p606-308 CHAPTER XVII. OLD SOPHY CALLS ON THE REVEREND DOCTOR.

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The two meeting-houses which faced each
other like a pair of fighting-cocks had not flapped
their wings or crowed at each other for a considerable
time. The Reverend Mr. Fairweather had
been dyspeptic and low-spirited of late, and was
too languid for controversy. The Reverend Doctor
Honeywood had been very busy with his benevolent
associations, and had discoursed chiefly
on practical matters, to the neglect of special
doctrinal subjects. His senior deacon ventured
to say to him that some of his people required to
be reminded of the great fundamental doctrine
of the worthlessness of all human efforts and motives.
Some of them were altogether too much
pleased with the success of the Temperance Society
and the Association for the Relief of the
Poor. There was a pestilent heresy about, concerning
the satisfaction to be derived from a good
conscience, — as if anybody ever did anything

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which was not to be hated, loathed, despised and
condemned.

The old minister listened gravely, with an inward
smile, and told his deacon that he would attend
to his suggestion. After the deacon had gone,
he tumbled over his manuscripts, until at length
he came upon his first-rate old sermon on “Human
Nature.” He had read a great deal of hard
theology, and had at last reached that curious
state which is so common in good ministers, —
that, namely, in which they contrive to switch
off their logical faculties on the narrow side-track
of their technical dogmas, while the great freighttrain
of their substantial human qualities keeps
in the main highway of common-sense, in which
kindly souls are always found by all who approach
them by their human side.

The Doctor read his sermon with a pleasant,
paternal interest: it was well argued from his
premises. Here and there he dashed his pen
through a harsh expression. Now and then he
added an explanation or qualified a broad statement.
But his mind was on the logical side-track,
and he followed the chain of reasoning
without fairly perceiving where it would lead
him, if he carried it into real life.

He was just touching up the final proposition,
when his granddaughter, Letty, once before referred
to, came into the room with her smiling
face and lively movement. Miss Letty or Letitia
Forrester was a city-bred girl of some fifteen or

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sixteen years old, who was passing the summer
with her grandfather for the sake of country air and
quiet. It was a sensible arrangement; for, having
the promise of figuring as a belle by-and-by, and
being a little given to dancing, and having a
voice which drew a pretty dense circle around
the piano when she sat down to play and sing,
it was hard to keep her from being carried into
society before her time, by the mere force of mutual
attraction. Fortunately, she had some quiet
as well as some social tastes, and was willing
enough to pass two or three of the summer
months in the country, where she was much
better bestowed than she would have been at
one of those watering-places where so many half-formed
girls get prematurely hardened in the vice
of self-consciousness.

Miss Letty was altogether too wholesome,
hearty, and high-strung a young girl to be a
model, according to the flat-chested and cachectic
pattern which is the classical type of certain excellent
young females, often the subjects of biographical
memoirs. But the old minister was
proud of his granddaughter for all that. She
was so full of life, so graceful, so generous, so
vivacious, so ready always to do all she could for
him and for everybody, so perfectly frank in her
avowed delight in the pleasures which this miserable
world offered her in the shape of natural
beauty, of poetry, of music, of companionship,
of books, of cheerful coöperation in the tasks of

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those about her, that the Reverend Doctor could
not find it in his heart to condemn her because
she was deficient in those particular graces and
that signal other-worldliness he had sometimes
noticed in feeble young persons suffering from
various chronic diseases which impaired their
vivacity and removed them from the range of
temptation.

When Letty, therefore, came bounding into the
old minister's study, he glanced up from his manuscript,
and, as his eye fell upon her, it flashed
across him that there was nothing so very monstrous
and unnatural about the specimen of congenital
perversion he was looking at, with his
features opening into their pleasantest sunshine.
Technically, according to the fifth proposition of
the sermon on Human Nature, very bad, no
doubt. Practically, according to the fact before
him, a very pretty piece of the Creator's handiwork,
body and soul. Was it not a conceivable
thing that the divine grace might show itself in
different forms in a fresh young girl like Letitia,
and in that poor thing he had visited yesterday,
half-grown, half-colored, in bed for the last year
with hip-disease? Was it to be supposed that
this healthy young girl, with life throbbing all
over her, could, without a miracle, be good according
to the invalid pattern and formula?

And yet there were mysteries in human nature
which pointed to some tremendous perversion of
its tendencies, — to some profound, radical vice

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of moral constitution, native or transmitted, as
you will have it, but positive, at any rate, as the
leprosy, breaking out in the blood of races, guard
them ever so carefully. Did he not know the
case of a young lady in Rockland, daughter of
one of the first families in the place, a very beautiful
and noble creature to look at, for whose
bringing-up nothing had been spared, — a girl
who had had governesses to teach her at the
house, who had been indulged almost too kindly,—
a girl whose father had given himself up to
her, he being himself a pure and high-souled
man? — and yet this girl was accused in whispers
of having been on the very verge of committing
a fatal crime; she was an object of fear
to all who knew the dark hints which had been
let fall about her, and there were some that believed—
Why, what was this but an instance
of the total obliquity and degeneration of the
moral principle? and to what could it be owing,
but to an innate organic tendency?

“Busy, grandpapa?” said Letty, and without
waiting for an answer kissed his cheek with a
pair of lips made on purpose for that little function, —
fine, but richly turned out, the corners
tucked in with a finish of pretty dimples, the
rose-bud lips of girlhood's June.

The old gentleman looked at his granddaughter.
Nature swelled up from his heart in a wave
that sent a glow to his cheek and a sparkle to his
eye. But it is very hard to be interrupted just as

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we are winding up a string of propositions with
the grand conclusion which is the statement in
brief of all that has gone before: our own starting-point,
into which we have been trying to back
our reader or listener as one backs a horse into
the shafts.

“Video meliora, proboque, — I see the better,
and approve it; deteriora sequor, I follow after
the worse; 'tis that natural dislike to what is
good, pure, holy, and true, that inrooted selfishness,
totally insensible to the claims of” —

Here the worthy man was interrupted by Miss
Letty.

“Do come, if you can, grandpapa,” said the
young girl; “here is a poor old black woman
wants to see you so much!”

The good minister was as kind-hearted as if
he had never groped in the dust and ashes of
those cruel old abstractions which have killed
out so much of the world's life and happiness.
“With the heart man believeth unto righteousness”;
a man's love is the measure of his fitness
for good or bad company here or elsewhere.
Men are tattooed with their special beliefs like so
many South-Sea Islanders; but a real human
heart, with Divine love in it, beats with the same
glow under all the patterns of all earth's thousand
tribes!

The Doctor sighed, and folded the sermon, and
laid the Quarto Cruden on it. He rose from his
desk, and, looking once more at the young girl's

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face, forgot his logical conclusions, and said to
himself that she was a little angel, — which was
in violent contradiction to the leading doctrine of
his sermon on Human Nature. And so he followed
her out of the study into the wide entry
of the old-fashioned country-house.

An old black woman sat on the plain oaken
settle which humble visitors waiting to see the
minister were wont to occupy. She was old, but
how old it would be very hard to guess. She
might be seventy. She might be ninety. One
could not swear she was not a hundred. Black
women remain at a stationary age (to the eyes
of white people, at least) for thirty years. They
do not appear to change during this period any
more than so many Trenton trilobites. Bent up,
wrinkled, yellow-eyed, with long upper-lip, projecting
jaws, retreating chin, still meek features,
long arms, large flat hands with uncolored palms
and slightly webbed fingers, it was impossible not
to see in this old creature a hint of the gradations
by which life climbs up through the lower natures
to the highest human developments. We cannot
tell such old women's ages because we do not
understand the physiognomy of a race so unlike
our own. No doubt they see a great deal in each
other's faces that we cannot, — changes of color
and expression as real as our own, blushes and
sudden betrayals of feeling, — just as these two
canaries know what their single notes and short
sentences and full song with this or that

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variation mean, though it is a mystery to us unplumed
mortals.

This particular old black woman was a striking
specimen of her class. Old as she looked, her
eye was bright and knowing. She wore a red-and-yellow
turban, which set off her complexion
well, and hoops of gold in her ears, and beads of
gold about her neck, and an old funeral ring upon
her finger. She had that touching stillness about
her which belongs to animals that wait to be
spoken to and then look up with a kind of sad
humility.

“Why, Sophy!” said the good minister, “is
this you?”

She looked up with the still expression on her
face. “It's ol' Sophy,” she said.

“Why,” said the Doctor, “I did not believe
you could walk so far as this to save the Union.
Bring Sophy a glass of wine, Letty. Wine's
good for old folks like Sophy and me, after walking
a good way, or preaching a good while.”

The young girl stepped into the back-parlor,
where she found the great pewter flagon in
which the wine that was left after each communion-service
was brought to the minister's
house. With much toil she managed to tip it so
as to get a couple of glasses filled. The minister
tasted his, and made old Sophy finish hers.

“I wan' to see you 'n' talk wi' you all alone,”
she said presently.

The minister got up and led the way towards

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his study. “To be sure,” he said; he had only
waited for her to rest a moment before he asked
her into the library. The young girl took her
gently by the arm, and helped her feeble steps
along the passage. When they reached the
study, she smoothed the cushion of a rocking-chair,
and made the old woman sit down in it.
Then she tripped lightly away, and left her alone
with the minister.

Old Sophy was a member of the Reverend
Doctor Honeywood's church. She had been put
through the necessary confessions in a tolerably
satisfactory manner. To be sure, as her grandfather
had been a cannibal chief, according to the
common story, and, at any rate, a terrible wild
savage, and as her mother retained to the last
some of the prejudices of her early education,
there was a heathen flavor in her Christianity,
which had often scandalized the elder of the
minister's two deacons. But the good minister
had smoothed matters over: had explained
that allowances were to be made for those who
had been long sitting without the gate of Zion,—
that, no doubt, a part of the curse which descended
to the children of Ham consisted in
“having the understanding darkened,” as well
as the skin, — and so had brought his suspicious
senior deacon to tolerate old Sophy as
one of the communion of fellow-sinners.

— Poor things! How little we know the

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simple notions with which these rudiments of
souls are nourished by the Divine Goodness! Did
not Mrs. Professor come home this very blessed
morning with a story of one of her old black
women?

“And how do you feel to-day, Mrs. Robinson?”

“Oh, my dear, I have this singing in my head
all the time.” (What doctors call tinnitus aurium.)

“She's got a cold in the head,” said old Mrs.
Rider.

