1 10 3 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/9f5dab6a34f5297b8a7230a4916a07ee.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=lSLSXvhUXbexnBaSD8bZ%7ERi%7EX-u3bN4iB4tIYHCGE25LfQAD%7EXqAz4BIb9dpK5c8WwfRmhYlHWHyaLMtIXOpOBQYhjZ8CsFjmo2nryHtRkivIw9HPkHHRICtJpmXjyGCtFxHDnkrLmjYyKzxZ-lDXICra60JlTlip6CMBND5UDPeFebxilImuwmPtfJ1muwVtmGFWvphr6hsLuWGCDqiTcufnmiU5ADiFPj6y6qz%7Ey8QK2vwzGwtrcXSpaov49JU5zojRr7WRthc-bsWY4iM-r8umvrqWdXwvVoMJfOBk4NeGFz8vEFqRw%7ELSB%7EFPkWNjtXJDndyoKXVBG5S1YT0rg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f993435fae157841b6f55ff2f3841f64 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1831 Subject The topic of the resource Stories published in 1831. Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. BERKELEY JAIL. By the Author of Hope Leslie. None are all evil. Byron. The circumstances of the following story, though they transpired within the last thirty years, are already nearly forgotten, or are only accurately remembered by those who are passing into the ranks of the shadowy existence – ‘the oldest inhabitant,’ by whom they are transmitted in the prosing winter’s tale, to the thirsty ears of boys and girls. I have diligently collected the particulars, partly from the records of the judicial proceedings in Berkeley county, partly from tradition, and partly from memory – for the events formed an epoch in my quiet childhood, similar to that which might be made by an earthquake, an inundation, the eruption of a volcano, or any other interruption of the silent process of nature. [14] Within a township which I shall take the liberty to call Shelburne, stood, and still stands, a little removed from the village, and on the brow of a hill kindly sloping to the south, a mansion, which thirty years since was occupied by Colonel Vassal, and for almost a century preceding was in the possession of his ancestors. The projecting upper story marks the period of its erection to have been when Shelburne was a frontier settlement, and the houses were thus constructed to facilitate their defense against the Indians. It has the marked physiognomy of the pilgrim architecture – the upright roof, dormant windows, and door posts carved with hollyhocks and full blown roses, all as perpendicular and rectangular as the unbending proprietor of a century since. Its little antique court yard, with its scragged peach trees half hidden by overgrown lilac bushes – its superannuated damask rose bushes and high box borders, are quite enough to throw a modern horticulturist into a fever, but they were the pride and delight of Colonel Vassal. Beyond this boundary, nature, then and now, though now somewhat more adorned, smiles around the mansion in free unspoiled beauty. Elms of magnificent growth, the sugar maple with its masses of dense foliage, and mountain ashes with their palmy clusters of bright scarlet berries, indi- [15] cate the taste and refinement of the early proprietors; and the bright little stream, which winds and sparkles through the meadows that repose at the foot of the hill, seems to send up, from its wooded and fragrant banks, the homage of nature, a spontaneous tribute to the senses of its legitimate lord. Colonel Vassal was a gentleman of the old school, and would have continued so, if he had lived to the present day of ‘don’t care’ and slipshod manners, for he had the essence of gentlemanliness in his spirit – delicacy, self-sacrifice, and an instinctive care of the feelings of every human being. He might have been a little overdoing and ennuyant in his courtesies, but the spirit went with the letter. The Colonel served in the French war, and the laurels he then won in the service of the mother country probably strengthened his ties to it, for his loyalty, though pure as gold, was not, when the revolutionary war broke out, found to be a transmutable metal, that could be fused into patriotism. To have opposed the current of what, in his honest judgment, the Colonel deemed rebellion, would at Shelburne have been madness, as well as folly. He therefore maintained a strict neutrality as to any overt acts, and gently floated down the troubled current of the times, now and then slightly molested by hot-headed partisans, [16] but generally protected by the sentiment which his strict honour, his kind-heartedness, and generosity could not fail to inspire. His estate, however, suffered the common deterioration of property at the time, and unfortunately he was not bred to any business, nor gifted with that art which, in the language of the country, makes the most of a shilling. His keen neighbours would have ‘scorned to take the advantage’ of the Colonel’s uncalculating temper, but he was always sure to give it to them. Year after year his income was reduced and his capital abated, till, as was happily said by my friend in a similar case, ‘nobody could guess how his family was clothed and fed, but by supposing that the habit of eating, drinking, and wearing clothes was, like all other habits, when once fixed, not to be shaken off.’ This original solution of a common mystery did not entirely explain the enigma of the Colonel’s subsistence in his accustomed style. He had an old family servant who bore the nursery appellation of Mammy, and who was fully as devoted to the Colonel, in affection and effort, as Caleb, that prince and flower of servingmen, was to the master of Ravenswood, and far more ingenious in the arts of saving and twisting and twining, than any thing of mankind ever was or ever will be. The wants of Colonel [17] Vassal’s household were few; its numbers, alas! were reduced. Death had removed his wife, and child after child, till only one remained, Fanny Vassal, the last hope – the sweet and sufficient solace of her father. She was ‘The gentle and beautiful – The child of grace and genius.’ There was a thriving young attorney in Shelburne by the name Levi Carter. He might have sat for the admirable picture of Gilbert Glossin, Esq. If he never committed equal atrocities, it was because a kind Providence saved him from equal temptation and convenient opportunity. He belonged to the large and detestable class of number one people, who think, hope, desire, plan and act only for themselves, and who are alone restrained, in the promotion of their interests, by the coarse fear of the law of the land. This man ‘fell in love’ – we use the current, much abused phrase – with Fanny Vassal. His wooing of course was the subject of village gossip, and the popular opinion went in favour of his success. A remarkable expression of dissent from this opinion from one Sam Whistler, an Indian game seller, was reported to Carter – “Miss Fanny marry Levi Carter! [18] when ye see the innocent lamb seek the company of the fox, and the pretty dove mate with the hawk, then ye’ll see Miss Fanny the wife of Levi Carter!” This speech happened to be repeated on the very morning after Carter received a decided negative from Miss Vassal, and a positive refusal from the Colonel, who was never positive before, to interpose his influence. As there is neither proportion nor distinctness in minds where there is no principle of truth or justice, Carter blended the miserable author of this petty offence, with the more dignified objects of his mean and malignant resentment. It was the first link in a chain that led to fatal consequences. Carter’s pretensions had passed and were forgotten by every one but himself, when the curiosity of the villagers of Shelburne was more powerfully exercised by the arrival of a nephew of Colonel Vassal, a captain in the corps of royal engineers, who was stationed somewhere in the wilds of Canada, and who, having obtained leave of absence for a winter to travel to the States, had come to Shelburne to pay his uncle a visit. It was no wonder to those who had seen, known and loved Fanny Vassal, that her cousin, having seen her, should grow indifferent about seeing any thing else in all our United States; nor was it a [19] marvel that after knowing the frank, warm-hearted and accomplished young soldier, she, like the gentle Miranda, should have ‘No ambition to see a goodlier man.’ Before the winter was over, with more love than prudence, they were united. As Fanny could not or would not leave her father, it had been settled that Captain Vassal should return to Canada early in the spring, dispose of his commission, and come back to seek his fortune in the United States. He went, and, in attempting to cross one of the Canadian rivers on the ice, he was drowned. Poor Fanny! Her heart was too tender, and her love too concentrated to endure the shock. In a few months she was borne to the village church yard: but her memory lived; it lived in the increased kindness of the Colonel’s friends; in the patient grief written on his monumental face; in an infant boy; the memorial of her sufferings, and the heir of his mother’s wealth – the love of all that loved her. As the infant expanded into boyhood, no eye but his grandfather’s and mammy’s could discern in him any resemblance to the blond beauty of his mother. His high bold forehead, black curling hair, bright restless eye lit with the fires of his ardent spirit, unfolded the dawn of a mind that promised a bright [20] futurity. He had nothing of the quiet acquiescent temperament of his old relative, but he had strong affections, and they were developed by his intercourse with him. He often put his little hands to the tasks of aiding his grandfather in cherishing a rose bush that had been planted by his mother. Everything else in the court yard grew in wild luxuriance, or died unheeded. This was pruned and watered and trained, as if instinct with her sweet spirit. His mother’s guitar hung beside the fireplace, and Charles would watch the old man has he leaned his head against it and his white lock fell over its broken strings, and silently creep into his lap and lay his head on his bosom, and this express the deep and almost mystical sympathy that united them, and which made him feel (to borrow the expression of the beautiful deaf mute, whose life has recently fallen a sacrifice to her filial tenderness) as if his heart grew close to his parent’s. Time passed on, and has brought us, somewhat slowly, to Charles’s fourteenth year, and the incidents of the boy’s life which may indicate subsequent greatness. The same principle that stirs a feather impels a planet. I must remind my readers, before exposing my young hero to the chastisements of a woman’s tongue, [21] that Mammy was of the privileged order of faithful old servants; that she had to strain every nerve to maintain a decent appearance and that she was often at her wit’s end, to keep the wheels of her little empire in motion. It was Monday afternoon, and she had just put the last flourish on her well scoured and sanded kitchen floor, when Charles entered, with a string of game in one hand and a gun in the other, his shoes and pantaloons bearing ample tokens of his having been ‘Over hill, over dale Thorough bush, thorough briar.’ He was followed by a lean, hungry dog, who, by keeping close to the heels of his principal and dropping his head and tail, indicated that he was aware of the fearful presence into which he had ventured. Mammy’s tongue always sounded as quick as an alarm bell; “What, under the canopy, Charles, does this mean? – stop, see how you are tracking the floor! your new pantaloons on too! Get out, you hound!” she continued, giving the expecting dog a blow with her broom-stick that sent him howling out of the house. “Oh hush, Mammy,” replied Charles, in a deprecating [22] voice, “Sam is on the steps: here, Biter, here!” the dog bounded in again. “Now, Mammy, don’t scold, indeed I forgot to scrape my feet – there now,” he added, rising on his tiptoes, leaning over the old woman’s shoulder, and giving a hearty smack to her withered cheek – “there now, Mammy, we are friends again, are we not?” An affectionate kiss is a panacea to old and young. The muscles of Mammy’s face relaxed, and her voice softened, as she replied, “Yes, Charlie, friends; but do drive out that nasty dog.” “Excuse me, Mammy, I can’t; you must give him a bone, and draw a mug of cider for Sam.” “A bone, child – high! the last bone in the house is as clean as the fatted calf’s; and a mug of cider for Sam, indeed! no, it is a shame and a sin to give cider to a drunken Indian.” “Oh, hush, Mammy, hush, for pity’s sake. Look here – do you see these ducks? – elegant, are they not?” “They are plump; they’ll do the Colonel’s heart good, poor old gentleman; he has had no more stomach for his victuals to-day than a teething baby.” “Then remember, Mammy, we could not have got them but for Sam; and these partridges – beauties, as fat as butter – and four of them.” [23] “Did Sam kill them all?” “No, indeed, I killed one; but the best of it all is, that as we were coming across the bridge we met Mr. Carter.” “Did you? the black-hearted fellow!” There was no neutral ground in Mammy’s mind for Mr. Carter; he never passed it without a shot. “Well, he stopped and told Sam he had met him just in time; that he had company at his house, and wanted his game. ‘Turn round, Sam,’ said he, ‘and carry it to my house, and I’ll give you a dollar for it, and a glass of brandy into the bargain.’” “What a shame to tempt the poor creater with brandy,” interrupted Mammy, with a most virtuous nod. “Well, what did Sam say, Charlie?” “He shook his head.” “Did he?” “Yes, indeed! ‘Why you rascal,’ says Mr. Carter, ‘you don’t expect to get more than a dollar? well, well, I must have it, so go along with it, and I’ll give you a dollar and a half.’ “ ‘Squire,’ says Sam, looking up in his keen way, you know, Mammy – ‘Squire, all the money you have in the world can’t buy my game.’” “Good, good!” exclaimed Mammy. “ ‘What do you mean, fellow?’ says Mr. Carter. [24] ‘I mean, Squire, to give the game to your betters – it’s for the Colonel.’ ” “Well said, Whistler!” exclaimed Mammy, and setting down her broom, on which she had hitherto rested, she brought forth a bit of cold lamb which she had husbanded for the Colonel’s supper, cut it from the bone, which she threw to Biter, called Sam into her kitchen, set him down to her freshly scoured table, and in spite of her high principles, that a moment before had been stern enough for the head of a ‘Temperance Society,’ she filled and twice refilled the mug with cider. Sam, or Sam Whistler (for Sam, as well as Cicero, had his descriptive cognomen), was a full-blooded Indian, I believe of the Seneca tribe. How he came to be a lopped branch from the parent tree was not known; the only soil he loved or honoured was that in which it grew. Accident probably threw him in his childhood among the whites, and the chains with which habit binds, even the most lawless, kept him there. But though in the heart of a civilized community, he adopted none of its usages. His tall and finely moulded figure was habited in a half savage costume. His crownless and almost brimless hat was banded with the skin of a rattlesnake, and trophied with the plumage of his last game. His outer garment [25] was a demi-coat, demi-blanket, fastened at the waist with a wampum belt, and his feet (when shod at all) were shod with a motley article compounded of moccasin and shoe. His home was a hut far in the depths of a wood that supplied the town of Shelburne with fuel. This hut was the resort of all those outlaws and vagrants that hand on the skirts of civilized society, as birds of prey hover over a cultivated land. Whistler honoured by observance the conjugal notions of his people, and, in the number and succession of his wives, his establishment rivalled the wigwam of a western chief. For the rest, he had the common vices so generously communicated by the whites to the vanishing race, in exchange for their broad lands and bright streams. He sustained his numerous consumers by hunting, fishing, basket and broom making, and such other little arts as did not, in his estimation, degrade him to the level of civilization. Towards the whites he had the sense of wrong that pervades his people, ‘And though the voice of wrath a sacred call To pay the injuries of some on all.’ The Colonel and his little household were among the few exceptions to this deep-seated and cherished sentiment. The Colonel was a magistrate, but he had not one spark of the Brutus in his kindly nature, and, as his more astute neighbours thought, he [26] had often been culpably remiss in suffering Whistler’s petty offenses to pass without judicial investigation. Whistler felt his obligation to the Colonel’s long suffering, and besides, he gratefully remembered that Miss Fanny, always generous and pitiful, had, during a rigorous winter, sent provisions and blankets to his wives, subjects far without the pale of the charities of the good matrons of Shelburne. Whistler never forgot this kindness, and he returned it in many a tribute from flood and field to the Colonel’s table, and in instructing Charles, or, as he called him, his young ‘Eagle of Delight,’ in all the mysteries of fishing and woodcraft, so that before the boy was twelve years old, he knew the haunts of the game, and the lurking places of the trout, the shyest of the finny race, better than the oldest sportsman in the country. Whistler’s lasting and effective gratitude was one of the lights that relieved the dark shadows of his character. There was another – a feeling of innate and indestructible superiority, which at times imparted dignity to his expressions and loftiness to his bearing, when there seemed to come from his soul revelations of a noble origin and high destiny, and he forgot himself and almost made others forget his actual squalid condition. Carter, by all legal shifts, by [27] buying up notes and bonds and mortgages, acquired, at a cheap rate, a title to Colonel Vassal’s landed property, and claims beyond to a considerable amount. On the day following his encounter with Whistler, and, as was afterwards adjudged at all the tea-tables and lounging-places in Shelburne, impelled by the sting his pride then received – it is the last drop that makes the cup run over – he sent a deputy sheriff to Colonel Vassal’s with a writ, commanding the officer in the usual form ‘to attach the real and personal estate of the defendant, and for want thereof to take his body.’ He probably expected that the Colonel would apply to his neighbours for bail, and he well knew they would not permit the venerable old man to suffer the indignity of being put within the limits of the county jail, which was eight miles distant from Shelburne. But the Colonel was now broken down by age and infirmities, the habit of his mind was passive submission, and he thought nothing but literal compliance with the requisitions of the law. He seemed stunned and bewildered, but he betrayed no emotion. Once, indeed, he asked for Charles, and on being told that he was gone to the next village, he muttered, “Thank God – poor boy!” He seemed quite deaf to the cries and remonstrances of Mammy, who treated [28] the sheriff, who most unwillingly executed his office, as if he were a highway robber. There was a strange mixture of consciousness and inanity in the Colonel’s preparations to accompany the sheriff. He took down poor Fanny’s guitar, blew the dust away that had settled under the chords, and passed his trembling fingers over them. Alas! the resemblance of its unmeaning and discordant sounds to that nicer instrument which seemed suddenly to have been crushed, struck even Mammy’s coarse perceptions. “It’s as shattered as his mind,” she murmured. “Take it, Mammy,” he said, “and put it in your chest,” and turning to the sheriff he added with a faint smile, “I believe it would be of no use to Mr. Carter, it would not sell.” He then combed down his thin gray hairs in his customary way before putting on his hat, and said, in his usual manner, “Farewell, Mammy; take care of my boy, and look after every thing, and mind and tell David to put Lightfoot in the chaise and come for me before dark.” It was already nearly dark, and a cold October evening. David, an old family servant, had been dead many a year, and Lightfoot and the old chaise, long, long before, had passed into other hands, and Mammy, as she listened to these senseless orders, wept aloud. “Oh, it’s broke him all to pieces!” [29] she exclaimed: “it will kill him, I’m sure of it!” She was right. A predisposition to paralysis, combining with the effect of the shock and the unwonted exposure to the evening air, proved fatal, and before the next morning the good old man was released from his accumulated burden of age and grief. His body was brought back to his home, and the good people of Shelburne assembled, almost en masse, to testify their respect for his innocent life and sympathy for his sad death. Carter knew too well how to play his part, to be absent from this assembly, though when he met glances from of detestation from many an eye, and his ears caught but half-suppressed curses from many lips, he felt that there were sharper punishments than the laws can inflict. Then, as now, in many New England villages, the office of bearer retained its original import, and was no sinecure. Hearses were an unknown luxury. The young and the vigorous preceded the coffin, and alternately bore it on their shoulders. The procession was formed, Mammy and Charles walking next the body. Their honest grief neither feared observation, nor thought of it. Charles forgot that it was not manly to cry, and Mammy forgot every thing, but that she was following to the grave the beloved old master in whose service her hair had grown gray. [30] Not far from them, and parallel to the line of the procession stalked along Sam Whistler, followed by his dog Biter. It was the first time he had ever been seen participating in any ceremony or usage of the villagers, and their feelings were touched by this extraordinary tribute to the Colonel’s memory. It was evident that Whistler felt the awkwardness of his conspicuous and novel position; he sometimes bounded forward, in a sort of Indian half trot, to the head of the procession, then fell back to the rear, but for the most part he was near Charles, and it was manifest that the living divided with the dead the honour of his presence. The procession halted. The bearers were to be changed, and Carter advanced with others to assure his portion of the burden. He had just raised his hands to transfer the coffin to his shoulder, when Whistler sprang forward, pushed him aside, and placing his own shoulder under the coffin, muttered, “The murderer touch the murdered? – no! no!” Carter was compelled to submit to the indignity; altercation would only have rendered his dishonour more glaring, and he slunk back, angry and mortified, to his former station. Death in this instance, as in others, did one of its appointed offices; it awakened active kindness for the [31] bereaved. A friend of Colonel Vassal, soon after his death, procured a midshipman’s commission for Charles, and Mammy found a happy home, having in her own energies the abundant means of independence. As may be supposed, Carter did not forget the humiliation he had endured on the day of the funeral. His mind was like bad liquor which has no purifying principle, and never works itself clear. He wreaked his resentment upon Sam by every species of legal annoyance, and it must be confessed that the poor outlaw afforded him opportunities for frequent inflictions, within the letter of the law. Sam, for the most part, nourished his resentment in silence, but once or twice he had been betrayed into saying, that “the Squire had best take care, or he would have the worst of it.” Hostilities had been growing more serious for some weeks, and Carter, to whom Sam’s threats had been reported, began to feel some forebodings of Indian revenge, that suggested to him the policy of driving him away. Accordingly he seized upon Sam’s next offence as a pretext, and availing himself of some obsolete puritanical by-law, he sent a constable to Sam’s forest-hut to warn him, as a public nuisance, to leave the town of Shelburne within twelve hours; in case of his failure to obey the mandate, [32] his hut would be pulled down over his head, and burnt to the ground. It happened that when this mandate arrived, Whistler had just procured an unusual quantity of spirits for a vigil, which was to be kept on the occasion of the burial of an infant child. The grave was not far from the hut, and a panic just then pervading the country about the ‘resurrection men,’ Sam, with a guest, one Ira, a mulatto, had determined to secure the safety of the little defunct. As soon as the man of the law had performed his duty and departed, the women (always ‘tim’rous beastie’) counselled a temporary removal. Ira, too, who was a bird of passage that deemed a perch on one bough just as good as another, advocated the policy of a retreat. Whistler heard them through, and then, after taking a deep draught from his jug, said, “Ye may all go, like scared pigeons; I’ll not budge a foot – ‘pull down my hut!’ – what care I? Let them that live under broad roofs and sleep on soft beds fear. Carter, and all his race to back him, can’t harm me. Let them strike down the poles that shelter us; there are more in the forest; and if there were not, do I fear to lay my head on the bare-ground? – the earth is my mother. Do I fear the storms? – they are kinder than those that have driven my people beyond the great waters No, no; ye may all go, but I will not move while one clod of [33] earth is here for my foot to stand upon. If the fire on my hearth-stone is put out, Carter shall repent it.” Whistler’s resolution, as is often the case when a resolution is found to be immovable, was applauded. The women opened their steaming cauldron. The rude but savoury supper was served. The jug was freely passed. Whistler’s thirst was made insatiate by his roused passions, and the next day when Carter’s emissaries arrived on the spot, they found him laying across his child’s grave, in a state of brutal intoxication. Ira was near him, not quite unconscious, though his brain was completely muddled. The women had prudently absconded with their children. The hut, then, according to the legal warrant, was raised to the ground, and fire set to the dry poles. On the same day Carter went out, as usual, to take his afternoon walk. He stopped on a little eminence that overlooked the long tract of wood that skirted Shelburne on the eastern side, and in whose depths Whistler’s hut had been sheltered. It was a cloudless, finely tempered summer’s afternoon. The air was freighted with the fragrance of the coming evening. The shadows were stealing over hill and valley, leaving here and there bright patches of sunshine. The matrons were sitting at their doors in [34] their clean caps and calicoes, with their infant broods about them. The farmers were driving home their last creaking loads from their rich meadows. Little rustics were hieing to the village with their baskets of wild berries, and the happy boys were whistling home from pasture after their cows. But it was not this sweet picture of ‘country contentments’ that arrested Carter’s eye, or touched his sordid spirit. He had paused on that eminence to gaze on the light blue smoke that rose from the ruins of poor Whistler’s dwelling, and curled over the wood as if some instinct made it linger there. It was a feeling, as paltry as malignant, that made him exult in a triumph over such an enemy. Had he been at that moment inspired with one hour’s prescience, how would his exultation have been changed to fear and dread and horror. In one hour his body was found on that spot a reeking corpse. A cap identified as Ira’s, and Whistler’s well known basket were found near him, and suspicion, or rather belief, immediately fixed on these persons as the perpetrators of the crime; and though there might have been some who, in their secret souls, thought Carter had not suffered very far beyond his deserts, yet murder excites a universal sentiment of horror and desire of retribution, and all united in a vigorous pursuit of the supposed offenders. They were found [35] together and both taken, and, before the close of the following day, were lodged in Berkeley county jail. Ira appeared, like common criminals, eager for life, and anxious to obtain the best counsel. He denied in public, and to his lawyer in private, any participation in the murder of Carter. He denied also any knowledge of the means by which he came to his death. He did not intimate any suspicion of Whistler, but he asserted that they were separated during the afternoon of the murder, and he accounted plausibly for their being found together the next day. After some faltering he said, in explanation of his cap being found near the body, that it fitted Sam as well as it did himself, leaving it to be understood, without saying so, that the cap had been worn by Sam. Whistler neither confessed nor denied the fact of the murder. When examined before the officers of justice he reserved a dogged silence, excepting repeated expressions of exulting, savage satisfaction in Carter’s death. When asked to select counsel for his trial, he refused, saying, “He knew no right white people had to try him, and if they would do it, they might have it all their own way.” Counsel was then assigned him by the court, and to the gentleman who undertook the hopeless task of defending him, he preserved the same obstinate silence and indifference. [36] The prisoners were confined in the same cell, and it was observed that Ira was sycophantic in his devotion to Whistler, while Whistler treated him with a kind of churlish contempt. Ira was like one under the influence of strong fear, watchful of every word and motion, strictly decorous and respectful; while Whistler showed no other feeling than that yawning, snarling weariness which a wild animal manifests when imprisoned in a cage. Ira was first put on trial. It was proved that Carter had come to his death by a single discharge of one gun, and Ira was acquitted. After the verdict was pronounced, he seemed mainly anxious not to be reconducted to Whistler’s cell for a moment, and nervously fearful of again seeing him. When this was reported to Whistler, he laughed scornfully, shook his head, and said, “Ira is half white.” When Whistler was put to the bar and asked the usual question, ‘guilty or not guilty?’ he rose, stretched out his arm and answered, “I’m glad he’s killed; if that’s being guilty, make the most on’t.” No other answer could be obtained from him. The trial proceeded. The impression of his guilt was so fixed, that scarcely any testimony could have saved him, and there was none in his favour. All the [37] circumstances of his long existing feud with Carter were remembered and related; his repeated threats of vengeance, and various other unfavorable particulars, which the ingenious reader will recollect. As if to remove the least shadow of doubt of his guilt, a prisoner, who had been in the same cell with Ira and Whistler, testified that he heard Sam say, in a low emphatic whisper, to Ira’s wife (who had been permitted to visit her husband), ‘I killed him.’ The jury, without leaving their box, gave their verdict of guilty. Some said the prisoner was asleep when it was pronounced. It was certain that his eyes were closed, and that there was not on his countenance the slightest indication of sensation. When asked by the court if he knew any reason why sentence of death should not be pronounced on him, he started, and asked fiercely, “What good would it do me if I did? No! no! I have but one thing to say – send for one of my own people to hang me; I want no white fingers to make a button of my neck.” All were shocked at the poor wretch’s obduracy, but there were many persons of the neighbourhood who had known him a great while, and had kindly feeling towards him. Making allowance for the provocations he had received, for the habits of his life, and for the principle of revenge which [38] he considered virtue, they would have rejoiced in his pardon. One of these persons, a man respected through the country for his wisdom, as well as humanity, told Sam that he would head a petition to the governor for his life. “Thank ye, thank ye kindly,” replied Whistler, for the first time softened; “but I don’t wish it; they have carried matters so far now, I would not take a pardon from them.” The project was therefore abandoned. There was one individual that, like the Duke of Argyle’s follower who prayed ‘the Lord stand by our side right or wrong,’ hoped from the first to the last that Whistler, guilty or not guilty, would get clear. This individual was our friend Mammy; but her feelings as well as some important circumstances, will be best conveyed in her own simple language, in a letter addressed to Charles Vassal. ‘To Mr. Charles Vassal Midshipman on board the United States Ship -----. ‘My dear Charlie: – These few lines, you will know, come from your old Mammy, though, owing to my failing sight, I cannot write so straight and sightly as formerly. ‘I trust these will find you safe returned from the East or West Indies – which is it? I know they are different places, though I never can remember [39] which is which. I enjoy but poor health lately, partly owing to worrying about Whistler. I can’t forget his trouble was ’casioned by his friendship for our family (Mammy always identified herself with the Vassal family), and it seems, Charles, it does, as if every thing that tried to prop up the old stricken tree was blasted. It is now two months since I wrote you about the trial, and his last day draws nigh, being one fortnight from next Friday. Poor Whistler! he has some bright spots in his heart – some places where you may say the sun breaks through the clouds; witness his often kindness to the Colonel, his love for you, Charlie, and his lifting the sods after your poor mother was buried, to lay a pair of moccasons on the coffin. It was an Indian notion, but did not it betoken a kind o’ human feeling? Well, I have done what I could to make the time pass away for him, and if I had done wrong, the Lord forgive me. You well know Charlie, I am an enemy to all spirituous liquor, and neither take it, nor willingly give it to others; but poor Whistler! Lord sakes it’s Indian natur! It was solitary for him, that was used to roaming the sweet wild woods, to be shut up in a stench cell! He needed the comfort and forgetfulness of it; and as to preparing for eternity, I’m sure I wish for it as much as the members can; but la me! he’ll never [40] do that in a reg’lar way. He does not care one straw for all the minister says, but he has some soaring thoughts of his own – religious I don’t dare to call them, though it does seem as if the Almighty had breathed them into his soul – where else could he get them, Charlie? – he an Indian – and the life he has led.’ Mammy’s letter was broken off, and the remainder bore the date of the following day. ‘Since writing the above, dear Charlie, I had a chance to go to see Whistler, and thinking he might have some message to you, I left my letter till I came back – it was well I did! He was glad to see me, and soon asked the jailor to leave us alone together. I told him your ship was daily expected. You remember the low deep sound he makes when any thing touches his heart-spring; twice he repeated it, then patted Biter – they have let his dog stay with him – then he looked up in my face and said, in the softest voice I ever heard from him, ‘I would die content if I could see him once more – if he would but come and stand by me at the last.’ “Ah!’ said I, “Charlie’s stout-hearted, but so pitiful, I misdoubt he could not bear it.’ “Ogh!’ said he, ‘I am sure he can stand it, if I can live through it.’ I smiled, and he said scornfully, ‘Do you think it’s the death struggle I speak of? – no, I fear not that; but to have my hands tied behind me, and to be stared and gaped at, like a caged bear, by the troops of men, and women too – shame to them.’ ‘And now, Charles, I have that to tell you that will make you both glad and sorrowful; and I would not tell it till the last, least my hand should be too much shaken to write the above. Whistler said to me, [41] ‘Do you think it would be a pleasure to the boy to believe I did not kill Carter?’ ‘Lord sakes, yes,’ says I, ‘indeed would it.’ Then he made me lift up my hand, as they do in court, and swear not to tell to any one but you what he should say. Then, Charlie, he laughed out and said, ‘I no more killed Carter than you did, mammy.’ I cannot repeat his exact words, but it seems that after the hut was burnt, and Sam came a little to himself, Ira would have persuaded him to go off, but he would not move, and then Ira said he would take his gun and Sam’s basket, and shoot some game to sell in the village for liquor. Neither of their heads was yet clear from what they had taken. Well, as Ira was on his way to the village he met Carter; some high words passed between them; Carter struck Ira with his cane, and Ira mad, and his brain still muddy, instantly discharged his gun into the poor [42] creatur. ‘I asked Sam, why he had not told this before.’ ‘Why should I?’ said he: ‘it was me that Carter wronged, not Ira; it was I that hated Carter, not Ira; it was I that shouted when heard he was killed, not Ira. No, no, I was the murderer here,’ he said, knocking on his breast, ‘and if either must die for it, it should be me.’ Now don’t this remind you of St. Paul’s words, ‘the Gentiles having not a law are a law unto themselves?’ I asked him if it were true that he had said, ‘I killed him?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but who was it to, and what did it mean? Ira’s wife came to our cell, and begged him to turn state’s evidence against me. She made me mad, and I told her I killed him. She well knew what I meant for she always called Ira I!’ ‘Now you see, dear Charles, how the whole matter stands, and I pray the Lord speed my letter and to bring you here in due time for the awful day. Yours, till death. ‘Mammy – otherwise ZILPAH THRIFT.’ Mammy’s prayers, seconded by a well appointed mail establishment, were effectual. Charles received her letter in due time, and using all diligence arrived at the shire-town of Berkeley county on the night preceding the day appointed for Whistler’s execution. Mammy was already there, and, firm in the faith of [43] her favourite’s arrival, she had engaged rooms for him and for herself in the tavern, which was an appendage to the jail, and, kept by the jailor, was already thronged by the county people, who had flocked in to be in readiness for the rare and favourite spectacle of a public execution. How strong and scared are the ties knit in childhood! They strained over Charles’s heart as he threw his arms around Mammy, and hugged the faithful old creature to his bosom, with the fond feeling of his earliest years. His grandfather – the home of his childhood – all its pleasures, never to be repeated rose to his recollection. Mammy suffered her rising feelings to overflow in words, and after wiping her eyes and clearing her voice, “Ha, Charlie, how you are grown? She said; “taller than I! – and goodness me! handsomer than ever.” Then passing her hand over his midshipman’s coat, “It beats the world – why you look like a reg’lar.” Then espying his dirk, “You don’t wear this all the time? – a’nt you afraid you’ll run it into somebody? – ha! how nat-ral that smile is! – Oh if the Colonel could have lived to see you! – Poor Whistler, Charles!” The current of her emotions had now borne them both to the point of the chief interest. Charles shut and locked the door, and a confidential conversation [44] ensued, in the course of which he ascertained, in answer to one of his first and most anxious inquiries, that it was customary for one individual or more, to pass the last night in the cell of the condemned; and on applying soon after to the jailor, and stating his interest in the prisoner, he obtained permission to keep this sad vigil. The jailor in due time conducted him to the cell, and having removed that bars and bolts, “Hush-hark,” he whispered, “the minister is at prayer – Ah, he’s come to! – this is the first time the hardened fellow has let any one pray with him.” Charles eagerly peeped through the crevice of the door – a lamp was standing on the floor before the clergyman, who was engaged in loud and earnest intercessions, while the subject of the prayer, heedless or scornful, was pacing up and down the narrow cell whistling an Indian hunting air, and followed at every turn by Biter. “The castaway!” muttered the jailor. The clergyman finished, and Charles sprang forward, pronouncing the prisoner’s name. Biter was instantly crouching at his feet and licking his hands. Whistler stood as if he were transfixed. He then tossed back the wiry locks that hung over his face, dashed off the gathering tears, suppressed his choking sobs, and, as if ashamed that nature had mastered and betrayed [45] him, he threw himself on his straw and buried his face in his blanket. Such is the omnipotent power of the electric chain, which, proceeding from him ‘who is love,’ communicates a celestial spark to every spirit, however ignorant, however degraded. The Indian was obdurate and impassive, his heart was stone, while he looked only on those whom he hated, but it melted within him at the first sound of the voice, at the first glance of the eye he loved. For an instant the dreary cell, the jailor, the galling hand-cuffs – all forms and modes of punishment were forgotten; a blessed vision floated before him; he scented the fresh sweet woods; he trod on the soft ground; he heard the singing of the birds and the hunter’s cry. But it was momentary. The calenture passed at the first sound of the clergyman’s voice, who continued his ministrations by reading some appropriate passages of scripture, and concluded with a feeling exhortation. The jailor wept audibly. Charles covered his face, but Whistler gave no intimation that he listened. The clergyman at last rose to depart; he beckoned to Charles – “My young friend,” he said, “you seem to have some influence over this hardened man, use it for the good of his soul, so soon to be called before the judgment seat; I leave my bible and psalm book with [46] you.” Charles bowed; but, his conscience reproaching him with something like hypocrisy in this implied assent, he said, “I respect the offices of religion; you, sir, have done your duty, I shall endeavour to do mine.” The young midshipman’s manner, more perhaps than his words, struck the clergyman as equivocal, but it was not till the following day that he was able clearly to interpret both. Though the jailor, in his double capacity of innkeeper and jailor, had enough to do on that memorable evening, he found time twice to revisit the prisoner’s cell, much to our young friend’s annoyance; but when, after midnight, he again appeared, Charles could not, or did not conceal his displeasure. “It is too hard,” he said, “that this poor fellow must have his last rest broken in this way.” “Soft and fair, young man, I must do my duty,” replied the officer of justice, and he reconnoitered the cell, first surveying the prisoner, who stretched and yawned on his pallet, and looking up scowling, as if he had been unkindly waked. He then approached the grated window; Charles’s heart throbbed as if it would have leaped from his bosom, and a tremulous motion of the blanket that covered the Indian might have been seen, but not a word, not a sound escaped [47] either. The jailor passed the light over the bars, he grasped on with his hand. Charles felt every droop of blood within him rush to his head, but it tingled again at his finer ends as the jailor said, half to himself, half to Charles, “All’s right, all’s right. When the house got still, I mistrusted I heard a strange noise, but I was mistaken, it’s pretty safe trusting people, be they ever so young and daring, where the blacksmith has done the carpenter’s work.” “Thank you for your hints,” retorted Charles proudly. “When may we expect the honour of another visit?” “Betimes, betimes,” was the only reply; and betimes he reappeared. It was an hour before the day dawned. Charles met him at the door. “Oh!” he said imploringly, “do not wake him now; be merciful, and give him one more hour.” The jailor said he did not “wish to be unmerciful, but that there was a great deal to be done, to get every thing in handsome order for the procession.” But when he looked in and saw the prisoner apparently sleeping sweetly and profoundly, he added, “Well, well, poor fellow! I can be doing something else for one hour,” and again he withdrew. Punctual to the moment, in one hour precisely he returned – but to what an altered scene! The [48] prisoner was gone! – the severed bars lay on the floor, with files and other instruments that had been used to detach them, and our young conspirator stood in the center of the cell; his arms folded, with an air of bold satisfaction at the success of his efforts, while his heart beat with the secret fear that those efforts must at last prove vain. The jailor stood for an instant riveted, then shouted an alarm, and seized Charles by the collar. “Hands off!” cried Charles, repelling him. “I