CHAPTER I.
SPRING.—ROSE.—MARGARET KEEPS SCHOOL.—SUNDRY MATTERS.—MR.
ANONYMOUS.
This Part commences with an omission of five or six years,
the particulars of which, one familiar with life at the Pond will
not find it difficult to supply. Margaret has pursued the tenor
of her way, even or uneven, as the case may be; assisting her
mother, entertaining her father, the companion of Chilion, and
the pupil of the Master. If variety in unity be the right condition
of things, then her life has been truthful and sound.
She has made considerable progress in her studies, pursued for
the most part in a line suggested by the peculiarities of her
instructor. It is Spring; Hash is about beginning his annual
labor of making maple sugar, and burning coal; Margaret has
promised him her aid, after which it is understood she is to
enjoy her own leisure. She carries to the Maples the alderspouts,
which Chilion makes, rights the troughs that have been
lying overturned under the trees, and in due time kindles a fire
beneath the large iron kettle that hangs from a pole supported
between two rocks. Wreathing the trailing arbutus in her
hair, and making a baldric of the ground-laurel, with a wooden
yoke stretched across her shoulders, she carries two pails full
of sap from the trees to the boiler. With a stick having a bit
of pork on the end, she graduates the walloping syrup when
it is likely to overflow, while her brother brings more sap from
the remote and less accessible part of the Camp. The neighbors,
boys and girls, come in at the “sugaring off;” the “wax”
is freely distributed to be cooled on lumps of snow, or the axe-head;
some string it about in long, flexile, fantastic lines,
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some get their mouths burnt, all are merry. Her mother
“stirs it off,” and a due quantity of the “quick” and “alive”
crystal sweet is the result, a moiety of which is destined to
Smiths at No. 4, in consideration for the use of the lot, and
another portion to Deacon Penrose's for other well-known
objects.
The Coal-pit, lying farther up the road, on the Via Salutaris,
next demanded attention. She helped clear off the rubbish,
and remove the sod to make a foundation for the kiln, and
prevent the spread of the fire. She lent a hand also in stacking
the wood, covering the pile with turf, and constructing a
lodge of green boughs, where her brother would stay during
the night; one whole night she herself watched with him.
Then she raked up the chips about the house, and with a twig
broom swept the dirt from the new-springing grass; she hoed
out the gutter where the water ran from the cistern, and
washed and aired her own little chamber. The cackling of
the hens drew her in search of their eggs in the manger and
over the hay-mow in the barn; she fed the brooders and
watched the chickens when they broke from their shells. So
four or five weeks pass away, and her own play-spell comes, if,
indeed, her whole life were not a play-spell. She would replenish
her flower-bed, and goes into the woods to gather rare
wild plants. She has books of natural history with which the
Master kept her supplied. The forests in their first leafing and
infloresence, present an incipient autumnal appearance, in
the variety of colors and marked divisions of the trees, but the
whole effect is thinned, diluted and softened. The distant
hills have a yellowish grey merging into a dim silver look,
and might be taken for high fields of grass in a bright dewy
morning. The atmosphere she finds deliciously balmy and
exhilaratingly pure. Innumerable birds have also come out to
enjoy the hour; they sing in the woods, roundelay among trees
and shrubbery about the house; their notes echo across the
Pond, and salute the skies from the top of Indian's Head.
She turned over logs and stones, and let loose to the light and
air tribes of caterpillars, ear-wigs, sow-bugs, beetles and lizzards,
that had harbored there all winter. The ants open
their own habitations by demolishing the roof, which they
convert into a redoubt; and she watched them coming up from
their dark troglodital abodes bringing the fine grit in their teeth,
and stepped with a kind caution among these groups of dumb,
moneyless, industrious Associationists. Toads, piebald, chunk-shaped,
shrugged and wallowed up from their torpid beds, and
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winked their big eyes at her. The birds are going on with
their grand opera, and she and the sun, who is just raising his
eye-glass above the trees, are the sole unoccupied spectators.
Hash is busy scolding and goading his oxen; her mother hastens
to bring in yarn she has had out over night, and storms
at the birds, who are to her no more than pilferers. Her father
perhaps has some interest in the scene; he sits in the front
door with a pipe in his mouth, the smoke rolls over his ruddy
pate and muffles his blear eyes, but he contrives to laugh lustily,
and his flabby proportions shake like a bowl of jelly. She
caught at the moment, a harry-long-legs, which she holds by
one of its shanks, while she very soberly inspects the book
before her, to find out more about it than it is disposed to tell
of itself. Her other brother, Chilion, used to love to go into
the woods with her, and while he was hunting, he pointed out
the different birds, gathered rare flowers, and discovered green
knolls and charming frescoes where she could sit. But he is
lame now, and cannot walk far, having never recovered from
the injury he received some years before, searching for her in
the wind-fall. Besides he never said much, and what value he
put upon things that interested her, she could never precisely
understand. He is engaged withal thwacking his axe-head on a
long white ash stick, the successive layers of which being
loosened, he tears off to make baskets with, which has become
almost his sole employment. So she enjoys the world quite alone,
and not the less for that, since she has always done so. The
place flows with birds, and they flow with song; robins, wrens,
yellow-polls, chirping and song-sparrows, bobolinks, thrushes,
cat-birds, cow-buntings, orioles, goldfinches, grassfinches, indigo
birds, purple linnets, swallows, martins, humming-birds;
loons and bitterns on the water; and deep in the forest olive-backs,
veeries, oven-birds, and many kinds of warblers and
creepers; to say nothing of a huge turkey gobbling in the
road, a rooster crowing on the fence, and ducks quacking in
the ditches. A varied note breaks upon her, which if she is
able to distinguish, she can do better perhaps than some of
our readers, who will hardly thank us for giving names to what
after all is very perceptible to the practised ear; twittering,
chirping, warbling, squeaking, screaming, shrieking, cawing,
cackling, humming, cooing, chattering, piping, whistling,
mewing, hissing, trilling, yelping. Chilion is passionately attatched
to music in his own way, is master even of some of its
technicalities, and Margaret in this matter is his pupil; and it
requires no great effort for her to discern a general hallelujah
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in this bird-concert; affetuoso and mæstuoso, con dolce and
con furia are agreeably intermingled; nor are there wanting
those besides herself to encore the strain. She is no Priapus
to drive the birds away, but as if she were a bramble-net,
their notes are caught in her ears; even if their feet are not
seized by her fingers as they winnow the air, wheel, dive and
dally about her. They frisk in the trees, pursue one another
across the lots, start fugues in a double sense, compete with
their rivals, clamor for their mates, sing amatory and convivial
ditties, and describe more ridottos than the Italians. Could
we suppose sounds to be represented by ribbons of different
colors, and the fair spirit of music to sit in the air some hundred
feet from the ground, having in her hand a knot of
lutestrings of a hundred hues, blue, pink, white, gold, silver,
and every intermediate and combined shade and lustre, and let
them play out in the sun and wind, their twisting, streaming,
snapping, giddying, glancing, forking, would be a fair symbol
of the voices of the birds in the ear of Margaret, on this warm
sunny Spring morning. Howbeit, the profusion of Nature
offers other things to her attention besides the birds; or
rather we should say the good mother of all gives these beautiful
voices wherewith to purify the sensibilities of her children,
and animate them in their several pursuits. Thus enlivened
and impelled, Margaret entered other departments of
observation. Shod with stout shoes, armed with a constitution
inured to all forces and mixtures of the elements, supported by
a resolution that neither snakes, bears, or a man could easily
abash, she penetrated a wet sedgy spot near the margin of the
Pond, where she found clusters of tall osmunds, straight as an
arrow, with white downy stems, and black seed-leaves, curling
gracefully at the top in the form of a Corinthian capital, and
shining pearl-like in the sun with their dew-spangled chaffy
crowns; the little polypods with green, feathery, carrot-shaped
fronds, penetrating the solid dry heaps of their decayed ancestry;
horse-tails with storied ruffs of supple spines; farther
down the road were the fleecy buds of the mouse-ear, bringing
beautiful cloud-life from the dank leaden earth; the young
mulleins, velvety, white, tender, fit to ornament the gardens of
Queen Mab; buttercup-sprouts with dense green leaves, waxen
and glistening; in the edge of the woods she gathered the
straw-colored, pendulous flowers of the chaste bell-wort; the
liver-leaves, with cups full of snow-capped threads; mosses,
with slender scarlet-tipped stems, some with brown cups like
acorns, others with crimson flowers; there were also
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innumerable germs of golden rod, blue vervain, and other flowers,
which at a later season shall fill the hedges and enliven the
roads. In the woods a solitary white birch, bedizened with
long, yellow, black-spotted flowers, pulsating in the wind, and
having a scarlet tanager sitting in its thin sunny boughs, attracted
her eye by its own gentle beauty; in the shaded grass
were hundreds of snow-drops, like a bevy of girls in white
bonnets trooping through a meadow; quantities of the slender,
pink flowering-wintergreen grew among the white dog-weed;
and the twin-flower interlaced the partridge berry. Within
the forest was a broad opening, where she loved to walk, and
which at this time disclosed in high perfection the beautiful
verdure of Spring. Here were white oaks with minute white
flowers, red oaks with bright red flowers, red maples with still
redder flowers, rock maples with salmon-colored leaves, as
it were birds fluttering on one foot, or little pirouetting
sylphs; a growth of white birches spread itself before a sombre
grove of pines, like a pea-green veil. The path was strown
with old claret boxberries, grey mosses, brown leaves,
freaked with fresh green shoots; and what with the flowers of
the trees illumined by the sun on either side, one could imagine
her walking an antique hall with tesselated floor and
particolored gay hangings. This opening descended to the
shore of the Pond, where, under another clump of white
birches, she sat down. The shadows of the trees refreshingly
invested her, the waves struck musically upon the rocks, and
in the clear air, her own thoughts sped like a breath away; the
vivacity of the birds was qualified by the advance of the day,
and while she had been delighted at first with what she saw,
all things now subsided into harmony with what she felt.