“Oh, no, my dear! Whatever I'm thinking
about, it's all this singing, this music. When I'm
thinking of the dear Redeemer, it all turns into
this singing and music. When the clark came to
see me, I asked him if he couldn't cure me, and
he said, No, — it was the Holy Spirit in me, singing
to me; and all the time I hear this beautiful
music, and it's the Holy Spirit a-singing to
me.” —

The good man waited for Sophy to speak; but
she did not open her lips as yet.

“I hope you are not troubled in mind or body,”
he said to her at length, finding she did not speak.

The poor old woman took out a white handkerchief,
and lifted it to her black face. She
could not say a word for her tears and sobs.

The minister would have consoled her; he was
used to tears, and could in most cases withstand
their contagion manfully; but something choked
his voice suddenly, and when he called upon it,

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he got no answer, but a tremulous movement of
the muscles, which was worse than silence.

At last she spoke.

“Oh, no, no, no! It's my poor girl, my darling,
my beauty, my baby, that's grown up to be a
woman; she will come to a bad end; she will do
something that will make them kill her or shut
her up all her life. Oh, Doctor, Doctor, save her,
pray for her! It a'n't her fault. It a'n't her fault.
If they knew all that I know, they wouldn' blame
that poor child. I must tell you, Doctor: if I
should die, perhaps nobody else would tell you.
Massa Venner can't talk about it. Doctor Kittredge
won't talk about it. Nobody but old Sophy
to tell you, Doctor; and old Sophy can't die
without telling you.”

The kind minister soothed the poor old soul
with those gentle, quieting tones which had carried
peace and comfort to so many chambers of
sickness and sorrow, to so many hearts overburdened
by the trials laid upon them.

Old Sophy became quiet in a few minutes, and
proceeded to tell her story. She told it in the low
half-whisper which is the natural voice of lips oppressed
with grief and fears; with quick glances
around the apartment from time to time, as if she
dreaded lest the dim portraits on the walls and
the dark folios on the shelves might overhear her
words.

It was not one of those conversations which a
third person can report minutely, unless by that

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miracle of clairvoyance known to the readers of
stories made out of authors' brains. Yet its main
character can be imparted in a much briefer space
than the old black woman took to give all its
details.

She went far back to the time when Dudley
Venner was born, — she being then a middle-aged
woman. The heir and hope of a family which
had been narrowing down as if doomed to extinction,
he had been surrounded with every care and
trained by the best education he could have in
New England. He had left college, and was
studying the profession which gentlemen of leisure
most affect, when he fell in love with a young
girl left in the world almost alone, as he was.
The old woman told the story of his young love
and his joyous bridal with a tenderness which had
something more, even, than her family sympathies
to account for it. Had she not hanging over her
bed a paper-cutting of a profile — jet black, but
not blacker than the face it represented — of one
who would have been her own husband in the
small years of this century, if the vessel in which
he went to sea, like Jamie in the ballad, had not
sailed away and never come back to land? Had
she not her bits of furniture stowed away which
had been got ready for her own wedding, — two
rocking-chairs, one worn with long use, one kept
for him so long that it had grown a superstition
with her never to sit in it, — and might he not
come back yet, after all? Had she not her chest

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of linen ready for her humble house-keeping, with
store of serviceable huckaback and piles of neatly
folded kerchiefs, wherefrom this one that showed
so white against her black face was taken, for that
she knew her eyes would betray her in “the
presence”?

All the first part of the story the old woman
told tenderly, and yet dwelling upon every incident
with a loving pleasure. How happy this
young couple had been, what plans and projects
of improvement they had formed, how they lived
in each other, always together, so young and fresh
and beautiful as she remembered them in that one
early summer when they walked arm in arm
through the wilderness of roses that ran riot in the
garden, — she told of this as loath to leave it and
come to the woe that lay beneath.

She told the whole story; — shall I repeat it?
Not now. If, in the course of relating the incidents
I have undertaken to report, it tells itself,
perhaps this will be better than to run the risk of
producing a painful impression on some of those
susceptible readers whom it would be ill-advised
to disturb or excite, when they rather require to
be amused and soothed. In our pictures of life,
we must show the flowering-out of terrible
growths which have their roots deep, deep underground.
Just how far we shall lay bare the unseemly
roots themselves is a matter of discretion
and taste, in which none of us are infallible.

The old woman told the whole story of Elsie,

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of her birth, of her peculiarities of person and disposition,
of the passionate fears and hopes with
which her father had watched the course of her
development. She recounted all her strange ways,
from the hour when she first tried to crawl across
the carpet, and her father's look as she worked her
way towards him. With the memory of Juliet's
nurse she told the story of her teething, and how,
the woman to whose breast she had clung dying
suddenly about that time, they had to struggle
hard with the child before she would learn the accomplishment
of feeding with a spoon. And so
of her fierce plays and fiercer disputes with that
boy who had been her companion, and the whole
scene of the quarrel when she struck him with
those sharp white teeth, frightening her, old Sophy,
almost to death; for, as she said, the boy
would have died, if it hadn't been for the old
Doctor's galloping over as fast as he could gallop
and burning the places right out of his arm.
Then came the story of that other incident, sufficiently
alluded to already, which had produced
such an ecstasy of fright and left such a nightmare
of apprehension in the household. And so
the old woman came down to this present time.
That boy she never loved nor trusted was grown
to a dark, dangerous-looking man, and he was under
their roof. He wanted to marry our poor
Elsie, and Elsie hated him, and sometimes she
would look at him over her shoulder just as she
used to look at that woman she hated; and she,

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old Sophy, couldn't sleep for thinking she should
hear a scream from the white chamber some night
and find him in spasms such as that woman
came so near dying with. And then there was
something about Elsie she did not know what to
make of: she would sit and hang her head sometimes,
and look as if she were dreaming; and she
brought home books they said a young gentleman
up at the great school lent her: and once she
heard her whisper in her sleep, and she talked as
young girls do to themselves when they're thinking
about somebody they have a liking for and
think nobody knows it.

She finished her long story at last. The minister
had listened to it in perfect silence. He sat
still even when she had done speaking, — still,
and lost in thought. It was a very awkward
matter for him to have a hand in. Old Sophy
was his parishioner, but the Venners had a pew
in the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's meeting-house.
It would seem that he, Mr. Fairweather, was the
natural adviser of the parties most interested.
Had he sense and spirit enough to deal with such
people? Was there enough capital of humanity
in his somewhat limited nature to furnish sympathy
and unshrinking service for his friends in an
emergency? or was he too busy with his own
attacks of spiritual neuralgia, and too much occupied
with taking account of stock of his own
thin-blooded offences, to forget himself and his
personal interests on the small scale and the large,

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and run a risk of his life, if need were, at any
rate give himself up without reserve to the dangerous
task of guiding and counselling these distressed
and imperilled fellow-creatures?

The good minister thought the best thing to do
would be to call and talk over some of these matters
with Brother Fairweather, — for so he would
call him at times, especially if his senior deacon
were not within earshot. Having settled this
point, he comforted Sophy with a few words of
counsel and a promise of coming to see her very
soon. He then called his man to put the old
white horse into the chaise and drive Sophy back
to the mansion-house.

When the Doctor sat down to his sermon
again, it looked very differently from the way it
had looked at the moment he left it. When he
came to think of it, he did not feel quite so sure
practically about that matter of the utter natural
selfishness of everybody. There was Letty, now,
seemed to take a very unselfish interest in that
old black woman, and indeed in poor people generally;
perhaps it would not be too much to say
that she was always thinking of other people.
He thought he had seen other young persons
naturally unselfish, thoughtful for others; it
seemed to be a family trait in some he had
known.

But most of all he was exercised about this
poor girl whose story Sophy had been telling.
If what the old woman believed was true, — and

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it had too much semblance of probability, —
what became of his theory of ingrained moral
obliquity applied to such a case? If by the visitation
of God a person receives any injury which
impairs the intellect or the moral perceptions, is
it not monstrous to judge such a person by our
common working standards of right and wrong?
Certainly, everybody will answer, in cases where
there is a palpable organic change brought about,
as when a blow on the head produces insanity.
Fools! How long will it be before we shall learn
that for every wound which betrays itself to the
sight by a scar, there are a thousand unseen mutilations
that cripple, each of them, some one or
more of our highest faculties? If what Sophy
told and believed was the real truth, what prayers
could be agonizing enough, what tenderness could
be deep enough, for this poor, lost, blighted, hapless,
blameless child of misfortune, struck by such
a doom as perhaps no living creature in all the
sisterhood of humanity shared with her?

The minister thought these matters over until
his mind was bewildered with doubts and tossed
to and fro on that stormy deep of thought heaving
forever beneath the conflict of windy dogmas.
He laid by his old sermon. He put back a pile
of old commentators with their eyes and mouths
and hearts full of the dust of the schools. Then
he opened the book of Genesis at the eighteenth
chapter and read that remarkable argument of
Abraham's with his Maker, in which he boldly

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appeals to first principles. He took as his text,
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
and began to write his sermon, afterwards so
famous, — “On the Obligations of an Infinite
Creator to a Finite Creature.”

It astonished the good people, who had been
accustomed so long to repeat mechanically their
Oriental hyperboles of self-abasement, to hear
their worthy minister maintaining that the dignified
attitude of the old Patriarch, insisting on
what was reasonable and fair with reference to
his fellow-creatures, was really much more respectful
to his Maker, and a great deal manlier
and more to his credit, than if he had yielded the
whole matter, and pretended that men had not
rights as well as duties. The same logic which
had carried him to certain conclusions with reference
to human nature, this same irresistible logic
carried him straight on from his text until he arrived
at those other results, which not only astonished
his people, as was said, but surprised himself.
He went so far in defence of the rights of
man, that he put his foot into several heresies, for
which men had been burned so often, it was time,
if ever it could be, to acknowledge the demonstration
of the argumentum ad ignem. He did not
believe in the responsibility of idiots. He did
not believe a new-born infant was morally answerable
for other people's acts. He thought a
man with a crooked spine would never be called
to account for not walking erect. He thought,

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if the crook was in his brain, instead of his back,
he could not fairly be blamed for any consequence
of this natural defect, whatever lawyers or divines
might call it. He argued, that, if a person inherited
a perfect mind, body, and disposition, and
had perfect teaching from infancy, that person
could do nothing more than keep the moral law
perfectly. But supposing that the Creator allows
a person to be born with an hereditary or ingrafted
organic tendency, and then puts this person into
the hands of teachers incompetent or positively
bad, is not what is called sin or transgression of
the law necessarily involved in the premises? Is
not a Creator bound to guard his children against
the ruin which inherited ignorance might entail
on them? Would it be fair for a parent to put
into a child's hands the title-deeds to all its future
possessions, and a bunch of matches? And are
not men children, nay, babes, in the eye of Omniscience? —
The minister grew bold in his questions.
Had not he as good right to ask questions
as Abraham?

