Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 1789-1867 [1835], Home (James Munroe and Company, Boston) [word count] [eaf343].
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Front matter
Covers, Edges and Spine
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Preliminaries
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SCENES AND CHARACTERS ILLUSTRATING CHRISTIAN TRUTH.
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No. III.
HOME.
BY THE AUTHOR
OF “REDWOOD,” “HOPE LESLIE,” &C.
BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE:
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY.
1835.
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Preliminaries
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HOME.
BY THE AUTHOR
OF “REDWOOD” “HOPE LESLIE,” &C.
“O, friendly to the best pursuits of man,
Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace,
Domestic life!”
Cowper.
BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE:
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY.
1835.
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Acknowledgment
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Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1835, by James
Munroe & Co., in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the
District of Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE:
CHARLES FOLSOM,
Printer to the University.
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Acknowledgment
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TO
FARMERS AND MECHANICS
THIS LITTLE VOLUME
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
BY THEIR FRIEND
THE AUTHOR.
Preliminaries
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CONTENTS.
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Chap.
Page
1. Going to House-keeping 1
2. A Glimpse at Family Government 14
3. A Family Dinner 27
4. The Reverse of the Picture 44
5. A Dedication Service 50
6. Sunday at Mr. Barclay's 54
7. A True Story 66
8. A Dark Day 75
9. A Home for the Homeless 86
10. A Peep into the Hive 103
11. Going home to Greenbrook 111
12. Cross-Purposes 123
13. Family Letters 135
14. The Conclusion 145
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Chapter I. GOING TO HOUSE-KEEPING.
My house a cottage more
Than palace; and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury.
Cowley.
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In a picturesque district of New England, —
it matters not in which of the Eastern States, for
in them all there is such unity of character and
similarity of condition, that what is true of one
may be probable of all, — in one of them there
is a sequestered village called Greenbrook. The
place derives its name from a stream of water
which bears this descriptive appellation,
“As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink,
Had given their stain to the wave they drink;
And they, whose meadows it murmurs through,
Have named the stream from its own fair hue.”
There is one particularly beautiful spot, where
this little river, or rather brook (for it is not
wider than the Tiber at Washington), winds
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through a lovely meadow, and then stretches
round a rocky peninsula, — curving in and out,
and lingering as if it had a human heart and
loved that which it enriched. On a gentle slope,
rising from the meadow and catching the first
rays of the morning sun, stood an old-fashioned
parsonage, about half a mile from the village and
at right angles with it, so that its road and shaded
side-walks, and the goings-out and comings-in of
his flock, could be overlooked by the good pastor.
Parson Draper's were not the days of agricultural
and horticultural societies, and just as he received
the place, he was content to hold and leave it.
He cut the hay from the meadow, and pastured a
few sheep in the beautiful wood of maples, oaks,
and beeches, that sheltered him from the northwest
wind, — where, if they did not find the
sweetest pasture in the world, they looked prettily,
cropping their scanty food from the rocky knolls,
or grouped together in the shaded dells.
The good man, according to his views of them,
performed his duties faithfully. He read diligently
large books of divinity, preached two sermons
(never an old one) every Sabbath, was punctual
at weddings and funerals, and abstracted no time
from these sacerdotal offices to improve his rugged
garden, or till his little farm. He had but two
children, the one a worthless son, and the other a
girl, a most dutiful and gentle creature, who married
a merchant, lived prosperously in a city for
two or three years, and then returned a widow,
penniless, and with an only son, to her father's
house. She bore her reverses meekly, and
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directed all her energies to one object, — the sine quâ
non of a New-England mother, — a good education
for her son. The boy, William Barclay,
found only happiness in the change. He was released
from what seemed to him a prison, a nursery
in a narrow city street, and permitted to feed
Grandfather's sheep, to harness his horse, sometimes
to ride and drive him; in short, to employ
those faculties that employed are blessings, and
unemployed, tormentors.
The parsonage, as we have said, was apart from
the village. Either because of his early solitude,
or through the leading of his mother, who, turned
back from the world, loved to commune with God
in his works, or from an innate love of natural
beauty, William Barclay knit his heart to this
home of his childhood; and when his grandfather
died, and the place was sold, and he was compelled
to leave it, he felt much as might our first
parents, when from Paradise they “took their
solitary way.”
His mother had a pittance, and this, with straining
every nerve, and now and then a lift from a
friend, enabled her to go on with her favorite project.
She and her son were received in the families
of her friends, and changed their abode according
to the liberality or convenience of their
patrons. But William was kept at his books, and
this repaid her for every sacrifice and every exertion.
William, however, was not of a temper to brook
this strain on his mother, and partial dependence
on others. As soon as he was of an age to comprehend
it, he renounced the idea of what is
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technically called an education, the four years at college,—
threw himself on his own exertions, and by
hook and by crook, that is, by infinite ingenuity and
diligence, and by the most severe self-denial and
frugality, he supported himself, obtained the rudiments
of an excellent education, and learned the art
of printing. At the age of twenty-two he was the
conductor of a valuable printing-press in the city
of New York, in partnership with Norton, its
proprietor, and with a reasonable prospect of a joint
property in the concern. In the mean time, his
earnings were sufficient to enable him to maintain
a family and go ahead. Thankful ought we
to be, that in our favored land a working man
need not wait till he be bald or grey before he
may, with prudence, avail himself of the blessed
institution of marriage; — that if, like William
Barclay, he be capable, diligent, frugal, and willing
to dispense with superfluities, he may, while
hope is unblighted, resolution vigorous, and love
in its early freshness, assume the responsibilities
of a married man. In Europe, — ay, in what
was “merry England,” it is not so; the kind order
of nature and Providence is baffled, and the
working man, be he “capable, diligent, and frugal,”
has an alms-house in his perspective, or
the joyless alternative, a life of safe and pining
singleness.
“And this is our home,” said Mrs. Barclay to
her husband, as they entered a small, newly-built,
two-story house in Greenwich Street.
“Yes, dear Anne; and if it were but in Greenbrook,
and a little stream before it, and an oak
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wood on one side, and a green lane to the road
on the other, we should stand a good chance at
love in a cottage.”
“I see how it is, William; I have yet to cure
you of your homesickness for the old parsonage.
Who knows but we may go there some time or
other? In the mean time, let us try if we cannot
be happy with love in a small house, instead of a
cottage.”
“You could make the happiness of any home
to me, Anne. Shifted about as I have been from
pillar to post, I scarcely know what home is, from
experience; but it is a word, that to my mind expresses
every motive and aid to virtue, and indicates
almost every source of happiness. I am
sure of content; but will not you, Anne, contrast
this little dwelling with your father's spacious
house, and when you look into the dirty street, or
into our poor, cramped, ten-feet yard, will you not
pine to see the golden harvests we left waving on
the sunny slopes of Greenbrook, or for the beautiful
view, from your window, of meadow and mountain?
Will you not miss the pleasant voices of
home? — the footsteps of sisters and brothers?”
“Yes,” replied the wife, smiling through the
tears that gushed from nature's fount at the picture
of her father's house, — “Yes, I shall miss
all this, — for who ever did, or ever can, forget a
happy home? I may even shed many tears,
William; but they will be like the rain that falls
when the sun shines, — there will be no cloud
over the heart. I am sure I shall never repent
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the promise made this night three weeks, forsaking
all others to cleave to you alone.”
“I trust you will not, Anne. But I cannot
help wishing I was not obliged at once to put you
to such a test. This house seems to me smaller
than when I hired it; this parlour is scarcely big
enough to turn in.”
“Now it struck me as just of the right size. I
always had a fancy for a snug parlour. Nothing
looks so forlorn as a large, desolate, cold, half-furnished,
shabby parlour.”
Mr. Barclay smiled, — “You have certainly
contrived, Anne, to make the large parlour look
disagreeable.”
“And I will try my best to make the small
one agreeable.”
A look from her husband indicated his belief
that she could not fail. “And can you say any
thing for this little bed-room?” he asked, opening
the door into an adjoining apartment.
After an instant's survey she replied, “It suits
me exactly.”
“But that is an ugly jut.”
“It's not pretty, but how neatly the bureau
fits in, — and this nice little closet, what a blessing! —
a grate too! I did not expect this. It
suits me exactly,” she repeated with hearty emphasis.
“But perhaps you did not mean this for
our apartment.”
“You must decide that. There is a room
above this precisely like it.”
“Then this shall be for mother, — she minds
stairs and we do not. And here she shall have
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her rocking-chair and Bible, and I trust she will
have a happy home after all.”
This “after all” meant years of miserable shifting
and changing, which old Mrs. Barclay had endured
with the patience of a martyr. No wonder
William Barclay felt grateful to his wife when
he perceived his mother's happiness was her first
care. He told her so.
“Wait,” she said, “till I deserve your thanks.
But now tell me where this little passage leads
to? — to the kitchen! — this is nice! I could
not bear to think of thrusting Martha down into
one of these New York cellar kitchens; they are
so dark and dismal, after being used to our light,
airy, sociable country kitchens. Martha will be
delighted.”
Mr. Barclay confessed he had made a sacrifice
to secure a pleasant apartment for Martha, a
young girl whom his wife (in country phrase)
had “taken to bring up.” “I had to decide,” he
said, “between two houses of equal rent, — the
apartments in the other were larger than these,
but the kitchen was under ground, and would
have seemed dismal to Martha, and I knew you
would wish to begin house-keeping with as much
happiness as possible beneath your roof.”
“At your old tricks, William, doing kind acts
and giving the credit to another. However, I
have generosity enough to approve this sacrifice
of a little for us, to a great deal for Martha.
Mother says there would not be half so much
complaining of help, if the master and mistress
had a religious sense of their duties to them, and
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took proper pains to promote their happiness.
Home should be the sweetest of all words even to
the humblest member of a family.”
This sentiment was echoed from William Barclay's
heart and tongue, and then the young pair
proceeded to examine together their furniture,
which had been purchased by the husband according
to a few general directions from the wife,
the funds being furnished by her father. We
shall not give an inventory, but merely note that
there were no superfluities, — no gewgaws of any
description, — no mantel-glass, ornamental lamp,
vase of Paris flowers, tawdry pictures; — such are
sometimes seen where there is a lamentable deficiency
of substantial comforts. But there was,
what in these dressed-up houses is sacrificed to
show; — ample stores of household linen, fine
mattresses, as nice an apparatus for ablutions as a
disciple of Combe could wish, jugs, basins, and
tubs large enough, if not to silence, to drown a
travelling Englishman, and finally one luxury,
which long habit and well cultivated taste had
rendered essential to happiness, — a book-case
filled with well selected and well bound volumes.
They paused before it, while Mrs. Barclay ran
over the titles of some of the books; “ `History
of England,' — `Universal History,' — `Marshall's
Washington,' — `American Revolution,' —
`Shakspeare,' — `Milton,' — `Pope,' — `Addison,
' — `Goldsmith,' — `Fenelon,' — `Taylor,'—
`Law,' — `Johnson's Dictionary,' — `Calmet's
Dictionary,' — `Lempriere,' — `Biographical Dictionary,
' — O what a capital Atlas! How in the
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world, William, did you contrive to afford so
many books? When father made an estimate of
the cost of our furniture, he allowed twenty-five
dollars for books. That, he said, would buy a
Bible, the histories of England and America, a
cookery book, and dictionary, — quite enough,
he said, for a nest egg.”[1]
“Your father is frugal, Anne, and so must we
be; but we have a right to select the department
in which we prefer sparing, and that is not books.
Since I have earned more than I was obliged to
spend, I have made a yearly investment in books,
as the stock which would yield the best income.
I had thus accumulated those heavy volumes on
the lower shelves; and as ladies sometimes think
heavy books heavy reading, I filled up the case
with such as I hoped would suit your taste, and
profit us both. All these were bought with your
money.”
“All these! how was that possible?”
“I will tell you. In purchasing your furniture,
my dear wife, whenever two articles were
offered of equal intrinsic value, the one ornamental
and the other plain, I bought the plain one,
and passed over the saving made to the book
fund. For instance, I was offered a remarkably
pretty Geneva clock, which cost fifty dollars in
Paris, for thirty dollars. A clock I thought essential
to the punctual arrangement of house
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affairs; and to convince myself of the propriety
of buying this particular clock, this bargain, I
reasoned as people do when they would persuade
themselves to that, which in their secret souls
they know is not quite right. `I have bought
nothing ornamental; surely we have a right to
one indulgence of this sort, — I may never meet
with such a bargain again, — it will just suit
Anne's taste.' This last thought turned the scale,
and I was on the point of concluding the purchase
when the master of the shop said, `If you
really want the clock for a time-piece merely,
here is an article of excellent mechanism, which
costs only five dollars.' I shut my eyes against
the pretty Geneva clock, bought the five dollar
article, hung it up in the kitchen, and with the
money saved I purchased that row of books. Instead
of twenty-five dollars' worth of glass and
gilding, we have some of the best productions of
the best minds. Instead of a poor gratification
of our vanity, or at best of our eyes, we have a
productive capital, from which we may derive exhaustless
pleasure, which hundreds may share,
and which those who come after us may enjoy.
O, who can estimate the value of a book!”
“Books are your Penates, William.”
“If so, Anne, I have greatly the advantage of
the ancients. Their household gods were dumb
idols, — mine have living and immortal souls.”
Mr. Barclay was a printer and might magnify
his art; but what honor is not due to that art,
which makes the spirits of the departed our familiar
companions and instructors, — which
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realizes the doctrine of metempsychosis, and transfuses
the souls of the departed into the living.
“Anne, you do not tell me whether you are
satisfied with my selection.”
“I see but one deficiency.”
“O, a Bible! You do not think I have omitted
that. No, that I consider as essential to a
home as the foundation-stone to an edifice. But
the family Bible is for daily use, and has its
proper station in the parlour. Neither have I
omitted the other item on your father's list; the
cookery book is on a shelf in the kitchen, with a
few other instructive and entertaining volumes for
Martha's use. I believe that whatever tends to
improve the minds and hearts of domestics will, to
say the worst of it, not injure their service; and
that every wise provision for their happiness multiplies
the chances of their attachment and fidelity.
We are novices, Anne, and may be wrong;
but at any rate we will try it.”
Mrs. Barclay was a loving and, with good reason,
a trustful wife, and ready to cooperate with
her husband in all his benevolent purposes.
They looked at the neat spare room, which, according
to the fashion of their fathers, they had
consecrated to hospitality; and after pleasing
themselves with the expectation, that this and that
relative or friend would occasionally occupy it,
they returned to the parlour, and naturally fell to
the retrospect of the long and checkered track by
which Providence had led them to this happy beginning
of their married life. Perhaps this review
was for the hundredth time; but it mattered
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not. Such subjects never lose their interest for
the parties concerned. To others there was
nothing striking in the history of their quiet lives;
but circumstances, to the individuals they affect,
take the hue of their feelings; and glowing hopes
and deep emotions produce an effect on ordinary
events resembling the alternations of shadows and
sunbeams on a familiar landscape.
Mrs. Barclay was one of the ten children of a
rich farmer; but there is nothing appalling to the
most modest aspirant in the riches of a New England
farmer, and the little, sweet-tempered, bright
Anne Hyde was very early (so early that it
seemed to him as a morning dream) the tenant
and joint proprietor of all William Barclay's castles
in the air. And he seemed to her, in the memory
of her childhood, to run, like a golden thread,
through all its web. She fondly recalled the time
when, one bitter cold day, he left a skating party
to drag her home on his sled; and that unlucky
day when she fell in climbing over the fence, tore
her frock, and spilled her strawberries, and he
re-filled her basket from his, and took her home to
his gentle mother to mend the rent; thus saving
her from disgrace with her own mother, whose
temper, poor woman, was a little the worse for
the wear and tear of ten children. And well
she remembered the time when, in choosing sides
for spelling, he chose her before her pretty competitor,
Fanny Smith, who was certainly the best
speller; and their standing together at poor Lucy
Grey's funeral, and crying so bitterly; and the
next day their tying up a wreath of
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apple-blossoms and laying it on her grave; and their
first singing-school; and though at meeting he sat
with the bass and she with the treble, she never
heard any voice but his. All she could not remember
was the time when she did not love him.
But it mattered not when or where the starting
point was, in the snows of winter or the pleasant
summer field, — in the school or church-yard, —
when the heart was merry or sad; certain it was,
their affection had grown with their growth, and
the stream that was now to flow in one deep, inseparable
current, was as pure and fresh as when
it first gushed forth from its separate founts.
The Barclays closed their first evening at home
by reading together in that holy book whose
truths and precepts were to inform and govern
their lives. They then knelt at the domestic
altar, while William Barclay, in a tone of cheerful,
manly devotion, dedicated his home to Him
“who setteth the solitary in families,” and from
that day it was hallowed by domestic worship.
Few persons, probably, have thought so much as
William Barclay of the economy of domestic happiness.
He had lived in various families, and
had seen much waste and neglect of the means
of virtue and happiness which Providence supplies
through the social relations. He had made
a chart for his future conduct, by which he hoped
to escape at least some of the shoals and quicksands
on which others make shipwreck. He believed
that a household, governed in obedience to
the Christian social law, would present as perfect
an image of heaven, as the infirmity of human
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nature, and the imperfections in the constitution of
human affairs, would admit. That he purposed
well, is certain; how far he succeeded, will be
imperfectly disclosed in the following pages.
eaf343.n1[1] The father-in-law's allowance exceeded that which
Byron allows to the intellectual wants of women, by the
two histories and the dictionary.
Chapter II. A GLIMPSE AT FAMILY GOVERNMENT.
Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resigned.
Johnson.
The skilful cultivator discerns in the germination
of the bud the perfection, or the disease, that
a superficial observer would first perceive in the
ripening or the blighted fruit. And the moral
observer, if equally skilled, might predict the
manhood from the promise of the youth. Few
are so skilled, and we seldom turn over ten years
of life without surprise at the developement of
qualities we had not perceived. The happy accidents, —
they could not be called virtues, but
rather the result of circumstances,—have vanished
like the dews of morning. The good-natured,
light-hearted, generous youth, as his cares increased
and his health abated, has become petulant,
gloomy, and selfish; the gay, agreeable
girl, moping and censorious. There were many
who wondered, that persons who seemed nothing
extraordinary in their youth, should turn out as
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the Barclays had; and they wondered too, how
in the world it was that every thing went right
with the Barclays; and then the puzzle was
solved in the common way, — “It was their luck.”
They did not see that the Barclays had begun
right, that they had proposed to themselves rational
objects, and had pursued them with all the
power of conscience and of an unslacking energy.
That happy, if not happiest portion of married
life, when the thousand clustering joys of parents
are first felt, when toil is hope without weariness,
passed brightly away with them. Twelve years
had thus passed; their cares were multiplied,
and their enjoyments, a hundred fold. Mr. Barclay's
accumulating responsibilities sometimes
weighed heavily upon him. He was, like most
persons of great sensibility, of an apprehensive
temper. The little ailments of his children were
apt to disturb his serenity, and, for the time being,
it was destroyed by the moral diseases that
break out in the healthiest subjects. His wife
was of a happier temperament. Her equal, sunny
temper soon rectified the disturbed balance of
his. She knew that the constitution of weak and
susceptible childhood was liable to moral and
physical maladies, and that, if well got through, it
became the more robust and resisting for having
suffered them. Her husband knew this too, and
was consoled by it, — after the danger was past.
Our friends were now in a convenient house,
adapted to their very much improved fortune and
increased family. The family were assembled in a
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back parlour. Mrs. Barclay was at some domestic
employment, to facilitate which Martha had just
brought in a tub of scalding water. Charles, the
eldest boy, with a patience most unboyish, was
holding a skein of yarn for Grandmama to wind;
Alice, the eldest girl, was arranging the dinner-table
in the adjoining room; Mary, the second,
was amusing the baby at the window; Willie was
saying his letters to Aunt Betsey; — all were busy,
but the busiest was little Haddy, a sweet child of
four years, who was sitting in the middle of the
room on a low chair, and who, unobserved by
the rest, and herself unconscious of wrong, was
doing deadly mischief. She had taken a new,
unfinished, and very precious kite belonging to
her brother Wallace, cut a hole in the centre,
thrust into it the head of her pet Maltese kitten,
and was holding it by its fore paws and making
it dance on her lap; the little animal looking as
demure and as formal as one of Queen Elizabeth's
maids of honor in her ruff. At this critical
juncture Wallace entered in search of his
kite. One word of prefatory palliation for Wallace.
The kite was the finest he had ever possessed;
it had been given him by a friend, and
that friend was waiting at the door, to string and
fly it for him. At once the ruin of the kite, and
the indignity to which it was subjected, flashed
on him, and perhaps little Haddy's very satisfied
air exasperated him. In a breath he seized the
kitten, and dashed it into the tub of scalding water.
His father had come in to dinner, and
paused at the open door of the next room.
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Haddy shrieked, — the children all screamed, —
Charles dropped Grandmama's yarn, and, at the
risk of his own hand, rescued the kitten; but
seeing its agony, with most characteristic consideration,
he gently dropped it in again, and thus
put the speediest termination to its sufferings.
The children were all sobbing. Wallace stood
pale and trembling. His eye turned to his father,
then to his mother, then was riveted on the floor.
The children saw the frown on their father's face,
more dreaded by them than ever was flogging, or
dark closet with all its hobgoblins.
“I guess you did not mean to, did you, Wally?”
said little Haddy, whose tender heart was
so touched by the utter misery depicted on her
brother's face, that her pity for him overcame her
sense of her own and pussy's wrongs. Wallace
sighed deeply, but spoke no word of apology or
justification. The children looked at Wallace,
at their father, and their mother, and still the
portentous silence was unbroken. The dinner-bell
rung. “Go to your own room, Wallace,”
said his father. “You have forfeited your right
to a place among us. Creatures who are the
slaves of their passions, are, like beasts of prey,
fit only for solitude.”
“How long must Wallace stay up stairs?”
asked Haddy, affectionately holding back her
brother who was hastening away.
“Till he feels assured,” replied Mr. Barclay,
fixing his eye sternly on Wallace, “that he can
control his hasty temper; at least so far as not to
be guilty of violence towards such a dear good
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little girl as you are, and murderous cruelty to an
innocent animal; — till, sir, you can give me some
proof that you dread the sin and danger of yielding
to your passions so much that you can govern
them. The boy is hopeless,” he added in a low
voice to his wife, as Wallace left the room.
“My dear husband! hopeless at ten years old,
and with such a good, affectionate heart as his?
We must have patience.”
A happy combination for children is there in
an uncompromising father and an all-hoping
mother. The family sat down to table. The
parents were silent, serious, unhappy. The children
caught the infection, and scarcely a word
was said above a whisper. There was a favorite
dish on the table, followed by a nice pudding.
They were eaten, not enjoyed. The children realized
that it was not the good things they had to
eat, but the kind looks, the innocent laugh, and
cheerful voice, that made the pleasure of the social
meal.
“My dear children,” said their father, as he
took his hat to leave them, “we have lost all our
comfort to day, have not we?”
“Yes, sir, — yes, sir,” they answered in a
breath.
“Then learn one lesson from your poor
brother. Learn to dread doing wrong. If you
commit sin, you must suffer, and all that love you
must suffer with you; for every sin is a violation
of the laws of your heavenly Father, and he will
not suffer it to go unpunished.”
If Mr. and Mrs. Barclay had affected their
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concern, to overawe and impose on their children,
they would not have been long deceived; for
children, being themselves sincere, are clearsighted.
But they knew that the sadness was real;
they felt that it was in accordance with their parents'
characters and general conduct. They
never saw them ruffled by trifles. Many a glass
had been broken, many a greasy knife dropped,
many a disappointment and inconvenience incurred,
without calling forth more than a gentle
rebuke. These were not the things that moved
them, or disturbed the domestic tranquillity; but
the ill temper, selfishness, unkindness, or any
moral fault of the children, was received as an
affliction.
The days passed on. Wallace went to school
as usual, and returned to his solitude, without
speaking or being spoken to. His meals were
sent to his room, and whatever the family ate, he
ate. For the Barclays took care not to make rewards
and punishments out of eating and drinking,
and thus associate the duties and pleasures
of a moral being with a mere animal gratification.
