land with a sacrifice to Bacchus. The natural and legalized revel was as extravagant on this, as it usually is on similar occasions. The captain with unwonted good humour, dealt out the liquor most liberally to the crew, and bade William sing them his best songs. Will obeyed, and song after song, and glass after glass carried them, as they said, far above high water mark. Their language and manners became intolerable to William, and he endeavoured to steal away with the intention of hiding himself in the cabin, till the revel was over. One of the sailors suspecting his design, caught him rudely and swore he would detain him in his arms. William struggled, freed himself, and darted down the companion way, the men following and shouting.
The captain stood at the entrance of the cabin door. William sunk down at his feet terrified and exhausted, and screaming “protect me—oh! For the love of heaven, protect me.”
The captain demanded the occasion of the uproar, and ordered the men to stand back. They, however, stimulated to reckless courage, and in sight of the land and independence, no longer feared his authority, and
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they swore that they would not be balked of their frolic. Poor Will, already feeling their hands upon him, clung in terror to the captain, and one fear overcoming another, confessed that his masculine dress was a disguise, and wringing his hands with shame and anguish, supplicated protection as a helpless girl.
The sailors touched with remorse and pity, retreated; but the brutal captain spurned the trembling supplicant with his foot, swearing a round oath that it was the first time he had been imposed on, and it should be the last. Unfortunately the old man, priding himself on his sagacity, was as confident of his own infallibility as the most devoted Catholic is of the Pope’s. This was his last voyage, and after playing Sir Oracle, for forty years—to have been palpably deceived—incontrovertibly outwitted by a girl of fifteen, was a mortification that his vanity could not brook. He swore he would have his revenge, and most strictly did he perform his vow. He possessed a plantation in the vicinity of Oxford; thither he conveyed the unhappy girl, and degraded her to the rank of a common servant, among the negro slaves in his kitchen.
The captain’s wrath was magnified, by the stranger’s persisting in refusing to disclose the motive of her deception, to reveal her family, or even to tell her name. Her new acquaintance were at a loss what to call her, till the captain’s daughter, who had been
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on a visit to Philadelphia, and seen the Winter’s Tale performed there, bestowed on her the pretty appellative of Hermione’s lost child, Perdita.
The captain, a common case, was the severest sufferer by his own passions. His wife complained that his “venture,” as she provokingly styled poor Perdita, was a useless burden on her household—“a fine lady born and bred, like feathers, and flowers, and French goods, pretty to look at, but fit for no use in the world.” The captain’s daughters partly instigated by compassion, and partly by the striking contrast between the delicate graces of the stranger and their own buxom beauty, incessantly teased their father to send her back to her own country; and neighbours and acquaintances were forever letting fall some observation on the beauty of the girl, or some allusion to her story, that was a spark of fire to the captain’s gunpowder temper.
Weeks and months rolled heavily on without a dawn of hope to poor Perdita. She was too young and inexperienced herself, to contrive any mode of relief, and no one was likely to undertake voluntarily the difficult enterprise of rescuing her from her thraldom. Her condition was thus forlorn, when her story came to the ears of Frank Stuart, a gallant young sailor on board the Hazard, a vessel lying in the stream off Oxford, and on the eve of sailing for Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Frank stood deservedly high in the confidence of his commander, and on
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Sunday, the day preceding that appointed for the departure of the ship, he obtained leave to go on shore. His youthful imagination was excited by the story of the oppressed stranger, and he strolled along the beach in the direction of her master’s plantation, in the hope of gratifying his curiosity by a glimpse of her. As he approached the house, he perceived that the front blinds were closed, and inferring thence that the family were absent, he ventured within the bounds of the plantation, and saw at no great distance from him a young female sitting on a bench beneath a tree. She leaned her head against its trunk, with an air of dejectedness and abstraction, that encouraged the young man to hope he had already attained his object. As he approached nearer, the girl started from her musings and would have retreated to the house, but suddenly inspired by her beauty and youth with a resolution to devote himself to her service, he besought her to stop for one instant and listen to him. She turned and gazed at him as if she would have perused his heart. Frankness and truth were written on his face by the finger of heaven. She could not fear any impertinence from him, and farther assured by his respectful manner, when he added, “I have something particular to say to you—but we must luff and bear away, for we are in too plain sight of the look out there,” and he pointed to the house—she smiled and followed him to a more secluded part of the grounds. As soon as he was sure
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of being beyond observation, “Do you wish,” he asked with professional directness, “to return to old England?”
She could not speak, but she clasped her hands, and the tears gushed like an open fountain from her eyes—“you need not say any more—you need not say any more,” he exclaimed, for he felt every tear to be a word spoken to his heart—“If you will trust me,” he continued, “I swear, and so God help me as I speak the truth, I will treat you as if you were my sister. Our ship sails to-morrow morning at day light, make a tight bundle of your rigging, and meet me at twelve o’clock to-night at the gate of the plantation. Will you trust me?”
“Heaven has sent you to me,” replied the poor girl, her face brightening with hope, “and I will not fear to trust you.”
They then separated—Perdita to make her few preparations, and Frank to contrive the means of executing his romantic enterprise.
Precisely at the appointed hour the parties met at the place of rendezvous. Perdita was better furnished for her voyage than could have been anticipated, from the durance she had suffered. A short notice and a scant wardrobe, were never known to oppose an obstacle to a heroine’s compassing sea and land; but as we have dispensed with the facilities of fiction, we are bound to account for Perdita’s being in possession of the necessaries of life, and it is due to the
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captain’s daughter to state, that her feminine sympathy had moved her from time to time to grant generous supplies to Perdita, which our heroine did not fail to acknowledge on going away, by a letter enclosing a valuable ring.
A few whispered sentences of caution, assurance and gratitude, were reciprocated by Frank and Perdita, as they bent their hasty steps to the landing-place where he had left his boat; and when he had handed her into it, and pushed from the shore on to his own element, he felt the value of the trust which this beautiful young creature had reposed to him. Never in the days of knightly deeds was there a sentiment of purer chivalry, than that which inspired the determined resolution and romantic devotion of the young sailor. He was scarcely twenty, the age of fearless project, and self-confidence. How soon is the one checked by disappointments—the other humbled by experience of the infirmity of human virtue!
Stuart had not confided his designs to any of his shipmates. He was therefore obliged warily to approach the ship, and to get on board with the least possible noise. He had just time to secrete Perdita amidst bales of tobacco, in the darkest place in the hold of the vessel, when a call of “all hands on deck,” summoned him to duty. He was foremost at his post, and all was stir and bustle to get the vessel under way. The sails were hoisted—the anchor
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weighed, and all in readiness, when a signal was heard from the shore, and presently a boat filled with men seen approaching. The men probed to be Perdita’s master, a sheriff, and his attendants. They produced a warrant empowering them to search the vessel. The old captain affirmed that the girl had been seen on the preceding day, talking with a young spark, who was known to have come on shore from the Hazard. In his fury he foamed at the mouth, swore he would have the runaway dead or alive, and that her aider and abettor should be given over to condign punishment. The master of the Hazard declared, that if any of his men were found guilty, he would resign them to the dealings of land law, and to prove if there was a plot, he was quite innocent, but he not only freely abandoned his vessel to the search, but himself was most diligent in the inquest. The men were called up, confronted and examined; not one appeared more cool and unconcerned than Frank Stuart, and after every inquiry, after ransacking as they believed, in every possible place of concealment, the pursuers were compelled to withdraw, baffled and disappointed.
The vessel proceeded on her voyage.—Frank requested the captain’s permission to swing a hammock alongside his birth, on the pretence that the birth was rendered damp and unwholesome by a leak in the deck above it. The reasonable petition was of course granted, and when night had closed watch-
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ful eyes, and dropped her friendly veil, so essential to the clandestine enterprises of the most ingenious, Frank rescued Perdita from a position, in which she had suffered not only the inconveniences, but the terrors of an African slave; and wrapping her in his own dreadnought, and drawing his watchcap over her bright luxuriant hair, he conducted her past the open door of the captain’s state-room, and past his sleeping companions, to his own birth; then whispering to her, “that she was safe as a ship in harbour,” he gave her some bread and a glass of wine, for which he had bartered his allowance of spirits, and laid himself down in his own hammock, to the companionship of such thoughts as are ministering angels about the pillow of the virtuous.
The following day a storm arose—a storm still remembered, as the most terrible and disastrous that ever occurred in Chesapeake Bay. There were several passengers of consequence on board the Hazard, among others two deacons who were going to the mother country to receive orders—for then, we of the colonies, who have since taken all rights into our own hands, dared not exercise the rights God had given us, without the assent of the Lords Bishops. Night came on, the storm increased, and then, when the ship was in extremity, when death howled in every blast, when “the timid shrieked and the brave stood still”—then was the unwearied activity, the exhaustless invention, and the unconquerable re-
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solution of Frank Stuart, the last human support and help of the unhappy crew. The master of the Hazard was advanced in life, and unnerved by the usual feebleness and timidity of age. He had but just enough presence of mind left, to estimate the masterly conduct of young Stuart, and he abandoned the command of the vessel to him, and retired to what is too often only a last resource—to prayers with the churchmen.
Once or twice Stuart disappeared from the deck, ran to whisper a word of encouragement to his trembling charge, and then returned with renewed vigour to his duty. Owing, under Providence, to his exertions, the Hazard rode out a storm which filled the seaman’s annals with many a tale of terror. Gratitude is too apt to rest in second causes, in the visible means of deliverance, and perhaps an undue portion was now felt towards the intrepid youth. The passengers lavished their favours on him—they supplied his meals with the most delicate wines and fruits, and the choicest viands from their own stores; he, with the superstition characteristic of his profession, firmly believed that heaven had sent the storm to unlock their hearts to him, and thus afford him the means of furnishing Perdita with dainties suited to her delicate appetite, so that she fared, as he afterwards boasted, like the daughter of a king in her father’s palace.
Stuart was kept in a state of perpetual alarm by the mate of the vessel. He knew that this fellow, one
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of those imbeciles that bend like a reed before a strong blast, had been hostile to him ever since the storm, when the accidental superiority of his station had been compelled to bow to Frank’s superior genius. He was aware that the mate had, by malicious insinuations, estranged the captain from him, and he was but too certain that he should have nothing to hope, if his secret were discovered by this base man. Perhaps this apprehension gave him an air of unwonted constraint in the presence of his enemy; certain it is, the mate’s eye often rested on him with an expression of eager watchfulness and suspicion, and Stuart, perceiving it, would contract his brow and compress his lips, in a way that betrayed how hard he strove with his rising passion. The difficulty of concealment was daily increasing, as one after another of his messmates, either from some inevitable accident, or from a communication becoming necessary on his part, obtained possession of his secret. But his ascendency over them was complete, and by threats or persuasions, he induced them all to promise inviolable secrecy. There is an authority in a determined spirit, to which men naturally do homage. It is heaven’s own charter of a power, to which none can refuse submission.
Frank never permitted his comrades to approach Perdita, or to speak a word to her; but in the depths of the night, when the mate’s and the old captain’s senses were locked in sleep, he would bring her forth
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to breathe the fresh air. Seated on the gunwale, she would bestow on him the only reward in her gift—the treasures of her sweet voice; and Frank said the winds sat still in the sails to listen. There were times when not a human sound was heard in the ship, when these two beings, borne gently on by the tides in mid ocean, felt as if they were alone in the universe.
It was at such times that Frank felt an irrepressible curiosity to know something more of the mysterious history of Perdita, whose destiny heaven, he believed, had committed to his honour; and once he ventured to introduce the topic nearest his heart, by saying, “you bade me call you Perdita, but I do not like the name; it puts me too much in mind of those rodomontade novels, that turn the girls’ heads and set them asailing, as it were, without chart or compass, in quest of unknown worlds”—He hesitated; it was evident he had betaken himself to a figure, to avoid an explicit declaration of his wishes—after a moment’s pause he added—“it suits me best to be plain-spoken—it is not the name that I object to so much, but—but, hang it—I think you know Frank Stuart now, well enough to trust him with your real name.”
The unhappy girl cast down her eyes, and said “that Perdita suited her better than any other name.”
“Then you will not trust me?”
“Say not so, my noble, generous friend,” she ex-
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claimed—“trust you!—have I not trusted you!—you know that I would trust you with any thing that was my own—but my name—my father’s name, I have forfeited by my folly.”
“Oh no—that you shall not say—a brave ship is not run down with a light breeze, and a single folly of a young girl cannot sink a good name—a folly!” he continued, thus indirectly pushing inquiries, “if it is a folly, it’s a common one—there’s many a stouter heart than your’s, that’s tried to face a gale of love, and been obliged to bear about and scud before the wind.”
“Who told you?—how did you discover?” demanded Perdita in a hurried, alarmed manner.
Frank’s generous temper disdained to surprise the unwary girl into confidence, and he immediately surrendered the advantage he had gained. “Nobody has told me,” he said—“I have discovered nothing—I only guessed, as the yankees say—now wipe away your tears—the sea wants no more salt water, and believe me Frank Stuart has not such a woman’s spirit in him, that he cannot rest content without knowing a secret.”
In spite of Frank’s manly resolution, he did afterwards repeatedly intimate the longings of his curiosity, but they were always met with such unaffected distress on the part of Perdita, that he said he had not the heart to press them.
As the termination of the voyage approached,
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Stuart became more intensely anxious lest his secret should be discovered. Stuart became more intensely anxious lest his secret should be discovered. The mildest consequence would be, that he should forfeit his wages. That he cared not for¬—like Goldsmith’s poor soldier, he could lie on a bare board, and thank God he was so well off. “While he had youth and health,” he said, “and there was a ship afloat on the wide sea, he was provided for.” But his companions who had been true to him might forfeit their pay; for, by their fidelity to him, they had in some measure become his accessaries. But he found consolation even under this apprehension; “the honest lads,” he said, “would soon make a full purse empty, but the memory of a good action was a treasure gold could not buy—a treasure that would stick by them forever—a treasure for the port of heaven.” There was, however, one apprehended evil, for which his philosophy offered no antidote.
