CHAPTER IV. SUNDRY MATTERS.
Another day found Mr. Evelyn at the Pond, and with
Margaret, on the Head, now called Mons Christi.
“The name which this eminence has commonly borne,”
said Mr. Evelyn, “together with the broad forest about, bring
strongly, I may say, mournfully to recollection, the original
population, the Indians, I mean.”
“What do you know about them?” asked Margaret.
“If we may rely on accounts written when they and the
whites first met as friends, before a mutual hostility exasperated
the judgment of the historian, and disordered the conduct
of the natives, we shall form a pleasing picture of their
character and condition. `These people,' the New England
Indians, say the first discoverers, `are exceeding courteous,
gentle of disposition, and well-conditioned; for shape of body
and lovely favor they excel all the people of America; of
stature much higher than we. They are quick-eyed and
steadfast in their looks, fearless of others' harms, as intending
none themselves; some of the meaner sort given to filching.
Their women are fat and well-favored, and the men are very
dutiful towards them. The wholesomeness and temperature
of the climate doth argue them to be of a perfect constitution
of body, active, strong, healthful and very witty, as sundry
toys of theirs, very cunningly wrought, may easily witness.'
A friendly intercourse was had with them in those days,
`and,' say the whites, `in great love we parted.' They are
universally represented as kind-hearted, hospitable, grateful,
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truthful, simple, chaste. Property was never more secure
than with them, bolts and bars they had none on their doors,
and one vice that gangrenes Christian nations, was unknown
amongst them, they never offered indignity to woman; they
were also, in respect of drinks, a very temperate people.
They possessed more virtues and fewer vices than Christians.
But when in the process of time their young men were
pirated into slavery, their population was thinned by the introduction
of new immedicable diseases, intemperance shed its
baneful influence, inflaming their passions and corrupting their
morals, the mercenariness of border intercourse alternately
cajoled and defrauded them, their several sovereignties were
drawn into destructive collision, and their entire strength
became the game of a foreign and unknown intrigue; when
the disposition of the settlers was more clearly ascertained,
the pressure of civilized policy began to tighten about them,
and they grew sensible of the value of what they had in their
simplicity surrendered; and when in the contest that ensued
between the two powers, they were driven to every resort, for
the defence of their rights, the recovery of their empire and
the preservation of existence itself, they assume a new attitude,
as all men do in similar circumstances. They exhibit a
melancholy instance of the reflex, reciprocal action of evil,
agreeably to a law that we before talked about. And yet, if
we would give to their revenge the name of reprisals, call
their subtlety and cunning military manouvres, their hatred
patriotic pride, if we would render their ferocity gallant behavior,
record their cruelties as vigorous measures for disarming
an enemy, and if instead of distinguishing them as
savages, we should write them simply Americans, they would
not appear very unlike other people of the globe.”
“It is not so bad a thing for me to be called an Indian after
all,” said Margaret. “Yesterday I felt that I was a Christian,
I don't know but I had better remain an Indian.”
“I told you there was a difference between Ecclesiastical
Christians and Evangelical Christians.”
“I would call myself a Christoid, a Christman, or anything.
I wanted to tell you how glad I was I persuaded Nimrod, my
brother, not to enlist, when they were about, awhile since,
after soldiers to go against the Indians on the Ohio.”
“Poor Indians! We have driven them from their reserves
in the West, and they may at last be compelled to take refuge
in the forests of the Mississippi, or even to cross its waters for
defence!”
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“I know one Indian,” said Margaret, “an old man, who
comes here every year, and has come almost since I can
remember. He lives in the blue yonder, on the sides of
Umkiddin. He looks very old, as if he had seen a hundred
years. Yet he is tall and straight, has fine muscular proportions,
and passes the house with a taught, Junonian step. He
comes and sits up here. He makes his annual return in dry,
yellow Autumn, when the frosts have fallen and the leaves
change and drop. He is silent almost as Jupiter himself, and
I cannot get much out of him. His expression is majestically
sad. He sometimes brings a little girl with him, whom I have
more than once induced to play with me. She says he is her
grandfather. Here he sits in a sort of brown study, and
muses over the water and wood. His hair is tied in a knot
behind, and surmounted with a coronet of white heron's
feathers; he wears a robe of tambored deer-skin. I have seen
him stop and listen to Chilion's music, and once the girl gave
me a pair of beaded moccasins, in return, I suppose, for some
of my bread and cider.”
“He is probably a relic of the departed race, and comes to
look upon the home of his ancestors. He may have lived
hereabouts. A distinguished tribe of Indians formerly occupied
the borders of the River. They always selected the
most fertile and picturesque spots for their residences. And
truly this was a goodly heritage of theirs. The Connecticut,
the Merrimack, the Kennebec, the Penobscot were their noble
rivers. The early voyagers whom I have quoted to you seem
to have found the lost Eden. `This main,' say they, `is the
goodliest continent that we ever saw. The land is replenished
with fair fields, and in them fragrant flowers, also meadows,
and hedged in with stately groves, being furnished with
brooks of sweet water, and large rivers.' Their woods
abounded in beasts of the chase, their rivers in valuable fish.