“But ah!” he thought, as he walked up and down
his apartment, while eating his pie or pudding,
“how different it tastes from what it does at table!”
and though he did not put it precisely in
that form, he felt what it was that “sanctified the
food.” The children began to venture to say to
their father, whose justice they dared not question,
“How long Wally has stayed up stairs!”
and Charles, each day, eagerly told how well
Wallace behaved at school. His grandmother
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could not resist her desire to comfort him; she
would look into his room to see “if he were well,”
“if he were warm enough,” or “if he did not want
something.” The little fellow's moistening eye
and tremulous voice evinced his sensibility to her
kindness, but he resolutely abstained from asking
any mitigation of his punishment. He overheard
his Aunt Betsey (Mrs. Barclay's maiden sister)
say, “It is a sin, and ridiculous besides, to keep
Wallace mewed up so, just for a little flash of
temper. I am sure he had enough to provoke a
saint.”
“We do not keep him mewed up, Betsey,” replied
Mrs. Barclay, “nor does he continue mewed
up, for a single flash of temper; but because, with
all his good resolutions, his passionate temper is
constantly getting the better of him. There is
no easy cure for such a fault. If Wallace had
the seeds of a consumption, you would think it
the extreme of folly not to submit to a few weeks'
confinement, if it afforded a means of ridding him
of them; and how much worse than a consumption
is a moral disease!”
“Well,” answered the sister, “you must do as
you like, but I am sure we never had any such
fuss at home; — we grew up, and there was an
end on't.”
“But may be,” thought Wallace, “if there had
been a little more fuss when you were younger, it
would have been pleasanter living with you now,
Aunt Betsey.”
Poor Aunt Betsey, with many virtues, had a temper
that made her a nuisance wherever she was.
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The Barclays alone got on tolerably with her.
There was a disinfecting principle in the moral
atmosphere of their house.
Two weeks had passed when Mr. Barclay
heard Wallace's door open, and heard him say,
“Can I speak with you one minute before dinner,
sir.”
“Certainly, my son.” His father entered and
closed the door.
“Father,” said Wallace, with a tremulous voice
but an open, cheerful face, “I feel as if I had a
right now to ask you to forgive me, and take me
back into the family.”
Mr. Barclay felt so too, and kissing him, he
said, “I have only been waiting for you, Wallace;
and, from the time you have taken to consider
your besetting sin, I trust you have gained
strength to resist it.”
“It is not consideration only, sir, that I depend
on; for you told me I must wait till I could give
you proof; so I had to wait till something happened
to try me. I could not possibly tell else,
for I always do resolve, when I get over my passion,
that I never will get angry again. Luckily
for me, — for I began to be horribly tired of staying
alone, — Tom Allen snatched off my new
cap and threw it in the gutter. I had a book in
my hand, and I raised it to send at him; but I
thought just in time, and I was so glad I had
governed my passion, that I did not care about my
cap, or Tom, or any thing else. `But one swallow
doesn't make a summer,' as Aunt Betsey
says; so I waited till I should get angry again. It
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seemed as if I never should; there were provoking
things happened, but somehow or other they
did not provoke me, — why do you smile,
father?”
“I smile with pleasure, my dear boy, to find
that one fortnight's resolute watchfulness has enabled
you so to curb your temper that you are not
easily provoked.”
“But stay, father, you have not yet heard all;
yesterday, just as I was putting up my Arithmetic,
which I had written almost to the end without a
single blot, Tom Allen came along and gave my
inkstand a jostle, and over it went on my open
book; I thought he did it purposely, — I think so
still, but I don't feel so sure. I did not reflect
then, — I doubled my fist to strike him.”
“O, Wallace!”
“But I did not, father, I did not, — I thought
just in time. There was a horrid choking feeling
in my throat, and angry words seemed crowding
out; but I did not even say, `Blame you.' I
had to bite my lips, though, so that the blood ran.”
“God bless you, my son.”
“And the best of it all was, father, that Tom
Allen, who never before seemed to care how
much harm he did you, or how much he hurt your
feelings, was really sorry; and this morning he
brought me a new blank book nicely ruled, and
offered to help me copy my sums into it; so I
hope I did him some good as well as myself, by
governing my temper.”
“There is no telling, Wallace, how much good
may be done by a single right action, nor how
much harm by a single wrong one.”
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“I know it, sir; I have been thinking a great
deal since I have been up stairs, and I do wonder
why God did not make Adam and Eve so that
they could not do wrong.”
“This subject has puzzled older and wiser
heads than yours, my son, and puzzled them
more than I think it should. If we had been
created incapable of sin, there could have been no
virtue. Did you not feel happier yesterday after
your trial, than if it had not happened?”
“O yes, father; and the strangest of all was,
that after the first flash, I had not any bad feelings
towards Tom.”
“Then you can see, in your own case, good
resulting from being free to do good or evil. You
certainly were the better for your victory, and,
you say, happier. It is far better to be virtuous
than sinless, — I mean, incapable of sin. If you
subdue your temper, the exercise of the power to
do this will give you a pleasure that you could not
have had without it.”
“But if I fail, father?” Wallace looked in
his father's face with an expression which showed
he felt that he had more than a kingdom to gain
or lose.
“You cannot fail, my dear son, while you continue
to feel the worth of the object for which you
are striving; while you feel that the eye of God
is upon you; and that, not only your own happiness,
but the happiness of your father, and mother,
and brothers, and sisters, — of our home, depends
on your success.”
“But, father, did you ever know any body that
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had such a passionate temper, that learned to
govern it always?”
“Yes, my child, but not all at once. You are
placed in the happiest circumstances to obtain
this rule over your own spirit. The Americans are
said to be distinguished for their good temper. I
believe this is true, not from any natural superiority
in them to French, English, or Irish, but because
they are brought up among their equals, and
compelled from childhood to govern their tempers;
one cannot encroach on the rights of another.”
“But it is not so with all Americans, father.”
“No; those in the Southern States unfortunately
have not these restraints, — this equal pressure
on all sides, and they are esteemed more
irascible and passionate than the people of the
North. This is one of the thousand misfortunes
that result from slavery. But we must always remember,
my son, that the virtue or vice produced
by circumstances is not to be counted to the individual.
It is the noble struggle and resistance
against them, that makes virtue. It was this that
constituted the merit of Washington's subjugation
of his temper.”
“Was he, — was General Washington passionate,
father?”
“Yes; quite as irascible and passionate naturally,
as you are; and yet you know it was his
equanimity, his calmness, in the most irritating
circumstances, that made him so superior to other
men.”
“Was he pious, sir?”
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“He had always a strong sense of his responsibility
and duty to his Creator.”
“And I guess too, he had good parents, and a
pleasant home, and he hated to make them all
unhappy.”
“I guess he had, Wallace,” replied his father,
smiling; “but I can give you another example
for your encouragement. Which among the
Apostles appears to you to have been the gentlest,—
what we should call the sweetest tempered?”
“O, St. John, sir.”
“And yet he appears at one time to have been
very impetuous, — what you and I call hasty tempered.
He was for calling down fire on the offenders'
heads. So you see that even a grown-up
person, if he has the love of Christ in him,
and lays his precepts to heart, so that he will
really strive to be perfect as his Father in heaven
is perfect, may, at any age, subdue his temper;
though the work is far easier if he begins when a
child, as you have, in earnest, my dear boy. You
have manifested a virtuous resolution; and you
not only have my forgiveness, and my entire sympathy,
but I trust you have the approbation of
your heavenly Father. Come, come along to your
mother; take her happy kiss, and then to dinner.
We have not had one right pleasant dinner
since you have been up stairs.”
“Stop one moment, father.” Wallace lowered
his voice as he modestly added, “I don't think I
should have got through it alone, but every day I
have prayed to God to help me.”
“You have not been alone, my dear son,”
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replied his father, much moved, “nor will you ever
be left alone in your efforts to obey God; for, you
remember, Jesus has said, `If a man keep my
words, my Father will love him, and we will come
unto him and make our abode with him.' God,
my son, is present in every dictate of your conscience,
in every pure affection and holy emotion
of your soul.”
A farmer who has seen a beautiful crop bend
under the storm, and after it rise stronger and more
promising than ever, can have some feeble conception
of Mr. Barclay's satisfaction, while, leaving
Wallace with their mother, he assembled the
children in the dining-room, and recounted to
them as much as he deemed proper of his conversation
with their brother.
The dinner-bell sounded, and Wallace was
heard running down stairs before his mother, his
heels as light as his heart. The children, jumping
up behind and before him, shouted out his
welcome. Grandmama wiped her eyes, and
cleared her voice to say, “Dear me, Wally, how
glad we all are to see you!” Even Aunt Betsey
looked smiling, and satisfied, and unprovokable
for an hour to come.
Others may think with Aunt Betsey, that Wallace's
punishment was out of proportion to his
offence; but it must be remembered, that it was
not the penalty for a single offence, but for a
habit of irascibility that could not be cured without
serious and repeated efforts. Mr. Barclay held
whipping, and all such summary modes of punishment,
on a par with such nostrums in medicine
-- 027 -- p343-039
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as peppermint and lavender, which suspend the
manifestation of the disease, without conducing
to its cure. He believed the only effectual and
lasting government, — the only one that touches
the springs of action, and in all circumstances
controls them, is self-government. It was this he
labored to teach his children. The process was
slow but sure. It required judgment, and gentleness,
and, above all, patience on the part of the
parents; but every inch of ground gained was
kept. The children might not appear so orderly
as they whose parents are like drill-sergeants, and
who, while their eyes are on the fugel-man, appear
like little prodigies; but, deprived of external
aid or restraint, the self-regulating machine
shows its superiority.
Chapter III. A FAMILY DINNER.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Shakspeare.
As we have entered Mr. Barclay's dining-room,
we are tempted to linger there, and permit our
readers to observe the details of the dinner.
The right ministration of the table is an important
item in home education. Mr. Barclay had a
just horror of hurrying through meals. He
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regarded them as something more than means of
sustaining physical wants, — as opportunities of
improvement and social happiness. Are they not
so? and is there any danger of affixing an undue
importance to that, which may teach, at the rate of
three lessons a day, punctuality, order, neatness,
temperance, self-denial, kindness, generosity, and
hospitality? The conventional manners of highbred
people are meant to express these virtues;
but alas! with them the sign often exists without
the thing signified. In middling life, the form
cannot exist without the spirit. The working
men and working women of our country need
not remain for twelve hours chained to the oar
like galley-slaves; and if they will give up a little
money for what the wealth of “Rothschilds and the
Barings” cannot purchase, time, and devote that
time to such a ministration of their meals, as shall
secure “Earth's best angel, health,” as a guest at
the family board, — as shall develope the mind
by conversation, and cultivate refined manners,—
they will find the amount of good resulting to
the home circle incalculable.
Alice and Mary Barclay took their “weeks
about,” as they called it, to arrange and wait on
the table. The table was set with scrupulous
neatness. “Mother sees every thing,” was their
maxim; and sure she was to see it, if the salt was
not freshly stamped, the castors in order, and
every napkin, glass, spoon, knife, and dish put
on, as the girls said, by plummet and line.
These are trifles in detail, but their effect on the
comfort and habits of a large family of children
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can scarcely be magnified. Few tables in the
land were more frugal than the Barclays', and few
better served. They did not, however, sacrifice
the greater to the less, and there were occasions
when their customary forms gave place to higher
matters.
“Here is our dinner,” said Mr. Barclay, turning
his eye that had been riveted on the happy,
noisy children, to the table where Martha (still
the only domestic) was placing the last dish.
“The dinner here, and I have not changed
my cap!” said Mrs. Barclay.
“And I have not brushed my hair!” — “Nor
I,” — “Nor I,” exclaimed, in a breath, half a
dozen treble voices.
“It 's all my fault, — forgetting to ring the
warning bell,” said Martha, turning her eye from
Wallace to his mother, in explanation of her
lapse of memory.
“Never mind, Martha. Better to forget rules
for once, than forget your part in the family joy.”
“That 's good, mother! let us break all rules
to-day, — let Wally sit by me.”
“O no! mother; by me! by me!” exclaimed
other voices.
“No. Take your usual place, Wallace, by
Haddy.”
“O, where is dear little Haddy?” asked Wallace,
and was answered by her bouncing into the
room. She had been left up stairs to finish a
task. She took her seat beside Wallace. There
was some whispering between them, and it was
plain by her glad eye and her putting her chubby
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arm around her brother and hugging him close
to her, that pussy and the kite were drowned in
Lethe.
“I guess, Miss Haddy,” said Aunt Betsey,
“you got some help about your task.”
“Aunt Betsey!” replied the little girl, with a
quivering lip, “indeed I did not, — that would be
doing a lie.” How forcibly the “oracles of nature”
come from the unperverted mind of a child!
She who made this reply was but four years old.
The blessing was asked, a usage observed at
Mr. Barclay's table. Whatever objection may be
urged against it from its abuse, he considered the
example of the Saviour a definitive precedent for
him. His distinct and touching manner of acknowledging
the bounties of Providence fixed the
attention. It was feeling, not form.
“You have forgotten the napkins to-day,
Alice,” said her mother.
Alice smiled, and replied in a low voice, “It
was Wallace's fault; just as I was going for
them I heard him call father, and I forgot them.”
It was Alice's turn to serve the table, — a task
always assigned to one, in order to avoid the confusion
of the alternate jumping up and down of
half a dozen little bodies, the dropping of knives
and forks, the oversetting of glasses, and the din
and clatter of a disorderly table.
“There is a nice crust for you, Wallace,” said
Alice, as she passed round the bread; “you love
crust.”
“Aunt Betsey,” called out little Haddy, who
unluckily observed her aunt trespassing against
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[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]
one of the ordinances of the table, “it is not
proper not to use the butter-knife!”
“Hush, Haddy,” breathed her brother, but
not in time. The antagonist principle was strong
in Aunt Betsey's mind. She cherished with equal
fervor dislikes and partialities; and poor little
Haddy was no favorite.
“I wonder which is worst,” she replied, “to
use my own knife as I was brought up to, or for
a little saucebox like you to set me right.”
Willie, Aunt Betsey's pet, dropped his spoon,
put up his lips, and kissed the angry spot away.
“I guess, Alice,” said Mary, “you mean to
brush Wally's place clean enough.” Alice
smiled. She had unconsciously bestowed double
pains in brushing away her brother's crumbs.
How naturally affection makes the most ordinary
services its medium.
“O, Mary!” said Mrs. Barclay, “I forgot
when I gave you the pudding, that you complained
of a headache this morning.”
“It is gone now, mother.”
“It may come back, my dear.”
Mary put down her spoon, and gently pushed
away her plate, saying, without the slightest shade
of dissatisfaction, “It looks very good.”
Alice placed a dish of strawberries on the
table, — the first of the season, — saying as she
did so, “Rather a scant pattern, mother.”
“Yes, barely a taste for each.”
“Give mine to Wally, then,” said Mary.
“And mine too, — and mine too,” echoed and
reëchoed from both sides the table.
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“And mine too!” repeated little Willie, the
urchin next his mother, who had been contentedly
eating his potato without asking for, or even
looking at, the more inviting food on the table.
The children laughed at his parrotry, and Alice,
kissing his head as she passed, said, “Thank
you for nothing, Willie.”
“Why for nothing? why not thank him as
well as the rest?” asked Aunt Betsey.
“Because I suppose mother won't give him
any strawberries.”
“Why, Anne, you are not going to be so ridiculous
as not to give him strawberries! You may
as well starve him to death at once and done with
it. There is nothing in the world so wholesome
as strawberries.”
“No fruit is wholesome for him, just now,”
said Mrs. Barclay; and she continued to dispense
the strawberries, without manifesting the slightest
irritation at her sister's interference. She had
often explained to her the reason of the very strict
regimen of her younger children; but Aunt Betsey
was one of those who forget the reason, and feel
the fact.
As the Barclays had no nursery maid, they
were obliged to bring their children to the table,
when, with ordinary habits, they would have been
nuisances. To prevent this, as well as early to
implant self-denial, they were not tantalized with
“a very little of this,” and “just a taste of that.”
They saw delicacies come on and go off without
snatching, reaching, asking for them, or even
craving them. Many a time has a guest, on
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[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]
seeing the youngling of the flock eating his potatoes
or dry bread, remonstrated like Aunt Betsey on
the superfluous hardship. But the Barclays knew
it was not so. The monster appetite was thus
early tamed. Its pleasures were felt to be inferior
pleasures, — to be enjoyed socially and gratefully,
but forbearingly. The children were spared
the visitations that proceed from overloaded stomachs.
They rarely had occasion for a physician.
“How lucky Mrs. Barclay is with her children,”
would her wondering neighbours exclaim; “they
never have any sudden attacks, never any fevers,
and when half the children in the city are dying
with measles and hooping cough, these horrible
diseases pass lightly over them; what can it
be?”
This is no fiction, but truth (though feebly
set down) from life.
We left Mrs. Barclay distributing the strawberries.
The front door opened; “There comes
Harry Norton, just in time for some strawberries,”
exclaimed Alice. “O dear! no, it's Mr.
Anthon; it wont be quite so pleasant to give
them up to him.”
Charles rose to vacate his seat, saying, “Give
him my share, mother.”
“O no, mine,” said Alice.
“He shall have both. Thank you, my children;
one would be hardly enough to offer him.”
Charles and Alice retired to a window, while
Mr. Anthon seated himself in the vacated chair,
and fell to devouring the berries. “Bless my
heart,” he exclaimed after he had finished them,
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“I believe you have given me your place, children,
and your strawberries too; and you look
just as contented as if you had eaten them yourselves.
Its lucky it was not my young ones, —
the house would not have held them. There's
a great difference in children; yours, Barclay,
seem gentlemen and ladies, ready made to your
hand.” Mr. Barclay well knew they were not
“ready made,” but he abstained from disturbing
the self-complacent belief that all differences were
made by nature. “Speaking of gentlemen and
ladies,” resumed Mr. Anthon, “I called to consult
you about the propriety of people of our condition
sending their children to a dancing-school.
Wife is for their going, but women folks, — your
pardon, ma'am,” (to Mrs. Barclay,) “are always
for outside show; so I told her I would not say
yes nor no, till I had heard the pros and cons
from you. The first thing to be settled is,
whether dancing is desirable.”
“Do you mean whether we desire it, Mr. Anthon?
I guess we do!”
“I dare say, miss, but that is nothing to the
purpose.”
“I beg your pardon, my friend, that is very
much to the purpose. If the children relish
dancing, it is an argument in its favor. Youth
must have amusement. Active amusements are
best. If we lived in the country, where our children
could have free exercise in the open air,
dancing would be unimportant; but while they
are condemned to the unnatural life of a city, we
should supply them with every artificial means of
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[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]
developing and improving their persons. I hope
never to see my girls dance to display fine dancing, —
this would mortify me; nor would I have
them waste their time and health in dancing in
crowded rooms, at unseasonable hours; but when
you and I, Anthon, and a half a dozen friends are
talking over news and politics, and what not, it is
enlivening to our children to dance away for an
hour or two after the piano or the flute, or whatever
instrument they may happen to have.”
“Good lack! do you mean your children shall
learn music, too?”
“If they fancy it. Alice already plays tolerably,
and Charles plays a very good accompaniment
on the flute. I wish them to learn whatever
will increase the attractions of their home, and
tend to raise them above coarse pleasures.”
“O, this is all very well for rich people.”
“But far more important for us, Anthon.
Dancing, certainly; as I think, there is nothing
that conduces more to ease and grace, than learning
to dance, — learning to make legs, as Locke
says.”
“What a funny expression!” exclaimed Mary,
who, as well as the rest, was an attentive listener
to the conversation.
“Yes, my dear, odd enough; but Mr. Locke
probably meant learning to use them gracefully.
The legs and arms of boys who are never taught
to dance, are apt to be in their own and every
one's else way. I do not wish my boys to suffer
as I have from blundering into a room, and feeling
when I had to bow to half a dozen gentlemen
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[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
and ladies, as if I had to run a muck. I said
I consider dancing far more important to our
children than to what are called fashionable people,
and for the reason that they have other opportunities
of cultivating graceful and easy manners.”
“They have more occasion for them.”
“I am not sure of that. We do not yet realize
that we live in a new state of things, and
that the equality, which is the basis of our institutions,
should also, as far as possible, be the basis
of education. There is no sort of inferiority
about which young people suffer more than that
of manners. There are other things certainly
far more important, but this is for ever before their
eyes, pressing on their observation, — is seen and
felt at every turn. The morals of manners we
try to teach our children at home; arbitrary rules
and external graces they must take the usual
means of acquiring.”
“Well, you certainly are odd, Barclay.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I suppose I may speak out, for neither you
nor your wife are touchy.”
“Yes, pray speak out, my friend; my wife and
I both approve the speaking-out principle.”
Mr. Anthon fidgeted on his chair. He felt
a good-natured reluctance to criticizing his friend,
and perhaps a secret consciousness that it was
bold in him to do so. After a little hesitation
he sheltered himself under that broad, common,
and cowardly shield, “they say,” and proceeded;
“They say, Barclay, that you are very
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[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]
inconsistent; that your family is the plainest
dressed family, for people of your property, that
enter the church doors; that your furniture, —
now I don't mean to be impertinent; I know that
every thing is as neat and as comfortable here as
can be; — but they say you might afford to have
things a little smarter, — more like other folks,
who don't think of sending their children to expensive
schools, and to this, and that, and the
other; three of them, I heard a person say, attended
Griscom's course of lectures on natural
philosophy, with you and your wife. That of itself
runs up to a sum that would buy some pretty
articles.”
“It does so, Anthon, and therefore I cannot
buy `pretty articles.' I am a prosperous man in
my business, but my income is limited, and I
must select those objects of expenditure that appear
to me wisest. Now I had rather Alice
should learn to draw, than that she should wear
the prettiest ear-rings in New York, or any hardware
of that description. I would rather my boys
should learn from Professor Griscom something
of the nature and riches of the world they live
in, than to have a mirror the whole length of my
mantel-piece. No, Anthon, I can spare money elsewhere,
but, till I am compelled, I 'll not spare it
in the education of my children.”
“Well, I never thought you was such an ambitious
man.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why, that you are calculating to make all
your children gentlemen and ladies.”
-- 038 --
[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]
“May I ask you what you mean by my making
them gentlemen and ladies?”
“It is plain enough what I mean, — lawyers,
doctors, and ministers, and wives for such gentle-folks.”
“I shall be governed by circumstances; I do
not intend nor wish, Anthon, to crowd my boys
into the learned professions. If any among them
have a particular talent or taste for them, they
may follow them. They must decide for themselves
in a matter more important to them than to
any one else. But my boys know that I should
be mortified if they selected these professions,
from the vulgar notion that they were more genteel, —
a vulgar word that, that ought to be banished
from an American's vocabulary, — more
genteel than agriculture and the mechanic arts.
I have labored to convince my boys, that there is
nothing vulgar in the mechanic professions, — no
particular reason for envying the lawyer or the
doctor. They, as much as the farmer and the
mechanic, are working men. And I should like
to know what there is particularly elevating in
sitting over a table and writing prescribed forms,
or in inquiring into the particulars of diseases,
and doling out physic for them. It is certainly a
false notion in a democratic republic, that a lawyer
has any higher claim to respectability, — gentility,
if you please, — than a tanner, a goldsmith,
a printer, or a builder. It is the fault of the mechanic,
if he takes a place not assigned to him by
the government and institutions of his country.
He is of the lower orders, only when he is
-- 039 --
[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
selfdegraded by the ignorance and coarse manners,
which are associated with manual labor in countries
where society is divided into castes, and have
therefore come to be considered inseparable from
it. Rely upon it, it is not so. The old barriers are
down. The time has come when `being mechanical'
we may appear on `laboring days' as
well as holidays, without the `sign of our profession.
' Talent and worth are the only eternal
grounds of distinction. To these the Almighty
has affixed his everlasting patent of nobility, and
these it is which make the bright, `the immortal
names,' to which our children may aspire,
as well as others. It will be our own fault, Anthon,
if, in our land, society as well as government
is not organized upon a new foundation. But we
must secure, by our own efforts, the elevations that
are now accessible to all. There is nothing that
tends more to the separation into classes than difference
of manners. This is a badge that all can see.
I cannot blame a gentleman for not asking a clown
to his table, who will spit over his carpet, and
mortify himself and annoy every body else with
his awkwardness.”