She hummed herself in low song, which as it had not rhyme,
and perhaps not reason, we will not transcribe. Some new
tide of sensation bore her off, and she went up the Via Salutaris
to the brook Kedron. This she threaded as far as the
Tree-bridge; golden blossoms of the adder and willow over-hung
the dark stream; she passed thickets of wild cherries
in full snowy bloom; yellow adder's tongue diversified green
cowslips, pink columbines festooned the grey rocks, red
newts were sunning themselves on the pebbles of the brook;
she saw a veery building its nest in a branch so low its young
could be cradled in the music of the stream; green, lank frogs
sprang from her feet into the swift eddies, and thrust up their
heads on the other side, like their cousins the toads, to look
at her; clear water oozed from the slushy bog of the banks.
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Crossing from the Via Dolorosa, through the grove of walnuts
and birches, and the Maples, she came to rocks that abutted
the south-east boundary line of the elevated plain on which
lay the basin of the Pond; a point overlooking the bed of
Mill Brook, the Brandon road, ranges of hills beyond, and the
Village at the left. Descending this, on the slope below, were
pines, spruces and cedars; hereabouts also she discovered the
dog-wood, high cranberry and tulip-tree, in showy bloom;
and the prettily flowering mitrewort, saxifrage, and Solomon's
seal.
But there appeared what for the moment quite diverted her
from these things She heard a sound issuing from the
shady side of a young pine, like that of a woman, singing
or murmuring to itself. Stealing her way to the tree, through
the boughs, she beheld a young lady of nearly her own age,
reclined on the dry pine leaves, whiling herself in rending to
shreds the bright crimson flowers of the red-bud or Judas
tree, and uttering plaintive broken sounds. She was delicately
fair, the outline of her face was finely shaped, long locks of
golden hair trailed upon her neck; her hand was snowy white,
and fingers transparently thin. She wore a white red-sprigged
poplin, a small blue bonnet lay at her side, and a brocaded
camlet-hair shawl falling from her shoulders discovered a bust
of exquisite proportions. Her complexion was white, almost
too white for nature or health, and her whole aspect betokened
the subsidence and withdrawal of proper youthful vigorous
expressiveness. Margaret was spell-bound, and looked in astonished
silence. The young lady laughed as she scattered
the flowers, and there was a marvellous beauty in her smile,
melancholy though it seemed to be, and even to Margaret's
eye, who was not an adept in such matters, it rayed out like
the shimmer of a cardinal bird in a dark forest. Margaret
thought of the Pale Lady of her dreams, and that she had
suddenly dropped from the skies at her feet. She saw the
young lady press her thin fingers to her eyes as if she wept,
then she smiled again, and that smile penetrated Margaret's
heart, and she advanced from her ambuscade, but spider-like,
as if she were about to catch some fragile vision of her fancy.
The young lady sprang up at the noise, seized her bonnet, and
ran. Margaret pursued, and what with her ready familiarity
with the woods and fleetness of foot, gained upon the other,
who turned abruptly, and said, “Why do you chase me?”
“Why do you run?” responded Margaret. “I would not
hurt you; let me hear your voice—let me take your hand,”
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she continued. Her tone was kind, her manner innocent,
and the young lady seemed won by it, and disposed to parley.
She rejoined, “I sought this spot to be away from the faces
of all.”
“How strange!” ejaculated Margaret. “Where is your
home? Are you from the village?” she asked.
“I have no home,” replied the young lady, “but you are
Molly Hart, whom they have told me about.”
“Yes,” answered Margaret, “I am Molly Hart; but say
who are you, and what is your name?”
“Those are questions I cannot answer,” replied the other.
“You look very unhappy,” said Margaret.
“Were you ever unhappy?” asked the stranger.
“No,” said Margaret, “not much so; I have always been
happy, I think.”
“You seem to be fond of flowers,” said the young lady.
“Are not you?” asked Margaret.
“I used to be,” she replied. “I was going to say,” she
added, “I will help carry your basket for you, and look for
flowers with you; only you must not ask me any questions.”
“Then I shall want to,” said Margaret.
“But you must not,” said the young lady.
“Very well,” said Margaret, “you will be another flower
and bird to me, and equally unknown with all the rest; nor
will you give me less pleasure for that you are unknown, since
everything else is.
“Then I shall like you very much,” said the young lady,
“if you can consent to my being unknown; and perhaps in
that way we can contrive to amuse one another.”
They ascended the bluff, and returned through the woods
together.
“Have you found the snap-dragon, that recoils when it is
touched?” asked the young lady.
“That does not come out in the Spring,” said Margaret.
“But here are some berries of the witch-hazle that blossomed
last Fall.”
“And under our feet are withered dead leaves,” rejoined
the young lady.
“But they shone in vigorous starry brilliancy, after the
frosts pinched them,” said Margaret.
“Here is the morning glory,” said the young lady as they
entered the Mowing, “that lasts but an hour.”
The young lady, as we have said, evinced great waste of
strength, her voice was reduced in a corresponding degree,
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though it was sweet and clear as her face was beautiful; and
there was something in her tone and manner of allusion that
signified a secret unexpressed state of being which Margaret
could not fail to remark, however far she might be removed
from its proper comprehension; and her replies took the turn
of one in whose breast, intuitively, will float veiled images,
and be reflected therefrom indistinct recognizances of latent
deep realities in the breast of another.
“Look at this blue-flag,” she said; “our neighbor, a wise
simpler, declares it will cure a host of diseases.”
“The star-grass there,” replied the young lady, “hides
itself in the rank verdure, and only asks to be.
“The strawberry is very modest, too,” rejoined Margaret,
“but its delicious fruit is for you and me, and everybody.”
“Shall I never see you again?” enquired Margaret emphatically.
“Will you go away as suddenly as you came? Will
you not speak to me? Have the naturalists given no description
of such a one as you? You say you have no home—do
you live under the trees? Where did you get that shawl and
bonnet? No name! No genus, no species? Come into the
house and let Chilion play to you.”
“You have seen the pond-lily, “replied the young lady,
“that closes its cup at night, and sinks into the water.”
“But it springs up the next morning blooming as ever,” said
Margaret. “Besides, if only one had appeared in my life-time,
I should be tempted to plunge in after it, come what
might. You are very `anagogical,' as my Master says, strange
and mysterious I mean, like a good many other things. You
remind me of a pale beautiful lady I have seen in my dreams,
only her hair is black”
“The blood-root,” replied the imperturbable young lady,
“when it is broken loses its red juice.”
“In truth!” exclaimed Margaret. “Yet it is a very pretty
flower. I have a whole one just flowering in my bed near
the house. Do go with me and see it. You love flowers,
and I do too, and perhaps they will talk you more to me.”
“No,” replied the young lady, “I cannot go now. I am at
the Widow Wright's; but do not follow me. You are very
happy, you say, and you have no need of me; you are quite
busy too, and I would not call you away.”
“Do give me a name,” urged Margaret, “some point that
I can seize hold upon you by, be it ever so small. I am sure
I shall dream about you.”
“Since you like flowers,” answered the young lady, “you
may call me Rose, but one without color, a white one.”
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So they separated, and Margaret went to her house. From
her collection she transferred to her flower-beds a spring-beauty,
a rhodora, a winter-green, to grow by the side of
sweet briar, cardinal flowers, blood-roots, columbines, and
others. Chilion brought out a neatly made box in which he
wished her to set a venus shoe or ladies slipper.
It was not singular that Margaret should desire again to see
the strange young lady, who was called Rose, nor was she at
loss for opportunities to do so. She pursued her sedulously,
and even prevailed with her to come to her father's. The
spirit of Pluck seemed to rally Rose, and Chilion's music penetrated
and charmed her soul, albeit it failed to reveal the
secret of her thoughts. It was of different kind from any she
had heard before; it operated as a simple melodious incantation,
and did not, as music sometimes does, arouse feelings
only to tantalize and distress them. Chilion played in a wild
untutored way, catching his ideas from his own simple thoughts,
and from what of nature was comprised above and below the
horizon of the Pond, and this pleased her. Margaret sensitively
alive to whatever pertained to the due understanding of
Rose, sometimes gave her brother a hint at which he played;
but there was developed so plain an uneasiness within the
concealed being of the young lady, that both were fain to forbear.
Rose came frequently to Pluck's; she loved to be with
Margaret and Chilion; even the sullen disposition of Hash she
evinced a facility for softening by her playful repartees and
beautiful smiles. She gained the favor of Brown Moll by assisting
Margaret, who rising in domestic as well as natural
science, had become equal to carding and spinning. Bull too
was not insensible to her attractions, but with an enlargement
of heart, not always found in the superior races, while he fell
off no whit in his original attachments, he recognized her as
a new Lady-love, obeyed her voice, followed her steps, wagged
his tail at her smiles, and leaped forwards to meet her as readily
as he did Margaret, and that too in his old age. Nothing
could have been more diverting to the whole party, and to
Pluck especially, though in himself the line of the ridiculous
was complete, than to see Brown Moll weaving, Margaret
spinning, Rose carding, and Pluck, reduced to Margaret's
childhood estate, occupying her little stool, quilling; which
was often done. But Rose's strength was not adequate to such
tasks long continued, and perhaps from the entertainment it
afforded was her chief power derived. She and Margaret
walked in the woods, sailed on the Pond, and sometimes read
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and studied together. Now also the peculiarities of Rose appeared.
She would absent herself from Pluck's and Margaret
whole days; she would stay at the Widow's, between whom
and herself some relationship was claimed, and work silently
with Obed in his herb-beds, despite the most urgent solicitations
of Margaret; she resorted alone to the thickest parts of
the forest; and sometimes she would break away from Margaret
when they were on the Pond together, take the canoe and
wander alone over the deep dark waters, or spend hours by
herself on a solitary island. No questionings, no attentions,
no generosity could succeed in discovering the secret that
seemed evidently to labor in her breast, or a part of which
she may have been. The Widow, and Obed, who took his
cue from his mother, would answer nothing for her; save that
the latter called her his cousin. At times she was cheerful,
talkative, vivacious, even to exuberance; in the same moment
she would relapse into a thoughtful and preoccupied state;
not unfrequently she wept even, but would not tell Margaret
why. Margaret soon learned to acquiesce in these diversities
of the stranger, at whatever expense of baffled solicitude on
her own part. She was delighted with the gushes of Rose's
sprightliness, she was overawed by her hidden pain, as by some
great mystery of nature, which, nevertheless, she sometimes
essayed critically to explore, sometimes humanely to compose;
but the subject only reminded her of her ignorance, though,
meanwhile, it haunted her with new and indefinable sensations
of tenderness and reflective philanthropy.
