How strange this external habit of living! One
thinks how to stick in a pin, and how to tie a
string, — one busies one's self with folding robes,
and putting away napkins, the day after some
stroke that has cut the inner life in two, with the
heart's blood dropping quietly at every step.

Yet it is better so! Happy those whom stern
principle or long habit or hard necessity calls from
the darkened room, the languid trance of pain, in
which the wearied heart longs to indulge, and
gives this trite prose of common life, at which
our weak and wearied appetites so revolt! Mary
never thought of such a thing as self-indulgence;—
this daughter of the Puritans had her seed
within her. Aerial in her delicacy, as the blue-eyed
flax-flower with which they sowed their fields,
she had yet its strong fibre, which no stroke of
the flail could break; bruising and hackling only
made it fitter for uses of homely utility. Mary,
therefore, opened the kitchen-door at dawn, and,
after standing one moment to breathe the freshness,
began spreading the cloth for an early breakfast.
Mrs. Scudder, the mean while, was kneading
the bread that had been set to rise over-night;
and the oven was crackling and roaring with a
large-throated, honest garrulousness.

But, ever and anon, as the mother worked, she
followed the motions of her child anxiously.

“Mary, my dear,” she said, “the eggs are

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giving out; hadn't you better run to the barn and
get a few?”

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers. No
treatise on the laws of nervous fluids could have
taught Mrs. Scudder a better rôle for this morning,
than her tender gravity, and her constant expedients
to break and ripple, by changing employments, that
deep, deadly under-current of thoughts which she
feared might undermine her child's life.

Mary went into the barn, stopped a moment,
and took out a handful of corn to throw to her
hens, who had a habit of running towards her
and cocking an expectant eye to her little hand,
whenever she appeared. All came at once flying
towards her, — speckled, white, and gleamy with
hues between of tawny orange-gold, — the cocks,
magnificent with the blade-like waving of their
tails, — and, as they chattered and cackled and
pressed and crowded about her, pecking the corn,
even where it lodged in the edge of her little
shoes, she said, “Poor things, I am glad they enjoy
it!” — and even this one little act of love to
the ignorant fellowship below her carried away
some of the choking pain which seemed all the
while suffocating her heart. Then, climbing into
the hay, she sought the nest and filled her little
basket with eggs, warm, translucent, pinky-white
in their freshness. She felt, for a moment, the
customary animation in surveying her new

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treasures; but suddenly, like a vision rising before her,
came a remembrance of once when she and James
were children together and had been seeking eggs
just there. He flashed before her eyes, the bright
boy with the long black lashes, the dimpled cheeks,
the merry eyes, just as he stood and threw the hay
over her when they tumbled and laughed together,—
and she sat down with a sick faintness, and then
turned and walked wearily in.

CHAPTER XXII. THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.

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Mary returned to the house with her basket of
warm, fresh eggs, which she set down mournfully
upon the table. In her heart there was one conscious
want and yearning, and that was to go to the
friends of him she had lost, — to go to his mother.
The first impulse of bereavement is to stretch out
the hands towards what was nearest and dearest
to the departed.

Her dove came fluttering down out of the tree,
and settled on her hand, and began asking in his
dumb way to be noticed. Mary stroked his white
feathers, and bent her head down over them, till
they were wet with tears. “Oh, birdie, you live,
but he is gone!” she said. Then suddenly putting
it gently from her, and going near and throwing her
arms around her mother's neck, — “Mother,” she
said, “I want to go up to Cousin Ellen's.” (This
was the familiar name by which she always called
Mrs. Marvyn.) “Can't you go with me, mother?”

“My daughter, I have thought of it. I hurried

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about my baking this morning, and sent word to
Mr. Jenkyns that he needn't come to see about the
chimney, because I expected to go as soon as
breakfast should be out of the way. So, hurry,
now, boil some eggs, and get on the cold beef and
potatoes; for I see Solomon and Amaziah coming
in with the milk. They'll want their breakfast immediately.”

The breakfast for the hired men was soon arranged
on the table, and Mary sat down to preside
while her mother was going on with her baking, —
introducing various loaves of white and
brown bread into the capacious oven by means of
a long iron shovel, and discoursing at intervals
with Solomon, with regard to the different farming
operations which he had in hand for the
day.