Mr. Anthon's head was rather oppressed by the
matter for reflection that Barclay had put into it.
After a thoughtful pause he said, “Well, seeing
is believing.”
“Yes, and I fear it will be some time yet before
this new form of society which I anticipate,
will be seen; before men will seek to consort
with men because they are intelligent, accomplished,
and examplary, and not because they live
-- 040 --
[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
in fine houses, associate with genteel people, get
masses of fashionable persons together to pass
evenings in inanity, and exhaust their resources
in extravagant and poisonous eating and drinking.
Let me tell you, Anthon, there is too much
struggling after all this; too much envy; too
much imitation of it among those who are called,
and still call themselves, the middling classes, —
my poor old friend Norton, for instance. But I
see tokens of better times.”
“Of your millennium, I suppose; when farmers
and mechanics are to range with the highest
in the land?”
“Yes, and I can point you to some heralds of
this millennium. There is in this city —,
whom we both know, strictly a working man.
Did he not make a speech at a political meeting
the other night, that would have done honor to
any professional man in the state, not only full of
good common sense, but expressed in choice language,
and with enough of historical allusion to
show that he was a well-read man? His manner
too was easy and unembarrassed; such as becomes
a man addressing his equals. I know a
young man in Greenbrook, my native place, also
a working man, a laborious and successful farmer,
whose general attainments and manners qualify
him for polished society; who has some acquaintance
with science, draws beautifully, and
writes graceful verses.”
“Do you mean that such a man as that in fact
works?”
“Yes, digs, plants, sows, and reaps; and is
-- 041 --
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
contented to do so. His home is one of the most
attractive and happy I have ever seen.”
Mr. Anthon shook his head. “There may be
two such men in the nation, but eagles do not fly
in flocks. Your doctrine is quite captivating to
you and me, who do not stand on the top rung of
the ladder, but it's quite contrary to the nature of
things. `One star differeth from another star in
glory,' and there are angels and archangels in
heaven.”
“Yes, undoubtedly there must be angels and
archangels. But what is it that constitutes their
distinction? Knowledge and goodness; — these
make degrees in heaven, and they must be the
graduating scale of a true democracy. I believe
that the Christian law (of course seconding the
law of nature) ordains equality, — democracy if
you please, — and therefore that its progress and
final stability are certain. The ladder is knocked
down, my friend, and we stand on nature's level.”
“That's what I call a pretty up and down
level. You can't even off every body. Now just
look at the difference between your children and
mine. Here are yours listening to our talk, and
taking pleasure in it. Bless your heart, man,
mine would have been out at the doors and windows
before this time.”
It would have been a delicate matter for Mr.
Barclay to have admitted this difference, even if
he had imputed it to the true cause, his habit of
always associating with his children, and of making
conversation, which he considered one of the
most effective means of education, attractive and
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
instructive to them. “We cannot,” he said,
“judge of the merits of a subject which we make
personal. I am sorry we have come to this point,
for I should like, right well, to make a convert of
you. I shall comfort myself, as other people do,
with the faith that my doctrine will prevail. It
certainly will, if we make the equality, instead of
merely claiming it.”
“Ah, there's the rub; how the deuce are we
to make it?”
“By the careful use of all the means we possess
to train these young creatures; by giving
them sound minds in sound bodies; by making
them feel the dignity of well-informed minds, pure
hearts, and refined manners. And for this we
need not college education and foreign masters.
Home is the best school, — the parent the best
teacher. It is the opinion of some wise people,
that the habits are fixed at twelve.”
“The Lord have mercy on my children, then,”
interrupted Mr. Anthon.
“It is not my opinion,” resumed Mr. Barclay;
“but I do think that what is done after that is hard
work, both for parents and children. However,
as our children are, for the most part, at home till
the age of twelve, we see how much we have in
our power, and how wisely Providence has confided
the most important period of life to the care
of the parent, by far the most interested teacher.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Anthon, who had too
much reason for feeling uncomfortably under
these remarks, “it can't be expected of a business
man to do much with what you call home
-- 043 --
[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
education. The wife must see to that. My wife
is a good soul, but she has not got Mrs. Barclay's
knack. Come, is it not time for you to go to
your office?”
“Yes, past my usual time, by a half hour. I
always allow myself an hour with my family at
dinner.”
“An hour! bless my heart! We get through
at our house in about ten minutes, — never exceed
fifteen. My father made it a rule to choose
the quickest eaters for his workmen. If they did
not bolt in ten minutes, he concluded they were
lazy or shiftless.”
“Your father's bolting system would not suit
me. I cannot judge for others, but I know that
I am more diligent and active in business for
having such an object ahead as a happy hour at
home, — (an hour I must say, in praise of my
good wife, never abridged by a want of punctuality
on her part;) and I return to my office with
more strength and spirits, for the little rest I give
myself after I have swallowed my food. This is
my experience, and it should be so according to
the best medical theories.”
“O dear!” said Mr. Anthon, with something
between a sigh and a groan, “I wish I had
thought of all these matters when I was a
younger man; but it's too late now.”
We would humbly recommend it to those for
whom it is not too late, to think of “these matters.”
-- 044 -- p343-056
Chapter IV. THE REVERSE OF THE PICTURE.
“For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I?”
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
We shift the scene to Mr. Anthon's dinner-table.
Enter Mr. Anthon, shouting to a little girl,
who was scampering through the entry; “Laury,
call the folks to dinner.”
Laura screamed at the top of her voice,
“Mother, father has come to dinner. John, —
Tom, — Anne, — Julia, — Dick, — where are
you all? Dinner is ready.”
“Sure to be away at dinner-time,” said the father,
“if they are under your feet all the rest of
the day.”
Tom and John, and they only, responded to
the muster-call, and both entering the dining-room
seized the same chair; “It's my chair,” cried
Tom.
“No, it an't,” says John; “I got it first.”
“Be done disputing, boys,” interposed the
father; “is not there more than one chair in the
room? Take another, Tom.”
“It an't half fair,” muttered Tom, obeying,
however.
“Laury,” said the mother, entering in the act
of smoothing her hair with a side comb, “you
an't surely going to sit down to dinner in your
new frock, without an apron.”
“I can't find my apron, mother.”
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
“Look in the entry.”
“I have looked there.”
“Look in the bed-room.”
“I have looked all over the bed-room.”
“Well then, look in the pantry; hunt till you
find it.”
By this time the fumes of dinner had reached
the olfactories of Anne and Julia, and they came
racing down stairs, and entered, slamming the
door after them.
“Leave open that door,” said the father;
“you always shut the doors in June, and leave
them open in January.”
“Mother, shan't John give me my place?”
asked Anne, too intent on her invaded rights to
listen to her father.
“It an't her place, mother; I sat here yesterday.”
“But I sat here the day before.”
“What consequence is it what place you have?
Crowd in your chair there, next to John. We
shall be through dinner, before you all get
seated. Why don't you open the door, as I told
you, Anne?”
“Julia came in last, sir.”
“I told you to open it.”
“I did not know you meant me more than
Julia.”
“If you don't hear, and mind too, next time,
you shall go without your dinner.”
This threat made little impression on Anne,
for she was occupied in forcing her chair in
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
between her brothers, who were seated askew, or
rather, as the French would say, en échelon. A
natural consequence ensued; John's glass of
cider was jostled out of his hand, and Tom's shin
was pretty roughly hit (if one might judge from
his outcries) by the leg of the chair. “All that
cider over my clean cloth!” exclaimed the unhappy
mother. “What are you crying for, Anne?”
“Tom struck me.”
“I don't care if I did, she 'most murdered
me.”
“Laury, just hand me a piece of bread, too,”
said John to his sister, who had risen, at her father's
request, to give him the bread.
“You may help yourself, Mr. John.”
“Mother, can't Laury hand me the bread?”
“How can you be so disobliging, Laury? hand
him the bread.”
Laura, without budging an inch, stretched
out her arm to its utmost length; John snatched
at the bread-tray, and between them it went to the
floor.
“O!” cried the mother, “you are the worst
acting children I ever saw. Sit down in your
places, both of you. Julia, do you get up, and
pick up the bread.”
While Julia obeyed, Tom screamed out, “Mother,
shan't Anne use the salt-spoon? She puts
her fingers in the salt-cellar.”
“Well, Tom put in his knife, mother, all
drizzling with gravy; see here!” and she pointed
to the salt-cellar, which afforded demonstration
of the truth of her charge.
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
Before this controversy could be settled, Dick
enters, his face daubed with ink from ear to ear.
The children shouted, his mother bade him go
and wash, and his father ordered him to sit down
as he was and eat his dinner, saying, “He would
be just as dirty afterwards, and he might wash
then, and kill two birds with one stone.” Dick
eagerly obeyed, for he saw a pudding in perspective,
and he gulped down his unchewed food, to
be in readiness for it, in his haste upsetting a mustard
pot on one side, and making a trail of gravy
from the gravy-boat to his plate on the other.
Two of the girls briskly cleared the table, piling
the plates together and dropping the knives
and forks all the way from parlour to kitchen;
while the other children impatiently awaited the
process, one thrumming on the table, another rocking
back on the hind legs of his chair; one
picking his teeth with a dropped fork, and another
moulding the crumbs of bread into balls,
and all in turn chidden by the much-enduring
mother. Finally appeared a huge blackberry
pudding, hailed by smacking lips, and set down
amid the still standing paraphernalia of the first
course, and the wreck of mustard, cider, &c. A
mammoth bit was scarcely passed to the father,
when Laura cried out, “Help me first to-day,
mother; 'cause Anne was helped first yesterday.”
“I don't think you had best eat any to-day,
Laury; you know you had a burning fever all
night.”
“O, mother! I know blackberry pudding won't
hurt me.”
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
“Stop whining, Laury,” interrupted the father.
“Do give her a bit, my dear; I never heard of
blackberry pudding hurting any body.”
A cry was heard from the adjoining bed-room.
“The baby has waked,” said the mother; “take
her up, Julia, and hand her here.” The baby, a
poor, pale, teething thing, of a year old, but, like
all babies in large families, an object of general
fondness, was brought in. One fed her with pudding,
another gave her a crumb of cheese, and a
taste of cider. The mother ordered back a muttonchop
bone for her to suck; the father poured into
her little blue lips the last drop of his bumper of
wine, and then calling out, “Start your teams,
boys,” he sallied forth, the fifteen minutes, the
longest allowed space for dinner, having been
completely used up.
It would not be wonderful if John, Tom, and
Dick, afterwards, as members of Congress, or,
perchance, as higher officers, should elicit the
strictures of foreign observers of our manners,
and call down a sentence of inevitable and hopeless
vulgarity upon democratic institutions. This
might be borne; for, however much delicacy and
refinement of manners may embellish life, it
might be difficult to prove them essential to its
most substantial objects. But would there not be
some danger, that young persons, bred in such
utter disregard of what the French call les petites
morales (the lesser morals), would prove, as men
and women, sadly deficient in the social virtues?
The Barclays might, when grown up, chance
to pour an egg into a glass, instead of taking it
-- 049 --
[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
from the shell, or they might convey their food to
their mouths with a knife instead of a fork, in the
presence of a carping Englishman; for these matters
are merely conventional, and they might live
and die in ignorance of them. But they would
never dispense with the use of a tooth-brush, —
never pick their teeth at table, sit on two legs of
a chair, hawk, (we have come to delicate ground,)
spit on the carpet or grate, or, in any other of the
usual modes, betray the coarseness of early associations.
They would not be among those who
should elicit from foreigners such graphic descriptions
as the following; “If you pass coffee-houses,
taverns, or such like places, the street is full of
chairs on which loll human bodies, while the legs
belonging to them are supported against the wall
or the pillars that support the awning. At such
places the tobacco-juice is squirted about like a
fire of rockets.”
But this, after all, is but the mint and cummin.
They would not be found wanting in the weightier
matters, — in the gentle courtesies of the social
man, — in that politeness which comes from
the heart, like rays from the sun, — nor in the
very soul of good breeding, Christian grace and
gentleness.
He who should embody and manifest the virtues
taught in Christ's sermon on the Mount,
would, though he had never seen a drawing-room
nor ever heard of the artificial usages of society,
commend himself to all nations, the most refined
as well as the most simple.
-- 050 -- p343-062
Chapter V. A DEDICATION SERVICE.
Ye little flock, with pleasure hear;
Ye children, seek his face;
And fly with transports to receive.
The blessings of his grace.
Doddridge.
[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]
Thanks to the smiles of Heaven on our widespread
land, the dissocial principles of the political
economist of the old world do not apply here,
and a large family of children is the blessing to
an American, which it was to a patriarchal father.
The Barclays had now been married fourteen
years, and their seventh child was six weeks old.
The manner in which a new-born child is welcomed
into the family group, shows, in a most
touching aspect, the beauty and worth of the affections
which spring fromthe family compact.
The Sunday morning had come, when the baby
(of course there was always a baby in the family)
was to be carried out to be christened. If there
is a sanctifying influence from the simple ordinances
of our religion, they should not be omitted
or carelessly performed. In the institution of
these external rites, a wise reference seems to
have been made to the mixed nature of man,
partly spiritual and partly corporeal. Those are
over bold, who would separate what God has
joined together.
Mrs. Barclay came from her room with the
baby in her arms, in its christening-dress; the
-- 051 --
[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]
children gathering round her, and exclaiming,
“O, how sweet she looks!” “O mother, do let
me kiss her!” “I won't tumble her cap, — just
let me kiss the tips of her fingers.” “See her,
see her smile!” “How pretty she breathes!”
“What a cunning little fist she makes.” “Is
not she a beauty, mother.”
They assembled in the parlour for a sort of
private dedication service. “Now,” said Mr.
Barclay, looking at the little group about the
baby with delight, “All take one kiss, and then
go to your seats. — But where is Grandmama?”
The good old lady, dressed in her Sunday-best,
and with spectacles and handkerchief in hand,
answered the inquiry by entering and taking her
seat in the rocking-chair.
“Now, father, tell us the secret,” said Mary;
“what have you decided to name her?”
“O, say Emily Norton,” cried Wallace.
“O, I hope you will not name her Emily Norton,
sir,” said Alice.
“Why not, Alice?” asked Charles; “I am
sure Emily Norton is a sweet name.”
Alice well knew the why not existing in her
mind, but there was no time to explain.
“Please call her Hepsy Anne,” asked one of
the little ones, naming a favorite schoolmate.
“I speak to have it Aunt Betsey,” said Aunt
Betsey's pet.
Mr. Barclay shook his head. “Mother says
she must be named for Grandmama.”
“Ganmama!” cried little Willie, “what a
funny name!”
-- 052 --
[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]
“Euphemia is Grandmama's name, my dear.”
The children looked grave. Euphemia sounded
very strange and old-fashioned to their ears.
“Or Effie,” added Mr. Barclay, “if you like
that better.”
Effie, that prettiest of diminutives, gained all
suffrages. Grandmama, who had one of the tenderest
as well as kindest hearts in the world,
looked, but could not speak, her pleasure. There
is something that addresses itself to the passion
for immortality, in the transmission of that which
is even so extraneous as a name, to one, who in
the order of nature will survive us. But it was
not this that brought the tears to old Mrs. Barclay's
eyes. The name recalled long silent voices,
which, in far-gone years, had rung it in her ears
in tones of happiness and love. She said nothing,
but took the baby in her arms and pressed it to
her bosom. It was a pretty picture of infancy
and age. As she replaced the infant in its mother's
arms, “How kind it was of you,” she said,
“to give her my name. I thought every body
had forgotten it.”
Children are most easily impressed through the
medium of their senses, and the presence of their
baby-sister served to enforce the simple exhortation
which followed from their father. He was
particularly careful, in talking to his children on
religious subjects, to avoid an artificial solemn
tone. He spoke as if the subject were, (as it
was,) cheerful, dear, and familiar to him.
On this occasion he first called the attention
of his children to the physical powers which
-- 053 --
[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]
God bestows on man, — the marvellous contrivance
of the eye, — the uses and blessings of all
the senses, — the construction of the little hand
they so fondly kissed, so impotent now, but
formed to be so nice and wonderful an instrument.
He made their hearts beat quicker as
he showed them the benevolence and wisdom
manifest in the arrangement of the little frame
on which their curious eyes were fixed. He
then endeavoured to enable them to form some
conception of what was meant by man being
made in the image of God, — of the sublime
intellectual and moral faculties; and when their
faces beamed with a comprehension of the worth
of the spirit, he spoke of the temptations and
trials to which it must be exposed, — of the
happiness or misery that awaited it. And the
destiny of this precious little creature, they were
told, was in some measure confided to them.
They were to lead her by their good example,
to shelter her from temptation, to feed her
affections from their own loving hearts, so that
this new member of their family might be one
of the family of heaven.
He spoke to them of the tenderness of the Saviour
in bidding little children to come to him; and
of the certainty, that, if they loved him, and kept
his commandments, they would be loved by him,—
of all which this beneficent being had done to
secure his lambs in the fold, and to bring back the
wanderers. His simple eloquence made them realize
that there was a glorious nature embodied in
the little form before them, capable, if rightly
-- 054 -- p343-066
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
developed and cherished, of becoming the disciple
of Jesus, and child of God. Before he had wearied
them, and while, as he saw by their moistened
eyes and glowing cheeks, their hearts
burned within them, he asked them to kneel
with their parents and dedicate their little sister
to their heavenly Father, and ask of Him, who
was more ready to give than they to ask, grace
to perform their duty to her.
When, a few hours after, the rite of baptism
was administered in church, the children did
not look upon it as an empty or incomprehensible
form, but they understood its meaning and
felt its value.
How easy it is to interweave the religious with
the domestic affections, and how sadly do those
sin against the lights of nature, who neglect to
form this natural union!
Chapter VI. SUNDAY AT MR. BARCLAY'S.
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
We hope not to bring down the charge of
Sabbath-breaking on Mr. Barclay, if we venture
to inform our readers, that his mode of passing
Sunday differed, in some important particulars,
-- 055 --
[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
from that which generally obtains in the religious
world. His whole family, whatever the
weather might be, attended public worship in
the morning. He was anxious early to inspire
his children with a love of going to the house of
God, and with a deep reverence for public worship,
which (with one of our best uninspired teachers)
he believed to be “agreeable to our nature,
sanctioned by universal practice, countenanced
by revealed religion, and that its tendencies are
favorable to the morals and manners of mankind.”
Happily his pastor was beloved by his children,
and Mr. Barclay therefore had none of the
frivolous pretexts and evasions of duty to contend
with, which are as often the fault of the shepherd
as of the flock. Mr. Barclay loved to associate
in the minds of his children the word and works
of God, and after the morning service was closed,
the father, or mother, or both, as their convenience
served, accompanied the young troop to the
Battery, the only place accessible to them where
the works of God are not walled out by the works
of man. There, looking out on the magnificent
bay, and the islands and shores it embraces, they
might feel the presence of the Deity in a temple
not made with hands, they might see the fruits of
his creative energy, and, with sea and land out-spread
before them, feel that
“When this orb of sea and land
Was moulded by His forming hand,
His smile a beam of heaven imprest
In beauty on its ample breast.”
-- 056 --
[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
Mr. Barclay certainly would have preferred a
more retired walk. On Sunday, more than any
other day, he regretted the sequestered haunts
of Greenbrook, where he might have interpreted
the religious language of nature without encountering
observation or criticism. But he would
not sacrifice the greater to the less, and he was
willing to meet some curious eyes and perhaps
uncharitable judgments, for the sake of cultivating
in his children that deep and ineffaceable love
of nature, which can only be implanted or rather
cherished in childhood. He was careful in these
Sunday walks to avoid the temptations to frivolity
in the way of his children, and he never encouraged
remarks upon the looks, dress, and gait
of those they met.
Restricted as they were by their residence to
a single walk where the view of nature was unobstructed,
their topics were limited; but children
will bear repetition, if the teacher has a gift
for varied and happy illustration. A walk on
the Battery suggests many subjects to a thinking
mind. A few of these would occur to a careless
observer. The position of the city at the mouth
of a noble navigable river, — a position held sacred
by the Orientals; Long Island, with its inviting
retreats for the citizen, and its ample gardengrounds
seemingly designed by Providence to
supply the wants of a great metropolis; Governor's
Island, with its fortifications and military
establishment, — a picture to illustrate the great
topic of peace and war, on which a child's mind
cannot be too soon, nor too religiously
-- 057 --
[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]
enlightened; the little Island where the malefactor
suffers his doom, an object to impress a lesson of
his country's penal code; Staten Island with its
hospitals and quarantine ground, to elicit important
instruction concerning these benevolent institutions,
and their abuses in ill-governed countries;
the telegraph, the light-house, and the ship,
the most striking illustration of man's intelligence,
industry, skill, and courage; the lovely
shaded walks of Hoboken, over which the sisters
Health and Cheerfulness preside; and, finally, the
Narrows, — the outlet to that path on the great
deep, which the Almighty has formed to maintain
the social relations and mutual dependence of his
creatures.
There may be some who think that these are
not strictly religious topics, nor perfectly suited
to the Lord's-day. But perhaps a little reflection
will convince them, that all subjects involving the
great interests of mankind may be viewed in a
religious light; and, if they could have listened
to Mr. Barclay, as, leaning over the Battery
railing, he talked to the cluster of children about
him, they would have perceived that the religious
light, like the sun shining on the natural world,
shows every subject in its true colors and most
impressive aspect.
At half past one, the Barclays returned invigorated
and animated by the fresh sea-breezes
to a cold dinner prepared without encroaching
on the rest of Martha's Sabbath. The dinner
was only distinguished from that of other days by
being rather simpler and more prolonged, for
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they dedicated a part of this day, in the emphatic
words of Jesus, “made for man,” to social intercourse.
That, to be happy, must be spontaneous
and free.
“I wonder,” said a lady, on one occasion,
to Mrs. Barclay, “that you don't take your children
to church Sunday afternoons. It is the best
way of keeping them still.”
Mrs. Barclay smiled; and Mary answered, “I
am sure you would not think so, Mrs. Hart, if
you were to see Willie; — he fidgets all the
time.”
“No, — no, Miss Mary,” spoke up Willie,
“mother says I sit very still when they sing;
but I do get tired with the preaching part, —
I wish they would leave that out!”
“So do I,” said Mary; “I own, when I go in
the afternoon I cannot help going to sleep.”
“Then you never sleep in the morning,
Mary?”
“O no, — never.”
“I thought you never went in the afternoon.”
“Sometimes,” said Mrs. Barclay, “when I am
not well, I send her with the little ones, as I
suppose other mothers do, to get them out of the
way, and into a safe place. I am sorry ever to do
this, for the heart is apt to be hardened by an
habitual inattention to solemn truths, — by hearing
without listening to them.”
“You must have a pretty long, tiresome afternoon.”
“Tiresome!” exclaimed Mary, “I guess you
would not think so, if you were here, Mrs. Hart.
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Sunday afternoon is the pleasantest of all the
week. Is not it, Willie?”
“Yes, indeed, 'cause mother stays with us all
the time.”
“And reads to us,” added Mary.
“And shows us pictures,” said Willie, “and
lets Patrick and Biddy come and see them too.”
“They are Bible pictures, Mrs Hart, and so
mother reads something in the Bible that explains
them.”
“And sometimes she tells us Bible stories,”
said Willie; “and sometimes stories of real live
children, — real, — not book children, you know.”
“And sometimes,” continued Mary, still eager
to prove to Mrs. Hart, that the Sunday afternoons
were not tiresome, “mother writes a little sermon
on purpose for us, not a grown-up sermon. Then
she teaches us a hymn; then she teaches us to sing
it; and when she wants to read to herself, she sets
us all down, Willie and Biddy, and all, with our
slates to copy off some animal. I wish you could
see Willie's, — his horses look like flying dragons.”
“O Mary!” interrupted Willie; “well, you
know mother said your cow's legs were broken,
and her horns ram's horns.”
“This is a singular occupation for Sunday,”
said Mrs. Hart.
Mary perceived the implied censure. “O
but, ma'am,” she said, “you don't know what we
do it for. After we have finished, mother tells
us all about the animal, — how its frame is contrived
for its own happiness, — how God has prepared
its food, for you know the Bible says the
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young ravens cry unto him and he feedeth them;—
and then she explains what she calls the relations
between man and animals, and Pat Phealan
says mother makes him feel as if the dumb creatures
were his first cousins, — Pat is so droll.