In the latter part of May, the Master came to the Pond, his
thin grey face agreeably illumined by the pleasing intelligence
he bore, this, to wit, that he had negotiated the Village School
for Margaret,—it having recently, that is for three or four years
past, been in charge of a female during the Summer. However
Margaret might have regarded this proposal, there was one
consideration that prevailed with her to accept it. This arose
from the pecuniary embarrassments of the family. Pluck's
whole estate was under mortgage to Mr. Smith of No. 4, the
original proprietor, and retained indeed from year to year with
a diminishing prospect of redemption. That gentleman in fact
threatened an ejectment, and if relief were not soon afforded,
dismemberment and homelessness might at any moment become
their lot. Pursuant to orders, the next day, Margaret
paid a visit to Master Elliman's to take such instructions as
he felt bound to communicate relative to her new duties. He
gave her to understand that there existed an opposition in the
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minds of some of the people to her having the School, but that
he had secured the appointment through Parson Welles, whom
he persuaded to his views. He next advised her as to the
books used in the School. He said the children would read
daily in the Psalter, recite every Saturday morning from the
Primer, and for the matter of the Spelling-book, the only remaining
channel of elementary instruction, he intimated there
was a question. He made known that he learnt from Fenning's
Universal, which was afterwards supplanted by the New England;
that many of the people were clamorous for a change,
which had been effected in most of the towns; that one wanted
Perry's Only Sure Guide, another Dilworth, a third Webster's
First Part; and that he and Deacon Hadlock, who
agreed in little else, had hitherto been united in resisting scholastic
innovations; but the time was come when he supposed
a concession must be made to the wishes of the public.
“Compare,” said he, “the First Part, and the deific Universal.
Look at the pictures even. Young Noah, who propounds
to us his visage in the frontispiece of his book, has
doffed, you see, the wig, and is frizzed, much to the alarm of
your good friend Tony, who declares the introduction of said
book will ruin him. Those super-auricular capillary appendages,
hardened with pomatum, to what shall we liken them, or
with what similitude shall we set them forth? They are like
the caves of a Chinese temple; or in the vernacular of your
brother Nimrod, they are like a sheep's tail; yea, verily. — But
by a paradox, id est, by digressing and returning, we will keep
in the straight track. The Deacon, the Parson and the Master,
a megalosplanchnotical triad, have recommended Hale's
Spelling Book. Enoch was a pupil of mine, and though grown
sanctiloquent of late, he always knew how to say the right
thing, as his book abundantly declares. Webster, moreover,
advertises us that & is no letter — the goal of every breathless,
whip-fearing, abcdarian's valorous strife, the high-sounding
Amperzand, no letter! Mehercule! You apocopate that from
the alphabet, and Deacon Haddock will apocopate you from
the School; yea, verily. It really signifies and per se, that for
your private edification, Mistress Margaret. Moreover Perry
makes twenty-six vowel sounds, Hale only sixteen; Webster
enumerates nine vowels, Hale five; Hale preponderates in
merit by reduction in number. Too many words, Margaret,
too many words among men. The fewer vocals the better,
as you will certainly know, when you have the children to instruct.
In spelling, let the consonant be suffixed to the last
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vowel thus, g-i v-e-n, not, g-i-v e-n, given, as they do now-a-days.
It is revolutionary and monstrous. Hand me my pipe,
I shall get angry. — And, memor sis, mea discipula, vox populi,
vox dei. You have asked me who God is; you will probably
arrive at that understanding as soon as you desire. Here,”
he continued, presenting a heavy ebony ruler, “is what serves
to keep up the flammula vitalis in the simulacra hominum.
You will find it a good Anamnetic in the School, and useful
in cases of the Iliac Passion, that the young androids are subject
to. Let not the words of Martial be fulfilled in you,
`Ferule tristis, sceptra pædagogorum cessant!'
The best Master I wot of is the Swabian who gave his scholars
911,000 canings, with standing on peas, and wearing the fool's
cap in proportion. With my most pious endeavors, I could
never exceed more than ten castigations per diem, one at each
turn of the glass; and that in thirty years that I have borne the
Solomonic function, amounts only to about sixty thousand;
Jove forgive me! Here also is a clepsydra, yclept an hour-glass,
for you; and this is the Fool's Cap, which it is hardly
needful to put on in a world like this, but the Committee
will be pleased to see it worn. Lupus pilum mutat, non mentem.”
“Your friend Fenning,” interrupted Margaret, “I see, writes
thus in his preface. `I must take the freedom to say, that I
am sensible a Rod, a Cane, or Ferula, are of little signification;
for I have experienced in regard to Learning itself, Infants
may be cheated into it, and the more grown-up youth
won by good nature.”'
“I don't wonder,” replied the Master, “that Deacon Hadlock
is confounded at the times, when the scholar presumes to
arraign his tutor! My friend Fenning, peace to his shades, had
a weak side, nor could all the Divine Widow's embrocations
cure him; I mean he was tainted with heresy; he denied the
plenary inspiration of the Bible; not your father's, for of that
there can be no doubt; but that wherein King Solomon appears—
and this reminds you of the Parson's snuff, which is
truly after a godly sort, kept in godly pockets, and is efficacious
in the illuminating of the understanding of the saints—but of
these things I do not discourse. It is somewhere said, `Spare
the rod and spoil the child;' this truth carefully concealed in
the holy mysteries, my Friend Fenning most unbecomingly
dared to question.—But you are not through with your anagogics
yet. You never saw a Mumming, or Punch and Judy? No—
well —”
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While they were speaking, Deacon Ramsdill halted into the
room, with one of those smiles, which, if it ever preceded him
as a shadow, still was the promise of something kind and good-natured
thereafter. “I heer'd what the gal was about,” said
he, “and I thought I would try, and give her a lift. I am
abroad a good deal, and my woman is getting old and rather
lonesome-like; and we made up our minds if Miss Margery
would come and stay with us, she should have her board and
welcome. Hester Penrose that kept the School last summer, got
her lodgings free, at the Deacon's, and we thought we could
do as much for you. Don't know how you will like us, but
we have found that swine that run at large in the woods make
the sweetest pork, and we are willing to give you a try.—
What on arth are you going to do with that piece of board?”
“If I understand the Master,” replied Margaret, “he intends
for me to fence in the scholars with it.”
“There now,” responded the Deacon. “I tell you children
have nater, and you can't help it, no more than you can being
a cripple when your hamstrings are cut. When they first
come to school they are just like sheep, you put them into a
new pasture, and they run all over it up and down, shy
round the fence, try to break out, and they won't touch a sprig
of grass, though they are hungry as bears. You send the
youngsters of an arrant, and they climb all the rocks, throw
stones at the horse-sheds, chase the geese, and stop and talk
with all the boys and gals in the way, and more than as likely
as not forget what they have gone upon. We old folk must
keep patience, and remember we did just so once. It's sheer
nater and there's no stoppin on't, no more than a rooster's crowing
a Sabber-day.—Blotches are apt to come out in hot weather,
and you may find the scholars a little tarbulent, particularly
about dog-days; but nater must have its course. Don't keep
them too tight. When the tea-kettle biles too hard, my woman
has to take off the cover. 'Twon't do to press it down, it's
agin nater, you see.—But, Molly, or Mistress Margaret, as we
shall have to call you, for want of a nail the shoe is lost, as
Poor Richard says; you must mind little things, and see that
matters don't come to loose ends before you know it. Pull up
the weeds, and then throw down some brush for the cucumbers
to fasten to; it's nateral, and they don't get snarled among
themselves. But you understand how to work a garden; well,
it's all nater alike. Ha, ha!”
This language, the Master, who perhaps on the principle
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that extremes meet, or, what is more likely, that the simple,
hearty pleasantry of the Deacon was always boon company to
his own laughing humor, ever maintained friendly relations
with the latter gentleman—this language, we say, the Master
suffered to pass without animadversion or rejoinder.
Margaret, thus turned adrift to her own reflections by the
pointed opposition of her friends, thanked them both for their
magnanimous interest in her behalf, took the books and other
pædagogical ensigns, and returned to the Pond. Early the
succeeding Monday, she reported herself at the School-house,
took her seat behind the big desk, and opened with her scholars,
who filed in after her, each one making his bow or her curtesy
as they entered the door; and all with clean bright faces and
barefeet. The boys took their places one side of the room,
and the girls the other. They reckoned about twenty, and
were all under twelve years of age, comprising the buds of the
village population. Among them was little Job Luce, who
recompensed for deformity of body in vivacity of mind, and
combining withal certain singularities of sentiment, could not
fail to recommend himself to the favorable attention of his Mistress,
however he stood reputed with the world at large. She
classed her scholars, heard their a's, ab's, acorns, and abandonments,
gave them their outs, rapped with the ferule on the window
to call them in—the only application she made of the instrument
in question—turned her glass every half hour, enjoyed
the intermission at noon, and at night, if like most teachers,
was as glad as her scholars, to be dismissed. Her dinner this
first day, which she brought from home, she ate at the School-house;
a practice which she not unfrequently adopted, since
Deacon Ramsdill's where she had her quarters was some distance
from the Green,—and in this she was joined by many of
her scholars; and she spent the hour cultivating their acquaintance,
remarking their manifold novel and diverse evolutions,
moral and physical, and contributing to their pastime—she
never commanded the intimacy of children before. The Deacon's
became in fact no more than her nominal abode, since
there were others in the village who regarded her with kindness.
Isabel Weeks, whom she had occasionally encountered,
and who even visited her at the Pond, was her staunch friend.