Solomon was a tall, large-boned man, brawny
and angular; with a face tanned by the sun, and
graven with those considerate lines which New
England so early writes on the faces of her sons.
He was reputed an oracle in matters of agriculture
and cattle, and, like oracles generally, was
prudently sparing of his responses. Amaziah was
one of those uncouth overgrown boys of eighteen
whose physical bulk appears to have so suddenly
developed that the soul has more matter than she
has learned to recognize, so that the hapless individual
is always awkwardly conscious of too much

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limb; and in Amaziah's case, this consciousness
grew particularly distressing when Mary was in the
room. He liked to have her there, he said, — “but,
somehow, she was so white and pretty, she made
him feel sort o' awful-like.”

Of course, as such poor mortals always do, he
must, on this particular morning, blunder into precisely
the wrong subject.

“S'pose you've heerd the news that Jeduthun
Pettibone brought home in the `Flying Scud,'
'bout the wreck o' the `Monsoon'; it's an awful
providence, that 'ar' is, — a'n't it? Why, Jeduthun
says she jest crushed like an egg-shell”; — and with
that Amaziah illustrated the fact by crushing an
egg in his great brown hand.

Mary did not answer. She could not grow any
paler than she was before; a dreadful curiosity
came over her, but her lips could frame no question.
Amaziah went on: —

“Ye see, the cap'en he got killed with a spar
when the blow fust come on, and Jim Marvyn he
commanded; and Jeduthun says that he seemed
to have the spirit of ten men in him; he worked
and he watched, and he was everywhere at once,
and he kep' 'em all up for three days, till finally
they lost their rudder, and went drivin' right onto
the rocks. When they come in sight, he come
up on deck, and says he, `Well, my boys, we're
headin' right into eternity,' says he, `and our

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chances for this world a'n't worth mentionin', any on
us, but we'll all have one try for our lives. Boys,
I've tried to do my duty by you and the ship, —
but God's will be done! All I have to ask now
is, that, if any of you git to shore, you'll find my
mother and tell her I died thinkin' of her and
father and my dear friends.' That was the last
Jeduthun saw of him; for in a few minutes more
the ship struck, and then it was every man for
himself. Laws! Jeduthun says there couldn't nobody
have stood beatin' agin them rocks, unless
they was all leather and inger-rubber like him.
Why, he says the waves would take strong men
and jest crush 'em against the rocks like smashin'
a pie-plate!”

Here Mary's paleness became livid; she made a
hasty motion to rise from the table, and Solomon
trod on the foot of the narrator.

“You seem to forget that friends and relations
has feelin's,” he said, as Mary hastily went into
her own room.

Amaziah, suddenly awakened to the fact that
he had been trespassing, sat with mouth half open
and a stupefied look of perplexity on his face for
a moment, and then, rising hastily, said, “Well,
Sol, I guess I'll go an' yoke up the steers.”

At eight o'clock all the morning toils were over,
the wide kitchen cool and still, and the one-horse
wagon standing at the door, into which climbed

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Mary, her mother, and the Doctor; for, though
invested with no spiritual authority, and charged
with no ritual or form for hours of affliction, the
religion of New England always expects her minister
as a first visitor in every house of mourning.

The ride was a sorrowful and silent one. The
Doctor, propped upon his cane, seemed to reflect
deeply.

“Have you been at all conversant with the exercises
of our young friend's mind on the subject
of religion?” he asked.

Mrs. Scudder did not at first reply. The remembrance
of James's last letter flashed over her
mind, and she felt the vibration of the frail child
beside her, in whom every nerve was quivering.
After a moment, she said, — “It does not become us
to judge the spiritual state of any one. James's
mind was in an unsettled way when he left;
but who can say what wonders may have been
effected by divine grace since then?”