They raised corn in their meadows, beans, peas, pumpkins and
melons in their gardens. They had plums, cherries and
grapes. The Indian children gathered strawberries in the
Spring, and whortleberries in the Fall. Their maidens found
violets, lilies-of-the-valley, and numerous flowers in the fields
and forests. God they called by various names, Squanto,
Kishton, Manitou, Areouski.”
“What a pity they should not be here still; and I—I would
willingly be not.”
“They were not always at peace among themselves. The
Maquas, an imperious race, did much harm to the others, and
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threatened universal supremacy. But they are gone. For
reasons which we cannot well understand the red gives place
to the white man. With their wigwams and canoes, their
Gods and their pawwas, their government and titles, their
language and manners, they have vanished forever. No trace
of them remains, except in the names of a few localities.
The way is cleared for a new population, a new religion, new
society, new life. We wait to see what will be done. New
England is swept and garnished. It is an unencumbered
region.”
“Do I live in New England?”
“Yes, you are a New Englander.”
“Mehercule! I thought I lived anywhere between the sky
and this most anagogical rotundity, and have been entertaining
my later years with soap-bubbling a few Divinities—I
will be serious, Mr. Evelyn, I do know the realities of things.
But how the Gods chase one another over the world, Manitou,
Jupiter, Jehovah! Are not New Englanders like Old Englanders,
and Old Englanders like the Hindoos?”
“Men are all formed of one blood; yet there are specific
differences. But God is one, and if New Englanders were
pure in heart, as Christ says, they would see him, and that
more truly perhaps than any other people. Yet many of them
ascribe acts to their God which would disgrace a heathen
deity. This results from the debased state of the public
mind; or rather I should say from the debased doctrines of a
fallen church which have been transmitted to us. Still in
many respects we have an advantage over all other nations,
which it is worth your while to think of.”
“I am glad to hear anything you say.”
“A good part of the Old World on its passage to the New
was lost overboard. Our ancestors were very considerably
cleansed by the dashing waters of the Atlantic. We have no
monarchical supremacy, no hereditary prerogatives, no patent
nobility, no Kings, and but few Bishops, by especial Divine
interposition. The gift of God is with the virtuous and truthful.
`All men are equal,' is our favorite motto; and it is one
of far-piercing, greatly humanizing, radically reforming force,
though now but little understood. Many things that affect
character and condition in the Old World, adulterate truth,
perpetuate error, degrade society and life, sully the soul, and
retard improvement, we have not. I intend to take a trip
thither soon, and shall see what they are of and for.”
“Are you going away?”
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“My health and taste both require a sea-voyage, which I
shall make as soon as Bonaparte and Mr. Pitt settle their
differences a little.—There are no fairies in our meadows, and
no elves to spirit away our children. Our wells are drugged
by no saint, and of St. Winifred we have never heard. Our
rivers harbor no nereids, they run on the Sabbath, and are all
sacred alike, Mill Brook as the Ganges; and there is no
reason why the Pond of Mons Christi should not become as celebrated
as the Lake of Zurich. In the clefts of our rocks abide
the souls of no heroes, no spirits of the departed inhabit our
hills, nor are our mountains the seats of any Gods; Olympus,
Sinai, Othus, Pico-Adam, Umkiddin, Washington, Monadnock,
Holyoke, Ktaadin, it is all one. The Valley of the
Housatonic is beautiful as the Vale of Tempe, or of Cashmere,
and as oracular. We have no resorts for pilgrims, no shrines
for the devout, no summits looking into Paradise. We have no
traditions, legends, fables, and scarcely a history. Our galleries
are no cenotaphic burial grounds of ages past; we have no
Haddon Hall, or Raby Castle Kitchen; no chapels or abbeys,
no broken arches, no castled crags. You find these woods as
inspiring as those of Etruria or Mamre. Robin-Good-Fellow
is unknown, and the Devil haunts our theology not our
houses, and I see in the last edition of the Primer his tail is
entirely abridged. No hideous Ghosts appear at cock-crowing.
Witches have quite vanished, and omens from sneezing
and itching must soon follow. At least in all these things
there is a sensible change in the public mind. If the girls put
wedding-cake under their pillows to dream upon, it is rather
sport than magic. Astrology, Alchemy, Physiognomy and
Necromancy are fast dying out, and Animal Magnetism has
not ventured to cross the sea. January and May are not, as
in the Old World, unlucky months, and Friday is rapidly
losing its evil eye. At marriages the bride is not obliged to
throw her shoe at the company; at births, we have no Ragged
Shirt or Groaning Cheese; if a child die unbaptized, it is not
thought to wander in woods and solitudes; at deaths our common
people do not cover up the looking-glasses. Ecclesiastical
Holidays have a precarious hold on New Englanders;
curses are not denounced upon sinners, Ash Wednesday; we
have no Whitsuntide given to bearbaiting, drunkenness and
profligacy; Trinity Sunday our bachelors do not kiss our
maidens three times in honor of that mystery; bread baked
on Christmas eve turns mouldy as soon as any other; we are
not obliged to use tansy to purge our stomachs of fish eaten
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in Lent. In our church-yards bodies are buried on the North
as well as the South side. There is no virtue in the points of
compass that our clergy repeat the Creed looking towards the
East, and none in wood that we bow to the Altar. All these
things our Fathers left behind in England, or they were
brushed away by contact with the thick, spiny forests of
America. Our atmosphere is transparent, unoccupied, empty
from the bottom of our wells to the zenith, and throughout
the entire horizontal plane. It has no superstitious inhabitancy,
no darkening prevalence, no vague magistracy, no
Manichean bisection. As you say, Manitou is gone, and with
due courtesy to your Pantheon, the One God supervenes;
there is no Intermediation but Christ, and for man, the bars
are let down. Our globe stands on no elephant, but swings
clear in open boundless space; it is trammeled by no Northern
Snake, and circumvented by no Oriental Sea of Milk. We
have no Hindoo Caste, and Negro Slavery is virtually extinct
in New England. Education is universally encouraged, and
Freedom of Opinion tolerated.”