know my duty, and I will follow you; lock me up where you please, but do not touch me.” There was not time to be lost in parleying or contending. The jailor conveyed Charles to the nearest vacant apartment, which happened to overlook the street in front of the jail. Charles took his station at the grated window, and, breaking through a pane of glass, he remained there, all eye and ear, to get what intimation he might of the fugitive’s peril or reapprehension, which, calculating the little time he had in advance of his pursuers, Charles scarcely hoped could be avoided. The jail, the whole village, rang with cries of alarm. Men and women came pouring out, half awake and half dressed. The high sheriff was among them, and he immediately directed the pursuit. [49] “Let every house, every hiding place in the neighbourhood be searched,” he cried, “he cannot yet have cleared the village.” The jailor ran off with half a score of men; but, halting for a moment, he said, “Mr. Sheriff – there are holsters sleeping in the barn; had they not best be called and sent off on horseback?” The sheriff immediately assented, by directing they should be waked and bidden to lead out their horses and take orders. They shortly appeared, and a little in advance of the rest, and leading a high-mettled horse, was a tall fellow, extremely thin, with gray pantaloons, boots, a gray cloth round-about buttoned tight to his throat, a check neckcloth, a mass of dark curling hair, bushy whiskers, and a cloth cap. At the first glance at this man, Charles exclaimed “Heaven preserve us!” But who, that had not witnessed the putting on of the disguise, could have suspected that the person who so coolly led up the horse, and stood with such firmness even within the sheriff’s grasp, was the very felon over whom the sentence of death, suspended by the slightest thread, still hung? “And there is Biter too!” half articulated Charles, as his eye fell on the dog, who in the joy of recovered freedom was running hither and yon, with his nose to the ground, shaking his ears, wagging his tail, and snuffing up the fresh [50] smell of dewy earth. “Oh, Biter! Why could not I make you stay with me? every body knows his dog. Good heaven Whistler! why don’t you turn your face from the sheriff?” “Which way shall I go, sir,” asked Whistler of the sheriff. “Ha, “ thought Charles, “I should not know his voice myself.” “Go west, my good fellow,” replied the sheriff; “you have the best horse, and Sam will most like to take that direction. Give notice of his flight to the people on the road. Take a circuit, and come in by the north. You must all be in before night.” “Yes, sir,” replied Whistler, and mounted his horse, but so unskillfully (for he was as ignorant of horsemanship as his brethren of the wild west) that Charles thought “every body must see the Indian now,” when a new alarm reached him. Mammy appeared on the steps, and thinking, in her blind zeal, that she was delaying the pursuit, screamed at the top of her voice, “Stop that fellow, he is on my horse.” “Oh Mammy,” murmured Charles, “you have ruined all.” Whistler halted, faced about, and asked the sheriff in the most composed voice, “if he should get another horse?” The sheriff turned to Mammy, “Do not be [51] unreasonable, my good woman,” he said; “the man is to return to-day, and I will be answerable for your horse.” “But he’s a hired horse sir,” pertinaciously persisted Mammy, “and besides, who knows that fellow that’s on him?” Charles lost his patience and his self-possession, and screamed through the broken window, “Let him go, Mammy.” But even this imprudence did not put Whistler off his guard. He gave one glance to Charles that spoke volumes, and then, assuming a look as simple as Mr. Slender’s, he said, “La, old mother, every body hereabouts knows me; I don’t live six miles off; my name is John Smith.” “Thank heaven, “ thought Charles, “he remembers the name I gave him.” Mammy saw she could effect no farther delay, and muttering, “I suppose the high sheriff must do as he likes, but mind, you sir, don’t you ride that horse fast,” she returned with a heavy heart into the house. Whistler ventured one more glance at Charles. He even ventured more, for as he again turned the horse’s head he whistled, loud and shrill, one bar of the tune Charles had most loved in their merry greenwood rambles. He then rode off sharply, followed [52] by Biter, and soon turning out of the main street to a due west course, disappeared from sight. All day the pursuit was maintained by foot and horse, but at evening the pursuers returned without any tidings of the fugitive. All returned save the rider of Mammy’s horse, and his absence was explained to the wondering community the next morning, by the appearance of the good steed at his stable door in Shelburne. A full brown wig and whiskers were bound around his neck and well secured by a silk handkerchief marked with the initials C.V. The secret was now out, and there being no vindictiveness towards the fugitive among the kind-hearted people of Berkeley county, there was a prevailing satisfaction in his hair-breadth scape, and a general admiration of the zeal and ingenuity of his young preserver. This was greatly augmented by the belief, disseminated by Charles’s friends and Mammy’s gossips, of Whistler’s innocence of the alleged crime, a belief shortly after substantiated by Ira’s death-bed confession. Charles remained in durance till a statement of the affair, accompanied by a petition for his full pardon, signed by half the entire population of Berkeley county, could be forwarded to the governor. An answer of grace was returned, accompanied by a very proper and severe reprimand [53] of the presumption of a youth of fifteen, who had had the hardihood to oppose his opinion to the verdict of twelve honest men, and thereupon to counteract the judicial sentence of the law. But presumption is the sin of youth. Charles was forgiven his, and, it may be, loved the better for it. Whistler was never again heard of, unless a singular and affecting interview that occurred, many years after, between an Indian who came in a canoe, with a dog blind and decrepit with age, to Perry’s fleet on lake Erie, and a gallant officer who had earned laurels in celebrated victory of the preceding day, revealed the fugitive from BERKELEY JAIL. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Berkeley Jail Subject The topic of the resource Prison, Loyalty, Love, Native Americans Description An account of the resource The narrator recounts the story of the Vassal family, whose only surviving member and an old family servant rescue a Native American man, held for the murder of a local white property owner. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine Maria Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <em>The Atlantic Souvenir</em>, Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1831: 13-53 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Carey and Lea Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1831 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Shawn Riggins, Ciara Freeman, D. Gussman Language A language of the resource English 1831 alcoholism Atlantic Souvenir Brutus Byron Cicero civilization Dogs Gilbert Glossing Indians loyalty Miranda mulatto Native Americans orphans Prison public execution revenge sailors savagery Seneca tribe servants temperance vanishing race https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/910e85c44b0f260b9b39f4559bd091db.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=lfM7g4pf1UTbylFRTZmTTtwceOSyiEAQ0Va033zHcI9IitEvLDO6vDQSjnTNgoVAKLe4-fuFRPqMAoPUDIZdHYdoeVQgE8PGFBOQDwraLKafQI6akxc-vj4gw14o2vZVAfIg6RLvGFgMHmWZiPeJBzoOmGzpMILJlHOYG0t5o6O8y59CP94iWveRjcifFRYwG6xnEmwu1FeiiSbzvT4Z9sJM6ODGIJ3rhihY%7EO3gNWelspKSPy4tP%7E1Xheb-wCoRMwjDJRXB2f5vfrDU8m7wpTuvlhgPUAqXaxXQ4GPENYLFFaqn69DEjb3XZOHbh1MGj9ewlgJ-2RCBRC-nfGtS4Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b1149df3ebd0f91b9e2e34ca206105f8 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 1841 Subject The topic of the resource Stories published in 1841. Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. A Voyage Across The Atlantic By the author of “Hope Leslie” &c. To the Editor of the Democratic Review: Sir: --As you have done me the honor to publish pretty copious extracts from my journalizing letters about to be published by the Messrs. Harper, I send to you a letter written at sea, not included in that collection. C.M.S. On board the St. James, bound to London, May 6th, 1839 Well, my dear C—, did we not save one happy day from the chances of life by not sailing on the first? And we have lived through the parting with you and all the dear friends that came to the Hook with us! Who can tell the thoughts that are compressed into minutes when a life’s-love is in every beat of the heart? We talked cheerfully and laughed at M.’s lame joke, when he told me, jesting at our little home-stream, that he hoped I should find his sister’s House-a-tonic, --but the sounds struck upon faint, unanswering hearts. The parting [passing?] bell found us in the midst of our claret and crackers, and deprived poor— of his more solid lunch of ham and tongue, a raw material of feeling as well [236] as ideas, so pray do not blame him if he did not seem suitably sad afterward. Never shall I forget the group of faces in your steamer. The little thing rose above and sank below the deck of our ship, and those blanched cheeks and glowing eyes seemed to speak from another world. I doubt if the last parting will be harder to me than this, for then sense will be dulled, and feeling abated, and faith in another world stronger, I trust, than my hopes of the Old World to which we are going. How suddenly you glided away from us! How strangely the parting cheering broke upon the suppressed sobs around me! Every voice in our noble ship that could speak replied to you. Do you remember the beautiful flowers that Madame C. gave me? “You will treasure them,” said F., “long after they have faded, because they have grown in your in your home-earth.” I put them in water and had them carefully placed, and yesterday being tolerably recovered from my seasickness, I for the first time inquired for them. Of course they were gone-gone to deck the mermaids perhaps. So much for sentiment versus sensation. I resisted the fast-coming malady for an hour after we parted. A light fair breeze sprang up. I sat down on the threshold of the round-house, and resolved to observe B.’s “dressing of the ship.” Venus was not attired by the Graces with more enthusiasm, but my dull eye saw neither form nor comeliness, and I very soon followed those who, one by one, had dropped away wretched enough into their berths, and there we stayed for three oblivious days. After all there is compensation in this sea-sickness, that seems to me not to have been sufficiently considered. It comes at the right moment. It is an opiate for the aching heart, for homesickness, for all mental and moral ills; it is even potent against fear, for the magnificent dangers of the “great and wide sea” occurred to me yesterday, coward as I am, for the first time; and then, when it is over (as it is to most persons in three or four days), there is such a reaction of spirits, such a cheerful sense of escape and recovery, as to make you quite tolerant of all lesser sea-discomforts. It is a dark Lethean gulf between shore and sea-life, and once over, sea-pleasures, such as they are, begin. -------- We are fortunate in the officers of our ship. Captain S— is an able seaman on deck, a quiet gentleman in the cabin,--as to that, everywhere and at all times a gentleman. This is the first voyage he has made under the new régime of having no wine on the table but what is called for, and he says the quiet and comfort [237] resulting from it are inestimable. Nothing could be more grossly unjust than the old system, when ladies, invalids, and abstinents of all sorts, were obliged to pay for those who sat from three o’clock till ten, guzzling down liquors of every kind and quality. Nor was this the worst of it. Few people are content to pay for nothing, and many who were temperate at home tried at sea to drink their money’s worth; and before the voyage was ended there was much ill blood stirred, and many headaches and some fevers generated. Everything is well ordered in Captain S.’ ship. The seamen have no liquor except on extraordinary occasions. They are required to be quiet, to tread the deck softly, and during the morning watch, in slippers; to use decent and civil language, and to call one another by their names, the universal soubriquet of “Jack,” and “I say, you,” being forbidden, for, as our mate, B., says, they are men, and have names, and should be treated like men. B. in truth sails the ship. He has the entire confidence of every person on board, from the captain down to the most doubtful-minded----you may guess who that is. He should not be second in any ship.* He has all the virtues of a seaman, and a face befitting them,--a mouth with the most resolute and stern expression on deck, and the most winning smile in the cabin. There is the second mate just coming across the deck, the son of a rich Hamburgh merchant, with a face that a painter would choose if he would command your sympathies for a young sea-farer; and here is our steward, with a face befitting the steward of a benevolent society,--and here, too, is our stewardess, an English woman of forty-five, with such shining hair and teeth, as, I think, none but an Englishwoman of forty-five could show. Surely our commander is a fancier of faces! An interruption, a racing across the deck-“A souffleur! a souffleur!” screams Madame P.