He was sure the captain would deem it his duty, or make it his will, (even Frank’s slight knowledge of human nature told him that will and duty were too often convertible terms,) to return the fugitive to her soi-disant master in Maryland. Nothing could exceed the vigilance with which he watched every movement and turn that threatened a detection, or the ingenuity with which he evaded every circumstance that tended to it—but alas! the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.
One night when it was blowing a gale, a particular
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rope was wanted, which the mate remembered to have stowed away in the steerage. Frank eagerly offered to search for it, but the mate was certain that no one but himself could find it, and taking a lantern he went in quest of it. Frank followed him with fear and trembling. He has since been in many a desperate sea-fight, but he declares he never felt so much like a coward as at that moment. The mate’s irritable humour had been somewhat stirred by Frank’s persisting in his offer, to go for the rope, and when he turned and saw him at his heels, he asked him angrily, “what he was dogging him for?” “The ship rolls so heavily,” replied Frank in a subdued tone, “that I thought you might want me to hold the lantern for you.” Frank’s unwonted meekness quite conciliated the mate, and though he rejoined, “I think I have been used to the rolling of a ship a little longer than you, young man,” he spoke good-naturedly, and Frank ventured to proceed.
Most fortunately, as Frank thought, the mate directed his steps to the side of the ship opposite Perdita, but making a little circuit in his return, he passed between Frank’s hammock and Perdita’s birth. At this moment the poor lad’s heart, as he afterwards averred, stopped beating. The ship rolled on that side, and the mate catching hold of the birth to save himself from falling, exclaimed, “In heaven’s name what lazy devil is here, when every hand is wanted on deck;” and raising his lantern to identify
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the supposed delinquent sailor, he discovered the beautiful girl. For a moment he was dumb with amazement, but soon recalling the search at Oxford, the whole truth flashed upon him: he turned to Frank, and shaking his fist in his face, “Ah, this is you, Stuart!” he said, and enforced his gesture with a horrible oath.
“Yes,” retorted Frank, now standing boldly forth, “it is me, thank God”—and then drawing a curtain that he had arranged before Perdita’s birth, he bade her fear nothing.
“Oh Frank,” she exclaimed, “I cannot fear where you are.” This involuntary expression of confidence went to her protector’s heart. There is no man so dead to sentiment, as not to be touched by the trust of woman, especially if she be young and beautiful. Frank was at the age when sentiment is absolute, and he was resolved to secure his treasure at every hazard. Perdita’s declaration, while it stimulated his zeal, awakened the mean jealousies of the mate.
“And so my pretty miss,” he said, “you fear nothing where this fellow is—I can tell you, for all that he may boast, and you may believe, he is neither master nor mate yet, and please the Lord I’ll prove as much to him this very night.”
“And how will you prove it?” asked Stuart, in a voice which, though as calm as he could make it, resembled the low growl of a bull dog before he springs on his victim.
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“I’ll prove it, my lad, by telling the whole story of your smuggled goods to the captain. A pretty piece of work this, to be carried on under the nose of your officers. It’s no better than a mutiny, for I’ll warrant it the whole ship’s crew are leagued with you.”
Stuart reined in his passions, and condescended to expostulate. He represented to the mate that he could gain nothing by giving information to the captain. He described with his simple eloquence, the oppression the poor girl had already suffered; the cruelty of disappointing her present hopes, just as they were on the point of being realized, for the ship was not more than twenty-four hours sail from Cowes; he appealed to his compassion, his generosity, his manliness, but in vain, he found no accessible point. The mean pride of having discovered the secret, and the pleasure of humbling Stuart, mastered every good feeling of the mate, if indeed he possessed any, and he turned away, saying with a sort of chuckling exultation, “that he should go and do his duty.”
“Stop,” cried Frank, grasping his arm with a gripe that threatened to crush it. “Stop and hear me—I swear by him that made me, if you dare so much as to hint by word, look or movement, the secret you have discovered here, you shall not cumber the earth another day—day—said I—no, not an hour—I’ll send you to the devil as swift as a canon ball ever went to the mark—Look,” he continued, tearing away the
[24]
curtain he had just drawn before Perdita—“could any thing short of the malice of Satan himself contrive to harm such helpless innocence as that—do you hear me”—he added in a voice that outroared the storm—“in God’s name look at me, and see I am in earnest.”
The mate had no doubt to satisfy, he trembled like an aspen leaf—in vain he essayed to raise his eyes, the passion that glanced in Frank’s face, and dilated his whole figure, affected the trembling wretch like a stroke of the sun. He reeled in Frank’s iron grasp, his abject fear changed Stuart’s wrath to contempt, and giving him an impulse that sent him quite out of the door, he returned to sooth Perdita with the assurance that they had nothing to fear from the “cowardly dog.” She was confounded with terror, but much more frightened by the vehemence of Stuart’s passion than by the threats of the mate. She had always seen her protector move like an unobstructed stream along its course, in calm and silent power. Now he was the torrent, that no human force could control or direct.
She saw before her calamities far worse than any she had endured. She believed that the mate, as soon as he was recovered from his paroxysm of terror, would communicate his discovery. She apprehended the most fatal issue from Frank’s threats and determined resolution, and the possibility that his generous zeal for her might involve him in crime, was intolerable to her. Such thoughts do not become less
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terrible by solitary meditation—in the solemnity of night and amidst the howlings of a storm. Every blast spoke reproach and warning to Perdita, and tortured by those harpies remorse and fear, she took a sudden resolution to reveal herself to the captain, feeling at the moment that if she warded off evil from her protector, she could patiently abide the worst consequences to herself. She sprang from her birth as if afraid of being checked by a second thought, and rushed from the steerage to the cabin. All was perfect stillness there—the passengers had retired to their beds. The captain was sitting by the table, he had been reading, but his book had fallen to the floor, his head had sunk on his breast, and he was in a profound sleep. The light shone full on his weather-beaten face—on large uncouth features—on lines deepened to furrows—and muscles stiffened by time. Never was there an aspect more discouraging to one who needed mercy, and poor Perdita stood trembling before him and close to him, and dared not, could not speak. She heard a footstep approaching, still her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. Then she heard her name pronounced in a low whisper at the cabin door, and turning, she saw Stuart there beckoning most earnestly to her. She shook her head, signed to him to withdraw, and laid her hand on the captain’s shoulder. There was but one way to thwart her intentions, and Frank’s was not a hesi-
[26]
tating spirit, he sprang forward, caught her in his arms, and before the old man had rubbed his eyes fairly open, Perdita was again safe in the steerage.
Stuart’s threats produced the intended effect on the mate; he was completely intimidated. He scarcely ventured out of Frank’s sight lest he should incur his dangerous suspicions, and the next day the vessel, accelerated by the gale of the preceding evening, arrived at Cowes. The captain and mate immediately landed, and Stuart no longer embarrassed by their presence, was able to take the necessary measures for Perdita. She assured him that if once conveyed to the main land, to Portsmouth or Southampton, she could herself take the coach for London, and there, she said, happiness or misery awaited her, which her noble protector could neither promote or avert.
A wherry was procured. Before Perdita was transferred to it, she took leave of all the sailors, shook hands with each of them, and expressed to them individually, her gratitude and good wishes. Her words conveyed nothing but a sense of obligation, but there was something of condescension in her manner, and much of the grace of high station that contrasted strikingly with the abased, fearful, and shrinking air of the girl who had, till then, only been seen gliding like a spectre along the deck, attended by Stuart, and veiled by the shadows of night. As the wherry parted from the ship, she bowed her head
[27]
and waved her handkerchief to Frank’s shipmates, and they returned her salutation with three loud cheers.
Stuart attended her to an inn at Portsmouth, engaged for her a seat in the London coach, and then followed her to a private apartment which he had secured, to bid her farewell.
Perdita, from the moment she had felt her emancipation from a degrading condition, and the joy of setting her foot again on her native land, had manifested perhaps, an undue elation of sprits, an elation so opposite to Frank’s feelings, that to him it was a grating discord; but when she saw him for the last time, every other emotion gave place to unfeigned sorrow and inexpressive gratitude.
Stuart laid a purse on the table beside her. “My shipmates” he said, “receive their wages to-morrow, so they have been right glad to make their pockets clear of the little trash that was in them, which may be of service to you, though it is of no use to them.”
“Oh Frank!” she exclaimed, “if I should ever have any thing in my gift—if I could but reward you for all you have done for me!”
All the blood in Frank’s heart rushed to his face, and he said in a voice almost inarticulate with offended pride, “there are services that money cannot buy, and thank God, there are feelings in a poor man’s breast worth more than all the gold in the king’s coffers.”
“Oh what have I said,” exclaimed Perdita, “I
[28]
would rather die—rather return to the depth of misery from which you rescued me—yes, ten times told, than to speak one word that should offend you—you to whom I owe every thing—my life—and more than life. I did not say—I did not think, that money could reward you.”
“Do not speak that word again,” said Frank, half ashamed of his pride, and half glorying in it. “Reward! I want none but your safety and the blessed memory of having done my duty. Money—ho! I care no more for it, than for the dust I tread upon.”
“I know it—I am sure of it,” cried Perdita, humbled for the moment by a sense of an elevation of soul in Frank, that exalted him far above any accidents of birth or education. “Frank, you are rich in every thing that is good and noble—and what am I, to talk of reward—poor—poor in every thing but gratitude to you, Frank—I am not poor in that—you must not then despise me, and you will not forget me—and you will keep this ring for my sake.”
Frank took the ring, and the lily hand she extended to him—his tears fell fast upon it—he struggled for a moment with his feelings, then dashed away his tears, and half-articulating “God bless you!” he hurried out the apartment. Thus separating himself from the beautiful young creature, for whom he had performed a most difficult service with religious fidelity; and of whose name even, he was forever to remain in ignorance.
[29]
The enterprising talent of Stuart ensured its appropriate reward. In one year from the memorable voyage above related, he commanded a vessel; and on the breaking out of the revolutionary war, he devoted himself to his country’s cause, with the fervent zeal with characterized and consecrated that cause—which made the common interest a matter of feeling—a family affair to each individual.
Stuart commanded an armed merchantman, and disputes with the noted Paul Jones the honour of having first struck down the British flag. However this may be, he was distinguished for his skill and intrepidity—and, above all, (and this distinction endures when the most brilliant achievements have become insignificant,) for his humanity to those whom the fortune of war cast in his power.
While on a cruise off the West Indies, Stuart intercepted an enemy’s ship bound to Antigua. His adversary was far superior to him in men and guns, but as it did not comport with Stuart’s bold spirit to make any very nice calculations of an enemy’s superiority, he prepared without hesitation for action. The contest was a very severe one, and the victory long doubtful; but at last the British captain struck his colours. Though we certainly are disposed to render all honour to the skill of our hero, yet we dare not claim for him the whole merit of his success, but rather solve the mystery of victory at such odds, by quoting the expression of a patriotic English boy,
[30]
who said on a similar occasion—“Ah, but the Americans would not have beaten, if the Lord had not been on their side.”
After the fight the English commander requested an interview with captain Stuart; he informed him that the wife and mother of the governor of Antigua were on board his vessel, and that they were almost distracted with terror; he entreated therefore that they might be received with the humanity which their sex demanded, and the deference always due to high station. Stuart replied, “that as to high station, he held that all God’s creatures, who feared their Creator and did their duty, were on a dead level—and as to the duties of humanity, he trusted no American captain need go further than his own heart, for instructions how to perform them.” The British captain was ignorant of the spirit of the times, and auguring nothing favourable from Stuart’s republican reply, returned with a heavy heart to the ladies to conduct them on board the captor’s ship. The elder lady the mother, was a woman of rank, with all the pride and prejudice of high birth. The Americans she deemed all of that then much despised order—the common people; rebels and robbers were the best names she bestowed on them, and in the honesty of her ignorance she sincerely believed that she had fallen into the hands of pirates. The younger lady, though deeply affected by their disastrous situation, endeavoured to calm her mother’s apprehensions, and assured her that
[31]
she had heard there were men of distinguished humanity among the American sailors. The old lady shook her head incredulously. “Oh heaven help us,” she groaned, “what can we expect from such horrid fellows, when they know they have lady Strangford and the right honourable Mrs. Liston in their power—and your beauty, Selina! your beauty child! it is a fatal treasure to fall among thieves with—depend on’t— arrange your veil so that it will hang in thick folds over your face—I will draw my hood close.” The precaution on her part seemed quite superfluous, but the young lady obscured some of heaven’s cunningest workmanship with her impervious veil.
The servants were ordered to deliver the ladies baggage to the American captain, with a request that some necessaries might be reserved. Stuart answered that he interfered with no private property, and that all the baggage of the ladies remained at their disposal.
Lady Strangford was somewhat reassured by this generosity, and attended by her captain and followed by her daughter and servants, she proceeded to Stuart’s ship. Stuart advanced to meet them and offered her his hand—she proudly declined it and passed silently on. A gust of wind blew back her hood—“Faith!” exclaimed one of the sailor who observed the scrupulosity with which she replaced it, “the old lady had best show her face, for I’m sure we’ll all give a good birth to such an iron-bound coast as that.” But as the same breeze blew aside the young lady’s
[32]
veil, there was a general murmur of admiration. She had at the moment graciously accepted the tender of Stuart’s hand, in the hope of counteracting the impression of her mother’s rudeness, and when her veil was removed he had a full view of her face; conscious that many were gazing on her, she blushed deeply, and hastily readjusted it without raising her eyes. Stuart dropped her hand—smothered an exclamation, and retreated a few paces, leaving her to follow her mother alone.
One of his officers observing his emotion, said, “How is this captain? you don’t wink at a broadside, and yet you start at one flash from a lady’s bright face.”