Of Isabel we might say many things, and on Margaret's account,
some amplification perhaps were demanded; but agreeably to
the well used maxim, that times of peace furnish few topics for
the historian, we follow all precedents, and forbear. Isabel
was emphatically a time of peace, she had no contentions,
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intrigues, or revolutions. She was so quiet and unobtrusive, she
would be set down for an ordinary character. She was just as
common-place and unnoticed as the sun is. She had no veiled
secret like Rose, to tantalize expectation, and stimulate curiosity;
she was transparent as the air, and like that element,
was full of refreshment and health, sweet odors and pleasant
sounds. She had always been indulgent of Margaret, and of
the people at the Pond, from her childhood; and perhaps, if
we ascribe to her a portion of that self-love of which so few
are deprived, she found she lost nothing in continuing this
friendship, which indeed had cost her something with her
neighbors. In addition her sister Helen, older by one year,
was one not altogether unlike herself, and Mistress Weeks felt no
other concern about Margaret's coming to her house than that
it forced her to a fresh task of arithmetical action, so that she
frequently passed the night there. The Widow Luce, grateful
for her attention to the unfortunate Job, was also disposed
to receive Margaret cordially. She sometimes staid at the
Widow Small's, where the Master kept her late in the evening
employed in a manner that gave him the greatest possible
gratification, playing back gammon. One day in this first
week, at the close of the School, following her scholars from
the house, who broke forth in noise, freedom and joy, the boys
betaking themselves to their several diversions, snapping-the-whip,
skinning-the-cat, racing round the Meeting-house, or
what not, she found herself engaged with a group of girls,
saying,
“Intery, mintery, cutery-corn,
Apple seed, and apple thorn;
Wine, brier, limber-lock,
Five geese in a flock,
Sit and sing by a spring,
O—U—T and in again.”
“It's the Ma'am's, it's the Ma'am's!” shouted the girls, “she
must stand;” and stand she did, blinded her eyes, counted
a hundred, went in search of the hiders, anticipated their return,
and, in fine, went through a regular game of “Touch
Goal,” with the ardor and precision of her pupils.
Saturday forenoon, she omitted the customary lesson in the
Primer, and on her return home, deliberately reported her
conduct to the Master, and let fall some intimations about not
understanding the Book. “Understand the Primer!” retorted
he with considerable vehemence. “What most people dread,
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I am fain to confess I love, lunacy, to be out of one's head.
Didn't you know that you must be out of your head when you
undertook the School. Are not all teachers, preachers, speakers,
out of their head? What do they know or pretend to
know of what they froth and jabber about! Ugh! Eidepol! Is
it not all a puppet-show, are we not all wheel-grinders? Are
not Patriots cap wearers and Priests mummers? Wag your
mouth and blink your eyes like most genuine pasteboard when
you come out into the world among folk.—Not teach the Primer,
hey? That is the finest part of the whole. You would banish
Harlequin from the play, like some other good moral people!
Go to, go to, you little prude! Lie out in the Moon this and
to-morrow night, and you will be ready to begin your work
again Monday, like any good saint.”
With these condolences and ministrations, she continued
her way to the Pond, where she proposed to spend the Sabbath.
Rose came to see her, to whom she recounted the passages of
the week, new and reflective, painful and pleasing. Pluck
nearly split with laughter at what she related of the Master and
the Primer, whereby also Rose was similarly affected, yet not
so naturally as the old man, but like one startled from a dream,
or in whom an imprisoned phantasmal voice breaks out wild
and derisory.
“The bell tolls; who is dead?” asked Brown Moll, as they
were sitting in the door-way about sunset Sabbath evening,
and the measured melancholy note fell upon their ears, the old
and familiar signal to the town that some spirit had just left
the body. “Hold your yop, Gaffer, while I count.” So by
keeping pace with the number of strokes she learned the age
of the deceased. “Forty one, who is it?”
“It must be Mrs. Morgridge,” said Margaret. “I heard
that she was sick, but did not think she was going to die.
Poor little Arthur!”
This exclamation over one who was a pupil of hers, was supported
by no contributions of her friends, and the subject, like
those to whom it owed its rise, died away. The family never
said much about death, whether they feared it and did not wish
their peace disturbed, or were indifferent to it and felt moved
to no words, or were prepared for it and needed no admonitions,
nothing in their manner would leave us the means of determining.
Monday she resumed her duties; Tuesday afternoon, she
was advised by the Master that it was expected the school
would be suspended on account of the funeral. She went to
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the Judge's, who lived on the North Street, a short distance
from the Green, with her friend Isabel. There was a large
collection of people, many from the remote skirts of the town.
After prayer by Parson Welles, the coffin was taken into the
front yard, and laid on the bier, under the trees. Sunlight and
shadows, fit emblems of the hour, flickered over the scene, not
more breathless, hushed and solemn, than were the voice, step
and heart of the multitude there assembled. The voluminous
velvet pall thrown back, exposed a mahogany coffin, thickly
studded with silver buttons, ornamented with some gilt armorial
tracery, and having the name and age of the deceased on a
silver tablet. The citizens approached one by one to take a
last look of the remains, then sunk away into the silently revolving
crowd. The mourners presently appeared, and the
people parted in a ring on either side. These also indulged a
tearful, momentary, final vision; the lid was closed, and the
pall folded to its place. On the coffin were then laid six pairs
of white kid gloves, one for each of the pall bearers, and a
black silk scarf, designed for the Clergyman. The bier, carried
on the shoulders of four young men, was followed by the
relatives, when came the citizens at large, two and two abreast,
forming a long train. The bell began its slow, far-echoing, heavy
toll, and continued to sound till the procession reached the
grave-yard. This spot, chosen and consecrated by the original
colonists, and used for its present purpose more than a century,
lay on the South Street, or rather at the junction of the
road to the Mill and that leading to No. 4, and constituted the
crown of the ridge that divided Mill Brook and Kedron. It
was in fact conspicuous both for its elevation and its sterility.
A sandy soil nourished the yellow orchard grass that waved
ghostlike from the mounds, and filled all the intervals and the
paths. No verdure, neither flower, shrub, or tree, contributed
to the agreeableness of the grounds, nor was the bleak desolation
disturbed by many marks of art. There were two marble
shafts, a table of red sand-stone, several very old headstones of
similar material, and others of a later date made of slate. But
here lay the fathers of the people, and here too they soon must
lie, and it was a place of earnest solemnity to all. Coming to
the grave, the men took off their hats; the four bier men lowered
the coffin by leathern straps, then each in turn threw
in a shovelful of earth; next Philip Davis the Sexton, taking
the shovel into his own hands, standing at the foot of the grave,
said in form as follows, “I will see the rest done in decency
and order.” Parson Welles, as the last obsequial act, in the
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name of the beneaved family, thanked the people for their
kindness and attention to the dead and the living, and the
procession returned to the house of the Judge. Some lingered
behind to revisit the graves of their friends; Margaret and
Isabel also stayed. It was, as we have intimated, a spot without
beauty or bloom; like many others in New England; but
in New England affections are green remembrances and enduring
monuments; tears that mausoleums cannot always command,
were freely shed on this dry orchard-grass, and the
purest purposes of life were kindled over these unadorned
graves. The drunken Tapleys from No. 4, moved in a body
to a corner of the lot where four years before was laid their
youngest child, a little daughter, marked by a simple swell of
dry sod scarce a span long, and there at least they were sober.
Margaret alone had no friends there. Isabel took her to the
grave of one of her early companions, Jesselyne Ramsdill,
only child of the Deacon's, an amiable and beautiful girl who
was cut off by that scourge of our climate, consumption, in
her fifteenth year, wasting away, like a calm river, serene
and clear to the last. As objects of curiosity, were the old
monuments, made as we have said of red sand stone, now
grey with moss, bearing death's heads and cherub cheeks
rudely carved, and quaint epitaphs, and the whole both sinking
into the earth and fading under the effects of time. Alas,
who shall preserve the relics of these Old Covenanters!
Again in the same week was she summoned to the suspension
of her School, to which, from day to day, were her attachments
increasing. The occasion was this; being one evening
with the Master, he showed her a piece of brown parchment
inscribed with the following words, which he desired her to
translate;
“Universis Quorum interest.
“Attestamur Bartholomew Elliman in Actis Societatis dictæ
Masoniæ ex ordine fuisse inscriptum, &c.,” the substance of
which being, that he was a worthy member of the Masonic
Lodge of the Rising States. He condescended also to explain
the seal of his watch, a huge cornelian cased in gold, dangling
from a long gold chain, which had attracted the attention
of her earliest years. He said it was “Azure on a chevron
between two castles argent, a pair of compasses somewhat
extended of the first, &c.; and in fine he told her, that as the
Masonic Fraternity were about to perform the ceremony of
consecrating a Hall to their purposes in the village, it would
be quite impossible for the School to keep, and perhaps
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altogether pleasant for her to witness the scene. On the appointed
day, in company with Isabel, she repaired to the
Green. The procession, numbering nearly two hundred of
the order, out of the whole county, formed from the Crown
and Bowl. It exhibited what has been called a “splendid
parade” in the “gorgeous attire” of the men with their
freshly powdered hair, white gloves, aprons and stockings; the
six standards of crimson and gold, blue and silver, flaunting
in the sunbeams; the pictured gradations of office, and the
showy paraphernalia of the mystic institution. She saw
Captain Eliashib Tuck, Grand Tyler, with a drawn sword,
leading the march; then came her friend the Master among
the Worshipful Deacons, with staves; in place were the
Secretaries, Dr. Spoor being of the number; a band of Music
playing Hail Columbia; a corps of Singers; Brothers bearing
a gold pitcher of corn, and silver pitchers containing wine
and oil; four Tylers supporting the Lodge which was garnished
with white satin, and, so the Master gave her to understand,
was the identical Ark of the Covenant, constructed by
Bezaleel, and presented to Moses; the Right Worshipful
Grand Master, Esq. Weeks, who bore the Bible, Square and
Compasses on a crimson velvet cushion; the Chaplain, the
Rev. Mr. Lovers, of Brandon, in his robes. The uninitiated
were invited to fall into the rear, among whom were
Margaret and Isabel. The Hall, which was the object of this
convocation, covered the second floor of a building recently
put up for town occasions on the east side of the Green.