This was the dangerous vein of speculation in
which the Reverend Doctor Honeywood found
himself involved, as a consequence of the suggestions
forced upon him by old Sophy's communication.
The truth was, the good man had
got so humanized by mixing up with other people
in various benevolent schemes, that, the very
moment he could escape from his old scholastic
abstractions, he took the side of humanity

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instinctively, just as the Father of the Faithful did,—
all honor be to the noble old Patriarch for insisting
on the worth of an honest man, and making
the best terms he could for a very ill-conditioned
metropolis, which might possibly, however,
have contained ten righteous people, for whose
sake it should be spared!

The consequence of all this was, that he was
in a singular and seemingly self-contradictory
state of mind when he took his hat and cane and
went forth to call on his heretical brother. The
old minister took it for granted that the Reverend
Mr. Fairweather knew the private history of his
parishioner's family. He did not reflect that there
are griefs men never put into words, — that there
are fears which must not be spoken, — intimate
matters of consciousness which must be carried,
as bullets which have been driven deep into the
living tissues are sometimes carried, for a whole
lifetime, — encysted griefs, if we may borrow
the chirurgeon's term, never to be reached, never
to be seen, never to be thrown out, but to go into
the dust with the frame that bore them about
with it, during long years of anguish, known only
to the sufferer and his Maker. Dudley Venner
had talked with his minister about this child of
his. But he had talked cautiously, feeling his
way for sympathy, looking out for those indications
of tact and judgment which would warrant
him in some partial communication, at least,
of the origin of his doubts and fears, and never
finding them.

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There was something about the Reverend Mr.
Fairweather which repressed all attempts at confidential
intercourse. What this something was,
Dudley Venner could hardly say; but he felt it
distinctly, and it sealed his lips. He never got
beyond certain generalities connected with education
and religious instruction. The minister
could not help discovering, however, that there
were difficulties connected with this girl's management,
and he heard enough outside of the
family to convince him that she had manifested
tendencies, from an early age, at variance with
the theoretical opinions he was in the habit of
preaching, and in a dim way of holding for truth,
as to the natural dispositions of the human
being.

About this terrible fact of congenital obliquity
his new beliefs began to cluster as a centre, and
to take form as a crystal around its nucleus.
Still, he might perhaps have struggled against
them, had it not been for the little Roman Catholic
chapel he passed every Sunday, on his way
to the meeting-house. Such a crowd of worshippers,
swarming into the pews like bees, filling all
the aisles, running over at the door like berries
heaped too full in the measure, — some kneeling
on the steps, some standing on the side-walk,
hats off, heads down, lips moving, some looking
on devoutly from the other side of the street!
Oh, could he have followed his own Bridget,
maid of all work, into the heart of that steaming

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throng, and bowed his head while the priests intoned
their Latin prayers! could he have snuffed
up the cloud of frankincense, and felt that he
was in the great ark which holds the better half
of the Christian world, while all around it are
wretched creatures, some struggling against the
waves in leaky boats, and some on ill-connected
rafts, and some with their heads just above water,
thinking to ride out the flood which is to sweep
the earth clean of sinners, upon their own private,
individual life-preservers!

Such was the present state of mind of the
Reverend Chauncy Fairweather, when his clerical
brother called upon him to talk over the questions
to which old Sophy had called his attention.

p606-330 CHAPTER XVIII. THE REVEREND DOCTOR CALLS ON BROTHER FAIRWEATHER.

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

For the last few months, while all these various
matters were going on in Rockland, the Reverend
Chauncy Fairweather had been busy with
the records of ancient councils and the writings
of the early fathers. The more he read, the more
discontented he became with the platform upon
which he and his people were standing. They
and he were clearly in a minority, and his deep
inward longing to be with the majority was
growing into an engrossing passion. He yearned
especially towards the good old unquestioning,
authoritative Mother Church, with her articles of
faith which took away the necessity for private
judgment, with her traditional forms and ceremonies,
and her whole apparatus of stimulants
and anodynes.

About this time he procured a breviary and
kept it in his desk under the loose papers. He
sent to a Catholic bookstore and obtained a small
crucifix suspended from a string of beads. He
ordered his new coat to be cut very narrow in

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

the collar and to be made single-breasted. He
began an informal series of religious conversations
with Miss O'Brien, the young person of
Irish extraction already referred to as Bridget,
maid of all work. These not proving very satisfactory,
he managed to fall in with Father McShane,
the Catholic priest of the Rockland church.
Father McShane encouraged his nibble very scientifically.
It would be such a fine thing to bring
over one of those Protestant heretics, and a
“liberal” one too! — not that there was any real
difference between them, but it sounded better
to say that one of these rationalizing free-and-equal
religionists had been made a convert than
any of those half-way Protestants who were the
slaves of catechisms instead of councils and of
commentators instead of popes. The subtle
priest played his disciple with his finest tackle.
It was hardly necessary: when anything or anybody
wishes to be caught, a bare hook and a
coarse line are all that is needed.

If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish
to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon
becoming a slave, nothing can stop him. And the
temptation is to some natures a very great one.
Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves
that necessity for perpetual choice which is
the kind of labor men have always dreaded. In
common life we shirk it by forming habits, which
take the place of self-determination. In politics
party-organization saves us the pains of much

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

thinking before deciding how to cast our vote.
In religious matters there are great multitudes
watching us perpetually, each propagandist ready
with his bundle of finalities, which having accepted
we may be at peace. The more absolute the
submission demanded, the stronger the temptation
becomes to those who have been long tossed
among doubts and conflicts.

So it is that in all the quiet bays which indent
the shores of the great ocean of thought, at every
sinking wharf, we see moored the hulks and the
razees of enslaved or half-enslaved intelligences.
They rock peacefully as children in their cradles
on the subdued swell which comes feebly in over
the bar at the harbor's mouth, slowly crusting
with barnacles, pulling at their iron cables as if
they really wanted to be free, but better contented
to remain bound as they are. For these no more
the round unwalled horizon of the open sea,
the joyous breeze aloft, the furrow, the foam, the
sparkle that track the rushing keel! They have
escaped the dangers of the wave, and lie still
henceforth, evermore. Happiest of souls, if lethargy
is bliss, and palsy the chief beatitude!

America owes its political freedom to religious
Protestantism. But political freedom is reacting
on religious prescription with still mightier
force. We wonder, therefore, when we find a
soul which was born to a full sense of individual
liberty, an unchallenged right of self-determination
on every new alleged truth offered to its

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

intelligence, voluntarily surrendering any portion
of its liberty to a spiritual dictatorship which always
proves to rest, in the last analysis, on a
majority vote, nothing more nor less, commonly
an old one, passed in those barbarous times
when men cursed and murdered each other for
differences of opinion, and of course were not in
a condition to settle the beliefs of a comparatively
civilized community.

In our disgust, we are liable to be intolerant.
We forget that weakness is not in itself a sin.
We forget that even cowardice may call for our
most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate
infirmity. Who of us does not look with great
tenderness on the young chieftain in the “Fair
Maid of Perth,” when he confesses his want of
courage? All of us love companionship and sympathy;
some of us may love them too much. All
of us are more or less imaginative in our theology.
Some of us may find the aid of material
symbols a comfort, if not a necessity. The
boldest thinker may have his moments of languor
and discouragement, when he feels as if he
could willingly exchange faiths with the old beldame
crossing herself at the cathedral-door, —
nay, that, if he could drop all coherent thought,
and lie in the flowery meadow with the brown-eyed
solemnly unthinking cattle, looking up to
the sky, and all their simple consciousness staining
itself blue, then down to the grass, and life
turning to a mere greenness, blended with

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

confused scents of herbs,— no individual mind-movement
such as men are teased with, but the great
calm cattle-sense of all time and all places that
know the milky smell of herds, — if he could be
like these, he would be content to be driven home
by the cow-boy, and share the grassy banquet of
the king of ancient Babylon. Let us be very
generous, then, in our judgment of those who
leave the front ranks of thought for the company
of the meek non-combatants who follow with the
baggage and provisions. Age, illness, too much
wear and tear, a half-formed paralysis, may bring
any of us to this pass. But while we can think
and maintain the rights of our own individuality
against every human combination, let us not
forget to caution all who are disposed to waver
that there is a cowardice which is criminal, and
a longing for rest which it is baseness to indulge.
God help him, over whose dead soul in his living
body must be uttered the sad supplication,
Requiescat in pace!

A knock at the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's
study-door called his eyes from the book on which
they were intent. He looked up, as if expecting
a welcome guest.

The Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D.,
entered the study of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather.
He was not the expected guest. Mr.
Fairweather slipped the book he was reading into
a half-open drawer, and pushed in the drawer.

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

He slid something which rattled under a paper
lying on the table. He rose with a slight change
of color, and welcomed, a little awkwardly, his
unusual visitor.

“Good evening, Brother Fairweather!” said
the Reverend Doctor, in a very cordial, good-humored
way. “I hope I am not spoiling one of
those eloquent sermons I never have a chance to
hear.”

“Not at all, not at all,” the younger clergyman
answered, in a languid tone, with a kind of habitual
half-querulousness which belonged to it, —
the vocal expression which we meet with now
and then, and which says as plainly as so many
words could say it, “I am a suffering individual.
I am persistently undervalued, wronged, and imposed
upon by mankind and the powers of the
universe generally. But I endure all. I endure
you. Speak. I listen. It is a burden to me, but
I even approve. I sacrifice myself. Behold this
movement of my lips! It is a smile.”

The Reverend Doctor knew this forlorn way of
Mr. Fairweather's, and was not troubled by it.
He proceeded to relate the circumstances of his
visit from the old black woman, and the fear she
was in about the young girl, who being a parishioner
of Mr. Fairweather's, he had thought it best
to come over and speak to him about old Sophy's
fears and fancies.