“I got a scratch on my right arm in the engagement,” returned Stuart, evading the raillery, “and the lady’s touch gave me a pang.”
He then retired to his state-room, and wrote the following note, which he directed to be delivered to the young lady. “Captain Stuart’s compliments to the ladies under his protection—he incloses a ring once bestowed upon him in acknowledgment of honourable conduct, as a pledge to them that the hand that has worn such a badge shall never be sullied by a bad deed. Captain Stuart will proceed immediately to Antigua, conveying the ladies with the least possible delay to their destined port.” Such a communication to prisoners of war, might naturally excite emotion in a generous bosom, but it did not account for the ex-
[33]
cess of it manifested by the young lady. She became pale and faint, and when her mother, alarmed at such a demonstration of feeling, took up the note, she caught it from her, and then, after a second thought, relinquished it to her.
“I see nothing in this Selina,” said the old lady, after perusing and reperusing it, “to throw you into such a flurry, but you are young, and are thinking no doubt of getting home to your husband and children, young people’s feelings, are, like soft wax, easily melted.”
“There is a warmth in some kindness,” rejoined the daughter earnestly, “that ought to melt the hardest substance.”
“Really, I do not see any thing so very striking in this man’s civility. It would be, of course you know in the British navy; politeness, and all that sort of thing being inborn in an Englishman, but it may be, indeed I fancy it is, quite unheard of in an American.”
“Shall I write our acknowledgments, madam, to captain Stuart?” asked the young lady with evident solicitude to drop the conversation.
“Certainly—certainly, my dear Selina, always be ceremoniously polite with your inferiors.”
“Madam, I think this noble captain,” she would have added, “has no superiors,” but afraid of further discussion, she concluded her sentence with the tame addition, “richly deserves our thanks.”
She then wrote the following note. “Mrs. Liston,
[34]
in behalf of her mother in law lady Strangford, and on her own part, offers her warmest thanks to captain Stuart—the ladies esteem it heaven’s peculiar mercy that captain Stuart is their captor. They have already had such experience of his magnanimity, as to render them perfectly tranquil in reposing their safety and happiness on his honour.” The ring, without any allusion to it, was reinclosed.
When captain Stuart had perused the note, he inquired if the lady had not requested to speak with him. He was answered that so far from intimating such a wish, she had said to her mother that she should remain in her state-room, till she was summoned to leave captain Stuart’s vessel. The captain looked extremely chagrined, he knit his brows, and bit his lips, and gave his orders hastily, with the usual sea expletives appended to them—“a sure sign,” his men said, “that something went wrong with their captain,” but these signs of repressed emotion were all the expression he allowed to his offended pride, or perhaps his better feelings. The Ladies were scrupulously served, and every deferential attention paid to them that lady Strangford would have anticipated in the best disciplined ship in his majesty’s service.
A few days’ sail brought the schooner to the port of Antigua. She entered the harbour under a flag of truce, and remained there just time enough for the disembarkation of the ladies and their suite. During this ceremony the captain remained in his birth, under
[35]
pretext of a violent head-ache; but it was observed that they were no sooner fairly off than he was on the deck again, moving about with an activity and even impetuosity that seemed quite incompatible with a debilitating malady.
Captain Stuart continued for some months a fortunate cruise about the West India islands. His was not the prudent maxim that “discretion is the better part of valour,” but when valour would have been bootless he knew how to employ the alternative, and his little schooner was celebrated as the most desperate fighter and the swiftest sailor in those seas, and her captain became so formidable, that the English admiral off that station gave orders that the schooner should be followed and destroyed at all hazards.
Soon after this he was pursued by a ship of the line and compelled to take refuge in the harbour of St. Kitts, a French, and of course a friendly port to the American flag. Here he anchored his vessel, and deeming himself perfectly secure, and wearied with hard duty, he retired to his birth after setting a watch, and dismissing his crew to repose. In the middle of the night he was alarmed by an attack from the pursuing frigate, which had contrived to elude the vigilance of the fort that guarded the entrance of the harbour, and was already in such a position in relation to him as to cut off every possibility of escape. His spirit, far from quailing, was exasperated by the surprise. He fought as the most courageous animals
[36]
fight at bay. To increase the horror of his situation, the commander of the fort, from some fatal mistake, opened a fire upon him. He was boarded on all sides by boats manned with eighty-four men. We are too ignorant of such matters, and too peaceably inclined to give any interest to the particulars of a sea-fight. Suffice it to say, that our hero did not surrender till he was himself disabled by wounds, his little band cut down, and his schooner a wreck. When the British commander ascertained the actual force with which he had contended, his pride was stung with the consciousness that a victory so dearly bought, had all of defeat but the disgraceful name; and, incapable of that sympathy which a magnanimous spirit always feels with a noble captive, he arraigned captain Stuart before him as a criminal, and demanded of him how he dared against the law of nations, to defend an indefensible vessel.
“Did you think,” retorted Stuart with cold contempt, “that I had gunpowder and would not burn it? do you talk to me of the law of the nations! I fight after the law of nature, that teaches me to spend the last kernel of powder and the last drop of blood, in my country’s service.” His conqueror’s temper heated before, was inflamed by Stuart’s reply. He ordered him to be manacled and put into close confinement. This conduct may appear extraordinary in the commander of a British frigate, but the English, in their contest with the colonies were not always
[37]
governed by those generous principles, by which they have themselves so much alleviated the miseries of war. A defeated American was treated as a lawful enemy, or a rebel, as suited the individual temper of the conqueror.
The frigate was so much injured in the fight as to render a refit necessary, and her commander sailed with his prize for Antigua.
Stuart well knew that his fidelity to his country, rendered him obnoxious to the severest judgment from the admiralty court, and though he might plead the services he had rendered the ladies of the governor’s family in mitigation of his sentence, he proudly resolved never to advert to favours, which he had reason to believe had been lightly estimated.
Spirits most magnanimous in prosperity are often most lofty in adversity. Frank Stuart, mutilated by wounds, dejected by the fatal calamities of his faithful crew, irritated by the indignities heaped on him by his unworthy captor, and stung by secret thoughts of some real or fancied injury—chafed and overburdened with many griefs, received, and sullenly obeyed a summons to the presence of the governor. It cannot be denied, that reluctantly as he appeared before the governor, he surveyed him at his introduction with a look of keen curiosity. He was not surprised to see a man rather past his prime, though not yet declined into the vale of years. With generous allow-
[38]
ance for the effect of a tropical climate, he might not have been more than forty-five. His physiognomy was agreeable, and his deportment gentlemanly. He received captain Stuart with far more courtesy than was often vouchsafed from an officer of the crown, to one who fought under the rebel banner, and remarking that he looked pale and sick, he begged him to be seated.
Stuart declined the civility, and continued resting on a crutch, which a severe wound in his leg rendered necessary.
“You are the commander of the schooner Betsy?” said the governor.
“What’s left of him,” returned Stuart.
“You appear to be severely wounded,” continued the governor.
“Hacked to pieces,” rejoined Stuart, in a manner suited to the brevity of his reply.
“Your name, I believe, is Frank Stuart?”
“I have no reason to deny the name, thank God.”
“And, thank God, I have reason to bless and honour it,” exclaimed the governor, advancing and grasping Frank’s hand heartily. “What metal did you deem me of, my noble friend, that I should forget such favours as you conferred on me, in the persons of my wife and mother.”
“I have known greater favours than those forgotten,” said Frank, and the sudden illumination of his
[39]
pale face, showed how deeply he felt what he uttered.
“Say you so!” exclaimed the governor with good humoured warmth; “well, but that I am too poor to pay my own debts to you, I should count it a pleasure to assume those of all my species—but heaven grant, my friend, that you do not allude to my wife and mother. I blamed them much for not bringing you on shore with them—but my mother is somewhat over punctilious, and my wife, poor soul! her nerves were so shattered by that sea-fight, that she is but now herself again. On my word, so far from wanting gratitude to you, she never hears an allusion to you without tears, the language women deal in when words are too cold for them. But come,” concluded the governor, for he found that all his efforts did but add to Stuart’s evident distress, “come, follow me to the drawing-room, the ladies will themselves convince you, how impatient they have been to welcome you.”
“Are they apprised,” asked Stuart, still hesitating and holding back, “whom they are to see?”
“That are they—my mother is as much delighted as if his majesty were in waiting, and my wife is weeping with joy.”
“Perhaps,” said Stuart, still hesitating, “she would rather not see me now.”
“Nonsense, my good friend, come along. It is not for a brave fellow like you to shrink from a few friendly tears from a woman’s eye.”
[40]
Nothing more could be urged, and Stuart followed governor Liston to the presence of the ladies. Lady Strangford rose and offered him her hand with the most condescending kindness. Mrs. Liston rose too, but did not advance till her husband said, “come Selina, speak your welcome to our benefactor—he may misinterpret this expression of your feelings.”
“Oh no,” she said, now advancing eagerly, and fixing her eye on Stuart, while her cheeks, neck, and brow were suffused with crimson, “Oh no, Captain Stuart knows how deeply I must feel benefits, which none but he that bestowed them could forget or undervalue.”
“It was a rule my mother taught me,” replied Frank with bluntness, softened however by a sudden gleam of pleasure, “that givers should not have better memories than receivers.” There was a meaning in his honest phrase hidden from two of his auditors, but quite intelligible to her for whom it was designed, and to our readers, who have doubtless already anticipated that the honourable Mrs. Liston was none other than the fugitive Perdita. A sudden change of colour showed that she felt acutely Stuart’s keen though veiled reproach.
“A benefit,” she replied, still speaking in a double sense, “such as I have received from you, Captain Stuart, may be too deeply felt to be acknowledged by words—now heaven has given us the opportunity of deeds, and you shall find that my grati-
[41]
tude is only inferior to your merit.” Stuart was more accustomed to embody his feelings in action than speech, and he remained silent. He felt as if he were the sport of a dream, when he looked on the transformed Perdita. He knew not why, but invested as she now was, with all the power of wealth and the elegance of fashion, he felt not half the awe of her, as when in her helplessness and dependence, “he had fenced her rounde with many a spelle,” wrought by youthful and chivalric feeling.
He perceived, in spite of Mrs. Liston’s efforts, that his presence was embarrassing to her, and he would have taken leave, but the governor insisted peremptorily on his remaining to dine with him. Then saying that he had indispensable business to transact, and must be absent for a half hour, he would, he said, “leave the ladies to the free expression of their feelings.”
When he was gone, Mrs. Liston said to her mother, “I do not think your little favourite, Francis, is quite well to-day—will you have the goodness to look in upon him and give nurse some advice.” The old lady went without reluctance, as most people do to give advice, and Mrs. Liston turned to Stuart, and said, “I gave my boy your name, with a prayer that God would give him your spirit. Do not, oh do not think me,” she continued, her lip quivering with emotion, “the ungrateful wretch I have appeared. I am condemned to silence by the pride of another.
[42]
My heart rebels, but I am bound to keep that a secret, which my feelings prompt me to publish to the world.” Stuart would have spoken, but she anticipated him: “Listen to me without interruption,” she said, “my story is my only apology, and I have but brief space to tell it in. It was love, as you once guessed, that led me to that mad voyage to America. I had a silly passion for a young Virginian, who had been sent to England for his education—he was nineteen, I fifteen, when we promised to meet on board the ship which conveyed me to America. His purpose, but not his concert with me was discovered, and he was detained in England. You know all the events of my enterprise. I left a letter for my father, informing him that I had determined to abandon England, but I gave him not the slightest clue to my real designs. I was an only, and as you will readily believe, a spoiled child. My mother was not living, and my father hoping that I should soon return, and wishing to veil my folly, gave out that he has sent me to a boarding-school on the continent, and himself retired to Switzerland. When I arrived in London, I obtained his address and followed him. He immediately received me to apparent favour, but never restored me to his confidence. His heart was hardened by my childish folly, and though I recounted to him all my sufferings, I never drew a tear from him; but when I spoke of you, and dwelt on the particulars of your goodness to me, his eye would moisten, and he would exclaim,
[43]
‘God bless the lad.’ I must be brief,” she continued, casting her eye apprehensively at the door; “Mr. Liston came with his mother to Geneva, where we resided; he addressed me—my father favoured his suit, and though he is, as you perceive, much older than myself, I consented to marry him, but not, as I told my father, till I had unfolded my history to him. My father was incensed at what he called my folly—he treated me harshly—I was subdued, and our contest ended in my solemnly swearing never to divulge the secret, on the preservation of which he fancied the honour of his proud name to depend.”
“Thank God,” then exclaimed Frank with a burst of honest feeling, “it was not your pride, cursed pride, and I may still think on Perdita as a true, tender-hearted girl, it was a pleasant spot in my memory,” he continued, dashing away a tear, “and I hated to have it crossed with a black line.”
Mrs. Liston improved all that remained of her mother’s absence in detailing some particulars, not necessary to relate, by which it appeared that notwithstanding she had dispensed with the article of love in her marriage, (we crave mercy of our fair young readers,) her husband’s virtue and indulgence had matured a sentiment of affection, if not as romantic, yet quite as safe and enduring as youthful passion. She assured Stuart that she regarded him as the means of all her happiness. “Not a day passes,” she said, raising her beautiful eyes to heaven, “that I do not
[44]
remember my generous deliverer, where alone I am permitted to speak of him.” The old lady now rejoined them, bringing her grandchild in her arms. Frank threw down his crutch, forgot his wounds, and permitted his full heart to flow out, in the caresses he lavished on his little namesake.