The door was decorated with emblematical figures, the floor
had a mosaic coloring, heavy curtains of crimson and gold
shaded the windows, on the walls were blazoned sundry
hieroglyphics, the Sun and Moon, a Cock, Coffin, Eye and
Star; in their places were to be seen the implements of the
Order, the plummet, mallet, trowel and an armillary sphere,
and in the centre stood two marble pillars, understood to be
Jachin and Boaz. The procession entered and marched
three times round the room; at the first turn, the Grand
Master, facing the East, said; “In the name of Jehovah I
dedicate this Hall to Free Masonry;” then he pronounced it
sacred to Virtue, and lastly to Universal Benevolence. A
prayer and anthem succeeded, when an Oration was pronounced
by the Chaplain. “Free Masonry,” said the Reverend
gentleman, “is the most perfect and sublime institution
ever devised for conferring happiness on the individual, and
augmenting the general welfare of society. Its fundamental
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principles,” he continued, “are Universal Philanthropy and
Brotherly Love; its pillars are Faith, Hope and Charity; its
embellishments Order and Beauty; its instruments Truth and
Rectitude; its end Virtue and Happiness; Religion is its
Sister, its Creator is God. Its constitution is coeval with
that of the world, from the Divine Architecture of the Universe
are derived its Symbols, and He who said, Let there be
Light, proclaimed the solemn Dedication of our Order. Free
Masonry,” said he, “confounds distinctions, and is insensible
to rank; owning a common affiliation of the race, it distributes
its beneficence to all, and honors the meanest with its
fellowship. It treats none with contempt, and pardons the
imperfections of the weak. The distant Chinese, the rude
Arab, and the accomplished European will embrace an
American, and all sit together at the same table of fraternal
confidence and affection. Unconstrained by local prejudice,
unswerved by the rivalries of party, spurning alike the claims
of sect and the limitations of country, we know no preference
but virtue, no sanctity but truth, in whatever clime, or amid
whatever fluctuations of outward life they may appear. Our
Association relieves misery and shuns revenge. The tears
of Widowhood it wipes away, the pangs of Orphanage it
soothes, and by its hands are the stores of Destitution replenished.
It curbs the fury of War, and multiplies the blessings
of Peace. The sign of a brother even in an enemy's camp,
subdues our animosities and sheathes the sword. Nay, it
appeals to the most barbarous heart, and the rude Corsair of
Algiers receives to his bosom the hopeless victim of slavery,
and shelters a Brother Craftsman from the vindictive cruelties
of his tribe. The Arts behold in our Order a munificent
Patron, and knowledge receives from us a constant support;
in Good Manners we would be patterns, and Piety shall own
us its handworkers.”—“We have been accused,” such were
the closing words of his discourse, “of conspiring against the
liberties of mankind, it is slanderously reported that we are
leagued with the foes of law and order to demolish the entire
fabric of society. Were Napoleon a Mason, as he is a
Warrior, where he has drenched the earth in blood he would
have strewed it with flowers, for wasted cities would have
arisen Temples to Virtue, for Ministers of Wrath driving before
them the horror-stricken nations, we should behold Angels
of Mercy keeping watch over their happy homes, our Melodies
would drown the notes of the Clarion, and the race instead of
closing with the ferocity of ensanguined battle, would this day
meet in the embrace of Universal Brotherhood!”
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The speaker took his seat amid great applause; when an
Anthem was sung as follows:
“Hail Masonry! thou Craft Divine!
Glory of Earth, from Heaven revealed!
Which dost with jewels precious shine,
From all but Masons' eyes concealed!”
A collation was now enjoyed, consisting of fruits, cakes,
and since, on a previous day, at a funeral, spirituous liquors
were freely dispensed, we are only just to the times and to
this festal company, in adding, that wine and brandy formed a
conspicuous part of their entertainment. Three additional
grand marches around the Hall finished the scene; strangers
retired, and the Brotherhood were left to their private affairs.
Shortly after, with Deacon Ramsdill and his wife, and a
large number of villagers, Margaret was invited to an evening
party at Esq. Beach's. This gentleman lived on Grove Street,
in a house of the new style, very large and high, having a
curb roof with dormar windows, eleven windows on either
end, and the lower tier surmounted with carved work. The
parlor was, for the times, elegantly furnished, in a mahogany
side-board garishly bedecked with decanters of brandy and
wine, silver cups and tankard, a knife-case, and having underneath
a case-of-bottles brass-trimmed; a bright Kidderminster
carpet; light Windsor chairs; a Pembroke table, now degenerated
into a common dining-table; and, what caught the eye
of our novitiate, more than all, superb hangings. These represented
the South Sea Islands as conceived by the original
discoverers. The sides of the room opened away in charming
tropical scenery, landscapes and figures; the people, their
costume, habits, sports, houses were brought into panoramic
view, as were also apparent their innocence and simplicity, their
native and rural enjoyments and peace, now, alas, to be seen
no more by those who shall again visit them! These occupied
Margaret so long that she well nigh trespassed upon the
courtesies of the hour, and Deacon Ramsdill was obliged to
recall her to her fellow-guests. There were dancing, card-playing,
much spirit-drinking, and more warm political talking,
very warm indeed, so fervid and life-imbued, in fact, as to
engross all things within itself; and Margaret became a
devout listener to what for the instant appeared topics the
most lofty and interests the most momentous; nor could she
be diverted until the Master had thrice trod upon her toes,
and engaged her in a game of backgammon.
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The School, in her own estimation, was going on prosperously
and satisfactorily. Her scholars were ductile and inquisitive,
many-phased and many-minded, and their proficiency
in the Spelling Book was only equalled by their attachment
to herself. A single instance of discipline sprang from
a rude attack made by one of the larger boys, Consider
Gisborne, on one whose helplessness appealed strongly to the
teacher's sensibilities, Job Luce. She called Consider from
his own bench, and ordered him to sit an hour with the girls
on the opposite side of the house. In enjoyment and fidelity
three weeks were nearly spent.
Yet the original coolness with which the people at large
received her as teacher was fast ripening into positive dissent.
Some boldly proclaimed her unfitness for the station, others
clamored for the restitution of the old teacher, Hester Penrose.
Deacon Ramsdill was the first to break to her the no
less surprising than depressing intelligence, and Master Elliman
confirmed the suspicion that she would be obliged to quit
the School. Parson Welles was considerate enough to suggest
the propriety of an investigation in form prior to any action,
which, however, she would have done well to avoid by a voluntary
relinquishment of her post; but she was over-persuaded
by her friend Isabel, one of those who always hope for
the best, and consented to abide an issue. The study of the
Parson was the appointed scene of trial, and that room which
in her girlhood she had surveyed with strong delighted curiosity,
was now shaded to her mind beyond the stains of
tabacco-smoke and time on the walls. The great mysterious
books were there which she had importuned the Master to
give her access to, but he put her off on one pretence or
another, and now they seemed about to be forever hidden
from her view. Above all was the reverend presence itself,
the grave person of the Minister, a conflicting union to her
eye, of extremest sacredness and extremest profanity, a sort
of corporeal embodiment of all unreality with which the
lessons of Master Elliman were calculated to fill her mind;
and when she saw him soberly lay aside his pipe and as soberly
put on his glasses—that single act affected her with a twinge
of fright, which was not lessened at all by contact with
Isabel, who sat next her, shaking with awe and alarm. In
addition, rumor of what was afloat having drawn a number of
people to the place, their faces, some frowning, some sneering,
some laughing, increased the complexity of her sensations.
The nominal charges were reduced to two heads;
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first, omitting to use the Primer; and second, harsh and
unreasonable treatment of Consider Gisborne. To this was
appended a supplement that had its full weight, this to wit,
that she did not attend Meeting on the Sabbath, and that she
played with her scholars; and the whole was ridden by the
insinuation that she had shown partiality to the crumple-back,
Job. On these several and various matters she could make
no defence, and she attempted no reply. Her friends, who
would under other circumstances have gladly appeared in her
behalf, felt constrained to abandon the case, and could do no
more than secretly condole with her disappointment.
“Touching the unfortunate youth,” said the Parson, “he
suffereth from that sin which we do all inherit from the Fall.
The compassion which you have exhibited toward him would
be counted a token of gracious affections in the regenerate
mind. But continuing unregenerate, the danger is great that
you will reckon it meritorious, and thus by adding to your
good works, increase the probabilities of your condemnation,
for truly the Bible saith, The sacrifice of the wicked is an
abomination to the Lord. But,” he continued, addressing her
with a direct interrogation, “will the Mistress wholly deny to
impart the godly instruction contained in the Primer?”
“I cannot use it,” replied Margaret, with a tolerably firm
accent, yet faltering in every muscle.
“Therein are to be found,” resumed the Parson, “the
great truths of evangelical faith and practice.”
“I know nothing what it means,” she added, “and I could
never consent to teach it.”
“Truly,” exclaimed he, “their eyes are blinded that they
cannot see. What says Master Elliman on the matter?”
“Yea, verily,” replied the Master, “as the Lord hardened
the spirit of Sihon, King of Heshbon, and made his heart
obstinate, that he might deliver him into the hand of Israel,
so is it exemplified in what we now behold.”
“She's a dropt stitch,” said one woman, who had been busy
during the proceedings footing a stocking. “She has cast her
band if she is a spinner's daughter,” was the simultaneous comment
of another woman. “She ought to have put in a straining
brace before she run her roof so high,” observed Mr.
Gisborne the Joiner. “She had better learn of her Daddy
how to mend her own ways against she comes down to patch
up our 'n next time,” said Mr. Cutts, the Shoemaker. “How
hardly have we escaped from the hands of the Philistines!”
ejaculated Deacon Hadlock. “We have a small account
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against you at the Store, some pins and ferret I believe,” said
Deacon Penrose, “hope you will call and settle before you
leave.”
“You have lost your title, and we must call you Molly
again,” said Deacon Ramsdill, as they left the house; “but
you stuck to your pint, and mabby it's as well. I see 'twas
nater, and you couldn't give it up. The Lord knows what'll
come of it, but if you follow nater, he'll take care of you.