In telling the old woman's story, he alluded
only vaguely to those peculiar circumstances to

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

which she had attributed so much importance,
taking it for granted that the other minister must
be familiar with the whole series of incidents she
had related. The old minister was mistaken, as
we have before seen. Mr. Fairweather had been
settled in the place only about ten years, and,
if he had heard a strange hint now and then
about Elsie, had never considered it as anything
more than idle and ignorant, if not malicious, village-gossip.
All that he fully understood was
that this had been a perverse and unmanageable
child, and that the extraordinary care which had
been bestowed on her had been so far thrown
away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl,
whom all feared and almost all shunned, as if she
carried with her some malignant influence.

He replied, therefore, after hearing the story,
that Elsie had always given trouble. There
seemed to be a kind of natural obliquity about
her. Perfectly unaccountable. A very dark case.
Never amenable to good influences. Had sent
her good books from the Sunday-school library.
Remembered that she tore out the frontispiece of
one of them, and kept it, and flung the book out
of the window. It was a picture of Eve's temptation;
and he recollected her saying that Eve
was a good woman, — and she'd have done just
so, if she'd been there. A very sad child, — very
sad; bad from infancy. — He had talked himself
bold, and said all at once, —

“Doctor, do you know I am almost ready to

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

accept your doctrine of the congenital sinfulness
of human nature? I am afraid that is the only
thing which goes to the bottom of the difficulty.”

The old minister's face did not open so approvingly
as Mr. Fairweather had expected.

“Why, yes, — well, — many find comfort in it,—
I believe; — there is much to be said, — there
are many bad people, — and bad children, — I
can't be so sure about bad babies, — though they
cry very malignantly at times, — especially if
they have the stomach-ache. But I really don't
know how to condemn this poor Elsie; she may
have impulses that act in her like instincts in the
lower animals, and so not come under the bearing
of our ordinary rules of judgment.”

“But this depraved tendency, Doctor, — this
unaccountable perverseness. My dear Sir, I am
afraid your school is in the right about human nature.
Oh, those words of the Psalmist, `shapen
in iniquity,' and the rest! What are we to do
with them, — we who teach that the soul of a
child is an unstained white tablet?”

“King David was very subject to fits of humility,
and much given to self-reproaches,” said the
Doctor, in a rather dry way. “We owe you and
your friends a good deal for calling attention to
the natural graces, which, after all, may, perhaps,
be considered as another form of manifestation
of the divine influence. Some of our writers have
pressed rather too hard on the tendencies of the
human soul toward evil as such. It may be

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

questioned whether these views have not interfered
with the sound training of certain young persons,
sons of clergymen and others. I am nearer of
your mind about the possibility of educating
children so that they shall become good Christians
without any violent transition. That is what I
should hope for from bringing them up `in the
nurture and admonition of the Lord.'”

The younger minister looked puzzled, but presently
answered, —

“Possibly we may have called attention to
some neglected truths; but, after all, I fear we
must go to the old school, if we want to get at
the root of the matter. I know there is an outward
amiability about many young persons, some
young girls especially, that seems like genuine
goodness; but I have been disposed of late to
lean toward your view, that these human affections,
as we see them in our children, — ours, I
say, though I have not the fearful responsibility
of training any of my own, — are only a kind of
disguised and sinful selfishness.”

The old minister groaned in spirit. His heart
had been softened by the sweet influences of
children and grandchildren. He thought of a
half-sized grave in the burial-ground, and the
fine, brave, noble-hearted boy he laid in it thirty
years before, — the sweet, cheerful child who had
made his home all sunshine until the day when
he was brought into it, his long curls dripping, his
fresh lips purpled in death, — foolish dear little

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

blessed creature to throw himself into the deep
water to save the drowning boy, who clung about
him and carried him under! Disguised selfishness!
And his granddaughter too, whose disguised
selfishness was the light of his household!

“Don't call it my view!” he said. “Abstractly,
perhaps, all natures may be considered vitiated;
but practically, as I see it in life, the divine
grace keeps pace with the perverted instincts from
infancy in many natures. Besides, this perversion
itself may often be disease, bad habits transmitted,
like drunkenness, or some hereditary misfortune,
as with this Elsie we were talking about.”

The younger minister was completely mystified.
At every step he made towards the Doctor's recognized
theological position, the Doctor took just
one step towards his. They would cross each
other soon at this rate, and might as well exchange
pulpits, — as Colonel Sprowle once wished
they would, it may be remembered.

The Doctor, though a much clearer-headed man,
was almost equally puzzled. He turned the conversation
again upon Elsie, and endeavored to
make her minister feel the importance of bringing
every friendly influence to bear upon her at this
critical period of her life. His sympathies did
not seem so lively as the Doctor could have
wished. Perhaps he had vastly more important
objects of solicitude in his own spiritual interests.

A knock at the door interrupted them. The

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

Reverend Mr. Fairweather rose and went towards
it. As he passed the table, his coat caught something,
which came rattling to the floor. It was a
crucifix with a string of beads attached. As he
opened the door, the Milesian features of Father
McShane presented themselves, and from their
centre proceeded the clerical benediction in Irish-sounding
Latin, Pax vobiscum!

The Reverend Doctor Honeywood rose and left
the priest and his disciple together.

p606-341 CHAPTER XIX. THE SPIDER ON HIS THREAD.

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

There was nobody, then, to counsel poor Elsie,
except her father, who had learned to let her have
her own way so as not to disturb such relations
as they had together, and the old black woman,
who had a real, though limited influence over the
girl. Perhaps she did not need counsel. To look
upon her, one might well suppose that she was
competent to defend herself against any enemy
she was like to have. That glittering, piercing
eye was not to be softened by a few smooth
words spoken in low tones, charged with the
common sentiments which win their way to
maidens' hearts. That round, lithe, sinuous figure
was as full of dangerous life as ever lay under
the slender flanks and clean-shaped limbs of a
panther.

There were particular times when Elsie was in
such a mood that it must have been a bold person
who would have intruded upon her with reproof
or counsel. “This is one of her days,” old
Sophy would say quietly to her father, and he
would, as far as possible, leave her to herself.

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

These days were more frequent, as old Sophy's
keen, concentrated watchfulness had taught her,
at certain periods of the year. It was in the
heats of summer that they were most common
and most strongly characterized. In winter, on
the other hand, she was less excitable, and even
at times heavy and as if chilled and dulled in her
sensibilities. It was a strange, paroxysmal kind
of life that belonged to her. It seemed to come
and go with the sunlight. All winter long she
would be comparatively quiet, easy to manage,
listless, slow in her motions; her eye would lose
something of its strange lustre; and the old nurse
would feel so little anxiety, that her whole expression
and aspect would show the change, and
people would say to her, “Why, Sophy, how
young you're looking!”

As the spring came on, Elsie would leave the
fireside, have her tiger-skin spread in the empty
southern chamber next the wall, and lie there
basking for whole hours in the sunshine. As the
season warmed, the light would kindle afresh in
her eyes, and the old woman's sleep would grow
restless again, — for she knew, that, so long as the
glitter was fierce in the girl's eyes, there was no
trusting her impulses or movements.

At last, when the veins of the summer were hot
and swollen, and the juices of all the poison-plants
and the blood of all the creatures that feed upon
them had grown thick and strong, — about the
time when the second mowing was in hand, and

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

the brown, wet-faced men were following up the
scythes as they chased the falling waves of grass,
(falling as the waves fall on sickle-curved beaches;
the foam-flowers dropping as the grass-flowers
drop, — with sharp semivowel consonantal sounds,—
frsh, — for that is the way the sea talks, and
leaves all pure vowel-sounds for the winds to
breathe over it, and all mutes to the unyielding
earth,) — about this time of over-ripe midsummer,
the life of Elsie seemed fullest of its malign and
restless instincts. This was the period of the
year when the Rockland people were most cautious
of wandering in the leafier coverts which
skirted the base of The Mountain, and the farmers
liked to wear thick, long boots, whenever they
went into the bushes. But Elsie was never so
much given to roaming over The Mountain as
at this season; and as she had grown more absolute
and uncontrollable, she was as like to take
the night as the day for her rambles.

At this season, too, all her peculiar tastes in
dress and ornament came out in a more striking
way than at other times. She was never so
superb as then, and never so threatening in her
scowling beauty. The barred skirts she always
fancied showed sharply beneath her diaphanous
muslins; the diamonds often glittered on her
breast as if for her own pleasure rather than to
dazzle others; the asp-like bracelet hardly left
her arm. She was never seen without some
necklace, — either the golden cord she wore at the

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

great party, or a chain of mosaics, or simply a
ring of golden scales. Some said that Elsie always
slept in a necklace, and that when she died
she was to be buried in one. It was a fancy of
hers, — but many thought there was a reason for
it.

Nobody watched Elsie with a more searching
eye than her cousin, Dick Venner. He had kept
more out of her way of late, it is true, but there
was not a movement she made which he did not
carefully observe just so far as he could without
exciting her suspicion. It was plain enough to
him that the road to fortune was before him, and
that the first thing was to marry Elsie. What
course he should take with her, or with others
interested, after marrying her, need not be decided
in a hurry.

He had now done all he could expect to do at
present in the way of conciliating the other members
of the household. The girl's father tolerated
him, if he did not even like him. Whether he
suspected his project or not Dick did not feel
sure; but it was something to have got a foot-hold
in the house, and to have overcome any
prepossession against him which his uncle might
have entertained. To be a good listener and a
bad billiard-player was not a very great sacrifice
to effect this object. Then old Sophy could hardly
help feeling well-disposed towards him, after
the gifts he had bestowed on her and the court
he had payed her. These were the only persons

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

on the place of much importance to gain over.
The people employed about the house and farmlands
had little to do with Elsie, except to obey
her without questioning her commands.

Mr. Richard began to think of reopening his
second parallel. But he had lost something of
the coolness with which he had begun his system
of operations. The more he had reflected upon
the matter, the more he had convinced himself
that this was his one great chance in life. If he
suffered this girl to escape him, such an opportunity
could hardly, in the nature of things, present
itself a second time. Only one life between
Elsie and her fortune, — and lives are so uncertain!
The girl might not suit him as a wife.
Possibly. Time enough to find out after he had
got her. In short, he must have the property, and
Elsie Venner, as she was to go with it, — and then,
if he found it convenient and agreeable to lead a
virtuous life, he would settle down and raise children
and vegetables; but if he found it inconvenient
and disagreeable, so much the worse for
those who made it so. Like many other persons,
he was not principled against virtue, provided virtue
were a better investment than its opposite;
but he knew that there might be contingencies in
which the property would be better without its incumbrances,
and he contemplated this conceivable
problem in the light of all its possible solutions.