-“A baléno!” shouts François, and “a dolphin! A dolphin!” cry a half dozen voices. I rush with Francois’ aid to the bulwarks, and see—a porpoise. “Plenty of porpoises on the sea!” cries—, with his disagreeable cynical laugh. “I am sorry for your disappointment!” said a kindly voice. I looked up into the faces of these two men, wondering if Heaven had infused the sweet and bitter into their dispositions in such different proportions, or if a man by his own determination could make his heart a fountain of good-will. The experiment is worth trying. [238] *He has since been made captain of a packet-ship. We have some forty steerage passengers. Their quarters are divided from ours by sail-cloth, which invidious barrier they may not pass. They are, for the most part, malcontent English, who, having been lured to the United States by dreams of an Eldorado, are disappointed to find that the universal law is in force there-----Providence’s stern decree, that prosperity must be paid for in the old-fashioned coin of industry and its kindred virtues. We have tried to stir up a spirit of mutual kindness with these people, making the first advances by giving apples and raisins to their children, but they do not meet us half-way. They are both shy and surly; and I observe in them what I have often observed in English people of their condition, an uncertainty as to their relative position, and an unquietness that is ready to break forth into presumption and insolence. The artificial distinctions in which they were bred have ceased—the forms and words by which they expressed deference are disused—the harness is taken off, the blinders are removed, and they are in possession of a liberty to which they are unaccustomed, and are in the midst of objects which they are unaccustomed, and are in the midst of objects which they have never measured and do not understand. Our people, not fenced out with briar hedges, not trained to a proscriptive and unmeaning civility, learn to measure themselves with others, and to respect natural elevations and real distinctions. We all agree to dispense with certain forms of European civilization, but I doubt if in your whole life you have been half-a-dozen times treated with premeditated disrespect by your inferiors in condition. There is one old pair among the steerage passengers who are quite an exception to the prevailing sulkiness. I have seen them whenever the weather has been tolerable, sitting placidly, and for the most part silently, together, seeming like people who have come to the last chapter of the book, have wound up its strong interests, and are but waiting for a foregone conclusion. “You are old,” said I to the good woman, who had been telling me a dismal story of the discomforts of the people in the steerage, “you are old to be crossing the Atlantic.” “Ah, indeed, ma’am, if it were for anything but to go home.” “You are English?” “Ah!” interposed the husband good-humoredly, “who would be anything else that could help it?” “You should not say that,” replied his wife meekly, “since our children have chosen America for them and theirs.” “Well, and to say the truth,” he resumed, “it is a fine country for the young, but it is not old England.” “It is not our home, you should say,” replied his wife in an apologetic tone, and looking at me. [239] “We all allow,” I said, “there is no place like home.” “True, ma’am, we all say it; but to feel it one must cross the seas. Everybody wondered at us, but we could not get a contented feeling----the trees did not look natural----the rain on those new houses don’t sound as it did on the old thatched roof----the sun never seemed to rise nor set in the right place.” “But you have left all your children there.” “Yes, and all married and doing well on nice farms in Ohio; they are busy with the world, we have done with it—and we want to go home and lie down in the church-yard where all our dead lie—where are used to everything, and everything will look natural.” “And your children were willing?” “Yes—they are good children and kind,—yes—all but the youngest,—she was not willing—no, not willing; but when she saw us pine she was silent—poor Annie!—I wonder if the pear-tree is living you planted the day she was born, John? The shade of it killed the rose that you set for our eldest girl’s birthday.” “Yes—God forgive me—I remember,” relied John, “but indeed, ma’am, the little place was so stifled with shrubs and flowers, and the like, that one could not set down a tree without killing them with the shade of it. There were more flowers clustered under our windows than you can find on all the big farms in Ohio. It will be a long day ma’am, before your country will look like old England.” I too had my preferences, and my aching longings for home, and therefore I the more respected the old man’s, and the less wondered that he was going home in despite of all the excellent reasons the political economist might have given him for remaining in our more flourishing land. I should be very apt, like them, to go home, if but to die amid old familiar things. While we were talking with the old pair, there was a tall, haggard man, with uncombed hair and a death-like paleness, stalking up and down in the narrow and encumbered space on the forward deck, as if all the world were indeed a stage, and he the only player. I could find out nothing from his fellow-passengers, but that this had been the way of his going on ever since we embarked, that he is muttering to himself sleeping and waking—and that he drinks more than he eats. _____ Our gossip-stewardess has given me some further particulars of the man who excited my curiosity last evening. He is an Englishman, and has been a thriving carpenter in New York. He [240] came on board in a fit of madness, compounded of jealousy and alcohol. This has, in a degree, subsided, but he is still incessantly murmuring something of his wrongs,--at one moment swearing to return and murder his wife and her lover, and then remembering he has all his money with him, resolving he will leave them, as the stewardess elegantly expresses it, “to starve it out together.” “Their love or their life, stewardess?” “Their love—their love, ma’am—such love is short-lived, anyway;--but I think the poor man wrongs her and himself; it’s the delirium-tremens the poor fellow has, and that makes him conceit everything. His wife followed him to the ship begging him to go home with her—an innocent pretty woman, and she sat on an old box on the end of the wharf, with her baby in her arms, and the tears streaming down her cheeks, looking most desolate-like, —he swearing till the mate stopped him, and shut him down below. _____ Well, our Othello has finished his drama—not thrown himself into the sea, but the means whereby he lived, one hundred and twenty-five sovereigns. This our stewardess considers a far more unquestionable proof of madness than a felo-de-se. The poor fellow threw the money overboard last evening, and it has had the effect to sober him. He awoke this morning to a consciousness of his pennyless condition, and he begins to suspect he has been in a delusion about his wife. The passengers are all astir with the incident. One might imagine a morning paper had come in. What outside creatures most men and most women are!—they live upon what is enacted; the world within, with its ever-loving and inscrutable mysteries, has nothing novel or curious for them. _____ Oh, ye dear friends, who “live at home at ease”—whose senses unlock in the morning to the singing of spring birds—to the crowing of cocks and cackling of hens—to the stroke of the gardener’s he hoe in the upturning earth—to all cheerful domestic sounds; who look out upon the waving trees, and bursting blossoms, and inhale earth’s sweetest odors—oh, think of us wretches waked to the swashing of the water on the side of the ship almost into our ears, who see the blessed light of day only through the little glass eye of our state-room, and for the music of nature, the many voices of the glad earth, hear the “swabbing” of the decks, and for its sweetness have a congregation of pestilent odors that make us wish for the idol’s noses “that smell not!” [241] Then comes the necessity of dressing, a most comfortless process in this confined air and with these odious ship-odors. Think of washing one hand while you hold on with the other, staggering from side to side amid waving towels and curtains; grasping comb and tooth-brush, and the tedious process lengthening as you go. But while I am worrying and fretting, K— is sleeping as quietly as if an angel’s wing were brooding over her. What matters it, whether on sea or land, while the wing plumed with health, youth, and cheerfulness, broods over us. You should come to sea to know what a pleasant incident in every day’s chapter is the breakfast,—coming out from our little, dark, noisome dens to fresh air, cheerful faces, and cheerful voices. If Columbus is permitted to look down upon this Western ocean whose ways he opened, he must smile as he contrasts these floating hotels, and tables covered with the luxuries of every clime, with his little ship of two hundred tons burthen, and his salt and scanty fare. Here we have for breakfast fowls, beef-steaks, hot-rolls, hot-cakes, stewed fruit, &c.; and for dinner, what have we not? ______ I have got far into the pleasant depths of a childhood friendship with a little girl in the steerage; and had a hearty greeting from one of the sailors, who having heard me say I was from Massachusetts, told me he was a Boston lad. We anchored upon “Father Taylor,” and were friends at once. He likes, he says, “to tramp it over the world, but he does not mean to be a common sailor always.” No Eastern man does, nor is long, as our mate says. He pronounces them the best seamen in the world; but says you cannot keep them before the mast—they will go ahead. Happy the country where this principle is sown at broad-cast, and takes such root as in ours. When we parted my compatriot promised to “pull the ropes for me.” There are certain harmonies between human beings that may be brought out and are worth studying. God gives a natural touch and an ear for this music; but if the living instrument were studied but half as much as is a piano or a paltry guitar, excellent harmonies, that make glad the heart of man, would often burst forth. ______ Saturday, May 11th.—I have enjoyed two hours exquisitely, looking over the bulwarks, while the yeasty waves are bounding and leaping round the ship, throwing off jets of jewels, images of beauty and joy. The ship is gliding with a power that seems spiritual. The girls have been singing and shouting, and we forget all sea-troubles. So far the sea has not been the scene of discomfort, ennui, and wretchedness it was described to us. We keep employed and good-natured. Monday, 13th.-Saturday night we sat on deck till 12. Our singing trio were in their best voice, as their applauding public of some half-dozen thought; and when, at 12, our stewardess warned us to bed, we bade the bright stars and bright mirror below them an unwilling good-night, and parted in the expectation of passing the next evening in the light of the new moon. But Seged’s decree of happy days was not more presumptuous that a mariner’s promise of fair hours. Each hour had its individual, elemental character. In the morning the ship was pitching at such a rate that it was not without difficulty that we got into the round-house. Black, smoky clouds curtained the western horizon, and squally ones scudded before us, giving blasts for greetings. Captain S— will not let us call it a gale—nothing more that a gallant breeze. I have no aspirings to see anything grander on the ocean; it sublimities have too much of the element of terror for my taste. The girls are standing at the bulwarks; Captain S— assures me there is do danger, and they enjoy it all the more for the dashing they get, as we now and then ship a sea. Their merry shouts are a pleasant home-sound amid the roaring of the ocean. The poor steerage passengers are obliged to hide their heads in their dismal berths, as the water is dashing over the bowsprit. The sailors are my constant admiration—their obedience, promptness, calmness, and intrepidity. When I see these men mounting in all this hurly-burly to the round-top, fearless as birds, and trundling the ropes on the right use of which our lives depend, as calmly as we, in our quiet homes, pull the threads of our sewing, I cannot but laugh at certain bold theories about the sexes. What may be in the future developments of society we know not—the possible is in the impenetrable obscurity of the future; but what a young lady embroidering a bell-rope, and what a sailor reefing a sail in a storm, actually are, we know. There are, it is true, some striking exceptions to the general destiny and character,--that magnanimous creature, ‘Grace Darling,’ for example. _____ Wednesday, 15th. --We have just speaking an English ship from Barbadoes, which lay to, awaiting us. It is a stirring scene on the lonely track, when you seem cut off from the human race, suddenly to come upon fellow-beings, with wants, projects, sympathies answering to your own, as face to face,—to see and hear them for an instant, and then to part for ever! The passengers were all on deck, B— manoeuvring the ship, [243] and Captain S---exchanging greetings through the speaking trumpet, when I felt my gown grasped, and, turning round, saw little Sarah L.’s nurse, pale and panic-struck. “Thank the Almighty!” she exclaimed, “we are safe. I thought they were pirates. I heard the word from them, ‘You must give up!’” B—laughing, exclaimed, “Pirates!--they have one red cap on the starboard quarter, one monkey, two perroquets, three oranges, and no bananas!” A harmless equipage, truly!--but I am the last person that should scorn groundless fear. Thursday, 16th.---Last night appeared “the Northern Lights,” the first number of our paper, with a capital caricature vignette by one of our artists. M---is the editor; it was read aloud, and what with the writers for our audience, the reader’s piquant emphasis and flashing eyes, and an atmosphere of amour proper, it went off charmingly. Afterward, our three musicians fell to their guitars and songs, while a merry set of our messmates formed themselves into a gallery audience, stood at the skylight, and showered down applauses, encores, and prunes, on our performers. So you see our ship-life is not so dismal as you may imagine. Friday, 17th.--We have been on deck to see the setting sun. It set clear for the first time since we left New York, dropped its golden light into the ocean, and was gone. I have heard all my life of sunset at sea. Now that I have seen it, it seems to me not comparable in beauty to a sunset among our hills with a wavy horizon of trees and mountains, every ray caught and reflected by the varied landscape, the good-night beams burnishing the windows of happy homes, dancing on the topmost branches of that shade these homes, reflected on the soft blue smoke that curls up from the hospitable chimneys, glowing on the harvest hill-side, shining back from the steel-like lake, and finally dying away on the mountain tops. Here all is sea and sky, sky and sea—unity and grandeur to be sure, God in his wonderful works, not in his tender fatherly visitation to man, and lingering in his truest symbol with his social children. At ten o’clock we went again on deck to see a night far more beautiful than the setting sun. There was a mass of heavy clouds shrouding the western horizon, like the outspread wing of a demon brooding over terrors and danger. There was an indistinctness, a depth of gloom, a shadowing forth of the dark passage from time to eternity. Above this cloud, shining in a bright field, with a thousand stars around her, was the moon, five days old. A faint silvery light, at first but a speck, shone on the edge of the dark cloud. V.B. said it was the evening star, and while we were debating whether it were or were not, could or could not be, [244] this most beautiful of the planets shot out, and—I don’t know why, but that it produced the sensations that young, bright, and tender things do—L. and I exclaimed in the same breath, “It reminds me of dear little H—!” The celestial melodrama (pardon the belittling designation) was not over. At twelve, we had a brilliant aurora-borealis. The lights streamed up from that same black cloud as if touched by the divine hand it had opened, and sent up their bright tokens from the world it hid. I have seen splendid northern lights before. Do you remember those of the winter of ’37, when, on first looking out of the window, we thought the country was lit up with some great conflagration? Our snowy hills were tinted with the reflection of the rose-colored hues that extended quite to the zenith. I remember that, in spite of the mercury having fallen to sixteen below zero, the village street rang with voices. It seemed like a general turn-out of a moonlit summer’s evening. But last night’s spectacle was sublime. The column of light was reflected on the ocean—it was element discoursing to element a revelation from another world. To-day the curtain has fallen, we have returned to our general ill luck of easterly winds, drizzling rains, and leaden skies, so I am not like to bore you with any more sea scenery. Thursday, 23d.