There is more in things than we old folk have thought of, and
if you young heads can find it out, for one I shall be glad.
You have eat your crib and broke your halter, but there is a
good deal of feed out of the stable. Fences last the longest
when the logs are peeled; you are pretty well stripped, but I
guess you won't give out any quicker. The children have
nater, and you and they would get along smart enough together;
the old people are chock full of their notions and
politicals, and I don't know as you could do better than to let
them alone. I was afraid, at the start, how the matter would
turn. About Consider, he is not a nateral bad boy, only it
went agin the grain to be put among the gals; and he took
on dreadfully, and his people thought he had been most
killed. But it was because you did it, Molly, yes because you
did it; if anybody else had done so, he would not have said a
word; but he liked the new Ma'am, I've heard him say so,
and when you punished him, it broke him right down; that's
nater agin, clear nater. Hester might have thrashed the skin
off his body, and he wouldn't have cried boo. Then you
know, some people's geese are always swans, so we thought
when our little Jessie was alive; yes, yes. God knows how
hard it is to help setting a good deal by one's children. — But,
Molly, you mustn't judge the people too harsh; they are just
like gooseberries, with a tough skin, and sharp pricks, and yet
there is something sweet inside. Remember too, he who can
wait hath what he desires.”
Tony, the negro barber and fiddler, who had been hovering
about the Parsonage during the trial with considerable apparent
concern, and still hung on the steps of the party as they
walked up the street, at length made bold to speak, and asked
Margaret if she would not go to his shop and have her hair
dressed; a request which she answered in the negative.
“Your brother Chilion has done great favors to this gentleman
in the musical profession,” continued the negro, “and if
the Mistress would let him try the tongs to her head, it would
make great commendations. It an't Tory now, and there isn't
nobody else in the world that I would see suffer if I could
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help it, and the Mistress was a most handsomest dancer, and
Chilion tuned my fiddle.” Still Margaret declined.
“You had better go,” said Deacon Ramsdill, “it does a
man as much good to do a favor as to get one. Tony has a
feeling heart, and he mabby would serve you when nobody
else would, and will take it hard if you deny him. Isabel will
go with you, and he would like to show you his shop.”
The Barber, whose function was no unimportant one to the
villagers, had set off his apartments in a manner for which
such quarters have been famed from time immemorial. The
window shutters that concealed his treasures during the night,
published them in the day, serving for advertising boards,
standing along the front of his shop, whereon appeared a list of
articles he sold, and of services he performed. Within doors
on shelves were displayed sundry of the exquisites of the day.
“King Henry's Water,” “Pink and Rose Hair Powder,”
“Face Powder instead of Paint,” “Hemmett's Essence of Pearl
for the Teeth,” “Paris made Pomatum,” “Infallible Antidote
for Consumption,” “Elixir Magnum Vitæ,” etc. etc. On the
walls were large bills, pertaining to the aforesaid articles, flaming
in color and rhetoric, and closing with a peculiar observation,
which, since it is somewhat old, and serves to distinguish
the times, and some virtuoso might like to have access
to it, we have taken the pains to copy, this to wit; “&hand; Beware
of Counterfeits.”
Margaret was seated in the tonsorial chair, and throwing off
her bonnet, delivered herself into the hands of the professor.
“What a head!” exclaimed the negro, “what a figure, Miss
Belle, she would make in the great world if she was only well
powdered! I have had Madam Hadlock four hours together
under my hands, when she was fixing for a ball, where I also
had the pleasure to attend her four hours more. After she
joined the Church, I lost that honor. The Sacrament, Miss
Belle, makes bad work with gentlemen of my profession. I
am as the Master says A. B. Android Barberosus, S. T. D.
Societatis Tonsorum Dux, a great man you see, and Parsons,
Judges and Masters, as Master Elliman says, bow down to
me —”
“You hurt me,” said Margaret.
“Yes, indeed,” replied the negro, “'tis a most fashionable
pain, Runy Shooks will sit it out by the hour.—You won't
need a cushion, but a little powder, patent lily, violet, gives
such an etiquette—”
“No, none,” said Margaret.
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“I can't use the tongs, you are all in curls now. What shall
we do, Miss Belle? A roller, toupee — that's all Paris.”
“What!” said Isabel, “I thought you didn't belong to the
French party, Tony.”
“Oh no, I'm all Jacobin, all Federal, all Lumination, only
I an't no dum Tory. The Lady's father was a Tory, wasn't
he? Well, they won't hurt me now. They were good heads,
all of them; I use to get five pounds a year out of Col. Welch's.
Let me comb it up over the top, and bring these back locks in
front?” “No, no,” said Margaret. “You shall be welcome
to one of my silver spangled ribbons to tie it with.” “Let it
be as it is.” “Ha! ha! who ever heard of a lady's hair being
as it is? That isn't the fashion at all. A lady wouldn't live
out half her days. We use to set it up a foot high; but that
was before the War. The War was very ruinatious to our
profession, and I have heard the York gentlemen say taste had
very much descended since.—I an't no Tory, I'm Federal,
Jacobin, Lumination, only if they won't put down the Barbers
so that they can't keep the fashion perfect. I have heard ladies
say they couldn't go to meetin' on the Lord's day or improve
a bit on the sermon because they were not in fashion. We
are a means of grace, as Master Elliman says. So I must
bring this curl here, and this one here, and let them be as
they was. Well, this gentleman declares upon his honor,
Mistress looks as beauteous as the great Queen Ann on the
wall. She will not disprove a little Hungary Water?” “No.”
“Thank the Lady Margaret, thank her. No pins, no spangles,
no tye-top, no beads, — Miss Belle so too — well upon my
soul!”
“Simplicity becomes us best, you know, Tony,” said Isabel.
“Ma always said those were most adorned who were adorned
the least. So you will not feel bad, I know you won't.”
“This gentleman D. D. Devil of a Doctor, — for you must
know we use to perform surgery, phlebotomy, and blood-letting,
till the other professors came in, and they have well nigh
propelled us,—this gentleman, A. B., S. T. D., D. D. see the
toilette every day going down, and expect the great Napoleon
will eat the Barbers all up; but he declares Mistress the most
grandiloquent head in all the country — hope no offence, Miss
Belle.”
“None at all,” replied Isabel; “you know we always said
Margery was beautiful, and she is good too, and good folks
will bear to have anything said to them, and not take it as flattery,
but only truth, Ma says.”
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The Barber held a looking-glass to Margaret, and she saw
her hair not essentially affected by the professional endeavor,
still as before parted on the top, and hanging in thick frizettes,
which the operator had done his best to smooth, gloss and
arrange. “Tell Master Chilion,” said he, as the young ladies
were going, “one of my fiddle-strings is broke, and the board
out of order, and he is the only gentleman this side of the Bay
can fix it, as it ought to be done.—Do the Mistress take a box
of the Patent Tooth Wash.”
Margaret finished out the week with Isabel, and Saturday
afternoon, left for Mr. Wharfield's, where she was invited
to make a visit, and two of whose children had been under
her tuition. The Quaker lived on the Brandon road half-way
between the Village and No. 4. Turning from the South Street
between Parson Welles and the Burying Ground, she crossed
Mill Brook, and rapidly commenced the ascent into a more
elevated region. On the right, below her, hidden among trees
and shrubbery, flowed the Brook; farther to the north-west
rose the beautiful green-wooded summit of the Pond, with her
favorite Indian's Head towering above all; on her left, by
alternate gentle acclivities and precipitous bluffs, sloped the
long hills away to the skies. A high flat brought her to the
house of her friends who were farmers, and as we say well off
in the world. Where she intended to stop a single night, her
abode was protracted nearly a week. The habits of the family
were simple, their manners quiet, and tastes peculiar. Their
enjoyment seemed to consist in listening to her, they strove to
make her happy by receiving what she had to say, they watched
her with the interest approaching to awe of those who
beheld in one, what they described as the “inner workings of
the spirit,” and from whom they looked for some surprising
evolutions. Thus by appliances the most delicate they contrived
to detain her. Their children were thrown continually
in her way that they might catch the inspiration with which
she seemed to be endowed. She pursued her studies of nature
in the woods, she climbed the loftiest eminences behind the
house,—books, if any were to be had, she for the moment
lost all relish for.—In these strolls the children were often her
companions, and they told their mother she dug up roots, examined
flowers, and lay on the grass and looked into the clouds;
that she sometimes explained to them the simple operations of
nature. Troubled at last as her friends imagined with a
desire to go home, they would no longer detain her, and
gratefully dismissed her on her way. If she were depressed
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at all by the events of the School, the treatment of the Quakers
was certainly fitted to reassure her; and with whatever melancholy
she may have first thought of returning home as it were
disgraced from the Village, this was qualified or displaced by
the second thought that it was her home, that there were her
best friends and purest pleasures—and she trod on with a firm
step and considerable buoyancy of feeling.
She traversed No. 4, known in her vocabulary as Avernus,
and not inappropriately named. In addition to every aspect of
blight and waste that could conveniently be combined in a
human dwelling place, the geese, those very agreeable articles
in their proper use, but the greatest enemies of road-side
beauty, like the locusts of Egypt, had discriminated and
polled the green grasses, and more delicate flowers, and left
only may-weed, smart-grass and indian-tobacco, shooting up
like living monuments of desolation; an offence for which
they had long since been banished the Pond. Hogs lay
under the cherry-trees by the stone-wall fences, crabbedly
grunting like bull-frogs, muddling the earth and wallowing in
the mire. Leaning well-sweeps creaked in the scant gardens.
She encountered a file of children, with hair thoroughly
whitened and face as thoroughly blackened by the sun, kicking
before them the dry dust of the road, in clouds. Sheep
with fettered legs wandered from side to side of the way restless
and forlorn. An overturned wood-sled, lying outside of
a barn-yard fence, and protecting within its bars a collection
of white-flowering catnip, was a solitary point of beauty. A flock
of yellow butterflies, flying before her and lighting on the road,
then flying and lighting again as she advanced, at last whisking
off and forming themselves into a saucy waltz over a black pool
of water, where they were finally dispersed by the incursion of
a pair of blue-spotted dragon-flies, afforded her some diversion.