One thing Mr. Richard could not conceal from
himself: Elsie had some new cause of

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

indifference, at least, if not of aversion to him. With
the acuteness which persons who make a sole
business of their own interest gain by practice, so
that fortune-hunters are often shrewd where real
lovers are terribly simple, he fixed at once on the
young man up at the school where the girl had
been going of late, as probably at the bottom of
it.

“Cousin Elsie in love!” so he communed with
himself upon his lonely pillow. “In love with a
Yankee school-master! What else can it be?
Let him look out for himself! He'll stand but
a bad chance between us. What makes you
think she's in love with him? Met her walking
with him. Don't like her looks and ways; —
she's thinking about something, anyhow. Where
does she get those books she is reading so often?
Not out of our library, that's certain. If I could
have ten minutes' peep into her chamber now, I
would find out where she got them, and what
mischief she was up to.”

At that instant, as if some tributary demon had
heard his wish, a shape which could be none but
Elsie's flitted through a gleam of moonlight into
the shadow of the trees. She was setting out on
one of her midnight rambles.

Dick felt his heart stir in its place, and presently
his cheeks flushed with the old longing for an
adventure. It was not much to invade a young
girl's deserted chamber, but it would amuse a
wakeful hour, and tell him some little matters he

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

wanted to know. The chamber he slept in was
over the room which Elsie chiefly occupied at
this season. There was no great risk of his being
seen or heard, if he ventured down-stairs to her
apartment.

Mr. Richard Venner, in the pursuit of his interesting
project, arose and lighted a lamp. He
wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and thrust
his feet into a pair of cloth slippers. He stole
carefully down the stair, and arrived safely at the
door of Elsie's room. The young lady had taken
the natural precaution to leave it fastened, carrying
the key with her, no doubt, — unless, indeed,
she had got out by the window, which was not
far from the ground. Dick could get in at this
window easily enough, but he did not like the
idea of leaving his footprints in the flower-bed
just under it. He returned to his own chamber,
and held a council of war with himself.

He put his head out of his own window and
looked at that beneath. It was open. He then
went to one of his trunks, which he unlocked, and
began carefully removing its contents. What
these were we need not stop to mention, — only
remarking that there were dresses of various patterns,
which might afford an agreeable series of
changes, and in certain contingencies prove eminently
useful. After removing a few of these, he
thrust his hand to the very bottom of the remaining
pile and drew out a coiled strip of leather
many yards in length, ending in a noose, — a

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

tough, well-seasoned lasso, looking as if it had
seen service and was none the worse for it. He
uncoiled a few yards of this and fastened it to the
knob of a door. Then he threw the loose end
out of the window so that it should hang by the
open casement of Elsie's room. By this he let
himself down opposite her window, and with a
slight effort swung himself inside the room. He
lighted a match, found a candle, and, having
lighted that, looked curiously about him, as Clodius
might have done when he smuggled himself
in among the Vestals.

Elsie's room was almost as peculiar as her
dress and ornaments. It was a kind of museum
of objects, such as the woods are full of to those
who have eyes to see them, but many of them
such as only few could hope to reach, even if
they knew where to look for them. Crows' nests,
which are never found but in the tall trees, commonly
enough in the forks of ancient hemlocks,
eggs of rare birds, which must have taken a quick
eye and a hard climb to find and get hold of,
mosses and ferns of unusual aspect, and quaint
monstrosities of vegetable growth, such as Nature
delights in, showed that Elsie had her tastes and
fancies like any naturalist or poet.

Nature, when left to her own freaks in the
forest, is grotesque and fanciful to the verge of
license, and beyond it. The foliage of trees does
not always require clipping to make it look like
an image of life. From those windows at Canoe

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

Meadow, among the mountains, we could see all
summer long a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken,
and General Jackson on horseback, done by Nature
in green leaves, each with a single tree. But
to Nature's tricks with boughs and roots and
smaller vegetable growths there is no end. Her
fancy is infinite, and her humor not always refined.
There is a perpetual reminiscence of animal
life in her rude caricatures, which sometimes
actually reach the point of imitating the complete
human figure, as in that extraordinary specimen
which nobody will believe to be genuine, except
the men of science, and of which the discreet
reader may have a glimpse by application in the
proper quarter.

Elsie had gathered so many of these sculpture-like
monstrosities, that one might have thought
she had robbed old Sophy's grandfather of his
fetishes. They helped to give her room a kind of
enchanted look, as if a witch had her home in it.
Over the fireplace was a long, staff-like branch,
strangled in the spiral coils of one of those vines
which strain the smaller trees in their clinging
embraces, sinking into the bark until the parasite
becomes almost identified with its support. With
these sylvan curiosities were blended objects of
art, some of them not less singular, but others
showing a love for the beautiful in form and color,
such as a girl of fine organization and nice culture
might naturally be expected to feel and to
indulge, in adorning her apartment.

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

All these objects, pictures, bronzes, vases, and
the rest, did not detain Mr. Richard Venner very
long, whatever may have been his sensibilities to
art. He was more curious about books and papers.
A copy of Keats lay on the table. He
opened it and read the name of Bernard C.
Langdon on the blank leaf. An envelope was
on the table with Elsie's name written in a similar
hand; but the envelope was empty, and he
could not find the note it contained. Her desk
was locked, and it would not be safe to tamper
with it. He had seen enough; the girl received
books and notes from this fellow up at the school,—
this usher, this Yankee quill-driver; — he was
aspiring to become the lord of the Dudley domain,
then, was he?

Elsie had been reasonably careful. She had
locked up her papers, whatever they might be.
There was little else that promised to reward his
curiosity, but he cast his eye on everything.
There was a clasp-Bible among her books. Dick
wondered if she ever unclasped it. There was
a book of hymns; it had her name in it, and
looked as if it might have been often read; —
what the diablo had Elsie to do with hymns?

Mr. Richard Venner was in an observing and
analytical state of mind, it will be noticed, or he
might perhaps have been touched with the innocent
betrayals of the poor girl's chamber. Had
she, after all, some human tenderness in her
heart? That was not the way he put the

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

question, — but whether she would take seriously to
this schoolmaster, and if she did, what would be
the neatest and surest and quickest way of putting
a stop to all that nonsense. All this, however,
he could think over more safely in his own
quarters. So he stole softly to the window, and,
catching the end of the leathern thong, regained
his own chamber and drew in the lasso.

It needs only a little jealousy to set a man on
who is doubtful in love or wooing, or to make
him take hold of his courting in earnest. As
soon as Dick had satisfied himself that the young
schoolmaster was his rival in Elsie's good graces,
his whole thoughts concentrated themselves more
than ever on accomplishing his great design of
securing her for himself. There was no time to
be lost. He must come into closer relations with
her, so as to withdraw her thoughts from this fellow,
and to find out more exactly what was the
state of her affections, if she had any. So he
began to court her company again, to propose
riding with her, to sing to her, to join her whenever
she was strolling about the grounds, to make
himself agreeable, according to the ordinary understanding
of that phrase, in every way which
seemed to promise a chance for succeeding in
that amiable effort.

The girl treated him more capriciously than
ever. She would be sullen and silent, or she
would draw back fiercely at some harmless word
or gesture, or she would look at him with her

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

eyes narrowed in such a strange way and with
such a wicked light in them that Dick swore to
himself they were too much for him, and would
leave her for the moment. Yet she tolerated him,
almost as a matter of necessity, and sometimes
seemed to take a kind of pleasure in trying her
power upon him. This he soon found out, and
humored her in the fancy that she could exercise
a kind of fascination over him, — though there
were times in which he actually felt an influence
he could not understand, an effect of some peculiar
expression about her, perhaps, but still centring
in those diamond eyes of hers which it
made one feel so curiously to look into.

Whether Elsie saw into his object or not was
more than he could tell. His idea was, after
having conciliated the good-will of all about her
as far as possible, to make himself first a habit
and then a necessity with the girl, — not to spring
any trap of a declaration upon her until tolerance
had grown into such a degree of inclination as
her nature was like to admit. He had succeeded
in the first part of his plan. He was at liberty to
prolong his visit at his own pleasure. This was
not strange; these three persons, Dudley Venner,
his daughter, and his nephew, represented all that
remained of an old and honorable family. Had
Elsie been like other girls, her father might have
been less willing to entertain a young fellow like
Dick as an inmate; but he had long outgrown all
the slighter apprehensions which he might have

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

had in common with all parents, and followed
rather than led the imperious instincts of his
daughter. It was not a question of sentiment,
but of life and death, or more than that, — some
dark ending, perhaps, which would close the history
of his race with disaster and evil report upon
the lips of all coming generations.

As to the thought of his nephew's making love
to his daughter, it had almost passed from his
mind. He had been so long in the habit of looking
at Elsie as outside of all common influences
and exceptional in the law of her nature, that it
was difficult for him to think of her as a girl to
be fallen in love with. Many persons are surprised,
when others court their female relatives;
they know them as good young or old women
enough, — aunts, sisters, nieces, daughters, whatever
they may be, — but never think of anybody's
falling in love with them, any more than of their
being struck by lightning. But in this case there
were special reasons, in addition to the common
family delusion, — reasons which seemed to make
it impossible that she should attract a suitor.
Who would dare to marry Elsie? No, let her
have the pleasure, if it was one, at any rate the
wholesome excitement, of companionship; it
might save her from lapsing into melancholy or
a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had
a kind of superstition, too, that, if Elsie could
only outlive three septenaries, twenty-one years,
so that, according to the prevalent idea, her whole

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

frame would have been thrice made over, counting
from her birth, she would revert to the natural
standard of health of mind and feelings from
which she had been so long perverted. The
thought of any other motive than love being
sufficient to induce Richard to become her suitor
had not occurred to him. He had married early,
at that happy period when interested motives are
least apt to influence the choice; and his single
idea of marriage was, that it was the union of
persons naturally drawn towards each other by
some mutual attraction. Very simple, perhaps;
but he had lived lonely for many years since his
wife's death, and judged the hearts of others,
most of all of his brother's son, by his own. He
had often thought whether, in case of Elsie's dying
or being necessarily doomed to seclusion, he
might not adopt this nephew and make him his
heir; but it had not occurred to him that Richard
might wish to become his son-in-law for the sake
of his property.