He says he never throws a stone at a dog now,
and he can't bear to see the men cruelly whip
their horses, — `he won't, plase God he ever
owns one;' you know Pat is Irish. No, Mrs.
Hart, you would not think it was wicked for us
to draw pictures Sunday, if you were to hear
mother teach us about them, or to see our little
books of natural history, where we write down
what she says.”
“Wicked, my dear! I did not say it was
wicked.”
“No, ma'am, — but — ”
“If I did think so,” added Mrs. Hart, rightly
interpreting Mary's hesitation to speak, “I think
so no longer. I too am learning of your dear
mother, Mary. I should like to know how the
rest of your family pass the Sunday afternoon.
May I question Mary, Mrs. Barclay?”
“Certainly, we make no secret of our mode
of passing Sunday, though we do not wish to
proclaim it. We do not expect to reform the
world, even if we should be satisfied with the
result of our experiment. To tell you the truth,
Mrs. Hart, we have long thought it would be
better to have but one religious service on Sunday, —
that people satisfy their consciences by
just sitting down within the four walls of a
church, no matter how languid their attention,
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how cold their hearts, when they get there, —
that much most precious time is thus wasted, the
only time that the great mass of the working
world have to consecrate to spiritual subjects
and active charities. We think clergymen would
preach better and their people hear more, if there
was but one sermon. These being our opinions,
our duty is plain, and we therefore quietly follow
the course conscience dictates to us, hoping to
be kindly judged by those from whom we differ
with all humility, and being well aware that those,
who depart from the received usages of the religious
world, should be diffident of themselves.
Do not, I beseech you, think that we underrate
or distrust the value of public worship. We
reverence it as one of the most important and
dearest of all social institutions, and we are
therefore most anxious that its effect on our
children's minds should not be impaired. Now
if you are not tired out with my long preface,
ask Mary what questions you please; if she cannot
answer them, I will.”
“Thank you. Well, Mary, what do Charles,
and Wallace, and Alice, Sunday afternoon?”
Mary bridled up with the conscious dignity of
a witness giving testimony in a matter of high
concernment. “Father says, ma'am, that as
Sunday is the Lord's day, we ought to be faithful
servants and spend it in his service; and he
thinks that those who have more knowledge than
others, should give it to them, just as the rich
give their money to the poor. So we have a
little school here Sunday afternoons, ten
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children, sometimes more, from father's families” —
“`Father's families!' what means the child?”
“The families father takes care of, — sees to,
you know, — that is, he visits them, knows all
about their affairs, advises the parents and instructs
the children, and the parents too I guess
sometimes, and now and then helps them, and
so on.”
“And sometimes he goes a sailing with them,”
interposed Willie.
“Sailing!” Mrs. Hart rolled up her eyes with
irrepressible astonishment.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Barclay in explanation, “he
has, upon some occasions, done this. When he
has found the parents exhausted by their labors,
people that could not read, and thus refresh their
minds at home, or, as is often the case, the children
pining for fresh air, — he has taken a little
party of them down to Whitehall, and gone over
with them to some quiet spot on Long Island; and
while they have been regaling on the fresh, sweet
air, he has found opportunity to speak a word in
season to them. And a word goes a great way
with them, from those that show an interest in
their little pleasures, and share them, as if they
really felt that these poor creatures in their low
condition, were their brethren and sisters, and
children of the same father. It makes a great
difference whether you do them a kindness to
discharge your conscience of a duty that presses
on it, or from an affectionate interest in them.”
“This is a new view of the subject to me,”
said Mrs. Hart, “but I 'll think on 't. Well,
-- 063 --
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Mary, how do the children manage the school? they
are rather young for such a business.”
“O, they don't do the managing part. Father
and mother do that; and Grandmama or Martha
sits in the room to see that all goes on smooth.
Aunt Betsey tried it, but” —
“My dear Mary!”
“Mother, I am sure Mrs. Hart knows Aunt
Betsey. Two of the children,” continued Mary,
“teach, and one goes with father to see his families,
and they take turns; and father and mother
come in and talk to them.”
Mrs. Barclay helped out Mary's account with
some explanations: “Some of the children,” she
said, “are Catholics, and of course would not attend
church in the afternoon. The Catholics are
shy of sending their children to the public schools,
but they have not manifested any reluctance to
trust them to us, probably from our intimate
knowledge of them at their homes, and from having
realized some advantage from our instruction
there; for we have done what we could to improve
their domestic economy. Home influences,
even among the poor and ignorant, are all in all
for good and for evil, for weal and for woe. We
have some tough subjects, as you may imagine;
but patience; `Patience and hope' is our motto.
Besides, we really get attached to them; and love,
you know, lightens all labor.”
“Yes, mother,” said Mary; “that is just like
what father read us out of Shakspeare last evening:
`I do it
With much more ease, for my good will is to it.”'
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“The children,” continued Mrs. Barclay, “are
quite competent to hear the lessons of their
classes. We spend our time in talking of whatever
the occasion may suggest. Sometimes we
elucidate or impress a passage of Scripture, —
sometimes we strive to deepen and fix a sentiment.
As most of their parents are Irish, they
are quite ignorant of the history, government, and
laws of their adopted country. Mr. Barclay endeavours
to enlighten them on these subjects. He
tries to make them feel their privileges and duties
as American citizens, and to instruct them in the
happy, exalted, and improving condition of man
at the present time, and in our country, compared
with what it has been heretofore, or is elsewhere.
I take upon myself the more humble, womanly
task of directing their domestic affections, and
instructing them, as well as I am able, in their
every-day, home duties. We wish to make them
feel the immense power and worth of their faculties,
and their responsibility to God for the proper
use of them.”
“Truly,” said Mrs. Hart, “your time is spent
quite as profitably as it would be at church; but
do you not get excessively wearied?”
“The weariness soon passes off.”
“And the compensation remains?”
“Yes, it does; I say it not boastfully, but with
thankfulness to Him who liberally rewards the
humblest laborer in his field.”
“And then, Mrs. Hart, our Sunday evenings
are so pleasant,” said Mary; “do, mother, let
me tell about them.”
-- 065 --
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“Very well, my dear, but remember what I
told you to-day about the Pharisees.”
“O yes, ma'am, that there might be Pharisees
now-a-days as well as in old times; but I am sure
it is not Pharasaical to tell Mrs. Hart how happy
we all are Sunday evenings.”
“I am sure it is not, Mary. Go on; what is
the order of Sunday evening?”
“O, ma'am, there is not any order at all, —
that is, I mean, we don't go by rules. I should
hate that, for it would seem just like learning a
lesson over, and over, and over again. We do
just what we happen to fancy. Sometimes father
reads to us, and sometimes mother, and sometimes
we read ourselves. Sometimes we write off
all that we can remember of the sermon, and
sometimes we take a text and write a little sermon
ourselves, — father, and mother, and all, —
pretty short mine are. But the shortest of all was
Willie's. You remember, mother, that which he
asked you to write for him. What was it, Willie?”
“`My peoples, if you are good, you 'll go to
heaven; and if you an't, you won't.' You need
not laugh, Mary; father said it was a very good
sermon.”
“Go on, Mary. I want to know all about
these Sunday evenings.”
“Well, ma'am; sometimes we write down
what we did last week, what we wish we had
done and what we wish we had not, and what we
mean to do next week. Sometimes we form a
class, — father, mother, and all, and we ask questions,
in turn, from the Bible, `what such a king
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did?' — `when such a prophet lived?' — `where
such a river runs?' — `where such a city stood?'
and so on; trying most of all to puzzle father and
mother, and get them to the foot of the class.
Sometimes father makes us all draw our own
characters, and then he draws them for us; and —
O dear! Mrs. Hart, when we come to put them
together, as Wallace said, ours looked crooked
enough, and out of joint. Once father gave us
for a lesson, to write all we could remember of
the history of our Saviour. We were not to look
in the Bible. We thought it would be very easy,
but it took us three Sunday nights. But the
pleasantest of all, — you know what the pleasantest
of all is, mother, — a story from father. O, I
forgot about your lists, mother.”
“You have remembered quite enough, my child.”
“Enough,” said Mrs. Hart, “to make me
envy your pleasant Sunday evenings at home, and
to inspire me with the desire, as far as I can, to
go and do likewise.”
Chapter VII. A TRUE STORY.
“The ants are a people not strong,
Yet they prepare their meat in summer.”
Among “father's families,” as Mary had called
those who were the particular subjects of her father's
bounty and supervisorship, was one by the
-- 067 --
[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]
name of Phealan. John Phealan was a laborious,
honest Irishman, who, having lost his wife
and being left with the care of three children,
had recourse to the usual consolation, and, in
the space of two or three months, took unto
himself another help-meet, the widow O'Neil,
who had worn her decent weeds for the canonical
term of a year and a day. “It was quite natural
it should plase God to bring them together at
last,” John said; “though it was by the hard
manes of taking Judy, — bless her soul, — to
himself; for he and Rosy were born within a
stone's throw, and saw the same sun rise and set
for the first twenty years of their lives at home,
in Ireland, whereas Judy was a stranger till he
took her to be the mother of his children.”
“It was quite natural, John,” replied Mr.
Barclay to this speech, which was meant as a sort
of apology to his friend for a step that he feared
would not meet with Mr. Barclay's approbation;
“quite natural, but our natural inclinations sometimes
make us lose sight of prudence; and I am
afraid the widow O'Neil's children and yours together
will be more than one house will hold, as
they say, John. The widow, — I beg your pardon,
John, — your wife has two children of her
own?”
“Two! bless your eyes, sir; yes, two and two
to that, and a stray into the bargain.”
“A stray? what do you mean by that?”
“I mane Biddy McClure, sir, the child of her
poor mother that's gone to rest. Ellen, the
mother, poor thing, died on Rosy's bed; so Rosy,
with a full heart in her, as she has, could do no
-- 068 --
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less than take on the baby with her own, though
she was bid turn it over to the orphan asylum; —
the Lord help poor Biddy! never to know a home
or a mother.”
“But where was her father?”
“She never had any to spake of, sir.”
“I suppose now, John, you would be glad to
get her into the orphan asylum.”
“Plase the Lord, no, sir; it would be an ill
turn to do Rosy, to cast away the chicken she 's
brooded under her own wing. Besides, sir, my
mother, that 's gone, — peace to her soul! —
always said there was a blessing to the roof that
sheltered an orphan child.”
Mr. Barclay thought there could scarcely fail to
be a blessing upon a roof that hung over such
generous hearts, and for once he was persuaded out
of his prepossessions against this clubbing together
of families, that so commonly issues in unhappiness.
He could not, however, forbear saying,
“I trust, John, you will have no additions to this
family.”
“We lave that with the Lord; if they come
they 'll find a welcome.”
“A large family is a heavy burden to a poor
man, John.”
John scratched his head, and admitted what
was undeniable, but with a mouthful of blessings
on the country, he said, “No honest working
man in it need to go to bed to dream of hungry
children.”
Time went on, and in due succession two more
children appeared, and found the welcome John
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[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]
Phealan had promised. Mr. Barclay took an especial
interest in seeing how far virtuous exertions
and naturally happy tempers could triumph over
unfavorable circumstances. He kept his eye on
the family. He found Phealan ready to be
guided by his advice, and Phealan's wife docile
to the instructions of Mrs. Barclay; always replying
to them, “I 'll do my endeevours, madam.”
And so faithfully did she do them, that, contrary to
common experience, and in the teeth of political
economy, this little confederation lived on prosperously
and happily, like the famous family of natural
haters, the dog, cat, rat, bird, snake, and squirrel,
proving that there are no natural discordances or
antipathies that may not be overcome by moral
force. There were now and then some little
clashings among the children, but they passed
over as harmless as light summer showers.
But alas! a storm did come, that threatened
utter desolation. Both Phealan and his wife were
carried off by an epidemic, after a week's illness.
What was to be done? Of the last marriage
there were two children living, one five and the
younger less than a year old. Little Biddy
McClure was not yet quite seven. A friend of the
Phealans adopted the child of five years, but no
one could be found to take the baby, and poor
Biddy was too young for service. Mr. Barclay
consulted with the elder children, and realized a
rich harvest in the fruits of his instructions to
them. They were all earning something, and
were able to estimate their resources and make
rational calculations for the future. They could
-- 070 --
[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
pay their room-rent, and support the baby and
Biddy; and if old Miss Jones, who had lost the
use of her legs, and rented a dark little room in
the garret, would live in their room rent-free, and
just look a little after Biddy nursing the baby,
while they were out at their places, they could
keep together yet, and need not send the baby
and Biddy, — a jewel was Biddy, — to any orphan
asylum but their own. This plan, calling
forth such virtuous exertions from these young
creatures, was approved by the Barclays. Never
a week passed that the Phealans were not visited
by one of them, and such counsel or aid given as
the exigencies of these little worthies required.
The family was actually kept comfortably afloat
for eighteen months. Then Miss Jones took it
into her head to retire to a relation's in the country;
but fortunately Mary Phealan, the oldest of
the family, married respectably just at this juncture,
having stipulated that if the family did
break up, she should take the baby for her own.
The family, Mr. Barclay said, must break up; but
what should be done with Biddy? Biddy was a
general favorite, and the children, after a consultation,
agreed that they would pay her board until
she was old enough to go to service. Mr. Barclay
did not quite like this plan. He thought
Biddy would be living in idleness for two or three
years, and forming bad habits, or no habits at all,
when the foundation should be laying for future
usefulness.
It may perhaps stimulate some reader's benevolence
to know, that while Mr. Barclay was paying
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[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]
this minute attention to the concerns of the little
orphan family, he was the principal manager of
one of the most important printing establishments
in New York.
“What is to be done with Biddy?” he asked
his wife; “the little stray, as poor Phealan used
to call her, must be provided for.”
“Yes, she must. I have been thinking a great
deal of her, and if I could only get Martha to
consent, we might take her ourselves.”
“My dear wife! the very plan I thought of, but
I could not bear to propose any thing which
should increase your cares.”
“O, that 's nothing; you know I do not mind
light burdens.”
“I know you make all burdens light; and I
wish that your children may learn from you, that
it is the light heart that makes the burden light,
and not vice versâ, as most people think.”
“Thank you; that 's a compliment worth having,
and I will see if it will make me eloquent to
Martha; but I dread the view she may take of
the subject.”
Mrs. Barclay had some reason for this dread.
Martha had too long had her own way, — an excellent
way it was, — to brook any interference
with it. She was orderly to precision, and she
had always said, (what she once said poor Martha
was much given to always say,) this would
be a terrible annoyance to her. She had before
stoutly and successfully opposed a benevolent plan
of Mrs. Barclay's, similar to the present, Mrs.
Barclay having thought it wisest to yield her own
-- 072 --
[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]
wishes to her faithful servant's.—Servant! we
beg Martha's pardon, help. Serving most assiduously,
she had an antipathy to the word servant.
Was she not right? There must be new terms
to express new relations. Help may have a ludicrous
and perhaps an alarming sound to unaccustomed
ears; but is there a word in the English
language more descriptive of the service rendered
by a New-England domestic; truly a “republican
independent dependent,” and the very best servant,
(this we say on the highest foreign, ay,
English authority,) provided we are willing to
dispense with obsequiousness and servility, for the
capability and virtue of a self-regulating and selfrespecting
agent.
The Barclays' religion governed all their relations.
They did not regard their servant as a
hireling, but as a member of their family, who,
from her humble position in it, was entitled to
their protection and care. Martha was their
friend; the family joys and sorrows were part
and parcel with hers, hers with theirs. As her
qualifications increased with her years, and her
labors with the growth of the family, they had
augmented her wages; never taking advantage of
her preference of their house to withhold a just
(others might have called it a generous) consideration
for her labors, and quieting their consciences
by a resolution to recompense her at some convenient
season,—that future indefinite, so convenient
to the debtor, so hopeless to the creditor.
Mrs. Barclay was certainly a most successful
grower of the virtues; but with the best moral
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[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]
cultivation, human infirmity is a weedy soil, and
poor Martha sometimes, wearied with the unvaried
routine of domestic service, became, like others,
unreasonable and fretful. She was not fretted at
in turn, and wondered at, as servants are (as if they
alone should be exempt from human weakness),
but sent to recreate herself in her native New
England; whence she returned, strong and cheerful,
to her tasks.
But we are leaving too long unsettled the interests
of our little friend Biddy.
“Martha,” said Mrs. Barclay, “the Phealans
are breaking up at last.”
“Are they indeed, ma'am? I am sorry for it;
they have been a sight to behold, that family. I
never could look at them without feelings.”
“Courage!” thought Mrs. Barclay; “if Martha
once has what she calls feelings, all will go right.”
“Poor Biddy,” she continued, “is looking puny;
she has been too much shut up with the baby.—
She is a nice, bright child.”
“Yes, she is indeed, ma'am.”
“I wish, Martha, she could get a good place.”
“I wish she could, ma'am, but she is not fit
for service yet.”
“No, not exactly; I suppose hardly any body
would be willing to take the trouble of her for
two or three years yet, while she is going to
school.”
“I suppose not, but they would be well paid
for it afterwards,—such a very good child.”
“That they would, Martha; but there are so
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[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]
few persons that are willing to take trouble now,
for a possible reward hereafter.”
“I know it; there 's few, even of those that
aim to do right, that are willing to pay the cost.
You and Mr. Barclay” — Martha stopped; it was
not in her line to pay direct compliments.
“Mr. Barclay and I, you think, perhaps, might
be willing to stretch out a helping hand to poor
Biddy; and so we should, and would, but the
trouble, Martha, would come upon you.”
“O, ma'am, in such a case, — for a poor little
orphan like Biddy, and so good too, I should not
mind the trouble.”
“If you really would not, Martha, I should
take her joyfully into the family. But you must
consider well; you will have her constantly with
you. You know you don't like a child under
your feet. If she is brought up in the family, you
will have to teach her; for you know I do not
choose to keep any one to wait on the children.
It will be a task, and a long one, Martha; but
then, if you should decide to undertake it, you will
have the consolation of doing a great service to a
fellow creature. Think of it, Martha, and decide
for yourself.”
Martha took time for consideration, and then
little Biddy was installed, a most happy and
grateful member of the family; and Martha, who
had been generously allowed to be a free agent
in the good work, bore all the little trials it
brought with patience, and trained Biddy with a
zeal that enters only into voluntary action.
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“The poorest poor
Long for some moments in a weary life,
When they can know and feel that they have been
* * * * * the dealers out
Of some small blessings, — have been kind to such
As needed kindness.”
Chapter VIII. A DARK DAY.
“A foolish son is the calamity of his father.”
There are seldom allotted to humanity fourteen
years of such success and happiness as had been
experienced by the Barclays. In this time, Mr.
Barclay had secured a competency. His competency
did not merit the well-known satirical definition
of being a “little more than a man has,”
but was enough to satisfy his well regulated desires,
to provide for the education of his children,
and to save his daughters from the temptation of
securing a home, in that most wretched of all
modes, by marrying for it. It was no part of his
plan to provide property for his sons. Good characters,
good education, and a start in the world,
was all they were to expect. This they perfectly
understood. As soon as they were capable of
comprehending them, they were made acquainted
with their father's affairs, minutely informed of
the condition of his property, and his plans for the
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[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]
future. Mr. Barclay despised that mean jealousy
with which some parents hide their pecuniary
affairs from their children, — some husbands from
their wives even, as if they were not joint and
equal proprietors in the concern.
He had now nearly reached the period when
he mediated a great change in his life. From
the beginning of his career in the city, he had
looked forward with a yearning heart to the time
when he might retire to Greenbrook. His children
often visited their relatives there. It was
their Jerusalem, to which the heart made all its
pilgrimages. The old parsonage had recently
come into market; Mr. Barclay had purchased it;
and it was a fixed matter, that in the ensuing
spring, as soon as the house could be repaired,
the family should remove thither. In the mean
time, this long hoped-for event was the constant
theme of father, mother, and children. Improvements
and occupations were planned by day, and
at night Mr. Barclay's dreams were of that home
of his childhood. Again he was wading and
swimming in that prettiest of all streams that circled
the meadows, slaking his thirst from the
moss-grown bucket, and making cups and saucers
for little Anne Hyde from the acorns under the
great oak tree at the end of the lane.
Alas! disappointment comes to the most prudent,
when least expected and often when least
deserved.
It was just before Christmas, about the annual
period when business is investigated and its results
ascertained. Mr. Barclay had been shut up
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all the morning in his counting-room with his elder
partner, Norton. Their accounts stood fairly,
and showed a prosperous business and great increase
of profits. The old man did not seem at all
animated by this happy state of things. He was
absent and thoughtful, and nothing roused him
till Mr. Barclay said, “I do not believe you will
ever regret taking my advice and putting Harry
into the printing-office.”
“Never, never,” repeated Norton emphatically.
“I should not be surprised,” continued Mr.
Barclay, “if he were in the end richer than his
brother, and I am sure he will not be less happy,
nor less respectable.”
A half-suppressed groan escaped Norton.
“You are not well, sir?”
“No, I am not well, — I have not been well
for a long time, — I never expect to be again.”
“O, sir, you are needlessly alarmed.”
“No, no; I am not alarmed, — not alarmed
about my health.”
“You have worked too hard this morning.
You will feel better for the fresh air; I will walk
home with you.”
The fresh air did not minister to the mind diseased.
Norton's depression continued during
the walk. He said little, and that little in broken
sentences, in praise of his son Harry. “He is an
honest boy, Barclay, — good principles, — good
habits, — owes them all to you, — he 'll be able to
shift for himself, if—he 's a good boy, Barclay.”
When they reached Norton's fine residence in
Hudson Square, his daughter Emily, a child of
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eleven or twelve, met them at the door, exclaiming,
“O, papa, the men have hung the lamps, and
brought the flowers, and the rooms look beautifully!”
In her eagerness she did not at first give any
heed to Mr. Barclay's presence; but when she did,
she nodded to him, stammered through the last
half of her sentence, turned on her heel, and
briskly ran through the entry and up stairs. Norton
was roused, his energy was excited by what
he deemed a necessary exertion, and he begged
Mr. Barclay to enter, saying he had a word to say
to him in private. Mr. Barclay followed him into
one of his two fine drawing-rooms; the foldingdoors
were open, and both were furnished in a
style that becomes the houses of our wealthiest
merchants. The apartments were obviously in
preparation for a party. The servants were going
to and fro with the most bustling and important
air. Norton looked round with a melancholy
gaze, and then asked Mr. Barclay to follow him to
a small breakfasting-room. He shut the door,
and, after a little moving of the chairs and hemming,
he said, “We are to have a great party
this evening, Barclay.”
“So I perceive, sir.”
“It is a party that John's wife gives for Emily.”
“Indeed!”
“It an't my fault, Barclay, nor Harry's, —
Heaven knows; nor can it be called Em's, — poor
child! these foolish notions are put in her head;
but it is John's wife's fault, — and John's too, I
must own, that your folks are not asked.”
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“My dear sir, do not give yourself a moment's
uneasiness about it. It would be no kindness to
my family to invite them; they know none of
Mrs. John Norton's friends, and these fine parties
are not at all in our way.”
“It is the better for you, — it is all cursed folly, —
I see it too late.”
Mr. Barclay responded mentally and most heartily,
“Amen,” and was going away, when Norton
laid his hand on his arm, saying, “Don't blame
Harry; he is good and true, — he is your own
boy, you've made him all he is; don't blame
him.”
“I assure you I blame no one, my good
friend,” said Mr. Barclay, and hurried home,
thinking a great deal of Norton's dejection, but
not again of the party, till, in the evening, Harry
Norton joined his family circle as usual, and stayed
till bed-time; but was not, as usual, cheerful and
sociable.
The elder Norton was an uneducated man.
He spent all his early life in toiling in a lean business,
and accumulating in consequence of his
very frugal house-keeping, his small gains. When
Mr. Barclay threw his talent into the concern, it
at once became thriving; and when John Norton,
whose education his ignorant father had
been quite incapable of directing, was of a marriageable
age, he was reputed the son of a rich
man. Being ambitious of a fashionable currency,
he succeeded in marrying a poor stylish girl, who
immediately introduced her notions of high life
into her father-in-law's house, and easily induced
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the weak old man to fall into her plan of setting
up a genteel establishment, and living fashionably;
“weakly imitating” (as has been pithily
said) “what is weakest abroad.” Old Norton
had but three children; two by a second marriage.