A pink in a pewter mug standing on the window-sill of one of
the low ragged houses, Mr. Tapley's, she would fain turn aside
to see; a little girl, Dorothy Tapley by name, appeared awkwardly
enough with her fingers in her mouth, and said it was
hers. Margaret laying hands upon it, asked if she would let
her have it. The girl immediately removed her fingers from
her mouth to her eyes and began to cry. Margaret enquired
what was the matter. Dorothy gave her to understand that
when her little sister Malvina was sick, and Miss Amy with
the Parson came to see her, she wanted a pink which Miss
Amy had pinned on her breast, and that having got possession
of it she would not part with it, but kept it by her, and when
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she died held the wilted fragments close in her hand; whereupon
she, Dorothy, went to the Parsonage and begged of Miss
Amy a root of the same pink which was now growing in the
pewter mug; that she had taken much care of it, and would
on no account let it go. This conversation through the window,
Margaret standing without and the girl within, reached
the ears of Mistress Tapley, who was at work in the back
shed cutting up cheese-curd; and brought her into the room.
She, a very greasy looking woman, with chopping knife in
one hand, and a pinch of snuff in the other, confirmed all the
child had said. Margaret told them she was glad they valued
the flower so, and said she would not think of taking it, and
asked for a draught of water. This produced a fresh demonstration
on the part of these people, the mother averring with
undisguised emotion that they had used their last drinking
utensil for the pink, and that they drank all their rum now
from the bottle; that the gourd was broke, but she should
be welcome to drink as the rest did from the bucket. “You
help her, Dorothy; she won't git away your posy; she han't
forgot how much we done for her when she was lost in the
woods.” They went through the house into the back shed.
That back shed! cheese-room, dye-room, sink-room, airy,
piazza, hen-roost, cupboard, wardrobe, scullery, with its soap-barrel,
pot of soap-grease, a range of shelves filled with rusty
nails, bits of iron hoops, broken trays, hammer, wedges,
chizel; tar-pot, swill-pail, bench, churn, basket of apples,
kittens, chickens, pup, row of earthern milk-pans drying
about it—take it for all in all, we shall never look upon its
like again! At one end was the well, its long sweep piercing
the skies, its bucket swinging to and fro in the wind. Dorothy
ran and caught the bucket, brought it to Margaret, who
grasping the pole was about to draw it down hand over hand.
She paused to look at what was below her. The mouth of
the well was shaded and narrowed by green mosses and slender
ferns; which also covered the stones quite to the bottom, and
bore on every leaf and point a drop of water from the waste
of the bucket. Below the calm surface of the water appeared
a reversed shaft having its sides begemmed with the moss-borne
drops, which with a singular effect of darkened brilliancy
shone like diamonds in a cave. Through a small green subterranean
orifice she could look into nethermost, luminous, boundless
space; a mysterious ethereal abyss, an unknown realm of
purity and peace below the earth, the faintly-revealed inferior
heavens; and too she beheld her own fair but shadowy face,
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in the midst of all, looking up to her. Anon a falling drop of
water would ruffle the scene, and then it eddied away into
clearness and repose. Such was the rare vision that detained
her, and made her pause with her hands still grasping the pole.
“What are you doing?” said Dorothy. “I am thinking of
your pink,” replied Margaret. “I thought I could see Malvina
in the well sometimes,” added the girl, “but there is nothing
there only some fishes Biah put in last summer.” “At any
rate there is good water there, and we will see if we can get
some,” said Margaret. The bucket was drawn up, and inclined
dripping on the curb, where Dorothy steadied it, while
Margaret drank. Margaret sat on the long bench to rest herself,
and told Dorothy Chilion would make a box for her pink.
Dorothy gave her the better half of a rotten geniton apple,
the best she had, and Mistress Tapley with unwashen hands
hurried into the garden, that is to say a small unenclosed spot
where they raised a few vines, and got a watermelon, and with
the same versatile and economical member, broke it in pieces,
which she divided between Margaret and her daughter. Going
on her way, she passed pastures, and extensive forest-skirted
uplands crimsoned over with the flowering sorrel; and large
fields, planted as it would seem to mulleins like nursery trees
with silvery leaves, rising into tall gold-tipped pinnacles.
She saw bull-thistles, like a phalanx of old Roman soldiers of
whom she had read, suddenly fallen into disorderly mutual combat,
piercing one another with sharp malignant spines. The air
of the place tainted as it might appear from the vapors of the
Still, whose fires waited not for mid-summer heats, was yet
sensibly relieved by the sweet-scented vernal grass mingling
with the odors of the new-mown hay, from the meadows or
lots on the margin of the Brook; she saw also women with
blue and brown skirts, naked arms, and straw hats, raking and
turning hay among alders and willows, that yet flourished in
their best mow-lands; ox-carts with rickety racks loaded with
hay, surmounted by stout men and driven by profane boys,
reeled and tilted over rocks and stones which no enterprise of
the people had sufficed to remove. From loads of brakes, a
lazy substitute for grass, that went by, regaling her with a rich
spicy fragrance, she was saluted by the slang and ugly mirth
of the owners. Men and boys were seen going to the Tavern
for their eleven o'clock, and in the sun before the house lay
Mr. Tapley, boosily sleeping, with his bare head pillowed on
a scythe-snath.
She was not sorry to turn into the Delectable Way, a name
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by which she had enlivened the road from Avernus to the
Pond; and perhaps on the whole it never seemed to her more
pleasant. She had often traversed it with the rum-bottle, with
baskets of chesnuts, bags of yarn, she had been carried over
it by her brothers, once she was borne up it in the proud arms
of an exulting populace. It was steep, narrow, rough, winding.
It had contributed to the elasticity of her muscles and
vigor of her heart. Now it glowed with wild-flowers, which
the lavish fertility of nature pours into every open space. It
was a warm day, and the sunbeams were strongly reflected
from the grey pebbles and glassy grit of the road, but a breeze
from the valley and another in her soul, gave her endurance
and self-possession. She was going home, and this, however
such a home might seem to many of her readers, was, we have
reason to believe, to her a solid consideration; she had been
disappointed in the School, sadly, grievously; her heart was
wrung in a manner that only a School-mistress can know; it
cannot be told. She nevertheless consoled herself with calling to
mind how much her scholars loved her, how kind some of the
villagers had been to her, and she might have decided the matter
at once by reflecting how utterly impossible it was, all
things taken together, to have stood well with the people at
large; she was encompassed by those subtle and exquisite
ministries of nature that can be enjoyed at every period of life,
and are capable of making themselves felt even by the most
desponding, and which go to mitigate the sense of calamity,
and give transport to our most temperate enjoyments. There
was besides an unnamed, undeveloped feeling in her own
breast, welling and provoking, partly inquisitiveness, partly
wonder, partly logic, partly thoughtfulness, partly she knew
not what, that heightened the interest of all things. This
feeling, we have cause to believe, was allied in character to
what it approximated in moral place, that, to wit, which was
sported between her and the Master as “Anagogicalness,”
whereby seems to have been intended any or all kinds of profundity
of uncertainty; seems, we say, for the compiler of this
Memoir professes to know no more of the matter than any of
its readers. On a side of the road was the cow-path winding
among sweet-fern and whortle-berry bushes, where she a little
girl used to walk, and even hide under their shade. The
great red daddocks lay in the green pastures where they had
lain year after year, crumbling away, and sending forth innumerable
forms of vegetable life. On a large rock grew a thistle,
the flower of which a yellow-breeched bee and a
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tortoise-shelled butterfly were quietly together feeding upon. Farther
off, in the edge of a dark green forest twinkled the small sunflower,
like a star. She walked on with a bank of beautiful
flowers on either side, golden-rods, blue-vervain, mulleins,
flea-bane, thoroughwort, high-mallows and others, which she
saw come up in the Spring, watched from month to month,
and would yet behold giving food to the little birds on the top
of the snow in mid-winter, and which had become a part of
her yearly life. A thin stream of water emerging from a long
line of fox-colored cotton thistle, sweet-flag, bullrushes and
high blackberries, ran across the road at her feet. The sky
was blue above her, relieved and variegated by mares-tail
clouds, from which some would augur a rain, and over her
left shoulder paled the mid-day moon. Her path in some
places was carpeted with the tassels of the late flowering chesnut.
A pig in a yoke started out from the bushes, scampered
before her as for dear life, its ears shaking like poplar leaves,
and dashed out of sight into the bushes again. The birds had
finished their spring melodies, and gave themselves up to the
quiet enjoyment of the season they so delightfully introduced,
and were no otherwise observable than in an occasional rustle
among the trees. She made a nose-gay for Chilion of yellow
loose-strife, purple spearmint, pale blue monkey flower, small
white buds of cow-wheat; and a smaller one for Rose, a stem
of mountain laurel leaves, red cedar with blueberries, and a
bunch of the white hard-hack, a cream-like flower, innerly
blushing. While thus employed, there appeared before her
a gentleman descending the hill, who seemed to have just
issued from the trees, and whom she fancied she had seen retreating
within doors at the Tavern, as she came by, and who,
if it were so, must have hastened across through the woods
while she loitered in the road. The face of this gentleman
was strikingly marked by a suit of enormous black whiskers
that flowed together and united under his chin. His age
might have been four-and-twenty; his eye was black and
piercing, but softened by an affectionate expression; his look
was animated, and a courteous smile played upon his lip. His
dress was more elegant than that of the young men of Livingston,
a scarlet coat delicately embroidered with buff facings,
a richly tambored waistcoat, lace ruffles, white silk breeches
and stockings, and a round brimmed hat. He addressed her
with deference and urbanity, and asked if he might have the
pleasure of accompanying her up the hill. “I am rambling
about the country,” said he, “and pursue whatever is novel
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and interesting, and hope my presence, Madam, will not disoblige
you? This is an exceedingly bleak place, and I should
think you would sometimes lack for variety.” “It is a very
beautiful spot to me,” she replied, “and—” “Ah yes, indeed,”
said he, “I did not mean that it was not beautiful, only there
are so few people here,—yet perhaps you are one who has the
singular felicity of being contented almost anywhere.—A boquet!