The governor redeemed Stuart’s schooner, and made such representations before the admiralty court of Stuart’s merits, and of the ill treatment he had received from the commander of the frigate, that the court ordered the schooner to be refitted and equipped, and permitted to proceed to sea at the pleasure of captain Stuart. He remained for several days domesticated in the governor’s family, and treated by every member of it with a frank cordiality suited to his temper and merits. Every look, word and action of Mrs. Liston expressed to him, that his singular service was engraven on her heart. He forbore even to allude to it, and with his characteristic magnanimity never inquired, directly or indirectly, her family name. He observed a timidity and apprehensiveness in her manner that resulted from a consciousness that she had, however reluctantly, practiced a fraud on her husband, and he said “that having felt how burdensome it was to keep a secret from his commander for a short voyage, he thought it was quite too heavy a lading for the voyage of life.”
The demonstrations of gratitude which Stuart received from governor Liston and his family, he deem-
[45]
ed out of all proportion to his services, and being more accustomed to bestow than to receive, he became restless, and as soon as his schooner was ready for sea, he announced his departure, and bade his friends farewell. He said that the tears that Perdita, (he always called her Perdita,) shed at parting, were far more precious to him than all the rich gifts she had bestowed on him.
At the moment Stuart set his foot on the deck of his vessel, the American colours, at the governor’s command, were hoisted. The generous sympathies of the multitude were moved, and huzzas from a thousand voices rent the air. Governor Liston and his suite and most of the merchant vessels, then in port, escorted the schooner out of the harbour. Even the stern usages of war cannot extinguish that sentiment in the bosom of man, implanted by God, which leads him to do homage to a brave and generous foe.
Captain Stuart continued to the end of the war, to serve his country with unabated zeal, and, when peace was restored, the same hardy spirit that had distinguished him in perilous times, made him foremost in bold adventure.
He commanded the second American trading vessel that arrived at Canton after the peace; and this vessel with which he sailed over half the globe, was a sloop of eighty tons, little more than half the size of the largest now used for the river trade. This adventure will be highly estimated by those who have
[46]
been so fortu
nate as to read the merry tale of Dolph Heilegher, and who remember the prudence manifested, at that period, by the wary Dutchmen in navigating these small vessels: how they were fain to shelter themselves at night in the friendly harbours with which the river abounds, and, we believe, to avoid adventuring through Haverstraw bay or the Tappan sea, in a high wind.
When Stuart’s little sloop rode into the port of Canton, it was mistaken for a tender from a large ship, and the bold mariner was afterwards familiarly called by the great Hong merchants, “the one-mast captain.”
_____
Fifty-seven years have gone by since the Hazard sailed from Oxford, and our hero is now enjoying in the winter of his life, the fruits of a summer of activity and integrity. Time, which he has well used, has used him gently—his hair is a little thinned and mottled, but is still a sufficient shelter to his honoured head. His eye when he talks of the past, (all good old men love to talk of the past,) rekindles with the fire of youth, his healthful complexion speaks his temperance, and a double row of unimpaired ivory, justifies the pleasant vanity of his boast, that he can still show his teeth to an enemy.
Professional carelessness or generosity has left him little of the world’s ‘gear,’ but he is rich—for he is independent of riches. He says he would recom-
[47]
mend honest dealings and an open hand, to all who would lay up stores of pleasant thoughts for their old age; and he avers—and who will gainsay him, that in the silent watches of the night, the memory of money well bestowed is better than a pocket full of guineas. He loves to recount his boyish pranks, and recal his childish feelings—how he rattled down the chincapins on the devoted heads of a troop of little girls; and how he was whipped for crying to go with Braddock and be a soldier! but above all, he loves to dwell on some of the particulars we have related, and in the sincerity of religious feeling to ascribe praise to that being, who kept his youth within the narrow bound of strict virtue.
I saw him last week surrounded by his grandchildren, recounting his imminent dangers and hair bread ‘scapes to a favourite boy, while the nimble fingers of rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed little girls were employed in making sails for a miniature ship, which the old man has just completed. Long may he enjoy the talisman that recals to his imagination, labour without its hardship, and enterprise without its failure—and God grant gentle breezes and a clear sky to the close of his voyage of life!
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Modern Chivalry
Subject
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Runaways, female virtue, chivalry, heroism, Revolutionary War.
Description
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A young American sailor rescues a mysterious young female English runaway, and goes on to become a heroic naval captain in the Revolutionary War, and a later a prosperous merchant.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [By the author of Redwood]
Source
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The Atlantic Souvenir, 5-47
Publisher
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H. C. Carey & Lea
Date
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1826
Contributor
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Dr. Jenifer Elmore with Megan Konynenbelt, Sarah Selden, and Rachel Sakrisson; D. Gussman
Relation
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Reprinted in New-York Mirror, edited by Horace Greeley, 25- Nov. 1826: 137-39.
Collected in The Ladies' Monthly Museum, Vol. XXV pp. 260-264, 325-331 and Vol. XXVI pp. 29-36, 91-97, London: Dean and Munday, 1827.
Collected in Lights and Shadows of American Life, vol.. 3, edited by Mary Russell Mitford, 226-73, London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1832.
Collected in Yorkshire Literary Annual for 1832, pp.202-232, edited by C. F. Edgar, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Browne & Greene, 1832.
Collected as "The Chivalric Sailor" in Sedgwick, Tales and Sketches, pp.237-78, Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
1826
A Winter's Tale
Antigua
Atlantic Souvenir
Bacchus
British colonies
Canton
Cape May
Catholic
Chesapeake Bay
China
Cowes
cross-dressing
disguise
Dolph Heilegher
Don Juan Canto II
Ecclesiastes 9:11
Elk River
England
Gravesend
Haverstraw Bay
Henry IV Part I
Hermione
Historical fiction
Hong merchants
Hudson River
indenture
Isle of Wight
John Paul Jones (1747-1792)
Lord Byron
Maryland
Oliver Goldsmith
Pasha
Perdita
Philadelphia
plantation
Pope
Redwood: A Tale
Revolutionary War
Rodomontade novels
Romance novels
sailing
sailors
sentimentality
servants
Shakespeare
shipwreck
Sir Oracle
Sir Toby Blech
Sir Walter Scott
slavery
St. Kitts
Storm
tears
Thames River
The Heart of Midlothian
The Merchant of Venice
Twelfth Night
Washington Irving
West Indies
-
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8242f257b768f73e7d3313d043431303
Dublin Core
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Title
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1853
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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SLAVERY IN NEW ENGLAND.
BY MISS SEDGEWICK.
[p. 417]
SLAVERY IN NEW ENGLAND.
BY MISS SEDGEWICK.
Before the American Revolution, slavery extended throughout the United States. In New England it was on a very limited scale. There were household slaves in Boston, who drove the coaches, cooked the dinners, and shared the luxuries of rich houses; and a few were distributed among the most wealthy of the rural population. They were not numerous enough to make the condition a great evil or embarrassment, but quite enough to show its incompatibility with the demonstration of the truth, on which our declaration of Independence is based, that "all men are born equal," and have "an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
The slaves in Massachusetts were treated with almost parental kindness. They were incorporated into the family, and each puritan household being a sort of religious structure, the relative duties of master and servant were clearly defined. No doubt the severest and longest task fell to the slave, but in the household of the farmer or artisan, the master and the mistress shared it, and when it was finished, the white and the black, like the feudal chief and his household servant, sat down to the same table, and shared the same viands. No doubt there were hard masters and cruel mistresses, and so there are cruel fathers and exacting mothers: unrestrained power is not a fit human trust. We know an old man, who, fifty years ago, when strict domestic discipline was a cardinal virtue, and "spare the rod and spoil the child" was written on the lintel, was in the unvarying habit, "after prayers" on a Monday morning, of setting his children, boys and girls, nine in number, in a row, and beginning with the eldest, a lad of eighteen, he inflicted an hebdomadal prospective chastisement down the whole line, to the little urchin of three years. And the tradition goes, that the possible transgressions of the week were never underrated—that these were supererogatory stripes for possible sins, or chance misdemeanors!
But this was a picturesque exception from the prevailing mildness of the parental government, and so were the cruelties exercised upon her slaves by a certain Madame A----, who lived in Sheffield, a border-town in the western part of Massachusetts, exceptional from the general course of patriarchal government. This Madame A---- belonged to the provincial gentry, and did not live long enough for the democratic wave to rise to her high-water mark. Her husband, as was, and is, not uncommon in New England, combined the duties of the soldier and the magistrate, and honourably discharged both. He won laurels in "the French war," (the war waged in the Northern British provinces), and wore them meekly. The plan of Providence to prevent monstrous discrepancies, by mating the tall with the short, the fat with the lean, the sour with the sweet, &c., was illustrated by General A---- and his help-meet. He was the gentlest, most benign of men;
[p. 418]
she, a shrew untameable. He was an 'Allworthy,' or 'my Uncle Toby.' He had pity, tolerance, and forgiveness for every human error. There was no such word as error in Madame A---- 's vocabulary. Every departure from her rule of rectitude was criminal. She was the type of punishment. Her justice was without scales as well as blind, so that she never weighed ignorance against error, nor temptation against sin. He was the kindest of masters to his slaves; she, the most despotic of mistresses. Happily for the servile household, those were the days of the fixed supremacy of man. No question of the equality of the sexes had impaired woman's contentment, or provoked man's fear or ridicule. The current of his authority had run undisturbed since first the river Pison flowed out of Eden. No "woman's rights' conventions" had dared to doubt the primitive law and curse, "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee:" so that, as we intimated, the servants of Madame A----, suffering under her despotism, had always a right of appeal to a higher tribunal. Whatever petty tyrannies the magnanimous General might quietly submit to in his own person, he never acquiesced in oppression of his people. Among them was a remarkable woman of unmixed African race. Her name was Elizabeth Freeman, transmuted to "Betty," and afterwards contracted by lisping lips from Mammy Bet, to Mum-Bett, by which name she was best known.
It has since been luminously translated in a French notice, into Chut Babet.
This woman,* who was said by a competent judge to have "no superiors and few equals," was the property, "the chattel" of General A---- . She had a sister in servitude with her, a sickly timid creature, over whom she watched as the lioness does over her cubs. On one occasion, when Madame A was making the patrol of her kitchen, she discovered a wheaten cake, made by Lizzy the sister, for herself, from the scrapings of the great oaken bowl in which the family batch had been kneaded. Enraged at the "thief," as she branded her, she seized a large iron shovel red hot from clearing the oven, and raised it over the terrified girl. Bet interposed her brawny arm, and took the blow. It cut quite across the arm to the bone, "but," she would say afterwards in concluding the story of the frightful scar she earned to her grave, "Madam never again laid her hand on Lizzy. I had a bad arm all winter, but Madam had the worst of it. I never covered the wound, and when people said to me, before Madam,—' Why, Betty! what ails your arm?' I only answered—' ask missis!" Which was the slave and which was the real mistress?
[p. 419]
She had another characteristic story of the days of her servitude; and she retained so vivid an impression of its circumstances, that when she related them in her old age, the blood of her hearers would curdle in their veins.
"It was in May," she would say, "just at the time of the apple blossoms; I was wetting the bleaching linen, when a smallish girl came in to the gate, and up the lane, and straight to me, and said, without raising her eyes, 'where is your master? I must speak with him.' 1 told her that my master was absent, that he would come home before night. 'Then I must stay,' she said, 'for I must speak with him.' I set down my watering pot, and told her to come with me into the house. I saw it was no common case. Gals in trouble were often coming to master." ('Girls in trouble,' is a definite rustic phrase, indicating but one species of trouble). "But," she continued, " I never saw one look like this. The blood seemed to have stopped in her veins; her face and neck were all in blotches of red and white. She had bitten her lip through; her voice was hoarse and husky, and her eyelids seemed to settle down as if she could never raise them again. I showed her into a bedroom next the kitchen, and shut the door, hoping Madam would not mistrust it, for she never overlooked anybody's wrongdoing but her own, and she had a partic'lar hatred of gals that had met with a misfortin; she could not abide them. She saw me bring the gal in—it was just her luck—she always saw everything. I heard her coming and I threw open the bedroom door; for seeing I could no way hide the poor child—she was not over fifteen—I determined to stand by her. When Madam had got half across the kitchen, in full sight of the child, she turned to me, and her eyes flashing like a cat's in the dark, she asked me, 'what that baggage wanted?' 'To speak to master.' 'What does she want to say to your master?' 'I don't know, ma'am.' 'I know,' she said—and there was no foul thing she didn't call the child; and when she had got to the end of her bad words, she ordered her to walk out of the house. Then the gal raised her eyes for the first time; she had not seemed to hear a word before. She did not speak—she did not sigh—nor sob—nor groan—but a sharp sound seemed to come right out of her heart; it was heart-breaking to hear it.
"' Sit still, child,' I said. At that Madam's temper rose like a thunder-storm. She said the house was hers, and again ordered the gal out of it. 'Sit still, child,' says I again. 'She shall go,' says madam. 'No, missis, she shan't,' says I. 'If the gal has a complaint to make, she has a right to see the judge; that's lawful, and stands to reason beside.' Madam knew when I set my foot down, I kept it down; so after blazing out, she walked away."
One should have known this remarkable woman, the native majesty of her deportment, the intelligence of her indomitable, irresistible will, to understand the calmness of the stranger-girl under her protection, and her sure victory over her hurricane of a mistress.
"When dinner-time came," she continued, " I offered the child
[p. 420]
a part of mine; I had no right to take madam's food and give it to her, and I didn't; but, poor little creature, she could no more eat than if she were a dead corpse; she tried when I begged her, but she could not. Master came home at evening." (It might have been noticed of Mum-Bett, that, to the end of her life, when referring to the days of her servitude, she spoke of General A---- as "my master," and tenderly, " my old master!" but always of her mistress as "Madam.") "I got speech of master as he was getting off his horse. I told him that there was a poor afflicted gal—a child, one might call her—had been waiting all day to speak to him. He bid me bring her in, after supper. I knew Madam would berate her to master, but that did not signify with him. When he sent word he was ready, 1 took a lighted candle in each hand, and told the child to follow me. She did not seem frightened; she was just as she was in the morning, 'cept that the red blotches had gone, and she was all one dreadful waxy white.