Harry was in firm hands, and easily managed,
but poor little Emily was removed from all
her old associates, sent to a French school, and
fairly inducted into a genteel circle.
The party was over, and a beautiful Christmas
morning followed. Mrs. Barclay was in her nursery
and Mr. Barclay still in his room, where he
had already received the greetings of his children
as they passed down stairs; “A merry
Christmas, father!” and “The next at Greenbrook,
and O how merry it will be!”
Another and hurried tap at the door, and
“May I come in, sir?”
“Yes, Harry, come in. Mercy on us! what
is the matter, my boy?”
Harry Norton was pale and breathless; he
burst into tears, and almost choking, exclaimed,
“John has killed himself!”
“Your brother! — John! — God forbid!”
“Indeed he has, sir, and that is not the worst
of it.”
“What can there be worse?”
“O, Mr. Barclay!” replied the poor lad, covering
his burning cheeks with both hands, “I
cannot bear to tell.”
What Harry in a broken voice, and tears poured
out like rain for the shame of another, told, was
briefly as follows. John, without education for
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business and without any capital of his own, had
engaged largely in mercantile concerns, and had
plunged deeply into that species of gaming called
speculation. His affairs took a disastrous turn,
and after his credit was exhausted, his paper was
accepted by virtue of the endorsement of Norton
and Co., which he obtained from his weak father
without the concurrence or knowledge of Mr.
Barclay. A crisis came. The old man refused
any farther assistance. John committed a fraud,
and, when soon after he perceived that detection
and ruin were inevitable, he resolved on self-murder.
He spent an hour or two at his wife's
Christmas-eve party, talked and laughed louder
than any body else, drank immeasurably of champagne,
and retired to the City Hotel to finish
the tragedy by the last horrid act. Thus, poor
wretch, did he shrink from the eye of man, to
rush into His presence, with whom the great account
of an outraged nature and a misspent life
was to be settled.
His family were roused from their beds to hear
the horrible news. The old man's health had
long been undermined in consequence of his
anxiety about his son's affairs, and the reproaches
of his conscience for the secret wrong he had
done his partner. The shock was too much for
him. It brought on nervous convulsions. At
the first interval of reason he sent for Mr. Barclay.
Mr. Barclay hastened to him with poor Harry,
who looked more like the guilty, than like the innocent
victim of the guilt of another.
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Reflections swarmed in Mr. Barclay's mind, as
he passed to the dying man's room through the
luxurious apartments where pleasure, so called,
had, through the demands of waste and extravagance,
led to the fatal issue. Some of the lamps
were still burning, or smoking in their sockets.
He passed the open door of the supper-room.
There still stood the relics of the feast, — fragments
of perigord pies, drooping flowers, broken
pyramids, and piles — literally piles — of empty
champagne bottles; an enormous whiskey-punch
bowl, drained to the last drop, stood in a niche in
the entry.[2] The door of Mrs. Norton's apartment
was open, — she in hysterics on the sofa,
her attendants running in and out, their minds
divided between the curiosity ever awake on such
occasions and the wants of the weak sufferer.
When at last Mr. Barclay reached the old man's
apartment in the third story, he found him bolstered
up in his bed, breathing painfully. When
he saw Mr. Barclay enter, followed by Harry, a
slight shivering passed over his frame. He
stretched out his arm and closed his eyes; Mr.
Barclay took his hand. Norton felt that there
was no longer time for delay or concealment.
He attempted to speak, but his organs were now
weaker than his mind. After several futile efforts,
his quivering lips uttered the words, “I have —
-- 083 --
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much to tell you, — John — I — John — O, I
cannot!”
“You need not, sir; Harry has told me.”
Norton turned his eager eye to his son. The
blood that seemed to be congealed at his heart,
once more flushed to his cheek. “All, Harry?”
he asked in a husky voice.
“Yes, sir; Mr. Barclay knows all that we
know.”
Norton's eye again explored Mr. Barclay's face.
No reproach was there, — not even a struggling
and repressed displeasure, — nothing but forgiveness
and pity. The poor man understood it, and
felt it to his heart's core. He was past tears, but
the veins of his forehead swelled, his features were
convulsed, and he said in a broken voice, “O how
kind! but I can't forgive myself; — poor John!—
he 's past it! I'm going, and I can't — I can't
even ask God to — forgive me.”
“My dear friend! do not say so, — God is infinitely
more merciful than any of his creatures.
He pitieth us, even as a father pitieth his children.”
These words seemed to the poor man's spirit
like water to parched lips. He looked at his
son, and then at his little daughter, Emily, who
was kneeling behind the bed with her face buried
in the bed-clothes, and he realized in the gushing
tenderness of his own parental feelings the full
worth of that benignant assurance, which has
raised up so many desponding hearts. “Can you—
will you pray for me?” he asked.
“Most certainly I will.”
“But now I mean, — aloud, so that I can hear
you.”
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Mr. Barclay knelt at the bedside. Harry
threw himself down by his sister, and put his
arm around her. Her moanings ceased while
their friend, in a low, calm voice, uttered his petitions
for their dying father. It was no time
for disguise or false coloring of any sort. Mr.
Norton had lived, as many live, believing in the
Bible and professing faith in Christ, but making
a very imperfect and insufficient application of
the precepts of Christianity to his life. In the
main, he was a moral, kind-hearted, and well-intentioned
man; but, misled by a silly ambition
and an overweening fondness for a favorite son,
he had destroyed him, deprived his younger children
of their rights, and defrauded his best
friend.
Mr. Barclay, in the name of the dying man,
expressed his contrition for the evil he had done,
and suffered to be done; — for the barrenness of
his life compared to the fruits it should have
produced. He acknowledged the equity of that
law which deprived him of the peace of the righteous
in his death. And then, even with tears,
he besought the compassion that faileth not, the
mercy promised by Jesus Christ and manifested
to many who had backslidden and sinned grievously,
but who, like the prodigal son, had returned
and been received with outstretched arms.
In conclusion, he alluded to himself. He fervently
thanked God, that when he had come from
the home of his fathers, a stranger to a strange
city, he had been received, befriended, and generously
aided by his departing servant; and he
-- 085 --
[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]
finished with a supplication that he might be heartily
disposed, and enabled, to return to the children
the favors received from the father.
Silence prevailed long after he ceased to
speak. Harry and Emily were locked in one another's
arms. Mr. Norton continued in fervent
prayer. His eyes were raised and his hands
folded. His spirit was at the foot of the cross,
seeking peace in the forgiveness and infinite compassion
there most manifest. When the old
man's mental prayer was finished, there was comparatively
peace on his countenance; but the
spirit that struggles back over those self-erected
barriers that have separated it from God, cannot
have, — must not expect, — the tranquillity, the
celestial joy, that is manifested in the death of
those who have been faithful in life.
Mr. Norton murmured his thoughts in half
formed sentences: “He is merciful; — `Come
unto me' — I am heavy laden. — Harry is very
good! — O — O, how good you are to me. — Poor
Emy, — she won't have to go to the alms-house,—
will she?”
Mr. Barclay turned his eye to the poor child,
and for the first time noticed her dress. She had
been wearied out with the party of the previous
evening, and had fallen asleep without undressing;
and now her ornamented pink silk frock, her rich
necklace and ear-rings were a painful comment
on her father's words. “Such a dress on a poor
child who has no certain refuge but the alms-house!”
thought Mr. Barclay. He felt the deepest
pity for her, but he was too honest to
-- 086 -- p343-098
[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]
authorize false hopes. “No,” he said in reply to Mr.
Norton, “Emily shall not go to the alms-house, —
she shall not be a dependent on any charity, public
or private, if she is true to herself. I will see
that she is qualified to earn her own living.”
“O, that is best, far best, — you 'll see to her,—
that 's enough, — and poor Harry too?”
“Harry already earns his living. I will be his
guardian Shall I, Harry?”
“You always have been, sir,” replied Harry,
grasping his hand.
“Yes, yes, — he has; — God reward him, —
he, not I.”
“O, father, I did not mean that, — indeed I
did not.”
“Truth don't hurt me now,” said the old man;
“it 's truth.” And so it was.
eaf343.n2[2] The writer was told by a lady, that after a party at
her house where one of these mammoth punch-bowls
had been nearly emptied, she offered a glass of the beverage
to a servant; “No, I thank you, madam,” he replied,
“I belong to the Temperance Society.” What a
satire!
Chapter IX. A HOME FOR THE HOMELESS.
O bright occasions of dispensing good,
How seldom used, how little understood!
Cowper.
The scene of life, not long after this, closed
on Mr. Norton, and he was respectfully committed
to the grave by those who regarded him as more
sinned against, than sinning. Perhaps he was
viewed in a different light by Mr. Barclay, whose
-- 087 --
[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]
estimate of a parent's power and responsibilities
was different from, and much higher than most
men's.
Mr. Barclay found John Norton's concerns, on
investigation, not quite so bad as he feared. After
settling the business and cancelling the endorsements
of “Norton and Co.,” the property
vested in his printing-presses and that in the farm
at Greenbrook remained. The press was a
means of future accumulation, and the farm a
polar star where he might still rest the eye of
hope. It certainly was a severe disappointment
to have the accumulations of years of vigorous
labor swept away from him by the profligacy of
others, — to have his dearest plans thwarted at the
moment of their accomplishment; but he bore
the evil patiently, as became a Christian who was
forearmed against the uncertainties of life. “We
must now,” he said at the conclusion of a long
conversation on their affairs with his wife, “we
must now show our children, what we have often
told them, that it is not the circumstances of life
that make our happiness or virtue, but the temper
in which we meet them.”
The children were made acquainted with the
unfortunate turn in their affairs, and the necessity
of the indefinite postponement of their removal
to Greenbrook. This they all took to
heart; but no event can make children long unhappy.
Some ten days after old Mr. Norton's interment,
the Barclays were assembled round a
well-lighted table. Mrs. Barclay, with a large
work-basket before her, was putting in that stich
-- 088 --
[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]
in time which absorbs so large a portion of the life of
the mother of half a dozen children. Charles and
Wallace were seated on each side of her, drawing,
acquiring at a leisure hour some knowledge of an
art for which a man in almost every pursuit has
some occasion. Alice was basting hems and ruling
copy-books for the little girls' next day's work.
Mary was dressing a doll for her youngest sister,
Grandmama knitting in the corner, and Aunt
Betsey making a very pretty dress for her pet; and
finally Mr. Barclay was reading aloud the Life of
Franklin, and making now and then such remarks
as would tend to impress its valuable instruction
on his children. He was interrupted
by an involuntary exclamation from Alice of “O
dear me!”
“What is the matter, Alice?”
“Nothing, only I can never make these red
lines straight, in my arithmetic book. I wish
Harry Norton was here, he does them so neatly.”
“I wish he was here too,” echoed Mary; “this
doll's arm torments me so, — I cannot make it
stay on.”
“I was just thinking,” said Wallace, “I would
give any thing to have him come in, to show me
how to stump this foreground.”
“O, that 's easy enough, Wallace,” said Charles;
“but I never can do these arches without his
help; I wonder he does not come.”
“He cannot come, Charles, and leave Emily
alone.”
“Why cannot Emily come too?”
“Dear me! I am sure nobody wants her,” said
Mary.
-- 089 --
[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]
“And why not? I wonder.”
“Because she is so hateful.”
“Mary, my dear child! — that's a hard word
for you. Come here, and tell me what makes
poor Emily so hateful.”
“Because, sir, she is.”
“Mary dear,” said Grandmama, “your Bible
tells you not to bring a `railing accusation.”'
Grandmama's gentle admonitions were seldom
disregarded by the children. Mary looked crest-fallen,
when Aunt Betsey came to her aid.
“Mary is quite right,” she said; “Emily Norton
is the most disagreeable little upstart that
ever I came across.”
“But how is she disagreeable? Come, Mary,
let us know. I suspect there is some prejudice
in the case. It is very important to poor little
Emily that you should have no prejudices against
her.”
“I don't think they are prejudices,” murmured
Alice in an under voice.
“I know they are!” exclaimed Wallace.
“I think they are too,” said Charles.
“O yes, boys, you think, because Miss Emily
has such beautiful hair, and eyes, and so forth,
that she must be good.”
“No, Alice,” replied Charles, “it is not that;
but I cannot believe that Harry Norton's own
sister can be such a horrid creature.”
“Dear me, Charles! I did not say she was a
horrid creature, but I do say she is as different
from Harry as night from day.”
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[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]
“My dear Alice, you speak very confidently,
considering how little you know of Emily.”
“Ah, father, that is the very thing. Miss
Emily don't choose to know us. The first day
we went to Smith's drawing-school, Sarah Scott
asked her if she knew us. She said she knew
our names. Sarah said something about our looking
ladylike; Miss Emily drew up her little scornful
mouth, — you need not smile, father, for those
were Sarah's very words, — and said we might
look so, but we were not so, for `sister said' nobody
visited mother, — only think what a falsehood,
sir, — and she advised Sarah not to get
acquainted with us, for she said `sister did not
want her to.' Now, sir, do you think it is all
prejudice?”
“Not all, my dear; but if we examine the
matter, we may find that a part of it is. In the
first place, I suspect the scornful mouth was an
addition of Sarah Scott's; that young lady has a
very lively imagination; and a sweeter tempered
mouth than Emily's, one farther removed from an
expression of scorn, I never saw.”
“So it is, sir, commonly, but you don't know
how girls can twist and spoil their mouths when
there are no grown people by. Besides, if Sarah
did add that about the mouth, and I own she is
apt to add and alter when she tells a story, I am
sure she did not make the rest; for whenever
Emily meets Mary and me in Broadway, her eyes
are suddenly staring every way; whatever else
she sees, she never sees us.”
“And,” added Mary, “she is always dressed
-- 091 --
[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]
just like a grown up lady. — O! she does look
too proud!”
Mr. Barclay waited a moment as if expecting
something more, and then asked, “Is this all, my
children?”
“All in particular, sir,” replied Alice.
“I am sure it is quite enough!” said Aunt
Betsey.
“Alice,” said her father, “sit down on my
knee, — here is another for you, Mary. Now
let us see if we cannot find some apology for
Emily.”
“She will not care whether we do or not.”
“O! my children, poor Emily has too much
reason to care for your good opinion now.”
“Why sir, now? don't she go and live with
Mrs. John Norton?”
“No. Poor Emily has no home now.”
“No home, father!”
The thought touched all their young kind hearts,
and Emily was at once placed in a new aspect.
Mr. Barclay took advantage of the favorable moment
to proceed. “What do you suppose, Alice,
Mrs. Norton meant by telling Emily that nobody
visited your mother?”
“I suppose she meant what she said, sir.”
“Not at all, my dear. She meant that none
of her visiting acquaintance visited us. — Mrs.
Norton calls all the people out of her circle nobody.”
“What a silly woman!”
“Very silly, my dear; and I am sure if you
reflect on it, you will very soon think with me,
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[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]
that Emily was more to be pitied than blamed
for the notions she got from this woman, into
whose hands she fell when she was so very young.
Her father, you all know, was not the wisest man
in the world. She had no mother. Harry was
too young to guide her. Mrs. John Norton flattered
her vanity, removed her entirely from her
early associates, indulged her in every idle wish,
and would have probably ruined the poor child,
had it not pleased Providence to remove her from
her influence. Mrs. Norton has gone back to her
uncle's, to live again in idle dependence upon
him, and has shown how little real affection she
had for Emily; for she has given herself no concern
as to what is to become of her, though she
knows she has not a penny, nor a relation to take
care of her.”
The children looked sad and pitiful.
“She is young enough, I believe,” continued
Mr. Barclay, “to be admitted either into the orphan's
asylum or the alms-house.”
“Both very good places for her,” said Aunt
Betsey.
“Aunt Betsey!” exclaimed Charles; “Emily
Norton go to the alms-house!”
“Harry's sister go to the alms-house, — awful!”
cried Alice. “Do, father, let her come and live
with us.”
“Alice, are you beside yourself?” asked Aunt
Betsey. “After your father has been all but
ruined by old Norton, to think of his taking upon
himself the support of Emily!”
Mr. Barclay went on, without directly
-- 093 --
[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]
answering either Alice or her aunt. “I have seen a
great deal of little Emily since her father's death,
and do not believe it will be difficult to give her
right notions. Poor child, her heart is melted,
and takes any impression you please to put upon
it. She is any thing but proud now, Mary; and
the fine clothes that offended you so much, are
all gone.”
“Gone, father?”
“Yes. I told her the greatest honor that
children in their case could do to a father's memory,
was, as far as possible, to pay his debts;
and I told her what exertions and sacrifices Harry
had made. She immediately went up stairs, and
packed up all her finery, — her little trinkets,
and every ornamental thing she had in the world,
and begged me to have them sold to pay the
chambermaid, who had complained bitterly of the
loss of the wages due to her.”
“Did she, father?” said Mary; “her watch,
her gold chain, and her real enamel buckle?”
“Yes, my dear, those, and every article but
her necessary clothes.”
“I always thought,” said Wallace, “that Emily
had something noble in her.”
“I felt sure of it,” said Charles.
“Most persons, my dear boys, have something
noble in them, if you but touch the right spring
to set it in motion. I think poor little Emily has
fine qualities, but her character will depend much
on the circumstances in which she is placed, for
she is easily influenced.”
“I like persons who are easily influenced,”
said Wallace, as if thinking aloud. This was
-- 094 --
[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]
true, and a common disposition enough it is, with
those who are strong willed, and who seem born,
like our friend Wallace, to influence others.
“I called in on Harry and Emily as I came
home to tea,” continued Mr. Barclay. “Their
house is in complete order for the auction which
is to take place to-morrow. Harry has worked
like a beaver, and with the help of one man and
one woman and little Emily, who has done all
she could, every thing is ready.”
“O dear!” said Alice, heaving a deep sigh,
“how sadly they must feel.”
“No, Alice, they do not, and they ought not.
It is family love and happy domestic intercourse
that attaches us to the inanimate objects of our
home. This table around which we have so
many pleasant gatherings, — the sofa, — Grandmama's
rocking-chair, — the baby's cradle, are
all so many signs, which, as often as you look
upon them, call forth delightful feelings. No
books or maps will ever look to you like those
we have read and studied together. But suppose
our parlour emptied of all it now contains, and
costly furniture put in it, such as would make us
appear genteel in other people's eyes; suppose
we never entered it but to receive morning calls,
or evening company; our vanity might be gratified,
but do you think the furniture would excite
any sensations worthy of the name of happiness?”
“No, sir, — no,” was the general verdict.
“The case I have supposed is just that of
Harry and Emily, — the family moved into a new
house when John Norton was married, — all the
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[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]
old furniture was sent to auction, and new was
bought. Harry has passed most of his evenings
with us, and poor little Emily, when they had
not company at home, has been left alone with
her father, who did not know how to amuse or
instruct her, or with the servants, who were very
unfit companions, for Mrs. John Norton was
never nice in the selection of her servants, and
was continually changing them. This evening,
I found Harry and Emily in the little breakfast-room.
There was a light on the table, and a
book from which Harry had been reading to his
sister; but they had drawn near the fire. They
were sitting on the same chair. Emily's arm was
round his neck, and she was listening to what he
was saying with such a tender, confiding look —”
“I wonder what he was saying, father,” said
Alice.
“Something of their separation, I believe, my
dear.”
“But why need they be separated, father? —
why can't they both come and live with us?”
It had been a settled matter, from the moment
of Mr. Norton's death, that Harry was to come
into the family.
“Are you crazy, Alice?” asked Aunt Betsey.
“I am sure I don't think Alice crazy at all,”
said Mary. “There are two beds in our room,
and Haddy sleeps with Alice, and I should like
of all things to have Emily sleep with me.”
“And it is exceedingly important,” said Wallace,
as wise as Socrates on the occasion, “that
Emily should live in a good place, because, father
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says, her character depends so much on circumstances.”
“And where can she go, if she don't come
here?” asked the tender-hearted Charles.
The children had arrived at the very point
Mr. Barclay desired.
“Your right dispositions, my dear children,”
he said, “gratify me; but you must remember that
it is on your mother that the burden of an increased
family must chiefly fall. Consult her. If she is
willing to extend the blessing of a home to both
these orphan children, at the cost, as must needs
be, of much labor and self-denial to herself, she
will set us an example of disinterestedness and
benevolence that we will try to follow.”
The children now all clustered round their
mother. To Mrs. Barclay, sound in health,
serene in temper, and of most benignant disposition,
no exertion for others seemed difficult; and
with one of her sweetest smiles she said, that, as
far as she was concerned, she should be most
happy that Harry and Emily should not be separated.
The children clapped their hands, and
returned to their father, shouting, “It's all settled.”
“Not quite so fast; there is something yet to
be considered. You all know that we allow
ourselves a fixed sum for our annual expenses.
If we indulge in the luxury of doing this kindness
to Emily, we must all give up something. You
and Mary, Alice, must give up the dancing-school
that has been running in your heads for the last
six weeks, and Charles and Wallace cannot have
a drawing-master.”
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This suggestion seemed for a moment to abate
the zeal of the young folks; but Alice, who was
always the first to clear away obstructions, said,
after a little reflection, “O! well, never mind the
dancing-school. I have thought of a nice plan, —
Emily is Mr. Chanaud's best scholar, — she can
give us lessons in the garret. It is a good place
for dancing, and we shall not disturb Grandmama
there.”
“And as to the drawing, sir,” said Charles,
“with a little of Harry's help we can teach ourselves;
and when we have such a good motive for
it, we shall take twice as much pains as if we had
a master.”
“Well, my good children, we will all take it
into consideration, and if we are of the same
mind to-morrow night, Emily shall come to us
with Harry.”
This conversation, had not, as may well be
supposed, occurred without much consultation
between Mr. and Mrs. Barclay. They thought
they could not do a more certain good, than by
extending the advantages of their home to the
young Nortons. They hoped this might be an
acceptable expression of their gratitude to Providence
for their domestic blessings. They knew
their children had some prepossessions against
Emily, and Mr. Barclay had undertaken to turn
the current of their feelings in her favor. In this
he had so far succeeded, that her entrance into
the family was a favor accorded to them; and
thus, instead of coming among them an object of
their prejudice and distrust, they henceforth
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considered themselves as Emily's champions and protectors.
Each one was anxious to shelter her
infirmities, to set her in a favorable light, and to
make her new home as happy as possible.
When all the family had retired excepting
Mrs. Barclay and her sister, Aunt Betsey jerked
round her chair, put her feet on the fender, and
gave vent to her pent-up feelings. By the way,
it should be said in Aunt Betsey's favor, that
fretting was her safety-valve; she thus let off her
petty irritations, and in conduct she was not less
humane than most persons.
“You are the oddest people,” she began, “that
ever I came across; with seven children, and the
Lord knows how many more you may have, the
old lady and myself, and only Martha for help, to
undertake these two children that have no claim
on earth upon you. Claim! the children of your
greatest enemy, the man that has all but ruined
you, and in such an underhand way too, — a
pretty reward for knavery! I hope you mean to
put up a sign, William Barclay & Co.'s orphan
asylum, or alms-house!”
Mrs. Barclay was too much accustomed to her
sister's railing to be disturbed by it.
“If it were more the practice, Betsey,” she
mildly replied, “for those who have homes to extend
the blessing to those who have them not,
there would be little occasion for orphan asylums,
and the charity now done by the public, would
be more effectively done in private families.”
“I see no advantage whatever in turning private
houses into alms-houses and such sort of
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places. I always thought home was a sacred
place, from which it was a duty to shut out every
thing disagreeable and unpleasant.”
Fortunately Aunt Betsey's self-love prevented
her perceiving how hard this rule would bear upon
herself. Her brother-in-law had given her a
home, simply because her temper was so uncomfortable,
that no other member of her family was
willing to receive her, — none other could have
borne and forborne with her, — none other would
have made allowances for the trials of her single
and solitary condition, and, by always opposing a
smooth surface to her sharp corners, have gradually
worn them down.