This conversation fell on the soul of Mary like
the sound of clods falling on a coffin to the ear
of one buried alive; — she heard it with a dull,
smothering sense of suffocation. That question to
be raised? — and about one, too, for whom she
could have given her own soul? At this moment
she felt how idle is the mere hope or promise of
personal salvation made to one who has passed

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beyond the life of self, and struck deep the roots
of his existence in others. She did not utter a
word; — how could she? A doubt, — the faintest
shadow of a doubt, — in such a case, falls on the
soul with the weight of mountain certainty; and
in that short ride she felt what an infinite pain
may be locked in one small, silent breast.

The wagon drew up to the house of mourning.
Cato stood at the gate, and came forward, officiously,
to help them out. “Mass'r and Missis
will be glad to see you,” he said. “It's a drefful
stroke has come upon 'em.”

Candace appeared at the door. There was a
majesty of sorrow in her bearing, as she received
them. She said not a word, but pointed with her
finger towards the inner room; but as Mary lifted
up her faded, weary face to hers, her whole soul
seemed to heave towards her like a billow, and
she took her up in her arms and broke forth into
sobbing, and, carrying her in, as if she had been
a child, set her down in the inner room and sat
down beside her.

Mrs. Marvyn and her husband sat together, holding
each other's hands, the open Bible between
them. For a few moments nothing was to be
heard but sobs and unrestrained weeping, and
then all kneeled down to pray.

After they rose up, Mr. Zebedee Marvyn stood
for a moment thoughtfully, and then said, — “If

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it had pleased the Lord to give me a sure evidence
of my son's salvation, I could have given
him up with all my heart; but now, whatever
here may be, I have seen none.” He stood in
an attitude of hopeless, heart-smitten dejection,
which contrasted painfully with his usual upright
carriage and the firm lines of his face.

Mrs. Marvyn started as if a sword had pierced
her, passed her arm round Mary's waist, with a
strong, nervous clasp, unlike her usual calm self,
and said, — “Stay with me, daughter, to-day! —
stay with me!”

“Mary can stay as long as you wish, cousin,”
said Mrs. Scudder; “we have nothing to call her
home.”

“Come with me!” said Mrs. Marvyn to Mary
opening an adjoining door into her bedroom, and
drawing her in with a sort of suppressed vehemence, —
“I want you! — I must have you!”

“Mrs. Marvyn's state alarms me,” said her husband,
looking apprehensively after her when the
door was closed; “she has not shed any tears,
nor slept any, since she heard this news. You
know that her mind has been in a peculiar and
unhappy state with regard to religious things for
many years. I was in hopes she might feel free
to open her exercises of mind to the Doctor.”

“Perhaps she will feel more freedom with Mary,”
said the Doctor. “There is no healing for such

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troubles except in unconditional submission to Infinite
Wisdom and Goodness. The Lord reigneth,
and will at last bring infinite good out of
evil, whether our small portion of existence be
included or not.”

After a few moments more of conference, Mrs.
Scudder and the Doctor departed, leaving Mary
alone in the house of mourning.

CHAPTER XXIII. VIEWS OF DIVINE GOVERNMENT.

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We have said before, what we now repeat, that
it is impossible to write a story of New England
life and manners for superficial thought or shallow
feeling. They who would fully understand the
springs which moved the characters with whom
we now associate must go down with us to the
very depths.

Never was there a community where the roots
of common life shot down so deeply, and were so
intensely grappled around things sublime and eternal.
The founders of it were a body of confessors
and martyrs, who turned their backs on the
whole glory of the visible, to found in the wilderness
a republic of which the God of Heaven and
Earth should be the sovereign power. For the
first hundred years grew this community, shut out
by a fathomless ocean from the existing world,
and divided by an antagonism not less deep
from all the reigning ideas of nominal Christendom.