There is a rare profusion of flowers here. The atmosphere
is so fresh and vivifying. Most charming day this.”
So they talked of the weather, the season, the place, till they
reached the summit of the road. Before they came in sight
of the house, the gentleman suddenly stopping, said, “Might
I venture to hope, Madam, if in my rural strolls I should
chance again to encounter you, it would not be disagreeable?”
“What is your name, sir?” said she. “I am—Anonymous,
Mr. Anonymous;—does not that savor more of the romantic,
of which I see you are passionately fond?” “All wind-fall
comers here seem to be without names,” said she; “but there
is really so little in a name, that I do not care much about it.”
“Are there other strangers besides myself here?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, “we have one who would be anonymous
at first, but she allows herself to be called Rose now, though
she is so frail she can hardly support any name.” “Rose,
Rose,” rejoined he with a repetition, “that is a very pretty
name indeed.” Politely bidding her good morning, he went
down the hill.
Margaret hastened home to recount her misfortunes, intelligence
of which must have preceded her, and enjoy the commiseration
of her friends. Bull with Dick on his back, whom Chilion,
seeing her come, had seated there, ran out to meet her,—
the only member of the family who did not know what had befallen
her, and whose expression of unmingled delight gave her
a momentary deep pain in the way of contrast, and yet in the
end tended to reassure her and bring her back to her former
state. After dinner she went to the Widow Wright's to see
Rose, whom, unfortunately, she found plunged in the deepest
melancholy, and the more distressing for that it could render
no reason for itself. Margaret strove by every effort that instinct
or ingenuity could suggest to compose her friend, but in
vain. She remained awhile, but found her own tenderness
fully reciprocated, that Rose was pained because she was
pained, that she increased what she endeavored to dispel, and
thus without the possibility of gaining intelligence or affording
relief, she could do more than embrace her friend and go
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home. For a solitary moment she might have seen a look of
returning equanimity in the face of Rose; this was when she
spoke of her own defeatures and repulsions respecting the
School, but it soon vanished.
Shortly afterwards, as she was occupied one morning with a
book in the shade of the woods near the Delectable Way, she
was aroused by the arrival of Mr. Anonymous. “Have you
read Cynthia?” said he, after concluding the compliments of
the hour. “I saw it at the village, the other day, she replied.”
“It is a charming novel,” said he. “I do not know as I am
capable of understanding it,” she rejoined. “I mean it is a
delightful thing to toss off a dull hour with. Are you never
afflicted with any such?” “Not often.” “Are no dangers
to be apprehended in a place like this?” “I never have any
fears.” “I see you know how to diversify your time. As you
would walk, Madam, let me assist you. Allow me to remove
that bit of brush from your path.” “I thank you, Sir, I never
mind the trees.” “I am tempted to help you over that rock.”
“These rocks are no more formidable than our kitchen door-sill.”
“How rich these woods are in flowers!” “Indeed
they are.” “The most beautiful are not the most esteemed.”
“I fear they are not.” “With great justice the Poet writes,
`Full many a flower is born to blush unseen!”'
“That is well said. I find new ones every Spring, and
there are many yet hidden in the dark store-house of the earth.”
So talked they awhile, when he again took an abrupt but civil
departure, acting it would appear on the principle that short
visits make long friends.
Margaret was obedient to her parents and faithful to the
house, so that she was allowed many indulgences, the chief of
which consisted in leisure for her own pursuits. She rose
early, did her work with spirit, and her enjoyments were
marred by few complaints of her mother, and little domineering
of Hash. A peculiarity of fog-scenery as observed from the
Head, a phenomenon in its perfect characteristics occurring
only two or three times a year, took her to that point. The
fogs arising from the River lay wholly below her; like a
flocculent ocean they filled the interval between the Pond and
the Mountain beyond. Above was a clear atmosphere and a
bright sun. As if an entire firmament of purest white clouds
had fallen into the valley, they were piled one upon another.
Like sea-waves they were moved by the winds, dilating
and quivering they flowed the high grounds of the Pond,
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swept around the base of the Head, and penetrated the region
beyond. They were an organic lustre, sublimated wool,
spiritualized alabaster; they glowed like snow-flames. It was
in fact to summer what snow is to winter, a robe of whiteness
thrown over the face of the earth. It was not often she could
look down upon the fogs with the pure dry air about her. She
had been in them, sailing on the Pond, or traversing the woods,
when they seemed to fall from the sky, and drizzled rain-like
over the earth; now she was over them, and could command
all their beautiful varieties and forms. Higher and higher
they rose till only the top of the Butternut, and the peak of the
tall forest was visible above them. She fancied that the visions
of her dreams were composed of fogs, and she thought she saw
fair shapes of Ideal Beauty as it were precipitated in them,
chemically, and becoming animated, like the Beautiful Lady.
A new Venus, of whom she had read, was indeed sprung from
this foam; and she looked when she should swim for the
Butternut, as for a green island, and she would run down and
embrace her; at the same moment, a great black crow flew up
from the depths of the white waves, a true make-shift for
Vulcan. But a more substantial apparition opposed itself to
her view. At the west edge of the platform, or level on which
she stood, arose an enormous pair of black whiskers, speedily
followed by the well dressed young gentleman to whom they
belonged, Mr. Anonymous, who, for some reason unexplained,
perhaps because it savored more of the romantic of which
he was an admirer, had chosen a very unusual and almost inaccessible
route to the summit of the Head, immediately
apologized for his intrusion, and hoped he had not disturbed
the tenor of the young lady's reveries. “I cannot be disturbed
by one who enjoys the scene,” replied Margaret. “The fog is
really uncivil,” added Mr. Anonymous, “it has quite drenched
me. If it would clear away I think there would be afforded a
very charming prospect. I wonder I had not sought it out
before. Yet the view which the place itself affords, Madam,
is unimpaired, and would richly repay clambering up a much
rougher way.” “I fear you must have fatigued yourself,”
said she, “you missed the path which is on the other side.”
“It matters little how I came, since I am well here, and in
the presence of so fair an object.” “You will join with me
in the contemplation of what is about us. Perhaps, Sir, you
can aid me in resolving the exceeding mystery of all these
things.” “I should be most felicitated to join you in anything.”
“That beauty and our beauty, how are they related?”
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“I see your beauty, and I scarcely think of that.” “But
there is a connexion, I feel it. The beauty that is in me either
gives, or is given. Or there is some cause that creates both,
and unites them like musical chords.” “Your beauty, most
enchanting lady, since you lead me to speak of it, consists in
symmetry and color, those eyebrows, your forehead, your lips,
that dark curling hair; it brings me near to you. Nay, pardon
my presumption.” “Do look at that pile swimming through
the mass, like a great white hog!” “Nay, Loveliest! I can
look only at you.” “Then I will go away; there is enough
besides to look at.” “Beauteous being! do not leave me.
Do not shun the person of one who adores you.” “Adores
me! I hardly know what to make of that.” “I kneel at your
feet, sweet Madam, allow me to take your hand.” “My hand!
more mystery still. What is there in my hand?” “May I
be so presumptuous as to believe that with your hand you
would also bestow your heart?” “I have no heart.” “Have
I vainly cherished the hope that my person had made some
impression upon you?” “What, your fine clothes?” “Oh,
you will not trifle with me. Your manner has been such as
to inspire the hope that my feelings toward you were reciprocated.”
“I would not trifle with you. I thought you better
dressed than the young men hereabouts. But do see how the
Mountain shines in its coat of fog!” “Be not so severe; do
not retreat from me; render some condescension to my poor
plaints.” “I know not what you desire.” “Yourself, Madam,
is the supremest object of my wishes. Allow me to press your
fingers to my lips.” “I cannot stay here, Sir, I shall leap off
into the Pond.” “O, fairest of creatures, be not so cruel.
Blame me not if I reveal I love you, never before unfortunate
if you prove pitiless, never before happy if you prove kind.”
“See, the mists are fast rising, we shall be thoroughly wet, if
we stay much longer.” “Dissipate, Madam, the distressing
apprehensions your words create. My purposes are legitimate,
I offer you marriage, I offer you a fortune. Our banns shall
be published in the neighboring Church the next Sabbath.”
“I must own, Sir, you do sadly disturb me now. Your presence
is becoming an intrusion.” “You will slip from the
rock, you will fall into those hideous waters.” “Beautiful
waters, and I could almost wish to drop through the snow-drifting
mist into them.” “I will not approach you nearer; I
will abide at a distance, till you say the dear, dear word that
shall make me happy.” “Do not be afraid of me. I would
make the birds and toads happy, and everything about me.”
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“I protest my designs are honorable as my sentiments are
invincible. Consider what I shall bestow upon you.” At this
crisis, our old friend Obed appeared, brustling his stalwart
knobby frame through the bushes, and being somewhat short
of sight, a defect that was aggravated by the dense fog-flood
that now surged over the place, he wholly mistook the nature
of the scene; saw Margaret, as he thought, driven to the verge
of the precipice by the violence of the man, whose fervid exclamations
he had confounded with demonstrations of a more
fatal character, rushed upon him from behind, and perfectly
trussed him in his long arms. In the struggle that ensued,
both fell and rolled down the hill, performing a kind of horizontal
waltz, through briars, over rocks, quite to the bottom.
Margaret screamed to Obed to quit his hold, ran after them,
but in vain; they finished the descent before she could overtake
them. The face of Mr. Anonymous was not a little bruised
and his dress soiled; Obed defended by so good a buckler
escaped nearly unhurt. Pluck and his wife ran out at the
alarm, Margaret proffered the unfortunate gentleman every
assistance in her power; but as if disposed to withdraw from
observation, he made a very rapid retreat, forgetting even his
customary civilities in the hurry of departure, and was seen no
more at the Pond.
Judd, Sylvester, 1813-1853 [1845], Margaret: a tale of the real and ideal, blight and bloom; including sketches of a place not before described, called Mons christi (Jordan and Wiley, Boston) [word count] [eaf234].