“It is a duty, as you say, Betsey,” replied her
sister, “to exclude every thing permanently disagreeable
from the family; for home should resemble
heaven in happiness as well as love. But
we cannot exclude from our earthly homes the
infirmities of humanity. There are few persons,
no young persons, who, if they are treated wisely
and tenderly, will not be found to have more
good than evil in them. In the Nortons, I am
sure, the good greatly preponderates. Our children,
we think, will be benefited by having new
excitements to kindness, generosity, and forbearance.”
“Well, if your children must have these excitements,
as you call them, why under the sun
don't you find some folks to take in, besides the
children of the man that 's robbed you of all
you 've been toiling for and saving, for this dozen
years and more?”
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“O, Betsey, it does seem to me that, seeing,
you see not. I don't mean to hurt you, — but how
can you help feeling Mr. Barclay's nobleness, his
truly Christian spirit in this matter? how he has
returned good for evil, and overcome evil with
good!” Aunt Betsey said nothing, and Mrs. Barclay
proceeded, “Our children, I am sure, cannot
but profit by such an example.”
“But they don't need it. You are both of you
always teaching them.”
“`Example is better than precept,' Betsey.”
“Well, let that rest. But I should like to
know how you can afford to set such examples?”
“As to that, the way is clear enough. Harry's
earnings will pay his board and all his other expenses.
He will only be indebted to us, for what,
he says, he esteems above all other things, a
home in our house.”
“But little Miss Emily cannot be boarded,
clothed, and schooled for nothing.”
“Certainly not; but the expense of feeding a
little girl in a family where there are three abundant
meals a day is really trifling. The cost of
Alice's clothes has never exceeded thirty dollars a
year; Emily's will not cost more.”
“No, to be sure. You will not have to buy
new for her. She is so much more slender than
Alice, that I can easily manage to make Alice's
old frocks over for her.”
“Thank you, Betsey; but I would rather Alice
should take her's. A person in the situation
Emily will hold, should never be degraded in the
eyes of others, or her own, by any such sign of
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dependence or inferiority. That is a very poor
kindness done to the body, which results in injury
to the mind.”
Aunt Betsey was reduced to biting her nails,
and her sister proceeded. “Emily's schooling,
it is true, will be expensive. Pity it is, that it is
so, in a country, where, of all others, good teaching
should be cheap and easily attained; but it is
not so, at least in this city. However, Mr. Barclay
is quite willing to meet the expense, whatever
it may be.”
“Oh, I dare say, — `Education the best investment
of capital,' — you know he is always
harping on that; but when you have precious
little to invest, it is worth while to consider. —
That 's all I have to say.”
“We have considered, Betsey. Mr. Barclay,
whose noble nature it is, as you know, to impart
of his abundance to others, — freely to give what
he so freely receives, — says that his business
was never more productive than at this moment.
We cannot therefore go on fretting over our losses.
We shall continue to live frugally, and to
educate our girls and Emily to earn their own
living, should it be necessary. Harry's highest
ambition for Emily is, that she should be qualified
for a teacher. He will himself be a great
assistance to her.”
“That he will. He is not like other boys, —
Harry is not.”
“I shall endeavour,” continued Mrs. Barclay,
“in my domestic school, to qualify Emily for the
offices of wife and mother. These in all human
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[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]
probability she will fill, — she may never be a
teacher. You will help us, Betsey, and we will
not give grudgingly. If her faults trouble us,
let us remember how sadly the poor child has
been neglected. All children, the best of them,
require patience.”
“Patience! — yes, the patience of Job.”
“Emily may prove better and more agreeable
than we expect, and we may be thankful to Providence
for enabling us to take the homeless
young creatures into the family.”
Aunt Betsey was softened by being put in the
light of a participator in the boon to Emily, and,
as she took up her lamp to go to bed, she said in
a tone of real kindness — “I 'll try to do my
part.”
Ah, if all the individuals of the human family
would “do their part,” there would be no wanderers,
no outcasts. The chain of mutual dependence
would be preserved unbroken, strong,
and bright. All would be linked together in the
bonds of natural affection and Christian love, —
the bonds of unity and peace.
-- 103 -- p343-115
Chapter X. A PEEP INTO THE HIVE.
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower.
Watts.
[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]
Many persons who act from generous impulses
are soon checked and disheartened in a course of
benevolence, merely from not having judiciously
surveyed the ground before them and estimated
the necessary amount of efforts, that is, counted
the cost. Those who are true disciples of that
devoted friend of man, whose whole life was a
succession of painful efforts and self-sacrifice,
will not become wearied with a duty because it
demands labor and self-denial. The Barclays
knew that two additional members of their family
must bring them additional anxiety and toil; and
when it came, they endured it cheerfully, yes,
thankfully, as faithful servants, who are zealous
to perform well an extra task for a kind master.
Emily Norton, daintily bred and petted from her
infancy, had the habits, though not the vicious
dispositions, that sometimes grow out of indulgence.
Her pride and little vanities had
taken but slight root in her heart, and they were
swept away by the storm that passed over her
father's house. But never was a little fine lady
more thoroughly helpless and good for nothing
than Emily, when she entered the Barclay
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family; but, once in that hive, where every little busy
bee did its appointed task, where labor was rendered
cheerful by participation, and light by regularity
and order, she gradually worked into the
ways of the household, and enjoyed, through the
whole of her after-life, the happy results of well-directed
effort. But this was not achieved without
much watchfulness and patience on the part of
her benefactress, much good-natured forbearance
on the part of the children, and many a struggle
and heart-ache on the part of the poor child.
Many a scene resembling the following, occurred
after she entered the family.
“You have promised to be one of my children,
dear Emily,” said Mrs. Barclay, at the close of a
long conversation with her; “I intend to treat you
precisely as I do them.” She then went through
with the enumeration of various household offices
which she expected Emily to perform, and concluded
with saying, “The girls take care of their
apartment week and week about. I hold any
want of neatness and order in a young lady's
room to be an abomination, and I never excuse it.
This is Alice's week; the next Mary's; the week
after will be yours. In the mean time, observe
how they manage, and when it comes your turn,
you will have learned their way. Remember,
dear, there is a right and a wrong way to do every
thing.”
Emily was sure, that before her turn came, she
should know how to take care of the room as well
as the other girls; but Emily was yet to learn
that “practice alone makes perfect.” Her week
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[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]
came. Alice entered her mother's room, and
shutting the door after her, and lowering her
voice, “Do mother,” she said, “let Mary go and
do our room, and let Emily come and tend the
baby; — it 's the only thing she is fit for.”
“She certainly does that better than either you
or Mary. She gives her undivided attention to
it, while you and Mary must always be doing
something else.”
“I know that, mother, but then — ”
“Then what?”
“Tending baby is a lazy sort of business that
just suits Emily.”
“She is not lazy about it; on the contrary she
is indefatigable in trying to please Effie and
Effie's mother.”
“So she is, ma'am, I own; and so I wish you
would keep her at it, and let us do what she can't
do, and we like best.”
“That would be hardly just to either Emily
or you, as there is a great deal besides tending
baby that a woman ought to know how to do, and
tending baby every woman must know how to
do.”
“Well, I suppose she must learn, but I don't
know when, nor how. To tell the truth, mother,
she is a real cry-baby. It is almost school-time,
and she has not touched the beds yet. They are
just as we left them, this morning, — the bed-clothes
stripped off, the pillows on the window-sill
airing, and she sitting down and crying. I
cannot get one word out of her.”
“Perhaps she cannot turn over the mattresses,
Alice.”
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[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]
“Mother! — those light mattresses!”
“Light to you, my dear, but you must remember
that Emily probably never made a bed in her
life, and that what is light to you, is an Herculean
task to her. Suppose, Alice, you were to go to
live in another family, and were required to do
something you had never done.”
“I should try, mother; I should not sit down
and cry.” And so she would have done; for
Alice, though by some months younger than Emily,
had been in the habit of using all her faculties
of mind and body. She was a Hebe in
health, and the very spirit of cheerfulness, so that
no task looked formidable in her eyes.
“Alice,” said her mother, “if you were to see
a poor child whose hands had been tied up from
her birth, who by gross mismanagement had been
robbed of the energy of her mind, and half the
health and strength natural to her, would not you
be grieved for her, and take pains to restore her
to the use of her faculties?”
“To be sure I should, mother.”
“Then go back to Emily. Do not ask her
what troubles her. She will be ashamed to tell
you, but offer to help her turn over the mattresses,
and assist her in whatever else seems to come
awkwardly to her. Help her bear her burden at
first, and after awhile she will be able to bear it
all herself. Be delicate and gentle with her, dear.
Above all, do not laugh at her. Don't come to
me again. Settle the matter yourself. It is best
I should not interfere.”
From the moment Alice felt that the
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responsibility of getting Emily on, rested on herself, she
felt at once eager for success; and, more good-natured
than the god in the fable, she hurried
back to put her shoulder to the wheel.
“Emily, dear,” she said kindly, “I don't think
you feel very well this morning.”
“Yes, I do, Alice, perfectly well,” replied
Emily, in a voice that sounded as if it came from
the tombs.
“Well, come then, Emily, you had better
make haste, — it is past eight, — come, jump up,—
I will give you a lift. These mattresses are
too heavy for you, till you can get used to them,
and then they will seem as light as a feather;”
and, suiting the action to the word, she threw over
the mattresses, while Emily crept languidly to the
other side of the bed.
“Now let 's beat it up, Emily, and then we
will have the clothes on in an instant. There,
smooth that sheet down, dear. Mother makes us
as particular as old women about making up the
beds, — lay the pillow straight Emy, — plummet
and line, you know, — now, hem over the sheet
this fashion, — there, it is done! and I defy a
Shaker to make a bed better.”
Emily was inspired by Alice's cheerful kindness,
and when they went to the other bed, she
begged Alice to let her try to do it alone. She
tried, as if she had a mountain to move, but all in
vain. Alice looked the other way to hide her
smiles.
“I can't possibly do it!” said Emily, despairingly.
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[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]
“Poor thing!” thought Alice, “her hands,
as mother says, have indeed been tied; but we 'll
contrive to loosen them.” “Take hold here,
Emily,” she said; “not with just the little tips of
your fingers, but so, — with your whole hand, —
there it goes! — O, you 'll soon learn.”
“Do you really think I ever shall, Alice?”
“Ever! Yes, indeed, very soon. I will show
you a little every day and you will edge on by
degrees. The world was not made in a day, you
know, as Aunt Betsey says.”
“But the sweeping, Alice? Do not, pray, tell
any body, but I never swept a room in my life.”
A girl of her own age, who did not know how
to sweep a room, seemed to Alice an object of
equal wonder and commiseration. She, however,
suppressed the exclamation that rose to her
lips, and merely said, “Well, that is not your
fault, Emily; take the broom and I will show
you.”
Emily took it. “O not so, Emily, — no, not
so; — just see me.” Again Emily began, and
looked so anxious and worked so desperately hard,
that Alice could scarcely forbear laughing out-right.
She did however, and very kindly and
patiently continued to instruct Emily, till the
mighty task was finished.
“O, you will learn after a while,” she said, as
poor Emily set down the broom and sunk into a
chair, out of breath and looking at her reddened
palms. “I will teach you to sweep, and you
shall teach me to dance, Emily.”
“O, you are very, very kind, Alice. I am sure
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[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]
I think it is worth a great deal more to know how
to sweep, than how to dance.”
“And so do I,” said Alice; “and yet we take
a great deal of pains for the one, and the other
we learn, we don't know how.”
Alice spoke truly. We learn we don't know
how the arts of domestic life, — the manual of a
woman's household duties.
Some among Mrs. Barclay's friends wondered
she did not “get more out of Martha,” and they
never could exhaust their astonishment at what
they called her inconsistency (a very convenient
indefinite word) in giving her girls accomplishments,
strictly so called, and putting them to the
humblest domestic employments. The Barclays
neither saw, nor had they ever occasion to feel,
this incompatibility. They believed that there was
no way so certain of giving their boys habits of
order, regularity, and neatness, and of inspiring
them with a grateful consideration for that sex
whose lot it is to be the domestic ministers of boy
and man, as the being early accustomed to receive
household services from their mother and
sisters, — from those they respected and loved.
They believed too, that their girls, destined to play
the parts of wives and mothers, in a country
where it is difficult and sometimes impossible to
obtain servants, would be made most independent
and consequently most happy, by having their
getting along faculties developed by use. These
little operatives, by light labors which encroached
neither upon their hours of study nor social
pleasure, became industrious, efficient, and
-- 110 --
[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]
orderly and were trained to be the dispensers of comfort
in that true and best sphere of woman, home.
Equal, too, would they be to either fortune; if mistresses,
capable, just, and considerate towards those
who served them; and if, perchance, obliged to perform
their own domestic labor, their practical acquaintance
with the process would make it light
and cheerful.
Never, we believe, was there a pleasanter domestic
scene, than the home of the Barclays; —
Martha, the queen bee, in her kitchen, as clean
as any parlour, or as (to use the superlative degree
of comparison) the kitchen of the pale, joyless Shakers;
her little handmaids in her school of mutual
aid and instruction, with their sleeves rolled up
from their fat, fair arms, their curls tucked under
their caps, and their gingham aprons, learning
the mysteries of cake and pastry manufacture,
pickling, preserving, and other coarser arts; while
another little maiden, her eyes sparkling and her
cheeks flushed with exercise, might be heard plying
her broom “up stairs and down stairs and in
the lady's chamber,” and warbling songs that
might soothe the savage breast, for they breathed
the very soul of health and cheerfulness.
Nor were they in the least disqualified by these
household duties for more refined employments;
and when they assembled in the evening, with
their pretty work-boxes and fancy-work, their
books and drawing, they formed a groupe to
grace any drawing-room in the land.
Their labors and their pleasures were transitory,
but the vivifying spirit of love and intelligence
-- 111 -- p343-123
[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]
that informed them was abiding, and was carrying
them on to higher and higher stages of improvement,
and preparing them for that period to
which their efforts and hopes pointed, when the
terrestrial shall put on the celestial.
Chapter XI. GOING HOME TO GREENBROOK.
And yet, ere I descend to the grave,
May I a small house and large garden have,
And a few friends and many books, both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too.
Cowley.
The race, we well know, is not always to the
swift, nor the battle always to the strong; and the
Barclays, like others, were sometimes thwarted in
their plans and disappointed in their expectations.
There were early indications in their eldest son
of a fragile constitution, attended by the consequent
preference of mental to corporeal labor.
He had a fondness almost amounting to a passion
for books, and his father, who sympathized in his
tastes, and did not at first perceive the alarming
influence of their gratification on his health, encouraged
them. “Charles's destiny is certainly
for one of the learned professions,” he thought,
and accordingly he stimulated him in the pursuits
that would qualify him for them. But when, from
thirteen to fifteen, he found that he was losing the
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[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]
little vigor he possessed, instead of gaining any,—
that his eye was getting the sunken, and his
cheek the pale and hollow appearance, that is so
generally the effect of sedentary life in our country,
(why, the physiologist must explain,) — he resolved
to change his pursuits; and he persuaded
Charles (Charles was the most persuadable of
mortals) to abandon his books and go and work
on the farm at Greenbrook. “I had rather, my
dear boy,” he said, “see you a common healthful
laborer in the country, than such a miserable dyspeptic
as are half our lawyers, doctors, and ministers;
when life is a burden to the possessor, it is
not apt to be very profitable to any body else.”
So Charles henceforth passed nine months of
every year with the skilful cultivator to whom
Mr. Barclay rented his farm. At first this seemed
very much like exile to the poor fellow; but his
character was too flexible and too well regulated,
not to adapt itself to circumstances, and, instead
of repining over defeated hopes, he set himself to
work to see and increase the good of his new occupations.
He found there was no occasion for
his intellect to sleep on a farm, but that mother
Earth had studies enough in her laboratory to
employ all the faculties of her children; that
there was a world of knowledge for the curious
student of nature in the difference of soils, in the
effect of temperatures, the nature of plants, the
composition and application of manures, and the
habitudes of animals. He felt an interest that
never abated, in the improvement of the farm, and
in beautifying it for the residence of the family.
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[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]
It was certainly to be their home at some future
day; and in the mean time the mother and children
came there to pass three months of every
year, and always found some new charm, some
new manifestation of Charles's taste, and affection
for his family. The slope between the house
and the river, with its natural terraces, was spread
out to the morning sun, and Charles thought it
was treason against nature not to improve it according
to her suggestion. So the green turf
gave place to a well spaded garden, where from
year to year were planted shrubs, vines, and fruit-trees.
The strawberry beds were doubled, because
strawberries were “mother's favorite fruit.”
Unwearied pains were taken to bring on the green
gages for father. A woody, scrawny lilac was permitted
to remain, because Grandmama had said,
“It looked so natural that she loved to see it.”
But above all, an especial blessing seemed to fall
on Emily's favorite plants and flowers; whatever
she liked sprung up like the roses under the feet
of the fairy's favorite, and grew and luxuriated as
if the sunbeams and the dews of heaven were
given to favoritism. The garden was overrun
with violets of every species, and honeysuckles
and white roses grew like weeds about the old
porch, mounted over and even peeped into Emily's
window, and ran round the pretty well-curb which
Charles built over the old well, where “the old
oaken bucket, the moss-covered bucket,” of his
grandfather's time, newly hooped, still swung.
There is a magic that can direct and double the secret
powers of nature; and Emily Norton, bright,
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[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]
sweet-tempered, and lovely, might call this magic
into operation. The three summer months she
passed at Greenbrook; the three winter months
Charles was in New York; thus their intercourse
was scarcely interrupted, and, for aught any one
observed, it retained, from year to year, its frank,
confiding, and fraternal character.
But Charles did not limit his interest to the
family in New York. He was a prodigious favorite
with the inhabitants of Greenbrook. The
old people liked his “serious turn,” and prophesied
that he would make his grandfather's (the
minister's) place good. The contemporaries of
his parents pronounced him, some of them,
“just like his father,” and others “just like his
mother,” “but not quite equal to either.” Every
social pleasure was imperfect to the young, if
Charles was not with them; and even the poor
laborers, black and white, said their work seemed
light when Charles worked with them. Does the
question of the transmission of the virtues belong
to physiology, or to philosophy and religion?
We have now come to an important era in the
history of the Barclays. Eight years, busy, fruitful
years, have glided away, — their fortunes are
repaired, — a partnership in the printing establishment
is formed between Harry Norton and
Wallace, and the family are now actually realizing
their long-cherished hopes, and removing to
Greenbrook. The old parsonage, which had
been built when there was a “glut” of timber
and a scarcity of every thing else, had still a firm
foundation and sound rafters, and by dint of
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[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]
knocking away the old porch (without detriment,
let it be observed, to Emily's favorites), making a
little addition here, and a little alteration there,
it looked like a most comfortable dwelling to the
passing stranger, and to Mr. Barclay, like an old
friend in new apparel.
The Americans are sometimes reproached
with being deficient in that love for the home of
childhood, which is so general a feature of the
human race, that it was supposed to be universal,
till an exception was made to our discredit. If
this be so, (we believe it is not, at least in New
England, for which, alone, we can answer,) it
should be remembered, in palliation of the unnatural
sin, that our homes are comparatively recent,
not consecrated by the memories of centuries,
and that the Yankee boy, from the earliest period
of forecast, dreams of seeking his fortune in the
richer soil and kinder climate which his far
spread country provides for him. He goes, but
his heart lingers at the homestead. Many a yeoman
who has felled the trees of the western forest
have we heard confess, that through weary
months he pined with that bitterest of all maladies,
homesickness; and that even after years
had passed, no day went by, that his thoughts did
not return to his father's house, nor night that
did not restore him to the old place. And when
age and hardship have furrowed his cheek, and
greyed and thinned his hair, and bent his sturdy
frame, he may be seen travelling hundreds and
hundreds of miles to revisit “the old place,” —
to linger about the haunts of his childhood, and
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live over, for a few brief days, the sunny hours of
youth. Then (as we have heard him) he says,
“I have a richer farm at the West, than any in
New England, — it is a wonderful growing country, —
my house is bigger than Colonel R—'s
or Doctor P—'s,” (the palaces of his native village,)
“but dear me! it has not the pleasant look
of the old place.”
And if it be true that our hearts are dead to
this love of “our own, our native land,” why is
it that so many, with the fire of enterprise burning
in their young bosoms, and the West with
mines of gold in its unbroken soil alluring them,
still linger about the old place, — still patiently
plough our stony hills, and subdue our cold morasses?
No, God has not denied, to any of his
creatures, from the time that the exiles of Judea
hung their harps on the willows of a strange land,
to the present moment, that strong love of birthplace
which tempers, to the native, the fierce winds
of the north, and the fiercer heats of the Equator, —
which equalizes every soil, and gives that
inimitable, that “pleasant look” to the old place.
A few evenings after the family were quietly
established at the old place, and in a soft, fragrant
June evening, they assembled on the piazza,
just as the moon was rising above the hazy line
of mountain that bounded the eastern horizon,
and sending a flood of softened radiance through
the valley. “O,” exclaimed Effie, “how much
bigger the moon looks, than it does in New
York!”
“That's because —” said William, eager
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to impart a little science which he had just acquired.
“Pshaw, Willie! I don't always want to know
the cause; every thing here is bigger, and brighter,
and pleasanter, and sweeter than in New
York, because it is, and that is enough.”
William appealed to his father, whether it were
not best always to find out the reason of the thing.
“Certainly, my dear boy, if you can; unless
like Effie, and Effie's father at this moment, you
are so brimful of satisfaction that nothing can
add to it.”
“And do you think, sir,” asked Harry Norton,
who was sitting with Alice at one end of the
piazza, under a closely woven honeysuckle, “do
you think you shall continue satisfied with your
present tranquil enjoyments? Will you not miss
the occupation of the office?”
“No, I shall substitute the occupations of my
garden and farm, which are far more agreeable
to me.”
“But will you not miss the excitements of the
city?”
“I think not, Harry. The excitements of the
country are underrated. Here nature is the kind
and healthful minister to the keen appetite for
sensation. The changes of the seasons, the rising
and setting of the sun, droughts and floods, a
good crop, a blight, — frosts and showers, are
all excitements. In the country the tie of human
brotherhood is felt through the circle, the social
electric chain is bound so closely that the vibration
of every touch is felt. We not only
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sympathize with the great joys and sorrows of our
neighbours, but in all the little circumstances that
make up life. The whole village was alive this
afternoon with the running away of Allen's
horse; and when they heard that the widow
Ray's boy, Sam, had been thrown from the cart
and injured, what sympathy was manifested!
what running to and from the windows! what
profferings of aid, advice, and consolation! The
wreck of an omnibus in Broadway would not
have caused half so much commotion. The children
were as much excited by their berrying
frolic yesterday, as they would have been by a
visit to Scudder's Museum; and they are as eager
to see Deacon Bennett's twin lambs, as they
would be to see a Chinese, or a mysterious or invisible
lady.”
“O, I do not doubt, sir, that children may find
excitement anywhere; but I speak of yourself
and Mrs. Barclay.”
“Ah, Harry, it is a sad mistake that some people,
even at our time of life, make, to depend on
events for excitement. How can we want for excitement
in our brief lives, while there is so much
knowledge to be gained and so much good to be
done? We have not here the abject poverty and
brutish ignorance that exist among the foreigners
in the city, but `the poor we have always with
us'; the poor, whose condition may be raised;
the sick, whose sufferings may be alleviated; the
ignorant, who may be instructed; the idle and
vicious, who may be reclaimed. The excitement
must be within ourselves, in a respect for our species,
in a deep, inexhaustible love for them.”
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“I ought to have known better,” said Harry,
“than to ask you such an idle question, after
living with you eight years. I see but one deficiency
here; you will miss the society of
town.”
“No, Harry, I think not. I confess that in
this matter of society, I have been somewhat disappointed.
There has not been so rapid an improvement
as I expected; but we must have patience.
It takes time to change the forms of
society; to give a new direction to a current that
has been wearing into its channel for centuries.