It is very easy to criticise other people's modes
of dealing with their children. Outside observers
see results; parents see processes. They notice
the trivial movements and accents which betray
the blood of this or that ancestor; they can detect
the irrepressible movement of hereditary impulse
in looks and acts which mean nothing to
the common observer. To be a parent is almost
to be a fatalist. This boy sits with legs crossed,
just as his uncle used to whom he never saw;

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

his grandfathers both died before he was born,
but he has the movement of the eyebrows which
we remember in one of them, and the gusty temper
of the other.

These are things parents can see, and which
they must take account of in education, but
which few except parents can be expected to
really understand. Here and there a sagacious
person, old, or of middle age, who has triangulated
a race, that is, taken three or more observations
from the several standing-places of three
different generations, can tell pretty nearly the
range of possibilities and the limitations of a
child, actual or potential, of a given stock, —
errors excepted always, because children of the
same stock are not bred just alike, because the
traits of some less known ancestor are liable to
break out at any time, and because each human
being has, after all, a small fraction of individuality
about him which gives him a flavor, so that
he is distinguishable from others by his friends
or in a court of justice, and which occasionally
makes a genius or a saint or a criminal of him.
It is well that young persons cannot read these
fatal oracles of Nature. Blind impulse is her
highest wisdom, after all. We make our great
jump, and then she takes the bandage off our
eyes. That is the way the broad sea-level of
average is maintained, and the physiological
democracy is enabled to fight against the principle
of selection which would disinherit all the

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

weaker children. The magnificent constituency
of mediocrities of which the world is made up,—
the people without biographies, whose lives
have made a clear solution in the fluid menstruum
of time, instead of being precipitated in
the opaque sediment of history —

But this is a narrative, and not a disquisition.

p606-357 CHAPTER XX. FROM WITHOUT AND FROM WITHIN.

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

There were not wanting people who accused
Dudley Venner of weakness and bad judgment
in his treatment of his daughter. Some were of
opinion that the great mistake was in not “breaking
her will” when she was a little child. There
was nothing the matter with her, they said, but
that she had been spoiled by indulgence. If they
had had the charge of her, they'd have brought
her down. She'd got the upperhand of her father
now; but if he'd only taken hold of her in
season! There are people who think that everything
may be done, if the doer, be he educator or
physician, be only called “in season.” No doubt,—
but in season would often be a hundred or
two years before the child was born; and people
never send so early as that.

The father of Elsie Venner knew his duties
and his difficulties too well to trouble himself
about anything others might think or say. So
soon as he found that he could not govern his
child, he gave his life up to following her and
protecting her as far as he could. It was a stern

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

and terrible trial for a man of acute sensibility,
and not without force of intellect and will, and
the manly ambition for himself and his family-name
which belonged to his endowments and
his position. Passive endurance is the hardest
trial to persons of such a nature.

What made it still more a long martyrdom
was the necessity for bearing his cross in utter
loneliness. He could not tell his griefs. He
could not talk of them even with those who
knew their secret spring. His minister had the
unsympathetic nature which is common in the
meaner sort of devotees, — persons who mistake
spiritual selfishness for sanctity, and grab at the
infinite prize of the great Future and Elsewhere
with the egotism they excommunicate in its hardly
more odious forms of avarice and self-indulgence.
How could he speak with the old physician and
the old black woman about a sorrow and a terror
which but to name was to strike dumb the lips of
Consolation?

In the dawn of his manhood he had found that
second consciousness for which young men and
young women go about looking into each other's
faces, with their sweet, artless aim playing in
every feature, and making them beautiful to
each other, as to all of us. He had found his
other self early, before he had grown weary in the
search and wasted his freshness in vain longings:
the lot of many, perhaps we may say of most,
who infringe the patent of our social order by

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

intruding themselves into a life already upon half-allowance
of the necessary luxuries of existence.
The life he had led for a brief space was not only
beautiful in outward circumstance, as old Sophy
had described it to the Reverend Doctor. It was
that delicious process of the tuning of two souls
to each other, string by string, not without little
half-pleasing discords now and then when some
chord in one or the other proves to be over-strained
or over-lax, but always approaching
nearer and nearer to harmony, until they become
at last as two instruments with a single
voice. Something more than a year of this blissful
doubled consciousness had passed over him
when he found himself once more alone, — alone,
save for the little diamond-eyed child lying in the
old black woman's arms, with the coral necklace
round her throat and the rattle in her hand.

He would not die by his own act. It was not
the way in his family. There may have been
other, perhaps better reasons, but this was
enough; he did not come of suicidal stock.
He must live for this child's sake, at any rate;
and yet, — oh, yet, who could tell with what
thoughts he looked upon her? Sometimes her
little features would look placid, and something
like a smile would steal over them; then all his
tender feelings would rush up into his eyes, and
he would put his arms out to take her from the
old woman, — but all at once her eyes would
narrow and she would throw her head back;

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

and a shudder would seize him as he stooped
over his child, — he could not look upon her, —
he could not touch his lips to her cheek; nay,
there would sometimes come into his soul such
frightful suggestions that he would hurry from
the room lest the hinted thought should become
a momentary madness and he should lift his
hand against the hapless infant which owed him
life.

In those miserable days he used to wander all
over The Mountain in his restless endeavor to
seek some relief for inward suffering in outward
action. He had no thought of throwing himself
from the summit of any of the broken cliffs, but
he clambered over them recklessly, as having no
particular care for his life. Sometimes he would
go into the accursed district where the venomous
reptiles were always to be dreaded, and court
their worst haunts, and kill all he could come
near with a kind of blind fury which was strange
in a person of his gentle nature.

One overhanging cliff was a favorite haunt
of his. It frowned upon his home beneath in
a very menacing way; he noticed slight seams
and fissures that looked ominous; — what would
happen, if it broke off some time or other and
came crashing down on the fields and roofs
below? He thought of such a possible catastrophe
with a singular indifference, in fact with
a feeling almost like pleasure. It would be such
a swift and thorough solution of this great

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

problem of life he was working out in ever-recurring
daily anguish! The remote possibility of such
a catastrophe had frightened some timid dwellers
beneath The Mountain to other places of residence;
here the danger was most imminent, and
yet he loved to dwell upon the chances of its
occurrence. Danger is often the best counterirritant
in cases of mental suffering; he found
a solace in careless exposure of his life, and
learned to endure the trials of each day better
by dwelling in imagination on the possibility
that it might be the last for him and the home
that was his.

Time, the great consoler, helped these influences,
and he gradually fell into more easy and
less dangerous habits of life. He ceased from
his more perilous rambles. He thought less of
the danger from the great overhanging rocks and
forests; they had hung there for centuries; it was
not very likely they would crash or slide in his
time. He became accustomed to all Elsie's
strange looks and ways. Old Sophy dressed
her with ruffles round her neck, and hunted up
the red coral branch with silver bells which the
little toothless Dudleys had bitten upon for a
hundred years. By an infinite effort, her father
forced himself to become the companion of this
child, for whom he had such a mingled feeling,
but whose presence was always a trial to him
and often a terror.

At a cost which no human being could

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

estimate, he had done his duty, and in some degree
reaped his reward. Elsie grew up with a kind of
filial feeling for him, such as her nature was capable
of. She never would obey him; that was not
to be looked for. Commands, threats, punishments,
were out of the question with her; the
mere physical effects of crossing her will betrayed
themselves in such changes of expression and
manner that it would have been senseless to attempt
to govern her in any such way. Leaving
her mainly to herself, she could be to some extent
indirectly influenced, — not otherwise. She called
her father “Dudley,” as if he had been her brother.
She ordered everybody and would be ordered by
none.

Who could know all these things, except the
few people of the household? What wonder,
therefore, that ignorant and shallow persons laid
the blame on her father of those peculiarities
which were freely talked about, — of those darker
tendencies which were hinted of in whispers?
To all this talk, so far as it reached him, he was
supremely indifferent, not only with the indifference
which all gentlemen feel to the gossip of
their inferiors, but with a charitable calmness
which did not wonder or blame. He knew that
his position was not simply a difficult, but an impossible
one, and schooled himself to bear his destiny
as well as he might, and report himself only
at Headquarters.

He had grown gentle under this discipline.

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

His hair was just beginning to be touched with
silver, and his expression was that of habitual
sadness and anxiety. He had no counsellor, as
we have seen, to turn to, who did not know either
too much or too little. He had no heart to rest
upon and into which he might unburden himself
of the secrets and the sorrows that were aching in
his own breast. Yet he had not allowed himself
to run to waste in the long time since he was left
alone to his trials and fears. He had resisted the
seductions which always beset solitary men with
restless brains overwrought by depressing agencies.
He disguised no misery to himself with the
lying delusion of wine. He sought no sleep from
narcotics, though he lay with throbbing, wide-open
eyeballs through all the weary hours of the night.

It was understood between Dudley Venner and
old Doctor Kittredge that Elsie was a subject of
occasional medical observation, on account of certain
mental peculiarities which might end in a
permanent affection of her reason. Beyond this
nothing was said, whatever may have been in the
mind of either. But Dudley Venner had studied
Elsie's case in the light of all the books he could
find which might do anything towards explaining
it. As in all cases where men meddle with medical
science for a special purpose, having no previous
acquaintance with it, his imagination found
what it wanted in the books he read, and adjusted
it to the facts before him. So it was he came to
cherish those two fancies before alluded to: that

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

the ominous birth-mark she had carried from infancy
might fade and become obliterated, and that
the age of complete maturity might be signalized
by an entire change in her physical and mental
state. He held these vague hopes as all of us
nurse our only half-believed illusions. Not for
the world would he have questioned his sagacious
old medical friend as to the probability or possibility
of their being true. We are very shy of
asking questions of those who know enough to
destroy with one word the hopes we live on.

In this life of comparative seclusion to which
the father had doomed himself for the sake of his
child, he had found time for large and varied
reading. The learned Judge Thornton confessed
himself surprised at the extent of Dudley Venner's
information. Doctor Kittredge found that
he was in advance of him in the knowledge of
recent physiological discoveries. He had taken
pains to become acquainted with agricultural
chemistry; and the neighboring farmers owed him
some useful hints about the management of their
land. He renewed his old acquaintance with the
classic authors. He loved to warm his pulses
with Homer and calm them down with Horace.
He received all manner of new books and periodicals,
and gradually gained an interest in the
events of the passing time. Yet he remained almost
a hermit, not absolutely refusing to see his
neighbors, nor ever churlish towards them, but on
the other hand not cultivating any intimate relations
with them.