“So you think New Englanders are the best people on the
Earth?”
“I think they might become such; or rather I think they
might lead the August Procession of the race to Human Perfectibility;
that here might be revealed the Coming of the
Day of the Lord, wherein the old Heavens of sin and error
should be dissolved, and a New Heavens and New Earth be
established, wherein dwelleth righteousness. I see nothing to
prevent them reassuming the old Hyperionic type, rising head
and shoulders to the clouds, crowding out Jupiter and Mars,
Diana and Venus, being filled, as the Apostle says, with all
the fulness of God, reaching the stature of perfect men in
Christ Jesus, and reimpressing upon the world the lost image
of its Maker. New England! my birth-place, my chosen
pilgrimage, I love it. I love its earth and its sky, and the
souls of its people. They, the Unconquerable, could alone
subdue its ruggedness, and they are alone worthy to enjoy its
amenities. I love the old folks and the children; I love the
enterprise of its youth and honorable toil of its manhood. I
love its snows and its grass, its hickory fires and its cornbread.
The seeds of infinite good, of eternal truth, are
already sown in many minds; these might germinate in
another generation, and in the third bear fruit. High Calculation,
which is only the symbol of a higher Moral Sense, is
even now at work; and they are ripping up the earth for a
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Canal from Worcester to Providence; and what shall next be
done, who knows. Only, if love lay at the heart of all things,
thought and action, what might not be! But how stint we
ourselves! Politics, society, life, the church, love, aim, what
are they all!”
“Why don't you lead off yourself in this matter? You
shall be a Hero, the days of Chivalry shall be renewed.”
“I! I have neither health nor spirit. I only perceive, I
only deplore.”
“Really, we must go to the Widow's without delay, and
get some of the Nommernisstortumbug, that will cure you.
Speaking of the Widow, I think of Rose, poor Rose. I
asked her to come with me and see you to-day; she hesitated,
and declined. I told her you would speak better to her than
anybody else. She shook her head mournfully, and said,
`Only you, Margaret, only you!' What can we do for her?”
“I do not know, I am sure, I have turned over the account
you gave me of her. I am persuaded she has some chord
that could be reached, some secret self to be disclosed.”
“Can you send me for no hammer that will break her to
pieces?”
“Christ might reach her, if nothing else.”
“Oh no. She has a perfect horror of that name. She
hates it, worse than I did; I only laughed at it, she seems to
loathe it inwardly. Said I, `Rose, Christ loves you, he suffered
for you, can't you have faith in him?'—`Gracious
Heavens!' she broke out `if you won't kill me, Margaret,
don't speak of that,' and so shut my mouth, and I could say
no more.”
“I think I see how it is; I believe I understand the difficulty,
so far at least as that demonstration is concerned.”
“I can very well understand how a person might not like
the name of Christ, how it might offend one; but that it
should give a shuddering pain is quite beyond my comprehension.”
“Be good and kind to Rose, and she may yet listen to
you.”
“I have borne her deep in my heart, I have felt most
strange motions towards her, I am ready to melt and flow into
her, and much sorrowful feeling she gives me, and I am willing
to have for her.”
“Persevere, and I am confident she will yield. I might say
many things of what I think about her, but perhaps it were of
no use. I am willing to leave her with you, though if it were
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in my power I should be glad to see her. When shall I find
you at leisure again?”
“To-morrow I must spin, next day help Chilion on his
baskets; then is Sunday, we do not work that day, I wish you
would come up then.”
“I go to Church.”
“Alackaday! so you do. I quite forgot you belong to the
fallen race!”
“I told you all had some excellences; and if you would
come and hear Parson Welles you might think so too. He is
serious-minded, his prayers are earnest, his sermons have some
good sense, and the place itself is grateful to one's spiritual
feelings. Perhaps in no one more than in him would you see
the struggle that goes on between Nature and the Unnatural.
Nor is it easy to overcome the effect of our education so but
that old erroneous influences seem to minister to one's spiritual
peace, and I find many things in going to Meeting very
pleasant.”
“No, it is not,” replied Margaret laughing, “and I find
much pleasure in staying at home.”
“Monday, I may see you?”
“Yes, after washing. Besides you have left me enough for
a three days' rumination, at least.”
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].