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In a community thus unworldly must have
arisen a mode of thought, energetic, original, and
sublime. The leaders of thought and feeling were
the ministry, and we boldly assert that the spectacle
of the early ministry of New England was
one to which the world gives no parallel. Living
an intense, earnest, practical life, mostly tilling the
earth with their own hands, they yet carried on
the most startling and original religious investigations
with a simplicity that might have been
deemed audacious, were it not so reverential. All
old issues relating to government, religion, ritual,
and forms of church organization having for them
passed away, they went straight to the heart of
things, and boldly confronted the problem of universal
being. They had come out from the world
as witnesses to the most solemn and sacred of
human rights. They had accustomed themselves
boldly to challenge and dispute all sham pretensions
and idolatries of past ages, — to question
the right of kings in the State, and of prelates in
the Church; and now they turned the same bold
inquiries towards the Eternal Throne, and threw
down their glove in the lists as authorized defenders
of every mystery in the Eternal Government.
The task they proposed to themselves was that
of reconciling the most tremendous facts of sin
and evil, present and eternal, with those conceptions
of Infinite Power and Benevolence which

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their own strong and generous natures enabled
them so vividly to realize. In the intervals of
planting and harvesting, they were busy with the
toils of adjusting the laws of a universe. Solemnly
simple, they made long journeys in their
old one-horse chaises, to settle with each other
some nice point of celestial jurisprudence, and to
compare their maps of the Infinite. Their letters
to each other form a literature altogether unique.
Hopkins sends to Edwards the younger his scheme
of the universe, in which he starts with the proposition,
that God is infinitely above all obligations
of any kind to his creatures. Edwards replies
with the brusque comment, — “This is wrong;
God has no more right to injure a creature than
a creature has to injure God;” and each probably
about that time preached a sermon on his
own views, which was discussed by every farmer,
in intervals of plough and hoe, by every woman
and girl, at loom, spinning-wheel, or wash-tub.
New England was one vast sea, surging from
depths to heights with thought and discussion on
the most insoluble of mysteries. And it is to be
added, that no man or woman accepted any theory
or speculation simply as theory or speculation;
all was profoundly real and vital, — a foundation
on which actual life was based with intensest
earnestness.

The views of human existence which resulted

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from this course of training were gloomy enough
to oppress any heart which did not rise above
them by triumphant faith or sink below them by
brutish insensibility; for they included every moral
problem of natural or revealed religion, divested
of all those softening poetries and tender draperies
which forms, ceremonies, and rituals had
thrown around them in other parts and ages of
Christendom. The human race, without exception,
coming into existence “under God's wrath and
curse,” with a nature so fatally disordered, that,
although perfect free agents, men were infallibly
certain to do nothing to Divine acceptance until
regenerated by the supernatural aid of God's Spirit, —
this aid being given only to a certain decreed
number of the human race, the rest, with
enough free agency to make them responsible, but
without this indispensable assistance exposed to
the malignant assaults of evil spirits versed in
every art of temptation, were sure to fall hopelessly
into perdition. The standard of what constituted
a true regeneration, as presented in such
treatises as Edwards on the Affections, and others of
the times, made this change to be something so high,
disinterested, and superhuman, so removed from all
natural and common habits and feelings, that the
most earnest and devoted, whose whole life had
been a constant travail of endeavor, a tissue of
almost unearthly disinterestedness, often lived and

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died with only a glimmering hope of its attainment.

According to any views then entertained of the
evidences of a true regeneration, the number of
the whole human race who could be supposed as
yet to have received this grace was so small, that,
as to any numerical valuation, it must have been
expressed as an infinitesimal. Dr. Hopkins in many
places distinctly recognizes the fact, that the greater
part of the human race, up to his time, had
been eternally lost, — and boldly assumes the ground,
that this amount of sin and suffering, being the
best and most necessary means of the greatest
final amount of happiness, was not merely permitted,
but distinctly chosen, decreed, and provided
for, as essential in the schemes of Infinite Benevolence.
He held that this decree not only permitted
each individual act of sin, but also took measures
to make it certain, though, by an exercise of
infinite skill, it accomplished this result without
violating human free agency.

The preaching of those times was animated by
an unflinching consistency which never shrank
from carrying an idea to its remotest logical verge
The sufferings of the lost were not kept from
view, but proclaimed with a terrible power. Dr.
Hopkins boldly asserts, that “all the use which
God will have for them is to suffer; this is all the
end they can answer; therefore all their faculties

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and their whole capacities, will be employed and
used for this end...... The body can by
omnipotence be made capable of suffering the
greatest imaginable pain, without producing dissolution,
or abating the least degree of life or sensibility......
One way in which God will
show his power in punishing the wicked will be
in strengthening and upholding their bodies and
souls in torments which otherwise would be intolerable.”