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

He had retired from the world a young man,
little more than a youth, indeed, with sentiments
and aspirations all of them suddenly extinguished.
The first had bequeathed him a single huge sorrow,
the second a single trying duty. In due
time the anguish had lost something of its poignancy,
the light of earlier and happier memories
had begun to struggle with and to soften its thick
darkness, and even that duty which he had confronted
with such an effort had become an endurable
habit.

At a period of life when many have been living
on the capital of their acquired knowledge and
their youthful stock of sensibilities until their
intellects are really shallower and their hearts
emptier than they were at twenty, Dudley Venner
was stronger in thought and tenderer in soul
than in the first freshness of his youth, when he
counted but half his present years. He had entered
that period which marks the decline of men
who have ceased growing in knowledge and
strength: from forty to fifty a man must move
upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of
life will carry him rapidly downward. At this
time his inward nature was richer and deeper
than in any earlier period of his life. If he could
only be summoned to action, he was capable of
noble service. If his sympathies could only find
an outlet, he was never so capable of love as
now; for his natural affections had been gathering
in the course of all these years, and the traces

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

of that ineffaceable calamity of his life were softened
and partially hidden by new growths of
thought and feeling, as the wreck left by a mountain-slide
is covered over by the gentle intrusion
of the soft-stemmed herbs which will prepare it
for the stronger vegetation that will bring it
once more into harmony with the peaceful slopes
around it.

Perhaps Dudley Venner had not gained so
much in worldly wisdom as if he had been more
in society and less in his study. The indulgence
with which he treated his nephew was, no doubt,
imprudent. A man more in the habit of dealing
with men would have been more guarded with a
person with Dick's questionable story and unquestionable
physiognomy. But he was singularly
unsuspicious, and his natural kindness was an
additional motive to the wish for introducing
some variety into the routine of Elsie's life.

If Dudley Venner did not know just what he
wanted at this period of his life, there were a
great many people in the town of Rockland who
thought they did know. He had been a widower
long enough, — night twenty year, wa'n't it?
He'd been aout to Spraowles's party, — there
wa'n't anything to hender him why he shouldn't
stir raound l'k other folks. What was the reason
he didn't go abaout to taown-meetin's 'n' Sahbathmeetin's,
'n' lýceums, 'n' school-'xaminations, 'n'
s'prise-parties, 'n' funerals, — and other entertainments
where the still-faced two-story folks were in

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

the habit of looking round to see if any of the
mansion-house gentry were present? — Fac' was,
he was livin' too lonesome daown there at the
mansion-haouse. Why shouldn't he make up to
the Jedge's daughter? She was genteel enough
for him and — let's see, haow old was she?
Seven-'n'-twenty, — no, six-'n'-twenty, — born the
same year we buried aour little Anny Marí'.

There was no possible objection to this arrangement,
if the parties interested had seen fit to
make it or even to think of it. But “Portia,” as
some of the mansion-house people called her, did
not happen to awaken the elective affinities of the
lonely widower. He met her once in a while, and
said to himself that she was a good specimen of
the grand style of woman; and then the image
came back to him of a woman not quite so large,
not quite so imperial in her port, not quite so incisive
in her speech, not quite so judicial in her
opinions, but with two or three more joints in her
frame, and two or three soft inflections in her
voice, which for some absurd reason or other drew
him to her side and so bewitched him that he told
her half his secrets and looked into her eyes all
that he could not tell, in less time than it would
have taken him to discuss the champion paper of
the last Quarterly with the admirable “Portia.”
Heu, quanto minus! How much more was that
lost image to him than all it left on earth!

The study of love is very much like that of
meteorology. We know that just about so much

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

rain will fall in a season; but on what particular
day it will shower is more than we can tell. We
know that just about so much love will be made
every year in a given population; but who will
rain his young affections upon the heart of whom
is not known except to the astrologers and fortune-tellers.
And why rain falls as it does, and
why love is made just as it is, are equally puzzling
questions.

The woman a man loves is always his own
daughter, far more his daughter than the female
children born to him by the common law of life.
It is not the outside woman, who takes his name,
that he loves: before her image has reached the
centre of his consciousness, it has passed through
fifty many-layered nerve-strainers, been churned
over by ten thousand pulse-beats, and reacted
upon by millions of lateral impulses which bandy
it about through the mental spaces as a reflection
is sent back and forward in a saloon lined with
mirrors. With this altered image of the woman
before him, his preëxisting ideal becomes blended.
The object of his love is in part the offspring of
her legal parents, but more of her lover's brain.
The difference between the real and the ideal objects
of love must not exceed a fixed maximum.
The heart's vision cannot unite them stereoscopically
into a single image, if the divergence passes
certain limits. A formidable analogy, much
in the nature of a proof, with very serious consequences,
which moralists and match-makers

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

would do well to remember! Double vision
with the eyes of the heart is a dangerous physiological
state, and may lead to missteps and
serious falls.

Whether Dudley Venner would ever find a
breathing image near enough to his ideal one, to
fill the desolate chamber of his heart, or not, was
very doubtful. Some gracious and gentle woman,
whose influence would steal upon him as the
first low words of prayer after that interval of
silent mental supplication known to one of our
simpler forms of public worship, gliding into his
consciousness without hurting its old griefs, herself
knowing the chastening of sorrow, and subdued
into sweet acquiescence with the Divine will,—
some such woman as this, if Heaven should
send him such, might call him back to the world
of happiness, from which he seemed forever exiled.
He could never again be the young lover
who walked through the garden-alleys all red with
roses in the old dead and buried June of long ago.
He could never forget the bride of his youth,
whose image, growing phantom-like with the
lapse of years, hovered over him like a dream
while waking and like a reality in dreams. But
if it might be in God's good providence that this
desolate life should come under the influence of
human affections once more, what an ecstasy of
renewed existence was in store for him! His life
had not all been buried under that narrow ridge
of turf with the white stone at its head. It

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

seemed so for a while; but it was not and could
not and ought not to be so. His first passion
had been a true and pure one; there was no spot
or stain upon it. With all his grief there blended
no cruel recollection of any word or look he
would have wished to forget. All those little differences,
such as young married people with any
individual flavor in their characters must have, if
they are tolerably mated, had only added to the
music of existence, as the lesser discords admitted
into some perfect symphony, fitly resolved, add
richness and strength to the whole harmonious
movement. It was a deep wound that Fate had
inflicted on him; may, it seemed like a mortal
one; but the weapon was clean, and its edge was
smooth. Such wounds must heal with time in
healthy natures, whatever a false sentiment may
say, by the wise and beneficent law of our being.
The recollection of a deep and true affection is
rather a divine nourishment for a life to grow
strong upon than a poison to destroy it.

Dudley Venner's habitual sadness could not be
laid wholly to his early bereavement. It was
partly the result of the long struggle between natural
affection and duty, on one side, and the involuntary
tendencies these had to overcome, on
the other, — between hope and fear, so long in
conflict that despair itself would have been like
an anodyne, and he would have slept upon some
final catastrophe with the heavy sleep of a bankrupt
after his failure is proclaimed. Alas! some

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

new affection might perhaps rekindle the fires of
youth in his heart; but what power could calm
that haggard terror of the parent which rose with
every morning's sun and watched with every evening
star, — what power save alone that of him
who comes bearing the inverted torch, and leaving
after him only the ashes printed with his footsteps?

p606-372 CHAPTER XXI. THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY.

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

There was a good deal of interest felt, as
has been said, in the lonely condition of Dudley
Venner in that fine mansion-house of his, and
with that strange daughter, who would never be
married, as many people thought, in spite of all
the stories. The feelings expressed by the good
folks who dated from the time when they “buried
aour little Anny Marí',” and others of that homespun
stripe, were founded in reason, after all.
And so it was natural enough that they should
be shared by various ladies, who, having conjugated
the verb to live as far as the preterpluperfect
tense, were ready to change one of its vowels
and begin with it in the present indicative. Unfortunately,
there was very little chance of showing
sympathy in its active form for a gentleman
who kept himself so much out of the way as the
master of the Dudley Mansion.

Various attempts had been made, from time to
time, of late years, to get him out of his study,
which had, for the most part, proved failures. It
was a surprise, therefore, when he was seen at

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

the Great Party at the Colonel's. But it was an
encouragement to try him again, and the consequence
had been that he had received a number
of notes inviting him to various smaller entertainments,
which, as neither he nor Elsie had any
fancy for them, he had politely declined.

Such was the state of things when he received
an invitation to take tea sociably, with a few
friends, at Hyacinth Cottage, the residence of
the Widow Rowens, relict of the late Beeri
Rowens, Esquire, better known as Major Rowens.
Major Rowens was at the time of his
decease a promising officer in the militia, in
the direct line of promotion, as his waistband
was getting tighter every year; and, as all the
world knows, the militia-officer who splits off
most buttons and fills the largest sword-belt
stands the best chance of rising, or, perhaps we
might say, spreading, to be General.

Major Rowens united in his person certain
other traits which help a man to eminence in
the branch of public service referred to. He ran
to high colors, to wide whiskers, to open pores;
he had the saddle-leather skin common in Englishmen,
rarer in Americans, — never found in
the Brahmin caste, oftener in the military and
the commodores: observing people know what
is meant; blow the seed-arrows from the white-kid-looking
button which holds them on a dandelion-stalk,
and the pricked-pincushion surface
shows you what to look for. He had the loud,

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gruff voice which implies the right to command.
He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers,
with bristled pads between their joints,
square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy limbs,
which mark a constitution made to use in
rough out-door work. He had the never-failing
predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that
step high, and sidle about, and act as if they
were going to do something fearful the next minute,
in the face of awed and admiring multitudes
gathered at mighty musters or imposing
cattle-shows. He had no objection, either, to
holding the reins in a wagon behind another
kind of horse, — a slouching, listless beast, with
a strong slant to his shoulder and a notable
depth to his quarter and an emphatic angle at
the hock, who commonly walked or lounged
along in a lazy trot of five or six miles an hour;
but, if a lively colt happened to come rattling
up alongside, or a brandy-faced old horse-jockey
took the road to show off a fast nag, and threw
his dust into the Major's face, would pick his
legs up all at once, and straighten his body out,
and swing off into a three-minute gait, in a way
that “Old Blue” himself need not have been
ashamed of.

For some reason which must be left to the
next generation of professors to find out, the men
who are knowing in horse-flesh have an eye also
for, — let a long dash separate the brute creation
from the angelic being now to be named, —

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for lovely woman. Of this fact there can be
no possible doubt; and therefore you shall notice,
that, if a fast horse trots before two, one
of the twain is apt to be a pretty bit of muliebrity,
with shapes to her, and eyes flying about
in all directions.