"We went to the study. Master was sitting in his high-backed chair, before his desk. Master could not scare her, he looked so pitiful. I sets down the candles, walked back to the wall, and stood there; I knew master had no objections,—master and 1 un- derstood one another. 'Come hither,' says master. The gal walked up to the desk. 'What is your name?'—' Tamor Graham.'—' Take off your bonnet, Tamor.' She took it off. Her hair was brown—a pretty brown, and curly, but all a tangle. Master looked at her." When Mum-Bett got to the point of her story, (every word, as she often repeated it, is "cut in" my memory), the tears started from her eyes, and she quietly wiped them away with the back of her hand. She was not given to tears. They were not her demonstration. "If ever there was a pitiful look," she continued, " it was that look of master's. I can see it yet. 'Now hold up your hand, Tamor,' he said,' and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God!' She did. 'Sit down now, child,' he said, and drew a chair himself. She kind of fell into the chair, and clasped her hands tight together."
We cannot, and it is not needful for our purpose that we should, go into the particulars of the wretched girl's story. It was steeped in horrors; in homely rustic life, a repetition of the crime of the Cenci tragedy. The girl had knit her soul to her task, and she went unfalteringly through it.
"Once," said Mum-Bett, "my master stopped her, and said, 'Do you know, child, that if your father is committed, and convicted, on your oath, he must die for the crime?' 'Yes, sir, I know it!" 'You say he has pursued you again and again; why did you not complain before?' 'I escaped, sir,—and for my mother's sake—and my little brother's—poor boy !' and then she burst out like a child, and cried, and cried, and wrung her hands."
After the examination, General A---- gave the girl into Mum-Bett's hands, with orders that every thing should be done for her security and comfort. The father was apprehended—his child was confronted with him. "He was an awful-looking man,"
[p. 421]
Mum-Bett said, "He had short grey hair, but not close cropped, and when I led Tamor in, it rose, and every hair stood stiff and upright on his head. I've seen awful sights in my day, but nothing near to that."
Much corroborative testimony was obtained. There was then no court for capital trials in Berkshire, the county of General A---- 's residence. The culprit was transferred to Hampshire to be tried. While Tamor remained at the General's she received a message, requesting her to come to a sequestered lane at twilight, to meet her mother. Nothing suspecting, she went, and was seized and carried off, by two men, agents of her father, who hoped to escape by abducting the witness. A posse of militia was called out, and she was found in durance, in a hut in the depth of a wood. The mother and child did meet once, and but once. They locked their arms around each other. The mother shrieked—the girl was silent—livid, and when they were parted, more dead than alive.
The father was condemned. The daughter, at her earnest instance, was sent off to a distant province where it was understood she died not long after.
Mum-Bett's character was composed of few but strong elements. Action was the law of her nature, and conscious of superiority to all around her, she felt servitude intolerable. It was not the work—work was play to her. Her power of execution was marvellous. Nor was it awe of her kind master, or fear of her despotic mistress, but it was the galling of the harness, the irresistible longing for liberty. I have heard her say, with an emphatic shake of the head peculiar to her: "Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God's airth a free woman—I would."
It was soon after the close of the revolutionary war, that she chanced at the village "meeting house," in Sheffield, to hear the Declaration of Independence read. She went the next day to the office of Mr. Theodore Sedgewick, then in the beginning of his honourable political and legal career. "Sir," said she, "I heard that paper read yesterday, that says, "all men are born equal, and that every man has a right to freedom. I am not a dumb critter; won't the law give me my freedom?" I can imagine her upright form, as she stood dilating with her fresh hope based on the declaration of an intrinsic, inalienable right. Such a resolve as hers is like God's messengers—wind, snow, and hail— irresistible.
Her application was made to one who had generosity as well as intelligence to meet it. Mr. Sedgewick immediately instituted a suit in behalf of the extraordinary plaintiff; a decree was obtained in her favour. It was the first practical construction in Massachusetts of the declaration which had been to the black race a constitutional abstraction, and on this decision was based the freedom of the few slaves remaining in Massachusetts.
Mum-Bett immediately transferred herself to the service of her
[p. 422]
champion, if service that could be called, which was quite as much rule as service. She was in truth a sort of nurse—gouvernante in his house—an anomalous office in our land.
The children under her government regarded it, as the Jews did theirs, as a theocracy; and if a divine right were founded upon such ability and fidelity as hers, there would be no revolutions. Wider abuses make rebels. Soon after the close of the war, there was some resistance to the administration of the newly organised State Government in Massachusetts. Instead of the exemption from taxation which the ignorant had expected, a heavy imposition was necessarily laid upon them, and instead of the licence they had hoped from liberty, they found themselves fenced in by legal restraints. The Jack Cades banded together; dishonest men misled honest ones; the government was embarrassed; the courts were interrupted; and disorder prevailed throughout the western counties. A man named Shay was the leader; the rising has been dignified as Shay's war. There were some skirmishing, and one or two encounters called battles; but with the exception of a few wounds and three or four deaths, it was a bloodless contest—chiefly mischievous for the fright it gave the women, and the licensed forays of the dishonest and idle, who joined the insurgents. Those who had fancied that equality of rights and privileges would make equality of condition; that the mountains and mole-hills of gentle descent, education, and fortune would all sink before the proclamation of a republic, to one level, were grievously disappointed; and the old war was waged that began with the revolt in Heaven, and has been continued down to our day of socialism. The gentlemen were called the "ruffled shirts;" they were made prisoners whereever the insurgents could lay hands upon them; their houses were invaded, and their moveable property unceremoniously seized by those whose might made their right.
Mr. Sedgewick was a member of the state legislature, and absent from his home on duty, at Boston. His family were transferred to a place free from danger or annoyance; all his family, with the exception of the servants, and one young invalid child, Mum-Bett's pet. Leave her castle she would not, and her particular treasure she felt able to defend. She adopted a rather feminine mode of defence. She drew her bars and bolts, hung over the kitchen fire a large kettle of beer, and sounded her trump of defiance, the declaration that she would scald to death the first invader.
The insurgents knew she would keep her word, and on that occasion they preserved their distance.
The fear of personal molestation having subsided, the family returned to their home. They were not, however, secure from levies by the honest insurgents, and thefts by the dishonest. For them all, Mum-Bett had an aristocratic contempt. She did not recognise their "new-made honour," but accoutered and decked as they were in epaulets and ivy boughs, they were, to her, " Nick Bottom the weaver, Robin Starveling the tailor, Tom Snout the tinker," &c.
[p. 423]
The captain of a company, with two or three subalterns, came to Mr. Sedgwick's with the intent to capture Jenny Gray, a beautiful young mare, esteemed too spirited for any hand but the master of the family, and "gentle as a dog in his hand," Mum-Bett would say. So a cowardly serving man obeyed the order to bring Jenny Gray from the stable, and saddle and bridle her. Mum- Bett stood at the open house-door, keenly observing the procedure. The captain, with much difficulty, for the animal was snorting and restive, mounted; but whether from an instinct of repulsion, or from some magnetic sign from Mum-Bett (I suspect the latter), she reared and plunged, and threw her unskilled rider on the turf behind her. Again the Captain mounted, and again was thrown; the third time he essayed with like default, then having got some hard bruises, he stood off, and hesitated. While he did so, Mum-Bett started out, unbuckled the saddle, threw it one side, and leading Jenny Gray to a gate that opened into a wide field skirting a wooded, unfenced, upland, she slipped off the bridle, clapped Jenny on the side, and whistled her off, and off she went, careering beyond the hope of Captain Smith, the joiner.
Alas! Jenny Gray was not always so fortunate! One dark night she disappeared from the stable, and the last that was seen of her, she was galloping away into the State of New York, bearing one of the Shay leaders from the pursuit of justice.
On another occasion, when a party of marauders were making their domiciliary visits to the houses of the few gentry in the village, they entered Mr. Sedgwick's, and demanded the key of the cellar. In those days, the distance now traversed in a few hours was a week's journey. The supplies of to-morrow, now sent from New York on the order of to-day, were then laid in semi-annually, and Mr. S.'s cellar was furnished for six months' unstinted hospitality. Mum-Bett led the party, embodying the dignity of the family in her own commanding manner. She adroitly directed their attention first to a store of bottled brown stout. One of the men knocking off the neck of a bottle, took a draught, and pithily expressed his abhorrence of the 'bitter stuff.' 'How should you like what gentlemen like?' she asked in a tone of derision bitterer than the brown stout. 'Is there nothing better here?' they asked. 'Gentlemen want nothing better,' she answered with contempt, and they, partly disappointed, but more crestfallen, turned back and left uutasted, liquor which they would have been as ready as Caliban to swear was 'not earthly,' was 'celestial liquor.' She managed her defensive warfare to the end with equal adroitness. She had secreted the watches and few trinkets of the ladies, and small articles of plate, in a large oaken chest containing her own wardrobe; no contemptible store either. Bett had a regal love of the solid and the splendid wear, and to the last of her long life went on accumulating chintzes and silks.
When, after tramping through the house, they came to Bett's locked chest and demanded the key, she lifted up her hands, and laughed in scorn. "Ah! Sam Cooper," she said, "you and your fellows are no
[p. 424]
better than I thought you. You call me 'wench' and 'nigger,' and you are not above rummaging my chest. You will have to break it open to do it!" Sam Cooper, a quondam broom-pedlar (to whom Bett had pointed out, in their progress, his worthless brooms rotting in the cellar) was the leader of the party. "He turned," she said, " and slunk away like a whipped cur as he was!"
We have marked a few striking points along the course of her life, but its whole course was like a noble river, that makes rich and glad the dwellers on its borders.
She was a guardian to the childhood, a friend to the maturity, a staff to the old age of those she served. More than once, by a courageous assumption of responsibility, by resisting the absurd medical usages of the time, in denying cold water and fresh air to burning fevers, she saved precious lives.
The time came for leaving even the shadow of service, and she retired to a freehold of her own, which she had purchased with her savings. These had been rather freely used by her only child, and her grandchildren, who, like most of their race, were addicted to festive joys.
In the last act of the drama of life, when conscience upheaves the barren or the bloated past, and poor humanity quails, she met death, not as the dreaded tyrant, but as the angel-messenger of God. Some of the "orthodox" pious felt a technical yet sincere concern for her. Even her worth required the passport of " Church Membership." The clergyman of the village visited her with the rigors of the old creed, and presenting the terrors of the law, said," Are you not afraid to meet your God?" "No, Sir,'' she replied, calmly and emphatically—" No, Sir. I have tried to do my duty, and I am not afeard!" She had passed from the slavery of spiritual conventionalism into the liberty of the children of God.
She lies now in the village burial ground, in the midst of those she loved and blessed; of those who loved and honoured her. The first ray of the sun, that as it rose over the beautiful hills of Berkshire, was welcomed by her vigilant eye, now greets her grave; its last beam falls on the marble inscribed with the following true words:—
"ELIZABETH FREEMAN,
(known by the name of Mum-Bett),
died Dec. 28th, 1829.
Her supposed age was 85 years.
She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write; yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal. She neither wasted time nor property. She never violated a truth, nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domestic trial she was the most efficient helper and the tenderest friend. Good mother, farewell!"
----------------------
* Our readers may have seen some account of this woman by Miss Martineau, I believe, in her "Society in America;" but as that account was but partial, and by a stranger, I have thought that one more extended, without exaggeration or colouring, in every particular true, might be acceptable at a time when "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has excited curiosity as to the individual character of the African race. It was said, perhaps truly, by that distinguished man, Charles Follen, that if you could establish the equality of the slave with the master in a single instance, you had answered the argument for slavery furnished by the inferiority of the African race.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Slavery in New England
Subject
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Elizabeth Freeman (Mum-Bett), Northern slavery
Description
An account of the resource
Sedgwick tells the story of Elizabeth Freeman ("Mum-Bett"), a slave in Massachusetts, who sought and won her freedom after hearing a reading of the Declaration of Independence, with the help of Theodore Sedgwick. She also recounts many of Freeman's heroic acts on behalf of others, including her sister, an abused village girl, and the Sedgwick family for whom she worked as a paid servant.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria.
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Bentley's Miscellany, vol. 34, 1853, pp. 417-24.
Date
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1853
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D. Gussman
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English
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Document
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"'Mumbett' (manuscript draft) by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, 1853" from the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers. Massachusetts Historical Society Collections Online, <a href="http://www.masshist.org/database/547">http://www.masshist.org/database/547</a>. Accessed 11 April 2018.<br /><br />"'Slavery in New England' by Catharine Maria Sedgwick [annotated student weblog]." Stockton University (2006), <a href="http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/projects/sedgwick/SlaveryinNewEngland.html">http://loki.stockton.edu/%7Ekinsellt/projects/sedgwick/SlaveryinNewEngland.html. </a>Accessed 10 April 2018.
1853
A Midsummer Night's Dream
anti-slavery
Beatrice Cenci
Bentley's Miscellany
Berkshires
Caliban
Charles Follen
child abuse
Church Membership
Declaration of Independence
Eden
Elizabeth Freeman
freedom
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Martineau
incest
Jack Cade
Massachusetts
Mum-Bett
Mumbet
Nick Bottom
servant
Shakespeare
Shay's Rebellion
Sheffield
slavery
Society in America
The Tempest
Theodore Sedgwick
Uncle Toby
Uncle Tom's Cabin
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900806d5afb33cd8c73737e67de94f80
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1836
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DANIEL PRIME.
___________
“Beware of Covetousness.”
[p. 215]
I remember, when a child, having my curiosity strongly excited by the fag end of a story which an old family servant was telling to my elders when I entered the room. “But are you sure,” asked a gentle lady, who could not give credit to such a demonstration of emotion, “are you sure his hair actually stood up?”