--I was awoke this morning by what Captain S— indulges me in calling a gale, though it proved a very short one. Our stewardess came early to my state-room to comfort me with her staple consolations: ‘It was a king of a day to any Miss A. had when she was no board the St. James--it didn’t blow a thimble-full!’ and like chambermaid assurances. I hurried on my clothes and went on deck. Madeline Grey stood there wrapped in her gray cloak. She, with her half-inspired old face, was a fit impersonation of the queen of the elements; and M—, his melancholy eye for once lighted, bent with a poet’s earnestness on the lashed waves. Captain S— was as courteous and composed as if he had been in a drawing-room. Nobody else was stirring save the sailors, and they were stirring enough. . . The tremendous roar of the ocean most struck me. There was a Divine power in its might voice. The effect was more astounding than the sound of Niagara. There you are encompassed with quiet objects, the softly breathing woods, the immovable hills, the steadfast rocks, --but here rushes from every quarter the mighty sound. No recession, no hiding-place, no rest, no repose!—you move on, and, seeming to grow louder, the roar follows you. Sunday Evening, 26th.--We have been pitching and tumbling all day. At 2, Mr. H---preached a sermon to us, and sweet voices blended in sacred music. Mr. H. is a Scotch Wesleyan Methodist [245] missionary, who has been twenty years in the West Indies, and he is well fitted to be a preacher of righteousness all over the world. He is a most cheerful and instructive member of our ship’s company; and his calling, instead of being in any way offensive, rather gives value and currency to his good sense and good humor. All on board, black spirits and gray, honor the old veteran, and admire the resolution with which he endures a racking cough, night and day. If you have read my journal up to this point without skipping, you are pretty well acquainted with our dramatis-personæ, and do you not think we get on famously, considering we have sixteen womankind in this narrow space? Elements of discord no doubt these are, if there were an evil spirit to bring them out. We might fight like cats for the only two sofas, the greatest luxury on ship-board, which some of us certainly do enjoy in a horizontal position an undue portion of time. Then there is --------’s taste for general dictation (going to the length of hints to the captain how to manage his ship!) which has won for her the sobriquet of ‘commodore;’ and poor old Madeline Grey’s just complaints of the stewardess’ favoritism; and above all, the little nuisance “Jolly” who our mate declares is worse than a snow-storm. There! while I am writing about him, he has had a tumble out of the swing, and one of the gentlemen asks with a mischievous smile, “Will the wound prove fatal?” Parents who make their children odious should be classed with those felons who poison water-sources, for they spoil the sweetest things that Heaven has given us. Our three young artists are continually on deck noting and enjoying every fresh aspect of sea scenery. V.B. is the only one of them, or of the ship’s company, who has had zeal enough to set up all night to see the moon set and the sun rise. These three interesting men are on their way to Rome to study their art,----we daily rejoice in the fate that made them of our company. There may be quackery, affectation, and pretence, about art in the old world, but I think there is little of it with us. We have not enough of the real thing to give value to its counterfeit; and in our money-seeking community, where every nerve is strained to get riches, as if riches were an end and not a means, there is something truly noble in young men starting in a career that holds out no lure of wealth, that at most promises but the means of pursuing their art, and those means ever moderate and often insecure. They show themselves, in the start, capable of rising above the gross material world; and without any of those outside things that give value to life in common eyes, and distinction to common men, they rise at once to a rank far above them, and form an aristocracy to which [246] deference is due, and will be paid even on the broad platform of our society-unquestionable deference, when to talent for art are added the high morals and attractive manners of our shipmates. While V.B. was out watching the stars, our kind mate, according to his promise, tapped at my door. It was just before the morning watch. I called the girls, and we went on deck to see the sun rise—it was a glorious sight to see, but not by a thousand-fold so lovely as when it comes over our own eastern hill—so comfort yourselves, ye idle stayers-at-home! Monday, 27th.--We had a religious service on deck yesterday. The sea was as calm as our “Mountain Mirror.” Worship is surely a natural voice in such a scene. I looked to see our steerage passengers avail themselves of their first opportunity of coming on the quarter-deck. Out of the forty-two, there were but my friends the old pair and three or four women who passed the sail-cloth barrier--“the line of demarcation,” as one of the steerage ladies called it with a toss of her head. Poor creatures! I do not blame them. I wonder that the necessary, and above all, the unnecessary disparities of life do not oftener produce dislike and exasperation in those who are thrust to the outer side of the “sail-cloth” barrier of society. Faith in God cometh by inspiration—it takes a long course of moral cultivation to perfect faith in man. Tuesday, 28th.--Still beating against the east wind. “A hardhearted wind” B. truly calls it. I do not perceive that seamen are more weatherwise than we land-folk. For the last ten days, captain, mate, and all, have been at fault in their predictions. The prolongation of our voyage makes me feel too vividly the distance between us. Home-faces pass before me as distinctly as the ghostly procession before Macbeth. The dear familiar places appear too. The garden-door in the long parlor is open, and the budding honeysuckle, creeping around it. I see the trees with their half-grown leaves, their thin May foliage, on the mountain-side—the "great bridge"—the meadows—the early flowers! I have dreamed, almost every night since I have been ship-board, of our dead. And this is not alone my experience. Every morning I hear some one of the women recounting a dream of some long-gone friend of whom she "has not dreamed for years,"--is not this enough to make one superstitious? It is said that as we approach death we recur to the associations of our childhood; even Falstaff, world-worn as he was, "prattled o' green fields" in his extremity. The dead and the distant are, alas! equally beyond our reach—equally lights in our firmament. _____ A pilot from the Scylla islands spoke us this morning, bringing with him fresh fish, potatoes, and that staple of life to all American mankind—a newspaper! He tells us the wind has blown from the east for six weeks, and as the east wind in this latitude blows on an average two months out of the twelve, we may hope for an end of it in a fortnight! "Patience is a great help." We have taken out our life-preservers, and had a merry time blowing them up. We have not thought of them before since we left New York, when R.W. made himself so merry, fancying us girdled with them, and spurred and mounted on sea-horses, careering about the Atlantic ocean! _____ Saturday, June 1st.--Still beating about in the Channel. We passed very near the Eddystone light-house this morning, and the ladies were not called up to see it, because, forsooth, the deck was wet! This is suffering from very delicateness, indeed; and thus women are cut off from half the uses and enjoyments of life, lest they should soil a dress, or damp their feet—poor things! Since breakfast we have seen land. England! But, alas! by writing the word, and putting the boldest stroke of my pen under it, I cannot send the thrill through your heart that went through mine at this first sight of the home of our fathers. The outline of the shore is bold and rocky; some points resemble the Palisadoes, and others remind me of the boldest steeps in our Hudson-river highlands. Now and then there is a recession of the hills and we descry a road, a village. Dr. M— sees the hedge-rows. L—, bless the senses of fifteen! can smell the violets, and see the children jumping over the hay-cocks! Our artists are charmed with the novelty of the outlines, and our English friend is clapping her hands, as if these green hills were living friends. _____ Sunday, 2d.--Our fifth Sunday on board! We had a last sermon from our good friend My. H---, full of the spirit of our religion of peace and love. What a pity it is that clergymen so often lose such golden opportunities as this, on shipboard, of commending their religion by inspiring regard for its preachers! Mr. H— has been one of the most cheerful members of our social compact—and who should be so cheerful as those whose business it is to fit us for a happier world? Mr. H— has not professional pedantry, technically, or sanctimony. His religion is an every-day-garment; he wears it easily and gracefully as if he were used to it. _____ Monday, 3d.--A clear sun at last! The Needles in sight—a fair breeze, and a good hope of landing in a few hours. _____ Tuesday, 4th.---Our evil luck of head-winds pursued us to the last. I had hardly written down our fair breeze, when it turned upon us, and we crawled round the Needles and cast anchor on the Mother Bank. Our vision of clean sheets and ample beds vanished, and we were in the condition of many poor fools who are spoiled by flattering anticipations for a very comfortable reality. A droll spectacle was our ship this morning, with dressing up and packing up. We hardly knew some of our shabby shipmates when they came forth all shaven and shorn (their sloughs cast), in velvet waistcoats, gold chains, brushed hats, the women in their land gear, and poor "Jolly" absolutely made over, recast, with a pretty clean dress, a new straw hat, a whip in one hand, and a trumpet in the other. "Three cheers for Jolly!" cried the gentlemen, and three were given, accompanied with a blast of Jolly's trumpet. M.'s appearance on deck caused quite as much sensation as Jolly's, but of a different kind. She has been confined to her berth almost invariably since we left New York—sea-sick five weeks!—and yet when we, who have had the deck, the table, and all possible sea-board varieties, to alleviate our condition, have chafed and fretted, she has been uniformly cheerful and agreeable. A notable triumph this, of the morale over the physique, is it not? There is much heroism that is never chronicled. Boat after boat came alongside to convey our passengers to Portsmouth. Our artist-friends, the London picture galleries already dancing before their eyes, were the first to be off. G— kept up his humorous affectation of Dalgettyism to the last, and declaring in a melting appeal to his fair young fellow-passengers, that he had no breakfast, they abstracted bread and crackers from the steward's pantry and sent down upon him, and he grasped the shower of manna, fixing his laughing eyes on his patron-saints, and bowing his head like a mandarin,--and off they went amid hurras and the waving of caps, handkerchiefs, and G—'s troubadour cloak. The captain's cutter came at last, and we left the ship with a blessing on every plank of the good St. James. It was a sad parting—it seemed like a bit of home, for the feet of our mess-mates with whom we have been for a month separated from all the world, and involved in a common destiny. Of all remedies for a mind diseased, inflamed with passion, irritated with petty resentments, discolored with envy, or inflated with vanity, I would recommend a sea voyage. You seem in some sort to have passed away from the world; you judge others dispassionately, yourself fairly; your prejudices fade away, your desires are calmed, your regrets are softened, your resentments vanquished—you are at peace with all men! Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Voyage Across The Atlantic Subject The topic of the resource Ships, Voyage, Travel, Journey, Atlantic Ocean Description An account of the resource The narrator embarks on a sea voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to England. Her story serves as both a travel log for her daily activities as well as a account of her interactions with other passengers. The interactions with the other passengers serves as a portrait of different groups within the United States. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catherine M., the author of "Hope Leslie" & c. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived "A Voyage Across The Atlantic." By the author of "Hope Leslie" & c. United States Magazine and Democratic Review [edited by John L. O'Sullivan] (September 1841): 23 6-49. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available United States Magazine and Democratic Review Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1841 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource LBD, S. Riggins Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Departures England Ships Storm temperance Travel United States Magazine and Democratic Review https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/c3619ab5c6d083d844f9cfb5d511cee1.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=YoyjVWS-TsbzDta1U0ZSzwaFr4mMO%7EGAjkh-dFi-luJS8z4hlDW9avtMRbbygbvaRdtwiPRNYjz8ttDvSOcrUnNsJxcD3MnhSmpBEqncj8h8lLHAkEvTu8d%7E2-YiAou882U%7EIcE8wkw-as4MhCJzu73fKTPS809gkNXnhWWQCtIrSJMst4L297x7djWcTo2UvBGMLWDRK9bqIQIc-S6%7ECtf%7EQrcjnYJUjXj2-NDXcavkXN94-5DkC9XpwqiZjvMu93K8kicByeG5K1Vz6f43a1r6mRmD9mbUGTlqm1QcciZQ0-4JyZS8iSUS%7E8b8wQvLYXaiGJRSpgWS-aPE6xvldA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2eb4747c0f824047c88bda15a9386674 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 1850 Subject The topic of the resource Stories published in 1850. Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. Miss C.M. Sedgwick “Might versus Right” "There is no wealth but the labour of man" -- or woman. ANNE CLEVELAND was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. She had a good New England school education, and was well bred and well taught at home in the virtues and manners that constitute domestic social life. Her father died a year before her marriage. He left a will dividing his property equally between his son and daughter, giving to the son the homestead with all its accumulated rural riches and to the daughter the largest share of the personal property, amounting to six or seven thousand dollars. This little fortune, the earnings of a life of labour and frugality, became at Anne's marriage the property of her husband. She had no longer any right to control it; to keep, or expend it. It would seem, to the perceptions of common sense and common justice, that the property of a woman received from her father should be hers, and should be so appropriated as to secure her independence, and to maintain and educate her children. But the laws of a barbarous age decided otherwise, and it is found very hard to right a wrong deeply fixed in the usages of society, and long-transmitted habit.* [i] Anne Cleveland married John Warren. He was the youngest child, daintily bred by his parents, and let off from all heavy work and difficult tasks, by his good-natured elder brothers. Anne's judgment was perhaps warped by his agreeableness, and an exterior with a little less of the rustic, and a little more of the gentleman than belonged to her other admirers; for many admirers had Anne Cleveland attracted by her charming countenance, her virtues, her sweet manners, to say nothing of the "plenty that feeds the lover's fire." This plenty, obtained with Anne's hand, was soon vested in a stock of goods, and Warren opened a dry-goods shop in a small town in the vicinity of Boston. He had not thought of his qualifications for merchandise, but only of escaping from distasteful farming, and frugal life. He went on tolerably for five or six years, living genteelly and recklessly; expecting that next year's gains would bring round the excess of this year's expenses. When sixteen years of their married life had passed, they were living in a single room in the most crowded street of Roxbury, Massachusetts. Mrs. Warren's inheritance had long been gone from them, every penny of it. The lives of three children had been sacrificed to unhealthy locations, and to the overtasked and wasted strength of their mother. Three survived—a girl fifteen years old, whom the mother by incredible exertions was educating to be a teacher, a boy of twelve, who was still living at home, and a delicate, pale, little struggler for life, Jessie, a girl of three years. Mrs. Warren was much changed in these sixteen years. Her round, blooming cheek was pale and sunken. Her dark, abundant chestnut hair had become thin and gray. Her sweet, dovelike eye, overtaxed by use and watching, was faded, and her whole person shrunken. Yet she had gained the great victory. The buoyancy of youth had given place to a most gentle submission and resignation, and the light of hope to a most sweet patience. This blessed patience, and even a certain degree of cheerfulness was visible, as she sat one July evening, sewing by the light of a single lamp, while her boy was getting his Latin lesson beside her, and at intervals threading her needle. "Dear mother," he said, "I will always thread your needles if you will not wear those horrid spectacles; they make you look a hundred years old, besides hiding your sweet eyes." "Ah, George, all children hate their mother's spectacles, I believe. They do not like to see those they love getting old; but you must make up your mind to it. I cannot leave off work, and I cannot see in the evening without them." George picked up the lamp-wick and then said, “There is no use—the oil is bad. I wish we had some of the lights that are burning away for nothing in rich men's houses." "Covet not your neighbour's goods, my son." "Covet! I don't covet, mother, I only wish. It makes me feel so, mother, to see you working your eyes out. Why do you work so late, mother? You work later and later, and that shoe-binding, you say, is so trying to your eyes." "I have good reason for doing extra work now, George; I have kept up without debt, and [76] have now fifty-five dollars due to me at Mr. Doyle's." "Then you have a good right to stop your work, mother," said George, affectionately, taking the shoe from her, "and if you won't, I shall make you." "No; give it to me, George. I must have sixty dollars, and then I shall treat myself to rest and recreation too. Anne must have some new clothes, or she cannot remain in the Rev. Mr. Howe's family, and you know what privileges she has there, and what a struggle I had to get the place for her. In one year more, Mr. Howe says she will be qualified to be head teacher in a school, or governess in a private family. By-and-by, George, my children will take off my spectacles indeed, and give my eyes and heart too rest." "I hope so, mother, I hope so," and resolves and joyous visions for a moment checked George's utterance. But he returned to the subject. "Sixty dollars, mother! Anne surely can't want sixty dollars!" "Oh no, I can make her quite comfortable with fifteen, or twenty at the utmost, and the rest I want to take poor little Jessie to the shore; the doctor has advised me to make some change for her. Last week he said if anything would do her good it was sea-bathing." “If anything, mother!—Is Jessie so ill?" "She is very ill, George. She seems to be going just in the way my other little girls went. Have you not observed that every day she gets weaker and paler?" "No, mother, but now I remember that she fell down twice to-day, when I was walking up the street just a little way with her, and I brought her home in my arms." George went to the crib where the child was sleeping unquietly, kissed her, stroked her attenuated arms, and kissed over and over again her almost transparent little hands, and bending over her, whispered, "Pettest of pets!"—then returning to his mother's side, his eyes brimming with tears, he said, "Oh, mother, Jessie must not die!—Do not wait to make up the sixty dollars. I will give up my school, and go into the cord and tassel factory. They give boys high wages there." "No, my son, we must pursue a steady plan. All that is gained will be lost if you are interrupted now; no, at the end of the week I shall have made up the sum, and then, without the fear of running in debt, I shall set out with my light little burden, and return with it heavier I trust,—but much less a burden." "Oh! dear mother, if you only had some of that money that father says he lost in business." George paused thoughtfully for a few moments, and then added, "How did my father ever get any money, mother?—Was his father rich?" "No, my son, but my father was—at least what is called very rich,—for a farmer." "Then it was yours after all. Surely my father would not take it from you; he is not such a man—at least he was not always," added the boy, blushing with a painful consciousness. "Your father took it, used it, and lost it, my son; but you must not blame him,—the money was his according to law." "What! your money his?—I don't understand that, mother. I don't see how money can belong to a person that does not earn it, nor inherit it, nor have it given to him. Oh, I suppose you did give it to him, mother?" "No; the law gave it to him." "It's a mean, dishonest law, then,—a law fit to have been made by pickpockets. Who made such a law ?—when was it made, mother?" "Oh! a long while ago." "Why don't they alter it, now they know better?" "They probably think it is better as it is. Men are bound to support their families, and they are supposed to be more capable of earning property than women, and of taking care of it." "Well, I suppose some men are much more capable of earning and keeping property than some other men, but for that, all the property is not given to them. And certainly some women are every way more capable than some men. What would we have done, mother, but for what you have earned and saved? And if you had kept your own property how comfortable and happy you might have been, instead of having half your heart in the grave of my poor little sister, and the other half contriving how to take care of the rest of us." "I have but done my duty, dear, and you must look on the best side, George;" and the mother was proceeding to show that best side, when she was interrupted by the entrance of her husband, whose loud voice and thickened utterance indicated that he was in his usual state of partial inebriation. He was accompanied by a Mr. Hutton, one of his early friends, who, for the sake of Mrs. Warren, still endured her husband's society. George's colour rose at the sight of his father, and a mist came before his eyes. His mother perceived this, and saying "Good-night, my son," she pushed an unlighted lamp towards him. He lighted it, and after pausing a moment at Jessie's crib, and drawing a deep sigh, he withdrew to an adjoining closet bed-room. "Well, Madam Warren," said her husband, in a loud, husky voice, "have not you a bit of pie, or crumb of cake to give us?—Hutton and [77] I have walked out from Boston, and are sharp set." "I am sorry then I have nothing to offer you." "Oh! women always say there is nothing: I guess I can find something!" said Warren, setting open her cupboard-doors, but discovering nothing but very clean shelves, and a few cups, plates, etc. After muttering his disappointment, he perceived in a corner a black bottle, and taking out the cork, "By Jove!" he said, "here's a bottle of wine!—this is luck!— We've no wine-glasses, but we'll drink Mrs. Warren's health in the tumblers!—they'll do! —Pleasant provisions you keep, Mrs. Warren! A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband —hey, Hutton?" "Oh, put up the wine, Warren," said Hutton, "I shan't taste a drop of it!" "I shall, then. Here's a health to you, wife and friend!" and he tossed off a glass of it. Mrs. Warren rose, and putting her hand on the bottle, said mildly, "You must not drink this, John. The doctor ordered wine-whey for Jessie, and I have bought it for that." "Never mind;" and wresting the bottle from her hand, Warren set it down violently on the table, and lighting a cigar sat down beside it. Mrs. Warren was so accustomed to his coarseness and selfish indulgence, that this caused little sensation, and she returned quietly to her sewing. Hutton did not so easily digest the matter. He sat down by the table, and after biting his nails for a few moments, he said, "Warren, why do you go to that Roger Smith's? —If you must haunt a grocery, go elsewhere;—he is a rascal!" "A rascal!—I find him a very liberal fellow." "Liberal! yes,—running up accounts with the husband for the wife to pay. Did you hear how he served poor Mrs. Farren, the best wife —always excepting yours—in Roxbury?" "No:—you know I hate gossip." "Well, this is too true and too sad a story to be called gossip. That poor woman had laid up a pretty little sum of money. She was obliged to hide it to keep it from her good-for-nothing husband. He got wind of it some way or other, and turned over her trunks and drawers till he found it. He then carried it to Roger Smith and paid his drinking account with it, and then, boasting how he got the money, began a new score! Hear me out. The next day poor Mrs. Farren went penniless to Smith's to buy a loaf of bread for her children's breakfast. The scoundrel refused it!"*[ii] "That was rather tough, I own,—but then what business had she to hide the money? She knew it was his, not hers, by the law of the land." "By the law of the land it may be, but not by the law of God; and there is neither truth, honour, nor manhood in a husband who will avail himself of such a law, to take away the rightful property of his wife." "Tut-tut! what nonsense you talk, Hutton! A married woman can't have any rightful property. Her husband is bound to protect and support her, and that is quite enough for her." "And if he does not?" "Why he is compelled to—the law compels him." At this moment the door of the little bed-room to which George had gone was set ajar. "The law abounds in fictions," rejoined Hutton. "Does the law compel him ?—You and I know some wives who have supported their families—including their lordly husbands—for years"—-Warren filled another bumper of wine and drank it off—"and yet the money they earn is not their own, and is at all times subject to the husband's rapacity. There is no end to the wrong done by men who fancy that old and barbarous laws give them rights that no human authority can give. I knew a gentleman, so called, who married a charming woman; she had a fortune of forty thousand dollars; he, not a penny. He was rather a good fellow, but idle. He lived on his wife's fortune, never earned or acquired in any way a shilling, and when he died he bequeathed his wife's property to her while she remained unmarried, but he made some other disposition of it if she married again!* [iii] This was strictly legal, Warren,—good old Norman law for it, no doubt; but I call it as impudent a piece of projected robbery as ever was done on a highway." "Nonsense! when he married, the property, if it was personal, and passed into his hands, became his of course. There may be a hard case now and then, but women don't know how to take care of property, and it's best they shouldn't have it." "I deny that. They take better care of property than men. They do not expose it to so many hazards. They rarely jeopard their children's happiness by a foolish second marriage, as men continually do. I have heard a man, older and wiser than either you or I, say that he has never known a woman left a widow who, if she had but a roof over her head, did not support her children. No, Warren, it does not become us to talk about women not being trusted with property because they don't know how to take care of it. At any rate, it is rather an Irish way of teaching them to deprive them of it. 'My girls are all boys,' as they say, Warren. When they marry, if their wives have property, it shall be secured to them, or I'll no longer own them for sons of mine." [78] "But, Hutton, would you have a division of interests in a family?