Major Rowens, at that time Lieutenant of
the Rockland Fusileers, had driven and “traded”
horses not a few before he turned his acquired
skill as a judge of physical advantages in another
direction. He knew a neat, snug hoof, a delicate
pastern, a broad haunch, a deep chest, a
close ribbed-up barrel, as well as any other man
in the town. He was not to be taken in by
your thick-jointed, heavy-headed cattle, without
any go to them, that suit a country-parson, nor
yet by the “gaänted-up,” long-legged animals,
with all their constitutions bred out of them,
such as rich greenhorns buy and cover up with
their plated trappings.

Whether his equine experience was of any use
to him in the selection of the mate with whom
he was to go in double harness so long as they
both should live, we need not stop to question.
At any rate, nobody could find fault with the
points of Miss Marilla Van Deusen, to whom he
offered the privilege of becoming Mrs. Rowens.
The Van must have been crossed out of her
blood, for she was an out-and-out brunette,
with hair and eyes black enough for a Mohawk's
daughter. A fine style of woman, with

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very striking tints and outlines, — an excellent
match for the Lieutenant, except for one thing.
She was marked by Nature for a widow. She
was evidently got up for mourning, and never
looked so well as in deep black, with jet ornaments.

The man who should dare to marry her would
doom himself; for how could she become the
widow she was bound to be, unless he would retire
and give her a chance? The Lieutenant
lived, however, as we have seen, to become Captain
and then Major, with prospects of further
advancement. But Mrs. Rowens often said she
should never look well in colors. At last her destiny
fulfilled itself, and the justice of Nature was
vindicated. Major Rowens got overheated galloping
about the field on the day of the Great Muster,
and had a rush of blood to the head, according
to the common report, — at any rate, something
which stopped him short in his career of expansion
and promotion, and established Mrs. Rowens
in her normal condition of widowhood.

The Widow Rowens was now in the full
bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very shallow
crape bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the
parted raven hair to show its glossy smoothness.
A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with
every sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown
origin. Jet bracelets shone with every movement
of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black
gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with

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manifold flounces, from beneath which a small foot
showed itself from time to time, clad in the same
hue of mourning. Everything about her was
dark, except the whites of her eyes and the
enamel of her teeth. The effect was complete.
Gray's Elegy was not a more perfect composition.

Much as the Widow was pleased with the costume
belonging to her condition, she did not
disguise from herself that under certain circumstances
she might be willing to change her name
again. Thus, for instance, if a gentleman not
too far gone in maturity, of dignified exterior,
with an ample fortune, and of unexceptionable
character, should happen to set his heart upon
her, and the only way to make him happy was to
give up her weeds and go into those unbecoming
colors again for his sake, — why, she felt that it
was in her nature to make the sacrifice. By a
singular coincidence it happened that a gentleman
was now living in Rockland who united in
himself all these advantages. Who he was, the
sagacious reader may very probably have divined.
Just to see how it looked, one day, having bolted
her door, and drawn the curtains close, and
glanced under the sofa, and listened at the key-hole
to be sure there was nobody in the entry, —
just to see how it looked, she had taken out an
envelope and written on the back of it Mrs. Marilla
Venner. It made her head swim and her
knees tremble. What if she should faint, or

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die, or have a stroke of palsy, and they should
break into the room and find that name written?
How she caught it up and tore it into little
shreds, and then could not be easy until she had
burned the small heap of pieces! But these are
things which every honorable reader will consider
imparted in strict confidence.

The Widow Rowens, though not of the mansion-house
set, was among the most genteel of
the two-story circle, and was in the habit of visiting
some of the great people. In one of these
visits she met a dashing young fellow with an
olive complexion at the house of a professional
gentleman who had married one of the white
necks and pairs of fat arms from a distinguished
family before referred to. The professional gentleman
himself was out, but the lady introduced
the olive-complexioned young man as Mr. Richard
Venner.

The Widow was particularly pleased with this
accidental meeting. Had heard Mr. Venner's
name frequently mentioned. Hoped his uncle
was well, and his charming cousin, — was she as
original as ever? Had often admired that charming
creature he rode: we had had some fine
horses. Had never got over her taste for riding,
but could find nobody that liked a good long gallop
since — well — she couldn't help wishing
she was alongside of him, the other day, when
she saw him dashing by, just at twilight.

The Widow paused; lifted a flimsy

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handkerchief with a very deep black border so as to play
the jet bracelet; pushed the tip of her slender foot
beyond the lowest of her black flounces; looked
up; looked down; looked at Mr. Richard, the
very picture of artless simplicity, — as represented
in well-played genteel comedy.

“A good bit of stuff,” Dick said to himself, —
“and something of it left yet; caramba!” The
Major had not studied points for nothing, and the
Widow was one of the right sort. The young
man had been a little restless of late, and was
willing to vary his routine by picking up an acquaintance
here and there. So he took the Widow's
hint. He should like to have a scamper of
half a dozen miles with her some fine morning.

The Widow was infinitely obliged; was not
sure that she could find any horse in the village
to suit her; but it was so kind in him! Would
he not call at Hyacinth Cottage, and let her
thank him again there?

Thus began an acquaintance which the Widow
made the most of, and on the strength of
which she determined to give a tea-party and
invite a number of persons of whom we know
something already. She took a half-sheet of
note-paper and made out her list as carefully as a
country “merchant's” “clerk” adds up two and
threepence (New-England nomenclature) and
twelve and a half cents, figure by figure, and
fraction by fraction, before he can be sure they
will make half a dollar, without cheating

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

somebody. After much consideration the list reduced
itself to the following names: Mr. Richard Venner
and Mrs. Blanche Creamer, the lady at whose
house she had met him, — mansion-house breed,—
but will come, — soft on Dick; Dudley Venner, —
take care of him herself; Elsie, — Dick
will see to her, — won't it fidget the Creamer
woman to see him round her? the old Doctor, —
he's always handy; and there's that young master
there, up at the school, — know him well
enough to ask him, — oh, yes, he'll come. One,
two, three, four, five, six, — seven; not room
enough, without the leaf in the table; one place
empty, if the leaf's in. Let's see, — Helen Darley, —
she'll do well enough to fill it up, — why,
yes, just the thing, — light brown hair, blue eyes,—
won't my pattern show off well against her?
Put her down, — she's worth her tea and toast
ten times over, — nobody knows what a “thunder-and-lightning
woman,” as poor Major used to
have it, is, till she gets alongside of one of those
old-maidish girls, with hair the color of brown
sugar, and eyes like the blue of a teacup.

The Widow smiled with a feeling of triumph
at having overcome her difficulties and arranged
her party, — arose and stood before her glass,
three-quarters front, one-quarter profile, so as to
show the whites of the eyes and the down of the
upper lip. “Splendid!” said the Widow, — and
to tell the truth, she was not far out of the way,
and with Helen Darley as a foil anybody would

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

know she must be foudroyant and pyramidal, —
if these French adjectives may be naturalized for
this one particular exigency.

So the Widow sent out her notes. The black
grief which had filled her heart and overflowed in
surges of crape around her person had left a deposit
half an inch wide at the margin of her
note-paper. Her seal was a small youth with an
inverted torch, the same on which Mrs. Blanche
Creamer made her spiteful remark, that she expected
to see that boy of the Widow's standing
on his head yet; meaning, as Dick supposed, that
she would get the torch right-side up as soon as
she had a chance. That was after Dick had
made the Widow's acquaintance, and Mrs.
Creamer had got it into her foolish head that she
would marry that young fellow, if she could catch
him. How could he ever come to fancy such a
quadroon-looking thing as that, she should like to
know?

It is easy enough to ask seven people to a
party; but whether they will come or not is an
open question, as it was in the case of the “vasty
spirits.” If the note issues from a three-story
mansion-house, and goes to two-story acquaintances,
they will all be in an excellent state of
health, and have much pleasure in accepting this
very polite invitation. If the note is from the
lady of a two-story family to three-story ones,
the former highly respectable person will very
probably find that an endemic complaint is

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prevalent, not represented in the weekly bills of mortality,
which occasions numerous regrets in the
bosoms of eminently desirable parties that they
cannot have the pleasure of and-so-forthing.

In this case there was room for doubt, —
mainly as to whether Elsie would take a fancy
to come or not. If she should come, her father
would certainly be with her. Dick had promised,
and thought he could bring Elsie. Of course
the young schoolmaster will come, and that poor
tired-out looking Helen, — if only to get out of
sight of those horrid Peckham wretches. They
don't get such invitations every day. The others
she felt sure of, — all but the old Doctor, — he
might have some horrid patient or other to visit;
tell him Elsie Venner's going to be there, — he
always likes to have an eye on her, they say, —
oh, he'd come fast enough, without any more
coaxing.

She wanted the Doctor, particularly. It was
odd, but she was afraid of Elsie. She felt as if
she should be safe enough, if the old Doctor
were there to see to the girl; and then she
should have leisure to devote herself more freely
to the young lady's father, for whom all her
sympathies were in a state of lively excitement.

It was a long time since the Widow had seen
so many persons round her table as she had now
invited. Better have the plates set and see how
they will fill it up with the leaf in. — A little too
scattering with only eight plates set; if she could

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find two more people, now, that would bring
the chairs a little closer, — snug, you know, —
which makes the company sociable. The Widow
thought over her acquaintances. Why! how
stupid! there was her good minister, the same
who had married her, and might — might — bury
her for aught she knew, and his granddaughter
staying with him, — nice little girl, pretty, and not
old enough to be dangerous; — for the Widow
had no notion of making a tea-party and asking
people to it that would be like to stand between
her and any little project she might happen
to have on anybody's heart, — not she! It
was all right now; — Blanche was married and
so forth; Letty was a child; Elsie was his daughter;
Helen Darley was a nice, worthy drudge, —
poor thing! — faded, faded, — colors wouldn't
wash, — just what she wanted to show off
against. Now, if the Dudley mansion-house
people would only come, — that was the great
point.

“Here's a note for us, Elsie,” said her father,
as they sat round the breakfast-table. “Mrs.
Rowens wants us all to come to tea.”

It was one of “Elsie's days,” as Old Sophy
called them. The light in her eyes was still, but
very bright. She looked up so full of perverse
and wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could
make her go with him and her father. He had
his own motives for bringing her to this determination, —
and his own way of setting about it.

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