“As sure as that I see you now, ma’am; and an awful sight it was. He was a thickset, strong-built fellow, with a tripy skin—lips, cheeks, forehead, all one colour; his eyes were gray and large, and his eyebrows black as jet, and solid; but his hair was considerable gray, and cut shortish—stiff, ugly hair it was—and, altogether, he looked as cruel as a meat-axe. He stood all as one as where ma’am stands now. There were two cotton-wicked candles on the table, burning bright, for I had just snuffed them. The colonel sat in his armchair, looking terrible—he could look so on them that desarved it—and the clark had his pen in his hand. The colonel gave me a sign; I opened the door, and he came in, as it were into that door, right in Prime’s face. I kept
[p. 216]
my eye on Prime. His hair rose and stood on end, straight and stiff as bristles. Every one took notice of it, and often have I heard the colonel speak of it.”
“But what made his hair rise?” I naturally asked. “Do not tell her,” interposed the aforesaid gentle lady; “it is too horrid a tale for a child’s ears.” Then followed the trite hint about “little pitchers,” and the promise, usually broken to the hope, that the story should be told me “one of these days.” That day did not, however, in this case, prove an illusion. The story was, in due time, told to me by that dear old servant and friend, who was one of the most acute observers I ever knew. On her veracious testimony I now repeat it.
Many more complicated and startling criminal cases may be found among “les causes celébres.” This is chiefly interesting, as illustrating the tendency of the indulgence of any one passion of the human mind to destroy its balance, and produce the diseases termed fixidity and monomania. These are, doubtless, actual diseases. The great truth to be learned from them is, that they might, in most instances, be avoided by moral education. The mind cannot safely dwell long and intently on one subject. The effect is precisely analogous to that produced on the physical system by bearing on one muscle—the muscle is inevitably weakened, if not destroyed.
[p. 217]
John Dorset was a wealthy yeoman in the southwestern part of Massachusetts. His was the best farm under the shadow of the Tahconnic, there where its swelling and lofty summits bound the western horizon of the pretty village of Sheffield. Dorset was a hard-working, sagacious farmer, acute, or, in rustic phrase, close at a bargain, but liberal in his ordinary transactions. “He gave freely of his bread to the poor, and his bountiful eye was blessed.” He was violent in his temper and self-willed, liable to sudden bursts of feeling, and governed by impulses. His heart was somewhat like iron, hard and resisting; but, if sufficient heat was applied, it glowed intensely, and might be worked at will. He had a fit helpmate; such as abounded in the good olden time of undisputed authority on the part of the husband and unquestioning submission on that of the wife. Dame Dorset worked diligently with wool and flax, and looked well to the ways of her household; in short, she was a wife after the old Puritan pattern. One only child had this thriving pair, to whom her father gave the name he deemed indicative of the condition and virtues of her sex, Submit, and truly did it express the very essence of her character. She was a gentle, comely, well-nurtured lass. Her father was wont to boast her accomplishments in such phrases as these: “Submit need not turn her back upon any gal in the New-England States. She can spin on the great wheel and
[p. 218]
the little wheel”—alas! for the cheerful, domestic sounds that have passed away from the farmer’s home—“she can make butter and cheese equal to her mother’s, roast a pig without cracking the skin, and make an Indian pudding that you can slice like wax; read, write, and cipher as well as any woman need to, and, what is more than larning, she never disobeyed me in her life !” With such store of accomplishments, and sole apparent heir of John Dorset’s wealth, no wonder that the fair Submit heard every day the preliminary question in the rustic treaty of marriage of that good olden time, “Will you undervaly yourself so much as to overvaly me so much as to keep company with me?” But none of the aspirants was she known to vouchsafe the propitious response, “No undervalyment at all, sir!”
Submit lost her mother, and her father, seeing his domestic affairs prosper in her hands, and loving her with all the strength of his undivided affection, was well pleased with her maidenly reserve.
“You are right, Submit,” he would say, when he had seen her close the door after some suiter in holyday array; “when the right one comes will be time enough. I despise those gals that are ready to say snip to every man’s snap.” Poor Dorset! who shall prophesy of human wisdom? The heaviest storms are sometimes brewing when not a cloud is to be seen.
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The proprietor of the farm adjoining Dorset’s was a certain Rube Prime, a careless, rack-rent fellow, negligent of his own rights, and regardless of the rights of others; an unprofitable acquaintance, and a most inconvenient neighbour, annoying in every way to a man of Dorset’s irritable temper and thrifty habits. Dorset’s dislike of the father was extended to his brood of marauding boys, with the exception of one among them, Daniel. “He,” Dorset said, “was different from the rest”—he did not mark the blush on Submit’s cheek when he said so; and once, when he was anathematizing the whole Prime race, he made a notable and long-remembered exception in favour of Daniel. “There is not a mother’s son of them worth a curse,” said Dorset, in his fury. “Yes, yes,” he added, “I will except Daniel.” Daniel was indebted for the honour of this exception to being the pet of a maiden aunt, Marah Prime, who had carefully trained him in the way in which she thought he should go, and HE DID GO THEREIN. “A penny saved is a penny gained,” was the first lore his infant lips learned. He was taught to exchange his share of pudding and cakes with his short-sighted brothers for something that could be kept or again bartered. His thriftless father was held up before him as a beacon; and modes of practising on the old man were suggested, similar to Jacob’s upon the unwary Laban, and this, he learned, “was a way to
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thrive.” Women of all ages, conditions, and tempers, will weave a thread of love into the web of a favourite’s destiny. It was when Submit was receiving her name over the baptismal font that Aunt Marah predestined her the wife of Daniel; and from that moment of sordid election, she shaped all device and action to this end.
“For once,” boasted one of the young Primes, “I’ve made a bargain out of Dan; he’s given me three fourpence ha’pennies for my string of birds’ eggs!”
The birds’ eggs might be seen the next day festooned round Submit’s looking-glass.
“What has become of Bob?” asked all the little Primes, in a breath, and asked again without being answered. Bob was a pet squirrel, tamed by Aunt Marah, and, in due time, conveyed, by Daniel’s hand, to Submit. Daniel was the only Prime permitted to enter Dorset’s premises, and he was only suffered, not encouraged. He, however, in the reputed spirit of his countrymen, made the most of his opportunity by gaining the heart of the gentle heiress. We are compelled to pass in this etching style over the years that brought Daniel to man’s estate. In the mean time his father died, his brothers scattered over the world, and he remained—“a rolling stone gathers no moss,” said Aunt Marah—he remained rooted to the farm, toiling hard to redeem it from encumbering mortgages. Now he fancied himself
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securely floating into the harbour so long desired, and day after day did his eye feast on Dorset’s fertile fields, and night after night did he reckon up the value of the lands, tenements, stock, goods, and chattels, that were to be conveyed to him by that sure and precious instrument, Submit. Aunt Marah felt his grasp so certain that she began to grumble at the liberality of Dorset’s housekeeping. “But time,” she trusted, “would change with masters!” Submit, and Submit alone, had secret forebodings that her father, though he tolerated Daniel, would not fancy him for a son-in-law; and, with all a woman’s timid forebodings, she saw the evening approach on which, by her acquiescence, consent was to be asked. Her father had been out all day. He came home with a ruffled countenance, and she saw they had fixed on an inauspicious moment. As he threw off his coat, he grumbled, “A pretty business! A chip of the old block! I knew the devil would out, in some shape or other!” And when Submit suppressed her ominous fears, and asked, in a low voice, “What has taken place, sir?” he narrated a transaction of Daniel Prime’s with a friend of his—whose simplicity Dorset had always sheltered under the wing of his superior sagacity—in which his friend had been overreached: a mode of cheating particularly odious to a man of Dorset’s frank temper. “I always told you, Submit,” he added, after finishing his narration, “you
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can’t ‘wash a checked apron white;’ ‘what’s bred in the bone’—but I’ll fix him, that I will.” At this moment Daniel entered. Dorset did not return his deferential greeting; but Dorset often had his surly moments, and when all seemed murky, the sun shot forth from the clouds. Submit in vain tried to give her lover a warning signal. Prime’s mind was intent on his purpose; and when she, hoping he might have understood her, and trusting, at any rate, that he was too discreet to unfold his purpose in her father’s present humour, left the room, Daniel spoke, or tried to speak; for no sooner did Dorset comprehend his meaning, than he broke out upon him, poured forth epithets as stinging as blows, and finished by opening the doors, and actually kicking him out of the house. Daniel slunk home, and calculated the cost of a lawsuit, and the probable amount of a verdict in a suit for assault and battery; but, after repeated consultations with Aunt Marah, he made a better estimate of the chances of profit and loss, and the next week, while Dorset was gone to Boston, he took a ride with Submit to the adjacent territory of New-York, where his marriage was effected without the previous publication of “intentions of marriage,” which the prudent Puritans prefixed to that rite.
We pass over the rage of the wronged father. We have no space to record his reiterated vows—too faithfully kept—that he would
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never again speak to his child, and that never a penny of his should pass into Daniel Prime’s hands. He made a will at once, and published it, formally disinheriting his daughter, and devising his property to various public institutions. Dorset tried to appear as cheerful as was his wont, for he was a proud man, and loth, even tacitly, to confess his dependence on any human being or circumstance; but nature was too strong for him; and when he was alone, walking over those fine fruitful fields, whose transmission to his posterity he had so often contemplated as a sort of self-perpetuation, his disappointment would break forth in exclamations and audible groans; and when he returned to his home, and missed his gentle, patient child, who had anticipated his wants, and endured his impatience without a murmur, his parental tenderness would find its way in tears; but, after the first ebullition of passion, never a word of complaint or regret escaped him. He went on as if nothing had happened, enriching his farm, and dispensing liberally from storehouses always full.
In the mean time, Submit, born to be an unresisting thrall to whatever power might master her, faithfully kept her vow of allegiance to her new lord, though her heart pined in secret for the abundance and cheerfulness of her old home. Her father’s temper was gusty, but the storms were short, and succeeded by sunshine and a healthy atmosphere. Her husband’s
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disposition was of the brooding, anxious, forecasting sort, that hangs like a leaden sky and pestilential fog over the domestic scene. He was not severe or unkind to her. As the means of attaining the great end of his life, she was inestimable to him; but he was apprehensive and restless till that was secured. He never, for a moment, believed that her fitful, impulsive father would persevere in his disinheritance of his only child; but there was no passion keener than avarice, and he was continually forcing her on active measures to recover her father’s favour. This imbittered her life. She could endure and suffer to the end of the chapter; there was no limit to her passive virtue; but to execute what her husband planned—to confront her storming father—was an enterprise for Submit similar to a passage under the sheet of water at Niagara.
In obedience to her husband, she repeatedly wrote to her father. The letters were returned unopened. She even, like a trembling victim, went to his house again and again. The good-natured servants—they were slaves, for our story dates before the Revolution—gathered about her with their honest, hearty welcomes, but her father passed by her without one glance of recognition; and if she ventured, in a half-stifled voice, to address him, he gave no sign of hearing her. Thus matters went on for three years. Aunt Marah, whose whole life was devoted to that most teasing
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domestic alchymy by which one man’s shilling can be made to go as far as another man’s dollar, was a continual thorn in Submit’s side.
At the end of three years the light broke in upon her weary existence. She had a child! that best of Heaven’s blessings—that ray of celestial light which penetrates the intensest darkness that can encompass a mother’s soul. A child! Who could be miserable with such a treasure? a gift that enriches every other possession: that is riches to poverty; meat and drink to the hungry and thirsty; rest to the wearied; health to the sick; an immeasurable present joy, and an infinite promise!
Our poor mother’s soul was kindled with new life; her home was no longer a waste and desolate place. She turned her eye from the dark spirit brooding in her husband’s face, and felt the smiles of her child warming her heart. She listened to the first sweet sounds from its lips, and was deaf to Aunt Marah’s eternal chidings.
“You say your father likes babies,” said her husband. “Sibyl begins to take notice”—the child had been warily named Sibyl Dorset, after its maternal grand-parents—“dress her up in her best, and take her to your father’s; don’t be scared away by the first frown—stay a while—he’ll come to at last: an old dog don’t turn for the first whistle.”
Submit obeyed with alacrity, because with hope. She believed her child irresistible, and
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longed to see it her father’s arms. The little girl had arrived at the prettiest stage of infancy; she was fat, and fair, and bright, and dressed in her prettiest, all-conquering in her mother’s eye. No wonder she walked with a light step up the narrow lane that led to the only place her heart called home. She was humbly making her way towards the kitchen door, when the old house-dog sprang upon her, and licked the baby’s hands. Dorset stood, unseen, at a window, stealthily watching the approach. The baby, instead of crying, clapped her little hands in reply to the dog’s caress. An exclamation of pleasure escaped from Dorset. Submit, unconscious of the auspicious omen, proceeded. The door was opened by Juno, an old negro matron. She summoned her daughters, Minerva and Venus; and the three goddesses exhausted on the child every epithet of endearment and admiration in their vocabulary. The doors communicating with the “dwelling-room” were open, and there was the grandfather, all ear.
“My!” cried Juno, “what pretty black eyes; for all the world like master’s!”
“That’s well!” thought Dorset; “no black eyes among the Primes—gray, squint, or walleyed, every d—l of them.”
“Dear! what a cunning little cherry mouth!” said Venus.
“Dan Prime’s mouth is like a wolf’s!” murmured Dorset.
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“This beats the Dutch—master’s peaked ear!” exclaimed Minerva; “and on the left side, too.”
“I saw, when I first looked at her, she favoured father,” said Submit, tremulously; “I suppose it was thinking of him so much!”
Dorset longed to take mother and child to his heart, but the remembrance of his rash vow checked the impulse. A project by which he might, in part, evade its consequences, dawned upon him. He went into the kitchen. Juno—experience made her the boldest—Juno held the baby up to him: “Isn’t she a beauty, master? as pretty as a London doll.”