Distinctions in our city are favored by great disparities
of fortune, and cherished perhaps equally
by the pride, arrogance, and little vanities of the
exclusives, and the servile imitations, the eager
striving, the want of real independence and selfrespect
in the second class. You know, Harry,
that I have no fanciful expectations of a perfect
equality, a dead level; this can only exist among
such savages as the Hottentots. But I believe the
time will come, — not in my day, perhaps not in
yours, — but it will come, as soon as the social
spirit of the Christian religion is understood, when
society will only be an extension of the intercourse
of home, when we shall meet together for
intellectual intercourse, for the generous exchange
of knowledge and of all the charities of social
life. Then the just and full influence of mind
and heart will be felt on society, and then our religious
emotions and affections will no longer be
kept for the closet and the church. But to realize
those social benefits which our religion has yet
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in store for us, we must first realize that we have
a common nature and destiny. — I have made an
harangue, instead of giving a plain answer to your
question, whether I should not miss the society of
town. You know that what is called society
there, was inaccessible to me. While I was an
actual printer with a moderate fortune, I was
without the barriers. The mechanics in the city
are unfortunately too much absorbed in their occupations
to care for the pleasures of society, or
to prepare their children for it. We had, you
know, a few valuable friends with whom we lived
on terms of intimacy; but our intercourse was very
limited, and we did not escape the reproach of
being unsocial. Now, in Greenbrook, society, —
you smile, Harry, but I do not mean society in
the conventional sense, — approaches my standard.
The intrinsic claims of each individual
are known and admitted. Whether a man be
lawyer, farmer, or mechanic, matters not, if he
be intelligent and respectable. Mr. Barlow, one
of the most eminent lawyers in the state, does not
esteem my family one grade below his, and I esteem
no man's below mine provided —”
“Ah, there is a provided then, sir?”
“Stop, my dear fellow, hear me out, — provided
my neighbour is a man of good morals, that he
has knowledge and is willing to impart it, or, being
ignorant, that he wishes to be enlightened;
and provided he does not offend against the
usages of civilized society.”
“But is there not a barrier in what you call the
usages of civilized society, that will be effectual
against some of your rough neighbours?”
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“I think not. They lack some refinements and
graces, but these are not essential; and if they
never learn, their children will be very apt to do so,
from a good example among their cotemporaries.
City families that remove into the country, so far
from endeavouring to benefit their country neighbours
by communicating any real refinements,
alarm their pride by artificial manners, and by
keeping up the modes of town life. We shall not
be apt to do this. Mrs. Barclay arranges our domestic
matters with such plainness and simplicity,
that there is nothing appalling to our country
neighbours; and as to my girls, if they should give
themselves any city airs, I will dump them in
Greenwich Street again; and let Miss Alice show
off her style in the establishment offered by her
rich lover.”
“Father! — pray —”
“I beg your pardon, my dear girl. I thought
Harry knew before this time to whom and to what
you had preferred him.”
“He knows,” replied Alice, blushing, “that I
prefer him to all the world.”
“That is quite enough, Alice, and you shall
tell or not tell particulars, as you like. But come,
Harry, adjourn your whisperings to Alice, and
hear me out. You know I have a notion, that
wherever we are placed in life, there we have a
mission. I do not mean to assume the invidious
character of a reformer in Greenbrook. No, but
I mean to be a fellow-worker with my good friends
and neighbours here. Many things they know
better than I; I some, better than they. All
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society should be a school of mutual instruction, and
in this school much is effected by the silent and
gentle force of example. I hope to do something
in this way towards elevating the pursuits of my
Greenbrook friends. We may perhaps teach them
that more than they have thought of may be done
in a well regulated home.”
“Yes, sir, and they might imitate you, if there
were more Mr. and Mrs. Barclays in the world.”
“Ah, Harry, it is not the superior capacity
that accomplishes most, but setting out with a firm
purpose to attain a certain object. Your mother,
Alice, began life with a determination to make a
happy home. As she is not present, I may say
of her what she would not permit me to say, if
she were here.”
“O let me speak of her, sir,” interrupted Harry
Norton.
“Let me speak of her,” said the modest Emily.
“O, I guess we all love to speak of mother, if
speaking means praising,” cried little Effie.
Grandmama's tremulous voice hushed all others.
“`Her children arise up and call her blessed,”'
she said; “`her husband also, and he praiseth
her.”'
“Yes, ma'am,” said Harry; “that and every
other verse in Scripture that describes a virtuous
woman, might be applied to her; and those who
have not the natural rights of children might rise
up too and call her blessed,— those on whom she
has bestowed a mother's care and tenderness.
And what, that woman should do, has she left undone?
How faithfully she has performed all the
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duties of her lot; how generously undertaken
those that were not imposed on her. What
sense she has manifested, what beautiful order
and neatness in her domestic economy, and in a
higher, moral economy, how she excels all others.
How she sees and foresees, provides against all
wants, avoids irritations and jealousies, economizes
happiness, saving those little odds and ends
that others waste. How she employs the faculties
of all, brings the virtue of each into operation,
and if she cannot cure, shelters faults. She
shows each in the best light, and is herself the
light that shines on all, — the sun of her home.”
“Do not flatter, Harry,” said Mr. Barclay, in a
voice, however, which proved that he felt this
was no flattery.
“O, Mr. Barclay,” said Emily, “we must
sometimes speak out our hearts, or they would
burst!”
“It is testimony, not flattery,” added Harry.
Chapter XII. CROSS-PURPOSES.
“The worst fault you have is to be in love.”
A letter was one morning brought to Mrs.
Barclay, while she was sitting amidst her family.
She read it twice over, and then without speaking
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laid it on the table. “No bad news, I hope,
mother?” said Alice inquiringly.
“It ought to be good news, Alice, and yet I
am afraid we shall all feel as if it were very bad.”
Mrs. Barclay took up the letter, and read it
aloud. It proved to be an application from a Carolinian
lady, to whom Emily had been recommended
as a governess. There were three young
children to be instructed, and very generous terms
were offered. Mrs. Barclay made no comments.
“I am sure I ought to be very glad and thankful,”
said Emily, in a voice that indicated how far
I ought was from I am.
“Glad and thankful,” echoed Alice, “for an
opportunity to leave us, just as we have all come
to be so happy here! No indeed, Emily, you
shall not leave us now.”
“Now nor ever,” thought Wallace, “if I can
prevent it.” He looked eagerly towards his mother,
in the hope she would put in a discouraging
word; but she did not speak, and he ventured to
say, “It is very little in the lady's favor, that she
asks Emily to go to the South at this season.”
“That is quite conclusive against the project,
mother,” said Charles.
“Neither you nor Charles, Wallace,” replied
their mother, “seems to have noticed that the lady
states her residence to be a very healthy one, on
a plantation.”
The young men had received but one impression
from the letter. The word plantation struck
on Effie's ear; “What, mother,” she exclaimed,
“let Emily go and live where there are slaves! O
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no, that we will all vote against; won't you,
Alice? and you? and you?” she continued, addressing
each person in the room.
The vote was unanimous till she came to her
mother, who said, “I am afraid we should always
find some good reason against Emily's leaving
us.”
“And why need she ever leave us, mother?
Why not stay and teach us?”
“I have already taught you, dear Effie, all I
know.”
“Ah, but now we are at Greenbrook, you can
have a new scholar.”
“Who, Effie?” asked Emily, little aware of
the toils into which she was falling.
“Charles.”
“And what in the world can I teach Charles?”
“What you have taught all the rest of us, —
what you teach best, — and without seeming to
try, too.”
“And what can that be, Effie?”
The little girl threw her arms round Emily's
neck, and, looking fondly in her face, replied,
“To love you.”
Wallace was standing by the window, apparently
absorbed in playing with a pet squirrel which
Charles had tamed for Emily. His eye involuntarily
turned towards her, and encountered hers.
A blush suffused her cheek. Wallace flung the
squirrel from him. “Did Bob bite you?” asked
Effie, observing the sudden change of her brother's
countenance.
“Yes, — no, no,” he replied, and hurried out
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of the room in no very tranquil frame of mind.
He went he knew not where, and did he knew
not what, till Alice ran down the steps of the piazza,
exclaiming, “Wallace! Wallace! don't
break off those carnations; don't you see how
nicely Emily has shaded them from the sun to
preserve them as long as possible? O what a pity
you have broken this off! Charles has taken such
pains to have it as fine as possible for Emily.”
“For Emily?”
There was a world of meaning in this concise
inquiry, but Alice did not comprehend it. “Yes,
for Emily. What is there strange in that? Emily
is very fond of carnations.”
The impetuosity which had appeared in outbreakings
of temper in Wallace's childhood, was
now manifest in decision, energy, and ardent affections.
Natural qualities may be modified by
moral education, not extirpated; — the stream
will flow, its course may be directed. “Come
with me down this walk, Alice,” said her brother;
“I have something to ask you, and you must answer
me frankly.” His voice became tremulous,
but he proceeded; “Alice, you girls have a way
of finding out one another's feelings; — I do not
ask you to betray confidence, but you may have
observed something, — there may have been some
accidental betrayal, — tell me at once, Alice.”
“Tell you what, Wallace?”
“You certainly understand me.”
“Indeed I do not.”
“Then in plain English, do you think Emily— ”
he stammered, but in plain English it
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must be spoken, and he proceeded, “has any
partiality for Charles?”
“Wallace!” exclaimed Alice, on whom the
truth now for the first time glimmered.
“Answer me truly, my dear sister; all I want
is, to know the truth.”
“Why, — it is difficult to judge of Emy; she
has a way of always laughing about such matters.
She is not in the least sentimental, you know.”
“Not foolishly sentimental, but she has strong
feelings.”
“Very strong.”
“Then if she has a preference, I am sure she
must at some time have betrayed it.”
“Not of course, Wallace. I am sure your
feelings are strong enough, and yet I never suspected— ”
“There were reasons for that; but girls are
always confidential. — Come, Alice, do put me
out of misery.”
“If I could, Wallace.”
“Then you do think she loves Charles?”
“Yes, I think she cares more for him than for
any one else.”
“I don't believe it!” The exclamation was
involuntary. Wallace was ashamed; he tried to
keep down his rising heart. “I beg your pardon,
Alice,” he said; “but — I may have been
dreaming; what indications have you observed?”
“When we are together, she talks ten times as
much of Charles, as of you.”—“That is no proof,”
thought Wallace. — “When he was at Greenbrook
and we in town,” continued Alice, “we
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agreed to write to him alternately; her letter was
always ready in time, filled and crossed, and often
she wrote in my turn. Charles used to say it
was like being at home to get one of her letters.
To be sure there was nothing particular in them;
they were such as a sister might write.”
Wallace thought over the only two letters he
had ever received from Emily. Snatches of letters
they were, rambling and indefinite; but he
thought they were not such as a sister would
write, and be felt a painful sort of triumph in
thinking they were not. “A little circumstance
occurred not long ago,” continued Alice, “that,
as I thought, let me into the real state of Emily's
feelings. The evening Harry and I made our
engagement, we were walking on the Battery all
the evening. The family believed I had been
walking with Charles, and I did not feel like undeceiving
them; but when I went to our room
with Emily, it seemed as if my heart would burst
if I did not speak. I threw my arms around her
neck, and called her my future sister. She misunderstood
me; I felt her tears on my cheek, and
she said something about my being too good, and
Charles too good, and all that; so I was forced
to relieve her embarrassment, and tell plainly my
meaning. I believed she had only anticipated a
little, for I was sure Charles loved her; are you
not, Wallace?”
“Yes, Alice, too sure; but I have been strangely
blind, — it never occurred to me till within the
last two hours. I am not equally sure that — ”
Emily loves him, he would have added; but he
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could not communicate the reasons of his long
cherished opinions, or rather hopes, on the subject
of Emily's affections, and he abruptly turned
away and left his sister to solitary and painful reflection.
“Poor Wallace!” she thought, “it
would have been far easier for Charles to have
gotten over it; his feelings are so much more
gentle and manageable.”
Hour after hour passed away while Wallace unconsciously
wandered along the river's bank, revolving
the past, balancing every trifling circumstance
to which love, and hope, and fear gave
weight, and painfully meditating on the future, —
on what he could do and what he ought to do; the
ought soon becomes the could in a virtuous mind.
Circumstances had led the brothers very innocently
into the indulgence of these jarring hopes.
Nothing was more natural, than that an intimate
intercourse with a girl very lovely in person and
character, and attractive in manners, should excite
their affections, and that affection in the boy
should ripen into love in the man. It was not so
natural that each should indulge his own hopes,
form his own plans, and never suspect the sentiments
of his brother. For the last half dozen
years, Charles had been for nine months of every
year at Greenbrook, and when the brothers were
together, they found the frank and affectionate
intercourse of the family a safe and convenient
shelter for their private feelings. Neither of them
had for a long time had a distinct purpose, or
been himself aware of the existence of an all-controlling
sentiment. But, for a few months
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past, they had been waiting for the moment when
their affairs should warrant the disclosure of their
attachment, or any crisis (on the brink of which
lovers always seem to themselves to be) should
render it inevitable. In the mean time, Emily's
entrance on her vocation of teacher had been, on
some pretext, deferred from spring to fall, and from
fall to spring. The truth was, none of the family
could bear to part with her, and even Mr. and
Mrs. Barclay were for once betrayed into the delay
of a most excellent plan in favor of a present
indulgence.
Wallace passed a sleepless night, the first in
his healthy and happy life. It was not profitless;
for, during the silent watches, he firmly resolved
upon an immediate and frank disclosure to
Charles. This he believed would prevent, as far
as it was possible to prevent them, all future regrets
and unhappiness. He could not bear to
risk, for a moment, that the harmony and sweet
affections, which had made their home a heaven,
should give place to suspicion, secret jealousy,
selfish competition, and possible hatred. “No,”
he said; “He who has commanded us to pluck
out an eye if it offend us, will enable me or
Charles to root out an affection which we have
both innocently, though one of us blindly, cherished.”
Wallace was (what all are not) true to the
resolution formed in solitude; and early the next
day he sought an interview with Charles. At
first it was embarrassed and painful. Charles's
delicate and somewhat reserved nature was
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shocked by having the secret he had so long cherished,
known and canvassed. But by degrees the
hearts of both were opened. Their mutual confidence
called forth all the vigor of their mutual
affections. The noblest powers of their nature
were roused; and such was the glow of fraternal
love, that each felt that success with Emily would
be almost as hard to bear as failure. Emily's
preference must of course decide the matter, and
the sooner that decision was known, they felt to
be the better. Charles proposed that the whole
affair should be confided to their mother, and
that she should ascertain for them which way Emily's
heart leaned. Wallace was disinclined to
this. He had always thought he would have no
medium, not even his mother, in an affair of this
sort. “If denial comes, it does not, Charles,
matter how; but if acceptance, I would first
know it from Emily's eye and lips.”
The sensation that darted through Charles's
bosom at this expression of Wallace, made him
realize the precipice on which they stood, and
stimulated his desire to have his fate decided at
once. He again urged the mode he had suggested.
“Let Emily,” he said, “know the happiness
she bestows, but never the pain she inflicts.
If I am to be her brother, Wallace, I would
not for worlds that the frank affection she has
shown me” (“ah, how misinterpreted!” he
thought,) “should be withdrawn, or shackled with
reserve, — a source of suffering to us both, to us
all.”
Wallace at length acquiesced, and felt and said
that Charles was always more considerate, more
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generous than he. The brothers parted, and
Charles hastened with his painful confidence to
his mother. The mother, always ready to bear
her part in the hopes and fears, success and disappointments,
of her children, received his communication
with tears of sympathy. But over
every other feeling, — regret that the catastrophe
had not been foreseen and avoided, anxiety for
the future, and perplexity with the present, — the
holy joy of the Christian mother triumphed; and
from the depths of her heart arose a silent, fervent
thanksgiving, that the religious principle of
her sons had swayed their affections and been
victorious over the temptations of the most subtile
of the human passions.
The application of the southern lady was the
theme on which Mrs. Barclay began her soundings
of Emily; but how she discharged her delicate
office, need not be told. A woman's management
on such occasions is so marked by the addroitness
and sagacity manifested by the lower
orders of creation, that we might call it by the
name we give to the inspiration of the bee and
the bird, and say that one woman instinctively
finds the clew that leads through the labyrinth of
another's heart.
When Charles again met his mother, he read
his fate in her face. “It is as I expected,” she
said; “Emily herself asks `how it could be otherwise.”
'
“Mother! you did not tell her that I — ”
“No, no, my son, she does not suspect the nature
of your feelings; but, as I was going to tell
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you, she said, amid the blushes and tears of her
confession, that she feared it was very wrong, received
as she had been into the family, to indulge
such an affection for Wallace; but she could not
help it. If he had gone away, as you did, she
should have loved him as she does you and her
brother Harry; but to be with him every day, and
every day find him more and more — ”
“You need not check yourself, mother; I can
bear to hear why she loves Wallace.”
Mrs. Barclay was proceeding; — Charles again
interrupted her. “Never mind, dear mother;
some other time I will hear the rest;” and he
left her, to still in solitude the throbbings of his
heart. Something must be allowed to human infirmity.
Charles had fortunately a pretext of
business, and in a few hours, without again seeing
his brother or Emily, he was on his way to a
distant part of the state.
Those hours which should have been the happiest
of Wallace's life were clouded; but the
clouds which are fraught with generous consideration
for another are better than sunshine. It is
good to have the joy of success tempered, the expectations
of youth abated; and above all it is
good, by personal and even bitter experience, to
have our convictions strengthened, that the highest
and only stable happiness results from an obedience
to the sense of duty. Even in the first intoxicating
moments of assured affection, the certainty
of possessing Emily's love was less to Wallace
than the certainty of having preserved his
brother's unimpaired.
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Charles's trial was the severest. His fondest
hopes were suddenly annihilated. Emily, who
unconsciously had shaped the plan of his life, and
lit up his futurity, was lost to him for ever; but
even the possession of her pure and tender heart,
lovely and beloved as she was, could not have inspired
the holy emotions he felt, from the assurance
that his love for Wallace was not abated one
jot, — that he could contemplate his happiness,
not only without a pang of envy, but with gratitude
to Heaven, that what was denied to him had
fallen to his brother's lot.
Whence came this self-conquest? whence this
power over the most selfish and exorbitant of the
passions? and at that period of life when passion
is strongest and reason weakest? It came from
a home cultivation of the affections that spring
from the natural and unchanging relations. It
came from what the Apostle calls a “mystery,”
the knitting of hearts together in love; and alas!
to a great portion of the world, the power of domestic
love is still a mystery. The vital principle
of the religion of Christ, the pervading element
of the divine nature, love, was the informing
spirit of the Barclays' home. This inspired
their exertions, and their self-restraints, and that
generous sympathy which enabled each to transfuse,
as it were, his existence into a brother's, —
to weep when he wept, and to rejoice when he
rejoiced.
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Chapter XIII. FAMILY LETTERS.
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Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain,
These simple blessings of the lowly train;
To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm than all the gloss of art.
Goldsmith.
To the younger members of the Greenbrook
family, the announcement of Wallace's and Emily's
engagement was unmixed joy. “They had
always,” they said, “loved her like a sister, and
now she was going to be their own sister. Horrid
it would have been, to have had Emily go
and live on a plantation among slaves. Mother
had always said that Emily would make
one of the best little housewives in the world,
if she did not make a wonderful teacher, and
they guessed mother knew all the while what was
going to happen; but that was nothing strange,
mother knew every thing! And how nicely father
fixed it to have Wallace and Harry Norton
partners.” — They wondered “if father meant that
all should come out so like the end of a story-book
when he took Harry and Emily home! And what
would Mr. Anthon say now? O, he would say it
was all father's luck! Poor Mr. Anthon! To
be sure he had bad luck enough, as he called it.
John such a drunkard, and Dick acting so shockingly,
and Anne quarrelling with her mother-in-law.”
Thus the children dwelt on results; older
heads may speculate on causes.
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Charles, in due time, returned to Greenbrook.
His gentle and still affectionate manner (perhaps
even more than usually so) betrayed no secret
to Emily; but his increased thoughtfulness and
occasional embarrassment did not escape his
mother's vigilant eye. He was himself conscious
of a weight on his spirits that he could not throw
off, — an accustomed and delightful stimulus
was withdrawn. It was the change from a day
of sunshine and ethereal atmosphere to leaden
skies and east winds. He fully realized
that it was easy for a mind formed upon right
principles to resolve upon a right course, but
very hard to cure the same mind of long indulged
habits. There was not a walk, a view,
a tree, or plant at Greenbrook, that did not tend
by its associations to keep alive feelings which it
was now his duty and most earnest endeavour to
extinguish. Human virtues partake of the human
constitution, — they are weak, and need external
aid and support; the true wisdom is to
find this out and apply the remedy in time.
After a conflict of weeks and months, Charles
came to the conclusion that a change of climate
is sometimes as essential to the mind, as the
body; and having frankly disclosed his reasons to
his parents, he announced to them his determination,
with their approbation, to remove to Ohio.
The Greenbrook farm, he said, was no more
than his father could manage without him at
present, and the younger boys were coming on
to take his place; for himself, he should find the
excitement he wanted, in the activity and novelty
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of a new state; and while he remembered his
home, he should be stimulated to do some good,
if he failed in getting all he hoped. He had
communicated his plans to Wallace, and had received
a letter from him filled with the most
affectionate expostulations, but they had not
changed his views. Charles was so important to
the home circle, he filled so many places which
nobody else could fill, that the whole family protested
against his leaving them. His father and
mother, after much anxious deliberation, were
the first to acquiesce in his wishes. His removal
was the greatest disappointment they had
ever met with, but, once having made up their
minds that it was best for him, they bore it
cheerfully. Self-sacrifice is so common in good
parents, that it strikes us no more than the falling
of the rain, or the shining of the sun, or any
other natural result of the beneficent arrangements
of Providence.
Charles's departure was loudly lamented by the
good people of Greenbrook. They liberally used
the right which all social country gossips assume
on such occasions, and “judged it a poor move for
such a young man as Charles Barclay to leave
his privileges in New England to rough it in the
West. However, it was nothing strange; all the
boys caught the western fever now-a-days.” But
deeply as Charles regretted the “privileges” of
a more advanced state of society, and above all
the “privilege” of his blessed home, he had no
reason to regret the vigorous resolution he had
taken, when he found his mind recovering its
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cheerful tone, without which all the “privileges”
that the happiest son of New England ever toiled
for and enjoyed, would have been unavailing to
him. The healthful state of his mind, the “prosperity
of his heart,” is best exhibited in the following
extract from a letter to his mother.
“I have profited by father's rule to drive out
private and personal griefs by devotion to the
well-being of others. Life is indeed too short to
be wasted in brooding over disappointment, and
I am convinced there is much more of selfishness
than of sensibility in this brooding. The affections
are given to us for activity and diffusion, — they
are the fire to warm, not to consume us. I am
a living witness, dear mother, against the corrupting
eloquence we meet with in novels and
poetry to persuade us that true love is an unconquerable
passion; I did love long and truly,
as you know. My affections were worthily
placed, and at first, I confess, I thought it impossible
they should ever cease to be exclusively
devoted to that one object. I remember the
night before I left you, when I was expressing
my dread of the solitariness that awaited me at
my new residence, father said, `O my son,
you will soon have a family around you.' I
replied querulously; `I never shall have a family!
' and I secretly wondered that father could
so have forgotten the feelings of his youth, as to
think that I could. Now I look forward to such
an event as possible; my heart is free.
“I have much reason to rejoice that I came
here; there is no time in these busy new
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settlements to look back. The `go ahead' principle
keeps hands and heads at work, — and hearts
too, dear mother. Do not imagine that in our
eager devotion to physical wants, we forget what
belongs to the lasting and nobler part of our nature.
I have literally made a circulating library of
the books father gave me; and if your household
maxim holds good here, and `the proof of
the pudding is in the eating,' the eagerness
with which they are devoured is a proof that
they were well selected. I have built a small
log-house, with two apartments, at a short distance
from the good family where I get my
meals. One of the apartments is my bed-room,
and I assure you it has quite a home look. A
little pine table in the corner of the room is
covered with the merino cloth which Mary and
Haddy embroidered with braids for me; there is
my flute, my port-folio, and the little pile of books
that was always on my table at home, — then
the quilt the girls made of bits of their pretty
frocks is on my bed, — the curtains Emily
hemmed and fringed before my windows. All
these home memorials, with your sweet picture
hanging over the fire-place, do confoundedly blur
my eyes sometimes.
