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.

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

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was withdrawn.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

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

“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.

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

“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

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

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,