“Put out your hands, Sibyl Dorset,” said the trembling mother. The little girl, instinctively eloquent in her own cause, stretched out her hands, smiled, and jumped towards her grandfather. He caught her in his arms, looked steadily in her face for a moment, exclaimed, “All Dorset, by Jupiter!” and then returning her to the servant, his eyes blinded with tears, he made his way to his apartment, slamming the doors after him as a sort of expression or echo to his feelings. Poor Submit, after lingering in faint hope or fear till the day closed, was obliged to return to her disappointed, sullen husband.
Two years after this first meeting, as Dorset was returning home, he saw a little girl tottling along the roadside, picking dandelions. His old dog Cæsar sprang upon her and threw her
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down. She patted him, calling him “naughty Cæsar.” They were familiar friends. “It is she!” thought Dorset; and he quickened his steps, and gave her his hand to help her up. She grasped his, and retained it. The pressure of a child’s soft, chubby hand is an electric touch to the heart.
“Ain’t you my danfather?” said Sibyl.
“Yes.”
“Then do you come and live with us. Mother tells me every day I must love you, and how can I love you if I don’t see you?”
“I can’t go to live with you, child, but would you like to come and live with me?”
“With you and Cæsar! yes, if mother will come too.”
“And your father?”
The child started at his changed tone of voice. “No, no, not father; let father and Aunt Marah stay at home.”
Dorset conducted the little runaway to her own premises, went home, passed a sleepless night, and the next morning sent the following note to Prime’s:
“TO DANIEL PRIME AND WIFE.
“If you will send me your child, Sibyl Dorset, and sign a quitclaim to her, and you, Daniel Prime, promise, under oath, never intentionally to see, and never speak with her during my life, I, in return, will take her as my own child, and will endeavor so to bring her up,
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that, when come to woman’s estate, she’ll not quit me for any rascal on earth.
“Signed, JOHN DORSET.”
This proposition was rather more than Prime could at once submit to; but, after a little reflection on the precariousness of Dorset’s life—how very uncertain other men’s lives seem!—his cupidity prevailed over his pride and every manly sentiment, as well as over his affections. “We must make hay while the sun shines,” said Aunt Marah; and many a case did she recount of breaches healed by the intervention of grandchildren. So little Sibyl was to be sent to serve the purpose of patent cement, and make the broken parts adhere more firmly than ever.
The weakest, most timid animal will turn to defend her young, and Submit, for the first time in her life, when she heard her husband’s decision, resisted. To give up Sibyl was to resign all that made existence tolerable to her.
“I cannot consent to this,” she said, with unprecedented firmness; “all the land on the round earth would not tempt me; no, not all my father’s money, ten thousand times told.”
“You talk like a fool, wife.”
“Oh, Daniel Prime, I think there is no folly like that of craving for more and more. You are always toiling, and selling, and gaining, and it all does no good to any one, and least of all
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to you. Are you happy? are you even content?”
“No, I am not; but I have been disappointed—balked. I shall be happy,” he stretched his hand towards Dorset’s, “when I get that farm.”
“No, Prime, there is neither good nor happiness to those that forget the laws of God, and you are breaking his tenth commandment. But,” she added, raising her voice, “you will never get it. I cannot part with Sibyl. I was taught never to give away the least trifle given to me, and can I give away God’s gift? No, never!”
Prime would at once have enforced obedience, but he feared that his wife, driven to extremity, might fly to her father, and remonstrate; he therefore let her exhaust her courage, and then urged compliance as a duty to her father. At this point she was vulnerable. From her child’s birth, and the simultaneous burst of parental feeling in her own breast, she had—a very common case—experienced a new sense of filial duty; had lamented her infidelity to her father, and ventured to express her remorse in Prime’s presence. She had now, as her husband urged, an opportunity to atone for her fault, and this foregone, would be lost forever. Her father was old; more children she might have, never another father. And when she ceased to answer, but still wept, he suggested that her father’s terms might be
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softened; he might consent to her seeing the child; and, finally, and more than all, Sibyl must prove a successful mediator between them.
Submit at last yielded so far as to write to her father. The letter was modified by her husband, blotted with her tears, and sent. The following reply was immediately returned: “The mother and child may meet as often as is reasonable; but Daniel Prime must be to Sibyl as though he were not. Let no more be written or said about it. Send her—on these conditions, mind ye!—to-morrow.”
Sibyl was sent, and her mother left to solitude and pining. She saw her child often. She found her always affectionate and kind, but there was little sympathy between them. Sibyl was a healthy, bright, stout-hearted girl, living and laughing in sunshine, and unable to sympathize with her weak, drooping mother, who had no pleasure in life but her meetings with her child, and those imbittered by Dorset’s unrelaxing adherence to his vow.
Eight dreary years passed away. There was no change in Daniel Prime but a gradual deepening of the lines of his character; or, rather, the one line, the channel to which everything tended, wore deeper and deeper. Not one of all the passions of the human race is so insatiable as avarice. The poet has well selected the wolf as its symbol, always hungry, never satiated—“E dopo ‘l pasto ha piu fama
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che pria” (and, after eating, he is more hungry than before). And if to avarice is added hoarding—a passion without motive, without present contentment or future reward—the folly is complete, the spirit is extinct, the image of God effaced. Prime grew more and more acute at his bargains, and with every acquisition more greedy of gain. Like his prototype, so well described by the satirist, he was always pouring into his grand reservoir from other men’s scanty cisterns, going hither and yon to add to his stores, and withering away for the want of one refreshing draught. So cautiously and securely did he keep within the bounds of legal honesty, that no one could have suspected the fatal trespass for which the inordinate growth of his ruling passion was preparing him. Every circumstance tended to sharpen this passion. The riches which had seemed to him within his grasp were before his eyes, whetting his appetite, like a plentiful table spread in the presence of the hungry man, who is always approaching, but never attains it. He knew the will alienating Dorset’s property from his posterity had been burned—Was there another made? Prime believed not; for Dorset was proverbially open in all his affairs.
Eight years, as we have said, passed away, and Submit was again a mother. Prime, who till this time had been like a rock over which the billows are continually rolling, so that nothing
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that thrives by the kind processes of nature could take root in his sordid soul, now felt something like affection at his heart, and with it came a jealousy and dislike of his eldest child. He hoped the pride of transmitting a name might induce Dorset to transfer his favour, and the boy too was sent to the grandfather to seek his fortune, but in vain. Sibyl had her citadel in the old man’s heart, and no one could dispossess her. She loved her brother, and would gladly have divided all her possessions, even her dearest, her grandfather’s affections, with him. But these were not a transferable treasure. He loved Sibyl better than he had ever loved his own daughter. Sibyl had a mind of her own, independent thought, and free action, and he liked her the better for it. He felt too late that there was no reliance on a machine worked by another’s will.
He had some natural dreads when his favourite approached the marriageable age, and strong likings and dislikings were manifested towards the aspirants for her favour. Fortunately, hers—as if their affections were governed by the same spring—coincided with his; and, finally, when, with untold hopes and purposes, he brought home a distant relative whom he had known and liked as a boy, the full measure of his contentment was filled up by a sudden and mutual liking between the young people.
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All went on smoothly. Dorset was perfectly happy; his own child was like a dropped and forgotten link. Bountiful preparations were made for celebrating the marriage, and Sibyl was maturing a plot for effecting a reconciliation with her mother at this auspicious moment, when all these fair prospects were forever overcast by the sudden death of the old man from a fall from his horse.
While poor Sibyl, in a paroxysm of grief, was lamenting over his lifeless body, and her mother, in more subdued, but far more bitter sorrow, was weeping in silence, Daniel Prime was prowling over the house, searching desks and drawers for a will. None was forthcoming; and with an exulting heart and decent countenance he performed the offices of the occasion. The funeral over, the servants were disposed of, the house shut up, Sibyl removed to her father’s, and he was proceeding to take out letters of administration, when a friend of Dorset returned from a journey, and produced a will deposited with him. The entire of Dorset’s property was bequeathed to his granddaughter. The will was simple and direct. There was no flaw, no pretext for a cavil.
Daniel Prime afterward confessed to a spiritual director and friend, that the thought which first occurred to him after the shock of the discovery of the will was over, was—but we will give it in his own words: “The devil put it into my head that, if Sibyl died a minor,
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and without issue of her body, I was her heir.” “Whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.”
Long before this Aunt Marah had fretted herself into that resting-place which awaits even such harassed and harassing souls as hers, and Daniel Prime was left without even her counsel and sympathy in the final failure of the hopes and plans of years. He was always a man of few words; now he was more moody and brooding than ever. Sibyl had painful recollections of his influence on her childhood; she had since been taught to shun him; she perceived her mother’s fear and dread of him; and now, whenever she met his evil eye, she felt a shiver pass over her as if a blight were upon her. Sad is it when nature’s sweet fountains are turned to bitterness.
When the letters she wrote at this juncture to her absent lover, intimating secret unhappiness, were afterward exhibited, it was believed by the superstitious that she had received some warning of the impending future; but in our rational days we find the natural explanation in the shock she had received from her grandfather’s violent death, and the sadness resulting from the transition from a cheerful home to a murky atmosphere. She loved her mother, but their natural relation was reversed; she was the sustainer, her mother the dependant; and now Sibyl was too weak and dejected to bear the burden. Her little brother
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seems to have been her sole comfort. She often alludes to him in her letters, recounts anecdotes of his manliness, his devotion to her, and always interweaves his destiny with the web of her future life.
The time appointed for her marriage drew near. She would not listen to her father’s suggestion to delay it. The day for her lover’s return arrived. She went out alone, at twilight, to await him at a secluded spot a mile distant from her father’s dwelling, where the road, after winding along the declivity of a steep, wooded hill that descended to the Housatonic, crossed a rickety old bridge. The river, noisy and shallow above the bridge, was there made deep and still by a dam erected a short distance below.
For the first time since her grandfather’s death, Sibyl went out with her natural light step, and her face bright and smiling, and looking, as she cast aside her mourning veil, like the sun beaming forth from a drapery of clouds.
In less than an hour she returned, her face muffled in her veil, her dress disordered, and the agitation of her whole frame betraying emotions that she vainly struggled to conceal. Her mother—whose whole life was an illustration of that axiom made for woman,
“’Tis meet and fit,
In all we feel, to make the heart submit”—
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William, her lover, might yet arrive to-night, or, if he did not, another was coming;” and concluded with that common comfort of the experienced, which passes by the young like idle wind, “we must all learn to bear disappointments!” Sibyl’s mother knew little of the manifestations of feeling, or she would have guessed a different cause than the mere delay of a lover’s return for the horror painted on her child’s countenance. She seemed to have shrank to half her usual size. In reply to her mother, she only said, “I cannot help it; I am disappointed;” and when she heard her father’s footstep, returning at his usual hour, she said, in a half-suffocated voice, “For mercy’s sake, mother, take no more notice of it!”
It was not observed at the time, but Sibyl’s mother afterward remembered, in recalling all the circumstances, that her husband was less reserved than usual; that he mentioned some particulars of business he had been transacting in the village; said he had brought a letter from the postoffice for Sibyl; asked where she was—she had left the room before he entered—and sent her brother with the letter to her, telling him to wait and ask “what news there was in it.”
The boy lingered till called by his father, and then he said, “Sibyl was crying because William was not coming for a week.”
“So much the better! so much the better!” said Prime. He ate heartily, sat for a long time
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looking intently at the embers, and then went to bed, muttering to himself, “Not coming for a week!”
His wife, after waiting till she had sure tokens her husband was sleeping, stole to Sibyl’s room. She was not there! Submit was returning, alarmed, by a back passage, through her boy’s little room, when she found Sibyl sitting by his bedside, her head on the pillow close to his, and her cheek as white as the linen it pressed. She signed to her mother to leave the room, and she obeyed, as she always obeyed the motions of others; but she subsequently confessed that she had vague apprehensions excited. Sibyl did not appear the next morning till her father had gone to his daily occupations. It was evident she had passed a sleepless night. She was all day nervous and restless. In the afternoon, having ascertained that her father was gone to the village, and would not return till late in the evening, she announced to her mother a sudden determination to go to a friend’s, five miles from them, and remain there till her lover’s return. Her mother remonstrated. There was no way of going but on foot, and the rustic girls of those days were not better pedestrians than those of ours. But the walk seemed no obstacle to Sibyl; she only asked that her brother might accompany her through “that dismal bit of woods”—so she called it—and as far as the bridge. To this her mother
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consented; but when, at parting, Sibyl threw her arms round her, and sobbed hysterically on her bosom, she felt some sad presentiment, and wished she had resisted, and kept her children at home.
The time came for the boy’s return. He did not appear. The mother grew anxious. Again and again she went to the window, but there was no sign of him; again and again she fancied she heard his footsteps, but it proved to be the dog tramping up the steps, or some other sound as unlike that of his light tread. At last, beginning to feel that, where happiness is at stake, we never “learn to bear disappointments,” she went forth in quest of him. She traversed the “dismal bit of woods,” crossed and recrossed the bridge—which never could she cross again—and then, calming her mind with the conclusion that Sibyl must have taken her brother to her place of destination, she returned home.
Her husband came from the village, where he had been, as was afterward proved, detained, settling some complicated accounts. On first entering the house, he inquired for Sibyl. His wife told him, in an apologetic tone, as if deprecating his displeasure, that “poor Sibyl seemed as if she could not content herself,” and had gone to spend a week with her friend. He grumbled something about “it being a poor bringing up that made a girl uneasy in her own father’s house,” and,
[p. 240]
as his wife said, seemed to think no more of it, for he was eating his supper as usual, when suddenly he broke off, and asked “if Dorset were abed.” His wife communicated the boy’s absence, and the supposition by which she explained it. Prime was not satisfied, but started up, exclaiming, “He did not go with her!” and after standing for a moment in evident agitation, he added, “I’ll go and look after him,” and left the house, but soon returned, saying, “To-morrow will be time enough.” He went to bed at his customary hour, but not to sleep, as his wife thought, excepting once, for a few moments, when he started up, exclaiming, “No, it is not a dream; it is all mine.” Ah, that word mine!