“The other apartment is, at present, a reading-room.
I have induced the young men to join
me in a society which we call (you know we are
fond of grand names in these parts) Philomathian.
Our Philos subscribe for half a dozen
newspapers, and three periodicals. They remain
a week at the reading-room where we meet
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evenings and rainy days. These meetings keep
alive a social spirit, and a barter trade of our
ideas, by which all gain, some more and some
less. All gain, I say, and so it is; for the most
humble has something peculiar in his observations
and experience, by which those that are
more highly endowed, and far better instructed,
may profit. After a certain time our papers, &c.
are put in circulation for the benefit of the
womankind. My little reading-room serves another
purpose that will particularly please you,
mother. We meet in it every Sabbath morning
for religious service. I am reader to our little
congregation. I find the sermons and other devotional
books father selected, admirably adapted
to our purpose. I began with reading prayers;
but our settlers, being chiefly from New England,
prefer an extempore service. At first I felt
bashful at being their organ, and, I confess it
with shame, I thought more of those who were
around me than of Him whom I addressed; but
I soon learned to abstract myself, and to enter
into the spirit of my petitions. We are but an
extended family circle, perfectly acquainted with
each other's condition, and feeling one another's
wants; after our service we have a Sunday
school. I adopt my father's mode of passing
the afternoon as far as practicable here. I visit
the sick and the afflicted, and, where there are
no such paramount claims, I impart what religious
and moral instruction I can to the children,
and to the ignorant who are but grown-up children.
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“Tell father the slips of fruit-trees he gave
me, are thriving on many a sunny patch, —
growing while we are sleeping; and pray tell the
girls, that their last package of flower seeds arrived
safely, and they have come up famously. Eve had
not a finer soil for her culture in Paradise than
we have here. Flowers grow like weeds, and
I know many a village in old Massachusetts,
shame to them! that has not so many of these
luxuries as there are in our little settlement
which has been opened to the sun but three
years.
“I assisted two little barefoot girls to-day to
train a native clematis (a pretty species) over the
logs of their hut. There is a honeysuckle and
white rose clambering over my window, that came
from slips I cut, — you know where, mother, the
morning I left home. How soon may we plant
a paradise in the wilds, if we will! The physical,
moral, and intellectual soil is ready; it only
wants the spirit of cultivation.
“That honeysuckle and white rose! They
have recalled images of the past, but they are
no longer spectres that trouble, but spirits that
soothe me. How I wish I could be with you on
the happy occasion at hand. I cannot, so there
is an end of wishing; but pray tell Wallace, with
my best love, that I rejoice in his joy, and have
no feeling that may not exist when all marrying
and giving in marriage is past, and we meet, as
I humbly trust we shall, a family in heaven.”
The happy occasion alluded to by Charles,
was the double marriage of Alice and Harry
Norton, Wallace and Emily.
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“What a pity you were not here, dear
Charles,” wrote Mary Barclay to her brother,
“we had such a delightful wedding. At first it
was decided it should be quite private. Emily
wished it so, and mother rather preferred it; but
Alice, who, as father says, always goes for `the
greatest happiness to the greatest number,' said
that she was to be married but once in her life,
and that those who could get pleasure from looking
at her, were quite welcome to it. The girls
were dressed sweetly, but unexpensively; for
father, you know, thinks a wedding a poor excuse
for extravagance, or, to express it as he would,
a woman is unfit to assume the most serious
cares and responsibilities of life till she better
estimates the uses of money than to invest it in
blond and pearls, — a common rigging nowadays,
even for portionless brides. Our brides
looked pretty enough, in all conscience, in white
muslins and natural flowers. Father and mother
had a long talk with us the evening before, and
we did all our crying then, and one and all resolved
we would have nothing but smiles at the
wedding. Good old Mr. Marvin performed the
ceremony. He was rather long and particular,
and too plain spoken; but his age and right intentions
were a warrant for his freedom, and his
earnest feeling made amends for all. You remember
his `narrative style' in prayer. He told
our whole family history, and such a `patriarch'
as he made of father! such a `mother in Israel'
of mother! and such `plants and polished cornerstones'
of their sons and daughters! There was
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an allusion that shocked us all to poor old Mr.
Norton, and father's Christian conduct towards
him, but happily it was so wrapped in Scripture
phraseology, that I doubt if any understood it
but such as were acquainted with the particulars.
But when he spoke of the blessed issues of that
painful business, —of the gentle Ruth and faithful
Jacob (these were the names by which he designated
Harry and Emily) who had been trained
under our roof in the `nurture and admonition of
the Lord,' all hearts were touched. The only
missing member of the family, dear Charles, was
not forgotten, and we all joined in the earnest
petition that the spirit of your father's house
might rest on your new home; and that the
waste places around you might blossom as the
rose.
“After the ceremony, the crying (alas, for our
previous resolution!), the kissing, and the wishing
were over, a tower of wedding-cake was set on
the centre-table, wreathed, as Emily had requested,
with roses and honeysuckles from those you
planted for her. In spite of the searching and
scrambling among the ready candidates for future
weddings, little Effie got the ring. Fortune pets
her as well as we. However, I suspected this
was a contrivance of Biddy's, whose true Irish
love of merry-making has been all called forth
on this occasion. By the way, Biddy is an inexpressible
comfort since we came to Greenbrook,
where the family work is so much increased.
She takes all the burden of it from Martha, and
is as dutiful to her as a child could be. Martha
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says herself, she is paid a hundred fold for all
the trouble she had with her.
“The brides leave us to-morrow, and I am
so busy that I must finish my letter with half our
wedding festivities untold, — how they danced
while I played, — how Captain Fisher, who in
his youth was drummer in a militia company,
sent home for his old drum and played en amateur
an accompaniment to the `White Cockade,' and
`Haste to the wedding!' — how the kind old people,
who used to think dancing a sin, looked on
complacently. They grow wiser, and we more
rational.
“How lonesome we shall be to-morrow! O
dear me! I wish, as Willie used to say, we had
`a big banging house where all my peoples as
loves one another could live together and not
make a noise.' Do you remember, Charles?
It seems but yesterday that we all laughed at this
outbreak of the loving little fellow's heart, and
now he is getting a bread, and looking mannish.
Well, the accomplishment of Willie's wish is reserved
for a happier condition of existence, when
we shall no more have to toil in cities, or go to
the forests to make new abodes. Then, dear
Charles, shall we dwell together in one home.
Till then, then, yours, dear brother,
“most affectionately,
“Mary Barclay.”
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Chapter XIV. THE CONCLUSION.
“Thy mercy bids all nature bloom;
The sun shines bright and man is gay;
Thine equal mercy spreads the gloom,
That darkens o'er his little day.”
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“What man is there that liveth and shall not
see death?” The import of these words comes
home at some time or other to every bosom.
Some think of death at a moment of sudden
alarm, in seasons of sickness, or in the silent
watches of the night, when the ministry of the
senses is suspended, and the consciousness of
mortality presses on the spirit. But should not the thought of death be associated with the
necessary pursuits and cheerful occupations of
life? Not introduced, like the skeleton at the
Egyptian feasts, to mingle gloom with gayety, but
to give a just coloring and weight to the affairs
of life by enabling us to estimate them in relation
to this great circumstance of existence, habitually
to associate life with immortality, — all
action here with accountability and retribution
hereafter.
“Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”
If a heathen, to whom the grave was still
wrapped in silence and darkness, could, from the
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mere consideration that death was inevitable,
be supposed to await it with firmness, what
ought we to expect from the Christian, for whom
life and immortality have been brought to light, —
who believes that there is a place prepared for
him in his Father's house?
Does he believe that death is but a brief passage,
a “circumstance” of life? that there is no
death to those who believe in Jesus? that the
mortal shall put on immortality? that death shall
be swallowed up in victory? If these are not
words, but articles of faith, why does death bring
such dismay and gloom into the home of the
Christian? If Jesus were now to appear to his
disciples, would he not have much reason to say
to them, “O ye of little faith”?
Early in the autumn following the marriage of
his children, Mr. Barclay returned from his usual
daily walk to the village post-office with a letter
in his hand. His face indicated anxiety and
sorrow. Every eye was fixed on him for explanation.
He gave the letter to Mrs. Barclay, and
turning to the children said, “Your brother
Charles is ill with a fever.”
“Very ill, father?”
“Yes. Effie; and he had been so for ten days
when the letter was written.”
“O father! and we have all been so happy
when Charles perhaps was” — “dying,” she
would have said, but there are words hard to
apply to those whose lives seem to be a portion of
our own.
“Do not you think, Effie, it would have
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grieved Charles to have abated one particle of your
happiness?”
“O yes, it would, father, Charles always
loved to have us glad, and never sorry, and he
always made us glad. But we shall never be glad
again if he dies.”
“Never, Effie?” Her father took her on his
knee. “And what would Charles think, if we
never could be happy because it had pleased our
heavenly Father to take him a little before us to
heaven?”
“I don't know, sir, what people think in
heaven, but I know what we feel on earth. Do
you think he will die, father?” she added very
softly, and laying her cheek to her father's.
“I fear he must, my child.” The children
whose eyes were on their father, as if awaiting a
sentence of life or death, could no longer restrain
their tears Mary and her mother were eagerly
reading the letter. They too thought Charles must
die, and when they had read through the physician's
statement, and saw at the end of it, “God's
will be done,” written almost illegibly in Charles's
hand, Mary hid her face on her mother's heaving
bosom. Mr. Barclay took the letter and showed
the line to the younger children. “Let us, too,
my dear children, try honestly to say `God's will
be done.' Let us all bow down before our
Father in heaven, and ask Him to give us the
spirit of obedience and faith, that we may quietly
submit to his holy will.” They all gathered
around him, and as they knelt with him they
caught the spirit of his expressions of trust, —
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they felt what it was to be the children of light,
and not of darkness, — of the light from heaven
which shines through the gospel of Christ.
Two days must pass before farther intelligence
could be received. In the mean time the sad
news spread through Greenbrook, and a general
sympathy pervaded the little community. Charles's
gracious qualities had commended him to all
hearts, and each family felt as if it were menaced
with a calamity. When the stage-coach arrived,
by which, as all knew, news must come from
Charles, and Mr. Barclay was seen riding towards
the post-office, many an eager and tearful eye
followed him. “The mail is not opened, sir,”
said the post-master. By this time several persons
had left their business, and were approaching
to get the first intelligence “O that I could
get my letter and be away with it,” thought Mr.
Barclay, reluctant, as every delicate person is,
to betray emotion before observers. He was recalled
to his better feelings.
“Shall I hold your horse for you, Mr. Barclay?”
asked a voice almost for the first time
low and gentle.
“Thank you, Dow,” he replied; and giving
him the bridle, he dismounted. Dow was a demioutlaw,
who lived on the outskirts of Greenbrook.
Every man's face was set against him, and his
against every man except Charles Barclay. And
why was he an exception? “Charles,” he said,
“had treated him like a human creature, had
done him many a good turn, and had many a
laugh with him;” and now Dow had come from
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his mountain-hut, and stood with his rifle in his
hand, and his shaggy cur at his side, awaiting
the first breath of news from Charles.
“What are you standing there for?” said the
post-master to a little girl on the door-step, “you
are in my light, child.”
“Mother wants to know, sir, what 's in the
letter.” “Mother” was the widow Ely, to whom
Charles had done many an unforgotten kindness.
“He 's got a letter, has not he?” exclaimed
old blind Palmer, whose quick ear caught the
breaking of the seal. “Hush, Meddler!” he
added, laying his hand on the head of the sagacious
little terrier Charles had given him, and
eagerly listening for the first word that should be
uttered. Mr. Barclay devoured the contents of
the letter at a glance, then threw it on the table,
mounted his horse, and galloped homeward.
“He is dead!” exclaimed one.
“I do not believe it,” said another.
“He has left the letter.” “He has left it for
us to read,” was the natural conclusion. They
did accordingly read the few lines announcing
that the fever had reached its crisis and the
patient was convalescing; and they were just
about to say “how strangely Mr. Barclay had
acted,” when they felt their voices broken by
their own emotions, and they realized how much
more difficult it might be to control an unexpected
joy, than a grief painfully prepared for.
After this came regular and encouraging accounts
from Charles; but the first letter from
himself, written with apparent effort, and at long
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intervals, checked their hopes. He expressed
with manly piety his deep gratitude for the experience
of his sickness. Over and over again,
he thanked his parents for his religious education.
He said that a tranquil reliance on the
mercy of God, and faith in the immortality revealed
by Christ and assured by his resurrection,
had never, for a moment, forsaken him. He had
but one inextinguishable earthly desire, and that
was to see home. “Home and Heaven, blended
together in his thoughts by day and his dreams by
night.” The letter was filled with the most tender
longings for a sight of his mother's face, —
his father, and each brother and sister, were
named in the most endearing language.
Soon after came a letter informing them that
symptoms of a rapid consumption had appeared,
which no longer admitted a doubt as to the termination
of the disease, and that he had determined
immediately to make an effort to reach
home. He intended to embark the next day for
New Orleans, whence he should go to New York,
where he hoped to meet his parents. The letter
indicated perfect firmness and tranquillity of mind.
It contained his wishes as to the disposition of his
effects. Some memorial was allotted to each member
of the family, not forgetting Martha and Biddy;
and some poor Greenbrook friends were remembered
by bequests adapted to their necessities.
At the end of a few weeks he arrived at New
York, where his parents were awaiting him, and
whence they conveyed him by slow stages to
Greenbrook. For the last few miles he was
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borne on a litter. His father, Wallace, and
Harry Norton aiding to carry, or walking beside
him, till his eyes rested on his beloved home,
where, on every side, were traces of his tasteful
and diligent hand.
Mary, with thoughtful care, had arranged his
room precisely as he left it. When they laid
him on his bed, no emotion was visible save a
slight fluttering at his heart. His face was
placid, and from his eye, which literally glowed,
there came “holy revealings.” He was alone with
his brother. “O Wallace,” he said, raising his
eye gratefully to Him who had granted his last
earthly prayer, “how pleasant it is to be here!
How I longed for this! O home, home! Open
wide those blinds, Wallace,” — he pointed to the
east window opposite his bed. “Now raise my
head and let it rest on your breast. I always
loved to look on those hills when the sun was
going down!”
It was one of those moments in the harmonies
of nature, when the outward world seems to
answer to the spirit. The valley was in deep
shadow, while the summit of the hills, rich with
the last softened, serious tints of autumn, was
lighted, — kindled, with the rays of the sun.
“The falling leaf! and the setting sun!” said
Charles, without expressing in words the relation
to his own condition so manifest. “Is it not
beautiful, Wallace?”
“Yes, very beautiful!” faintly echoed Wallace,
his eye fixed on his brother's pale, serene
brow, where it seemed to him there was a more
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beautiful light, — light from Heaven. As Wallace
gently rested his cheek on that brow, what a
contrast in the two faces, and yet what harmony!
His was rich with health and untouched vitality.
His eyes were suffused with tears, his brow contracted,
and his lips compressed with the effort
to subdue his struggling feelings. The beautiful
coloring of health had long and for ever forsaken
Charles. His cheeks were sunken, and there
were dark shadows in their cavities; but there
was an ineffable sweetness, a something like the
repose of satisfied infancy on his lips, and such
tranquillity on his smooth brow, that it seemed as
if the seal of eternal peace were set there. A
tear fell from Wallace's cheek on his. Charles
faintly smiled, and looking up he said, “Why are
you troubled, my dear brother? I am not, — kiss
me, Wallace. Thank God, dear brother, our
hearts have never been divided, — and yet we
were tried.”
“You were, — you were, Charles!” Wallace's
voice in spite of his efforts was choked.
“Well, Wallace, if you have children, bring
them up in that strict family love in which we
were brought up. `God is love,' and wherever
love is, there cannot be strifes and envyings.”
After a night of as much repose as could be
obtained in Charles's circumstances, and made
sweet to him by the sense of being under his
father's roof, each member of the family was
admitted to his apartment.
“This is too much happiness!” he said, as he
welcomed one after another to his bedside.
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He was too weak for sustained conversation;
but some seasonable, and never to be forgotten
word, he uttered at intervals. And inquiries were
to be made about the condition of the garden, and
the grounds, and the affairs of the Greenbrook
neighbourhood, all evincing that there was nothing
in his past pursuits and interests discordant
with his present circumstances. He wished his
sisters to bring in their work-baskets, (“I cannot
spare your hand, mother,” he said, pressing his
lips to it when he made the request,) that he
might see them at their usual employments, and
have more completely the feeling of being at
home.
This was the first time that death had come into
Mr. Barclay's habitation. He was received, not
as an enemy, but as an expected friend, — as the
messenger of God. The affections were not
cooled nor abated, (was this ever the effect of
religion?) and therefore their countenances were
sad, and their hearts sorrowful; but it was sorrow
without bitterness or repining. The visible domestic
chain was for the first time to be broken,—
a precious link for a time severed. The event
was attended with peculiar disappointment to Mr.
Barclay. Without favoritism there is often, perhaps
always, a closer tie to one child than to another.
There was a perfect sympathy between
Charles and his father. Their minds seemed
cast in the same mould. They had the same
views and purposes in life, — the same resolute,
steady application of their theories. Mr. Barclay
had relied on Charles to be the guide and
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support of his younger children. But God had ordered
it otherwise, and he submitted, as a Christian
should submit, in the spirit of love and of a
sound mind.
For two days Charles's disease seemed to be
suspended, and the energies of nature to be
called forth by moral causes; but on the third
day he appeared to be rapidly sinking away.
He could now only endure an upright position.
His head rested on his mother's bosom. Little
Effie, who read truly the fixed and intense looks
of the family, but who could not imitate their
calmness, shrunk behind her mother sobbing
aloud.
“Come here, Effie,” said her brother; “why
do you cry?”
“Because Charles” — she could not speak the
rest.
“Because I must die, Effie?”
“Yes,” she faintly answered.
“It is not hard to die, dear Effie, — not if we
love God, not if we believe the promises of Christ.
Come closer, Effie, I cannot speak loud; I am
going home, to a home like this, for love is there;
to a better home than this, for there, there is
neither sickness nor sorrow —”
“Rest now, my dear son,” said the tender
mother, as Charles paused from exhaustion and
closed his eyes.
“First, mother, let me tell Effie what is best of
all in that home. There is no sin there, Effie.”
“O, Charles, you never did any thing wrong
here.”
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“My dear little sister, I have done and felt
much that was wrong, and it is because I know
our God is a God of forgiveness and tender mercy,
that I hope to be accepted of Him. Kiss me
Effie, — be a good girl, and when you come to lie
on a sick bed you will have a great many pleasant
thoughts. Mary, my dear sister, do not grieve so,—
we shall very soon meet again. Alice, one
last word, my sister, — do not give your heart too
much to the world. Emily, my dear sister too,
we shall be one family in heaven.”
These and a few more short sentences (ever
after treasured in faithful hearts) Charles uttered
at long intervals; then, after a short pause, he
said, “I am very weak, — father, lay your hand
upon my breast, here, — what does this mean?”
His father perceived the tokens of dissolution;
“It is death, my dear child,” he replied.
Wallace offered to take his mother's place; —
“No,” said Charles, “my head is easiest on
mother's bosom; mother, you are not afraid to see
me die?”
“O, no, no, my son.”
“Nor am I afraid to die, mother; God hath
redeemed my soul from the power of the grave.
Father, pray with us.”
All felt their weakness, and the necessity for a
stronger than a human arm to lean upon, and they
bowed themselves in supplication to their Father
in heaven, as children in trouble fly to the arms
of their parents. The demands of the soul at
such a moment are pressing and few. They were
briefly expressed by the tender parent in the
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language of Scripture, — in words that in great exigences
are felt to convey the oracles of God.
“Thank you, dear father,” said Charles, “I
am better for this.” He looked around on each
one of the family and said, “It is hard parting,—
but there is sweet peace here.”
His voice had become more indistinct, and his
spirit seemed to rise from the home where it lingered
to that which awaited it. His lips still
moved as if in prayer. Suddenly he raised both
hands and said clearly, “Thanks be to God who
giveth —” the bodily organs were too feeble for
the parting soul. His father finished the sentence;
“Thanks be to God, who giveth us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Charles bowed his head. A few moments longer
they watched his ebbing life, and he was gone,
gently as a child falls asleep on its mother's bosom.
A deep, holy silence followed. It seemed
as if all heard the voice of God, “It is I, be not
afraid.”
But then came the mortal feeling, the sense of
separation, the poignant anguish of the parting
stroke, and sighs and tears broke forth. They
laid their cheeks to his, they kissed his forehead,
his hands, sobbing, “Charles! — dear, blessed
brother!”
The mother sat motionless, her son's head still
resting on her bosom. She could not bear to
change this last manifestation of his love to her.
Mr. Barclay gently disengaged him from her
arms, and laid him on the pillow, saying as he did
so, “He was our first-born!”
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What a world to the parent there is in these
few words! They recall the hours of brightest,
freshest hope, and deepest gratitude. They express
what has been dearest and happiest in life,
and when Mr. Barclay, after a moment's pause,
added in a firmer voice, “The Lord gave, — the
Lord hath taken away, — blessed be his name,”—
it was the meek Christian triumphing over the
man and father.
“My children,” he said, “it is finished. Now
let us unite our hearts in thanksgiving to God for
the life and death of your dear brother.” They
all knelt, while with a steady voice he poured out
his heart. Memory, kindled by love, lighted up
Charles's past life, and all, as it passed in review,
was the subject, not of lamentation that it was
gone, but of pious gratitude that it had been enjoyed.
He blessed God for the healthful infancy
of his son; for the obedience and docility of his
childhood; for the progressive knowledge and
virtue of his youth; and above all, for the faith in
Jesus that had given effect to his life, and peace
in the hour of death.
We have seen Mr. Barclay's home at its first
consecration; we have seen it when the tender
lights of blissful infancy fell upon it; when it was
filled with the life, activity, and hope of joyous
youth; when the poor and the orphan were gathered
under the wing of its succouring charities;
when pecuniary losses were met with tranquillity
and dignity; when social pleasures clustered
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round its hearth-stone; when sons and daughters
were given in happy marriage; but never have
we seen an hour so blessed, as that which bore
the assurance that death hath no sting, the grave
no victory, in the home of the Christian.
END.
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SCENES AND CHARACTERS ILLUSTRATING CHRISTIAN TRUTH.
“It we may judge of this series of little works from the two
numbers which have appeared, we should say, that it bids fair
to be eminently useful, and to realize whatever we might expect
from the high character of the writers engaged. * * *
They should be read. Whoever contributes at all to circulate
them, does good to the public.”
— Boston Daily Advertiser.
[figure description] Advertisement.[end figure description]
No. I. — TRIAL AND SELF-DISCIPLINE.
By the Author of “James Talbot,” “The Factory Girl,” &c.
“A very natural and faithful picture of the power of Christianity
to sustain the weak spirit through the trials of the
world.”
— Boston Daily Advertiser.
“If this little work is an earnest of those which are to follow,
it would be very safe to give them high praise before they
appear. It is written with great beauty, and perfectly accomplishes
its object.”
— Boston Observer.
“The title of this excellent tale is in no respect deceptive.
If the remaining numbers shall be executed with the same
skill, and the same deep religious feelings which pervade the
first, the little volumes will be an important addition to the
works which make religion attractive and lovely.”
— Chr. Reg.
No. II. — THE SKEPTIC. By the Author
of “The Well-Spent Hour,” “Words of Truth,” &c.
“This is an admirable little book, which no one will dip
into without reading through, and no one will read through
without being improved and delighted. The argumentative
portions are clear and forcible, and are naturally and skilfully
interwoven with the web of the story. The characters are
conceived and sustained wonderfully well, and never were the
Christian graces more beautifully and consistently displayed
than in the life and conversation of Alice Grey. We owe a
debt of gratitude to the writer who gives us so natural and true
a picture of the influence of Christianity upon our daily and
hourly duties, and of the mighty power which it bestows upon
the character and affections.”
— Boston Observer.
On the 20th of May, No. IV.
GLEAMS OF TRUTH,
OR SCENES FROM REAL LIFE.
By Joseph Tuckerman, D. D.
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 1789-1867 [1835], Home (James Munroe and Company, Boston) [word count] [eaf343].
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