—You must, if you have a division of property." "I know no division so bad as that which gives all the rights to one side, and all the wrongs to the other. This argument of yours, that women are not qualified to take care of property, is a very common and a specious one. But cannot women with large fortunes pay for wise counsel and faithful agency? It is that large class of poor women who work for small wages, whose wants demand the rectification of the laws. When they are permitted to control their earnings, their management is, for the most part, discreet and efficient. If common justice should be done to women, and the laws be repealed that annul their right to their own property, it would soon become a part of their education to learn to take care of it. Why, in France, where married women possess and control their own property, they conduct a vast amount of mercantile business. They are principals and book-keepers in large commercial establishments. In Germany, a woman is regarded as an equal partner with her husband, it being there admitted that she does half the business of the partnership in performing those duties that naturally fall to her sex. She is the possessor of half the property he acquires; that half he cannot dispose of, nor can he apply it to the payment of his debts: it is absolutely hers. And it is acknowledged, that in no country are there more domestic, devoted, and care-taking wives, than in Germany." "Fol-de-rol, Hutton! don't talk to me of German wives and French women. I should like to know where there are finer women, and better wives than here in our own Yankee-land, where, according to your doctrine, they are so oppressed and defrauded—Mrs. Warren for example." "And it is because we have such women as Mrs. Warren, that I think it fitting we should prove our appreciation of them by restoring to them their rights; making them as independent as we ourselves are." "Not quite, Hutton, not quite: it does not do to have two commanders to the ship." "No, but I have heard seamen say, that if the mate is the better man the command is very apt, when a storm rises, to fall into his hands; and in the storms of life women show how capable they are. When I see how strong they are in their calmness and patience, my blood boils that they should be so shackled and made the victims of the vices, the follies, or the misfortunes of their husbands." Hutton paused. Warren was becoming sobered under the influence of arguments that came home to him. He made no reply, but thrummed vehemently with his fingers on the table. "Matters, however," resumed Hutton, "are righting. Little Rhode Island was, I believe, the first champion among the states against this Goliath of old abuses.* [iv] I read the debates of their legislature at the time; they were full of sense and wit, with some touches of the pathetic," he added, turning to Mrs. Warren; who ever and anon, by a smile, or a nod, or a gentle "I think you are right, Mr. Hutton," had manifested her attention to the conversation. "I remember," continued Mr. Hutton, "a lawyer describing the ruthless seizure, for the husband's debts, of silver teaspoons cherished as a wedding-gift, and the gold beads transmitted through a long maternal line. And there was a funny story told of an Irish woman, to illustrate a wife's voluntary devotion: a woman who turned out a pig to save her husband from jail, saying, 'A poor husband is better than none; he's a hand, if no head; he can draw the water and lug the wood!' Indeed, some of us, Warren, are only fit to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to our good wives." "Speak for yourself, Hutton, speak for yourself." "I have acted for myself," replied Hutton, with perfect good temper. "I secured before my marriage, to my wife's separate use, her own property, and I have since made over to her half of what I have acquired. I do not say this boastingly; the first act was simply honest, and if some-grains of generosity entered into the second, it was but a small testimony to the excellent woman who has made my home happy; a wife and mother, Mrs. Warren, can make a home a sort of Paradise regained." The sense of what, in spite of his excellent wife, he had made his home, stung Warren through all the indurations of long years of wrong-doing. He arose, thrust back his chair, clasped his hands over his bald head, and groaned aloud. "His conscience is awakened," thought Hutton; "now is the time;" and rising, he laid his hand gently on Warren's shoulder. "My friend," he said, "look at your wife. See how, without intermission, she toils for you. For years, Warren, she has earned the bread for your family—she educates your children. You see what can be done even by a woman's unproductive labour. Doyle told me yesterday, he owed your wife more than fifty dollars on account; and all for this stitching early and late. Be a man, Warren,—put your shoulder to the wheel. Her strength is failing. For- [79] swear drinking—take the pledge. In God's name do anything that will help you in the course of duty to your family. Life is short, my friend.—God help you, good night!" Warren felt humbled by his friend's admonition. But it takes far more virtue than he possessed to endure humiliation, and turn it to account; so instead of cherishing the holy monitor that had entered his bosom, he rushed out of the house, and did not return to it till he could scarcely find his way to the bed he dishonoured by his brutal intoxication. During the rest of the week he was more surly and more uncomfortable than usual. He, two or three times, hinted to his wife that he was in pressing need of a small sum of money—that forty or fifty dollars would relieve him—that he could do nothing till he was relieved—that if he were, and his mind at ease, he would turn over a new leaf. On Friday morning he suddenly came into the house, and said that he had an employment he liked offered to him, that if he could have his mind at ease he would accept it. But he owed one fifty dollars, for which he was dunned every time he went up the street. His wife understood perfectly in what direction this discourse pointed. She had understood his hints before as an indirect demand for the fifty dollars due from Mr. Doyle. But she had devoted this fifty dollars to the prosperity of one child, and the life of another. "I am perfectly sure that if I could get rid of this one little debt I should be a new man," he continued. "But I can't undertake any business with this constant torment hanging over me. Hutton told me I must decide to-day. He got the offer of the place for me." "Then, John, ask the loan of fifty dollars from him. I know he will lend it to you." "Ah! you hear me, do you? I thought you were deaf. No, I can't demean myself to Hutton. I won't—that's flat. If my wife can't lend me—yes, I say lend—I give in to Hutton's notions, though I don't believe a word in them, so far as to say lend—if you can't lend me, madam, your fifty dollars, I won't humble myself to strangers for it." "John," said his wife calmly, "I have fifty dollars and more; to-morrow it will be sixty dollars, due to me. I have, as you know, worked early and late to earn it—I have, in my mind, devoted it to the good of our children. Hear now poor little Jessie moaning. See, she can hardly sit in her chair. Her life—the doctor says so—depends upon a change of air, and this money from Mr. Doyle is to pay the expense of our journey to my brother's. You have the right to it—but I am sure, John, you will not take it—and I cannot give it to you." Warren said nothing, and his wife ventured to ask "Who is this hard creditor?" "Roger Smith—curse him!" "I thought so—he cares not how many families he ruins, how many hearts he breaks, if he can make a little money by it! As fast as I can earn the money I will pay it, John, if you will have no more accounts with this man. Go and tell him so—and oh, John—for your own salvation, for my sake, for your children's, for God's sake, go no more near that bad man. Enter on this new path that is open to you." "I will, Anne—I will, if I can get the fifty dollars—I can do nothing without it." And without waiting for further expostulation, or answer of any kind, Warren rushed out of the house. His wife was left in perplexity—in the saddest of all perplexities,—uncertainty as to her duty. If her husband had told the truth, this might be a turning point in his life. Mr. Hutton had offered him a place on certain conditions, which he professed himself ready to accept. Warren might be restored to temperance and industry—if he had told the truth! "But my child! my child!" cried the poor mother, taking little Jessie into her lap and giving way to an unwonted burst of tears. "And yet have I a right to put her life against his salvation? possible salvation? Oh heavenly Father enlighten—direct me!" After awhile she became quite calm, the little girl fell asleep stroking away her mother's tears, and Mrs. Warren laid her in her crib, and then bent over and kissed her, saying, "It will be all gain and not loss to you, Jessie—it's a hard life— very hard!" Mrs. Warren had come to the conclusion to give the money to her husband, helped to this, as good people often are, by the very difficulty and bitterness of the duty turning the scale. One thing remained to be done. Mortifying as it was to impart to any one her distrust of her husband, she determined to ascertain the truth of his statement before she voluntarily parted with her precious little sum of money. She accordingly went herself to Mr. Hutton's. "My good friend," he said, "your husband has deceived you. I did tell him, last week, that if he would remain sober for one month, I would find a place for him. You know what a beginning he has made this week. Not a day of it but I have seen him at Roger Smith's. But, take courage, my friend—you have good children. God spare them to reward you for your devotion to them." Mrs. Warren turned away, I believe, with a lightened heart, for her husband had worn out her affection for him, and she now saw her way clear to pursue her project for little Jessie. She did not see her husband till late [80] that night, and then he was in his customary condition. The next morning, at breakfast, he launched forth in invectives against Hutton, and his newfangled notions, on which he freely bestowed his favourite epithets. When he went out, banging the door after him, "It is too bad!" said George. "If I get into the legislature when I am a man, I'll do what I can to give these old laws a smoking." "Oh hush, my son," said his mother; "I trust they will be righted long before that time; till they are, we must suffer and do as best we can. I feel as if I could bear anything just now,—I am all ready for our start; we are to be at the boat at one, and I am going now to settle accounts with Mr. Doyle. Write a letter to Anne while I am gone to the shop, and tell her I enclose twenty dollars in it. The doctor says Jessie is a little better to-day. Providence smiles on us, my son,—the weather is lovely." The world without and within was all smiling to the happy mother. She went with a light step and light heart to Mr. Doyle's. He was alone in his counting-room, where he received her kindly, for Mr. Doyle is one of the few men who put a heart of humanity into all his business relations. "You are always punctual, Mrs. Warren," he said; "you have finished your last lot of shoes." "Yes, sir, and if convenient, I should like to settle my account with you." "Certainly, there is a small balance due to you." "Small, Mr. Doyle! to me it seems very large. You who have to do with hundreds and thousands can scarcely conceive what fifty is to me, nor what good I expect it to do me." Mr. Doyle's countenance clouded, but Mrs. Warren not perceiving this went on. "My youngest child has been sick all summer, and nothing, the doctor says so, and I am sure of it, could do her any good while she is in the bad air in ____ Street. But I shall have her on the sea-shore by Tuesday morning; and owing to the captain's goodness, who gives George a free passage, he is going down to his uncle's with me. But excuse me, Mr. Doyle; I am so happy, I know you will feel with me." "I do with you, and for you, Mrs. Warren, and it grieves me to tell you that your husband came here last night and asked for your dues, and I not suspecting that he came unknown to you, paid him fifty-five dollars, so that there is but five dollars coming to you." The sudden change from light to darkness was too much for poor Mrs. Warren. The flush of sweet hopes vanished from her face. She became fearfully pale, and sank back into a chair. She did not faint, she did not weep, she did not speak. Tears gushed from Mr. Doyle's eyes. He thrust his hand into his money-drawer, and eagerly counting out sixty dollars, he put the money into Mrs. Warren's hand. She looked up, scarcely comprehending what he was doing. "It is yours, ma'am," he said; "accept it—no, take it as your due. It is your due. I could not swallow down the kind words you spoke, when you said you knew I would feel for you, if I did not do this. A plague on the laws that give a husband the right to take his wife's earnings, I say. No, no! don't thank me— don't say a word—you have no time to lose; get to the boat with your children as quick as you can, and I will take your thanks out in pleasant thoughts of all you are enjoying." Mrs. Warren did not speak—she could not; but the tears now flowed plentifully, and they were like the rain in sunshine, when every drop is bright as a jewel. N. B. We have simply recorded a recent fact in the life of a tradesman. Whether his name be Doyle, or whether he is a shoemaker, does not matter. If in the odd chances of life this page should meet his eye, his modesty will pardon the publicity given to his beneficence, in consideration of the value of so rare an example. While human nature is vilified in such fictions as Vanity Fair, we are anxious to present the antidote of real goodness which comes within our knowledge by personal observation, or unquestionable report. ___________________________________ Sedgwick’s notes: * [i]Much has been said and is saying about the rights of women. If the right to their own property, by inheritance, or by their own labour (the first of social rights), and the right of the mother to the custody of her children (the first of nature's rights), were secured to them, the rest might be left to the accidents of character and conduct. * [ii] Fact * [iii] Fact * [iv] Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, and now New York, have repaired the law in relation to the property of married women. We devoutly hope that Massachusetts will not much longer suffer the blot of this old abuse to remain on her escutcheon. 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 "Might Versus Right" Subject The topic of the resource Married women's property rights; temperance. Description An account of the resource A young woman from a wealthy family marries and her husband legally gains rights to all of her property. The husband's poor business management and drinking cause him to lose the money, and the wife must work to support the family. When the husband claims his wife's wages without her knowledge, a sympathetic employer makes a kind gesture. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine M. Miss C. M. Sedgwick Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Sartain’s Union Magazine [edited by Caroline M. Kirkland], Vol. VI., 75-80. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Philadelphia: John Sartain & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource January - June 1850 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource J. Robinson; D. Gussman Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Louisiana marriage married women's property acts Massachusetts Missouri Motherhood New York New York Married Women's Property Act 1848 Sartain's Union Magazine temperance temperance pledge Tennessee women's rights