He was up with the first ray of light, professedly anxious about his boy. There could be no doubt he was intensely so; but, notwithstanding this, one of his neighbours afterward deposed that he saw him, soon after daylight, walking over John Dorset’s cornfield, and pulling up some weeds that, since the proprietor’s death, had, for the first time, been permitted to grow unmolested in the rich soil. After breakfast, he announced his intention of going in quest of his boy. His wife wondered when she saw him set forth on the circuitous road that did not pass over the bridge. He had not long been gone, when some men arrived from the village. One dismounted, entered the house, and
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inquired for Prime; his wife said he was absent, and told the occasion of his absence. There was something that alarmed her in the inquirer’s face. She watched his return to his companions, saw them confer together, and afterward a part of them rode off, while the rest remained lurking about the house.
We must leave her wondering at this procedure, and tormented with apprehensions for her boy, to follow Prime, who, having gone to Sibyl’s friend’s on the pretence of ascertaining if his son were there, and being told that neither he nor Sibyl had been seen there, turned his course, and went up the river to Barrington, where an uncle of his wife resided, who had been observed the preceding evening driving on the road Sibyl had taken, and with whom, as he professed to believe, his children might have gone. Returning from Barrington, he was met by the party in search of him, and, in virtue of a warrant issued by Colonel Ashley, he was taken into custody, and conveyed to that magistrate’s house. He submitted at once, declaring, however, that he was not conscious of having offended against the laws of God or man.
And here we have arrived at that point in the story where the narrator, with whom I began it, became an eye-witness. She was then a slave, belonging to Colonel Ashley—I believe the sole, but certainly the most eminent magistrate in the western part of Massachusetts
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in those days, when either the magistracy made great men, or great men were appointed to the magistracy. I remember seeing him in his extreme old age, when his “youthful hose” was
“A world too wide for his shrunk shank;”
but even then I was impressed with traditionary respect for his magisterial attributes, and for the gentler qualities that tempered the pride of office. He might have sat for the picture of Allworthy, for his temper was ever of the cream of the milk of human kindness.
It was twilight when Prime arrived at his house. He was immediately conducted to the office, where preparations had been made to receive him. When he entered, Colonel Ashley, instead of manifesting the compassion that seemed his instinct, turned away his face, as if an evil spirit in mortal shape had come before him. “Prime was the first guilty person,” said my informer, “that I ever saw the colonel look upon without pity!” Prime was himself undaunted, and was the first to speak. He demanded why he was brought there. Colonel Ashley signed to him to advance, and stand beside the table, and bade his clerk be ready to take notes. Then, after a solemn admonition to Prime to deport himself as became the solemnity of the occasion, he said, “The body of your child, Sibyl Prime, has been found in the river, below Pine Hill bridge, with evident tokens of having been placed there by violent hands.”
[p. 243]
“Who dares say it was I that put her there?” demanded Prime, fiercely.
“It would better befit you to be both still and humble,” replied the magistrate.
“I will be neither till I know who dares accuse me.”
“Miserable man, forbear! you shall both know and see your accuser;” and, turning to the servant, “Call in the witness,” he said.
Prime fixed his eyes on the door through which the witness was to enter, and, for the first time, some fading of colour was evident through his dark, leathery skin. He did not speak. It did not seem to have occurred to him that nature demanded some expression of horror and surprise at hearing of the murder of his child. His heart had ossified under one indurating passion, and he had forgotten the ebb and flows of nature’s current. Yet now the possibility of what might ensue to himself and his possessions thrilled through his frame; and while his eye was fixed with intense eagerness on the door, he vainly tried to subdue the throbbings of his heart with repeating mentally, “There was no witness!” The door was reopened. A witness did appear—his own son! It was at this moment that Daniel Prime’s hair rose and stood like quills upon his head; so said my informant, and I believed her; for, though a woman, her observation and judgment were stronger than her imagination. The boy seemed inspired
[p. 244]
with supernatural strength and intrepidity. He bore, without flinching, the scowling brow and burning glance of his father. “One would have reckoned,” said my eye-witness, “that he had grown ten years older in twenty-four hours.” The usual preliminary forms over, Colonel Ashley asked,
“Did your sister request you to accompany her on the Canaan road yesterday?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did she give any reason for wishing your company?”
“No, sir. She always loved to have me go with her, and I always loved to go.”
“How far did you go?”
“To Pine Hill bridge, sir.”
The examination was for a moment interrupted by a convulsive cough from Prime.
“Did your sister say anything by the way?” proceeded the magistrate.
“Yes, sir. She asked me if I would not be afraid to go back through the woods alone. I told her, not a bit, and asked her if she was afraid; she said, not when I was with her. And then I told her I would go all the way; but she said she should not be afraid after she got over the bridge, and down to the mill, for the road beyond there was not so lonesome.”
“Did she say anything more?”
“Yes, sir. She said she never should come home again, and she cried, and I told her I did not want to live at home when she was
[p. 245]
gone; and then she said she hoped, one of these days, mother and I would come and live with her and William; she said she was not coming to live in grandfather’s house, but as soon as she was married she should move off somewhere.”
“Was anything more said?”
“No, sir; only when we came near the bridge, she squeezed my hand so tight that I told her she hurt me. When we got over the bridge, she told me I must make haste home, and she bid me good-by, and said I must always be very kind to mother—and these were the last words she spoke.”
“Go on, my child. What happened then?”
“I knew there was a sassafras tree that grew on the bank just above, and I wanted some sassafras, so I got over the fence; and when I got up the hill, I thought I’d just go on to Deacon Sam’s Rock, as they call it, and watch Sibyl till she got past the mill, and the minute I stepped on to it I saw him.”
“Saw whom?”
“Father.”
At this point of the testimony Prime’s knees shook together, and he was obliged to support himself by leaning on the colonel’s desk, against which he stood.
“Go on, my poor child,” said the good magistrate.
“He had a club,” continued the boy; “Sibyl had just come to the corner—she heard him,
[p. 246]
and looked back—he struck the club across her face.” The boy paused, and became intensely pale. Colonel Ashley passed his arm around him, and supported him.
“And what then?” he asked.
“Then,” replied the boy, with a burst of tears and sobs, “then Sibyl fell back
and—died—sir.”
“He lies! he lies!” cried Prime, vehemently. Colonel Ashley commanded silence, soothed the boy, and bade him proceed.
“Then, sir, he dragged her down the bank, and through that miry place where the trees are so thick, and he put her in the river, and put a stone on her head, and another on her feet.”
“Did he then come away?”
“Yes, sir, a few steps; but he went back again, and got her purse out of her pocket, and put it inside his leather pocket-book.”
“Lord have mercy on us!” murmured Colonel Ashley. After a moment’s pause of horror at this proof of the man’s cupidity, he asked the boy “if he knew whether his sister had any money in her purse?”
“Yes, sir, she had five gold pieces that grandfather gave her. She was showing them to mother only two days ago; and he took them, and chinked them in his hand.”
“Did your father then leave the spot?”
“Yes, sir; he got over the fence, and went across the lots very fast.”
[p. 247]
“Why did you not scream when first you saw him?”
“It was not half a minute, sir, before he struck, and I never thought of any harm till it was all done.”
“Why did you not then scream?”
“I don’t know, sir; I suppose I could not.”
“If you were so frightened, why did you not run away?”
“I don’t know, sir. After Sibyl fell dead, I can’t remember about feeling afraid, or feeling anything. I only stood there and looked. After he was gone, I began to think. I felt as if I could not go home and tell mother; then I thought I would stay in the woods till I died, and nobody would ever know he did it; and the night came—oh! such a long night! I did not sleep—I think I shall never sleep again. When daylight came, I felt as if I should burst if I did not tell somebody. I thought of you, sir. I remembered mother telling me you never punished anybody more than you could help, and so I came here, sir.”
Here ended the poor boy’s story, which hardly seemed to require the corroborating proof afterward derived, from finding Sibyl’s purse within her father’s pocket-book, and from ascertaining that he had informed himself of her intention of leaving home on that fatal afternoon.
It is hardly necessary to add, that Prime was committed for trial. After his trial and
[p. 248]
condemnation to death, he confessed he had made an attempt on his child’s life on the day preceding the murder, and near the same place. He had been baffled by the sudden appearance of a horseman on the road.
It appears that the boy’s grief at the fatal result of his accusation of his father so moved Colonel Ashley’s kind heart, that he accompanied the child to Boston, and seconded his affecting appeal to the governor in behalf of his parent. It was alleged that the man’s mind was so clouded and diseased by the predominance of his ruling passion, that he might be regarded as insane. This consideration, combining with compassion for his unfortunate and respectable family, induced the governor to commute the sentence of death to banishment.
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
Daniel Prime
Subject
The topic of the resource
Avarice, murder.
Description
An account of the resource
A father disinherits his daughter because he disapproves of the man she marries. The husband's plot to regain his father-in-laws estate leads to fatal consequences.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Tales and Sketches, Second Series.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Harper & Brothers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1844
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anna Mullis, L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Originally published in The Magnolia, edited by Henry William Herbert, 281-311. New York: Bancroft & Holley, 1837 [pub. 1836]. Also collected in The Irish Girl and Other Tales, 95-128, 1850, and in Stedman, Edmund Clarence and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, eds. A Library of American Literature: An Anthology in Eleven Volumes, Vol. V , 199-215, 1891.
Language
A language of the resource
English
1836
1844
As You Like It
avarice
colonial New England
colonies
covetousness
Ecclesiastes 10:8
filial piety
George Crabbe
inheritance
magistrate
maiden aunt
marriage
Massachusetts
murder
Shakespeare
slavery
Tales and Sketches
The Magnolia
-
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fb2de1925882ffc57b9503afdf9c5133
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
1858
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1858.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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<p>[Miss Sedgwick]</p>
<p>THE SLAVE AND SLAVE-OWNER.</p>
<p> "I would rather be anything than a slave, — except a slave-owner!" said a wise and good man. The slave-owner inflicts wrongs, — the slave but suffers it. He has friends and champions by thousands. Some men live only to defend and save him. Many are willing to fight for him. Some even to die for him. </p>
<p> The most effective romance of our times has been written for slaves. The genius of more than one of our best poets has been consecrated to them. They divide the hearts and councils of our great nation. They are daily remembered in the prayers of the faithful. They are the most earnest topic of the christian world.</p>
<p> But the slave-owner! who weeps, who prays, who lives, who dies for him! True, he is of the boasted Saxon race, or descended from the brilliant Gaul, or gifted Celt. He is enriched by the transmitted civilization of all ages. He has been nurtured by christian institutions. To him have been opened the fountains of Divine truth. But</p>
<p>[25]</p>
<p>from this elevation he is to be dragged down by the mill-stone of slavery.</p>
<p> If he be a rural landlord, he looks around: upon, his ancestral possessions, and sees the curse of slave-ownership upon them, — he knows the time must come when "the field shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall." To him the onward! tendencies of the age are reversed. His movement is steadily backward.</p>
<p> To the slave are held out the rewards of fortitude, of long suffering, of meekness, of patience in tribulation. What and where are the promises to the slave-owner?</p>
<p> Thousands among them are in a false position. They are the involuntary maintainers of wrong, and transmitters of evil. Hundreds among them have scrupulous consciences and tender feelings. They use power gently. They feed their servants bountifully. They nurse the sick kindly,—and devote weary days to their instruction. But alas! they live under the laws of slave-owners. They are forbidden to teach the slave to read, write, or cipher, to give them the means of independent progress and increasing light. Their teaching; is as bootless as the labor of Sysyphus! most wearisome and disheartening.</p>
<p> The great eras of domestic life, bright to the thoughtless slave, are dark with forecasting shadows to the slave-owner. The mother cannot for-</p>
<p>[26]</p>
<p>get her sorrows, because a man-child is born. If she dare contemplate his future, she sees that the activities of his nature must be repressed, his faculties but half developed, his passions stimulated by irresponsible power, inflamed by temptation, and solicited by convenient opportunity. She knows that his path in life must be more and more entangled as he goes onward, — darker and darker with the ever-deepening misery of this cruel institution.</p>
<p> Is it a “merry marriage-bell' that rings in the ear of a slave-owning mother for the bridal of her daughter? Does not her soul recoil from the possible (probable?) evils before her child; to be placed, perchance, on an isolated plantation, environed by natural enemies to; see, it may be, the brothers and sisters of her own children follow their slave-mother to the field, or severed from her to be sold at the slave-market ?</p>
<p> Compared with these miseries of the slave-owner, what are the toils and stripes of the slave? what his labor without stimulus or requital? what his degradation to a chattel? what the deprivation of security to the ties of kindred, and the annulling of that relation which is their source and chiefest blessing ?</p>
<p> The slave looks forward with ever-growing hope to the struggle that must come. He joyfully "smells the battle afar off." The slave-owner folds his arms, and shuts his eyes in paralyzing</p>
<p>[27]</p>
<p>despair. He hears the fearful threatenings of the gathering storm. He knows it must come, — to him fatally. It is only a question of time!</p>
<p>Who would not " rather be a slave than a slave-owner ? "</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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 Slave and Slave Owner"
Subject
The topic of the resource
Abolitionism, slavery.
Description
An account of the resource
Abolitionist sketch published in a giftbook created for the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society (1858).
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Autographs for Freedom,</em> ed. Julia Griffiths.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
John P. Jewett and Company
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1858
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
1858
abolitionism
anti-slavery
Autographs for Freedom
Celt
gift book
Julia Griffiths
plantation
Saxon
slave-owners
slavery
slaves
Sysyphus