The sermons preached by President Edwards on
this subject are so terrific in their refined poetry
of torture, that very few persons of quick sensibility
could read them through without agony; and
it is related, that, when, in those calm and tender
tones which never rose to passionate enunciation,
he read these discourses, the house was often filled
with shrieks and wailings, and that a brother
minister once laid hold of his skirts, exclaiming, in
an involuntary agony, “Oh! Mr. Edwards! Mr.
Edwards! is God not a God of mercy?”

Not that these men were indifferent or insensible
to the dread words they spoke; their whole
lives and deportment bore thrilling witness to their
sincerity. Edwards set apart special days of fasting,
in view of the dreadful doom of the lost, in
which he was wont to walk the floor, weeping and
wringing his hands. Hopkins fasted every Saturday.
David Brainerd gave up every refinement of

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civilized life to weep and pray at the feet of hardened
savages, if by any means he might save one.
All, by lives of eminent purity and earnestness, gave
awful weight and sanction to their words.

If we add to this statement the fact, that it was
always proposed to every inquiring soul, as an evidence
of regeneration, that it should truly and
heartily accept all the ways of God thus declared
right and lovely, and from the heart submit to Him
as the only just and good, it will be seen what
materials of tremendous internal conflict and agitation
were all the while working in every bosom.
Almost all the histories of religious experience of
those times relate paroxysms of opposition to God
and fierce rebellion, expressed in language which
appalls the very soul, — followed, at length, by
mysterious elevations of faith and reactions of
confiding love, the result of Divine interposition,
which carried the soul far above the region of the
intellect, into that of direct spiritual intuition.

President Edwards records that he was once in
this state of enmity, — that the facts of the Divine
administration seemed horrible to him, — and
that this opposition was overcome by no course of
reasoning, but by an “inward and sweet sense,”
which came to him once when walking alone in
the fields, and, looking up into the blue sky, he
saw the blending of the Divine majesty with a
calm, sweet, and almost infinite meekness.

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The piety which grew up under such a system
was, of necessity, energetic, — it was the uprousing
of the whole energy of the human soul, pierced
and wrenched and probed from her lowest depths
to her topmost heights with every awful life-force
possible to existence. He whose faith in God
came clear through these terrible tests would be
sure never to know greater ones. He might certainly
challenge earth or heaven, things present or
things to come, to swerve him from this grand allegiance.

But it is to be conceded, that these systems, so
admirable in relation to the energy, earnestness,
and acuteness of their authors, when received as
absolute truth, and as a basis of actual life, had,
on minds of a certain class, the effect of a slow
poison, producing life-habits of morbid action very
different from any which ever followed the simple
reading of the Bible. They differ from the New
Testament as the living embrace of a friend does
from his lifeless body, mapped out under the knife
of the anatomical demonstrator; — every nerve and
muscle is there, but to a sensitive spirit there is the
very chill of death in the analysis.

All systems that deal with the infinite are, besides,
exposed to danger from small, unsuspected
admixtures of human error, which become deadly
when carried to such vast results. The smallest
speck of earth's dust, in the focus of an infinite

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lens, appears magnified among the heavenly orbs
as a frightful monster.

Thus it happened, that, while strong spirits
walked, palm-crowned, with victorious hymns, along
these sublime paths, feebler and more sensitive
ones lay along the track, bleeding away in life-long
despair. Fearful to them were the shadows
that lay over the cradle and the grave. The
mother clasped her babe to her bosom, and looked
with shuddering to the awful coming trial of free
agency, with its terrible responsibilities and risks;
and, as she thought of the infinite chances against
her beloved, almost wished it might die in infancy.
But when the stroke of death came, and some
young, thoughtless head was laid suddenly low,
who can say what silent anguish of loving hearts
sounded the dread depths of eternity with the
awful question, Where?

In no other time or place of Christendom have
so fearful issues been presented to the mind.
Some church interposed its protecting shield; the
Christian born and baptized child was supposed
in some wise rescued from the curse of the fall,
and related to the great redemption, — to be a
member of Christ's family, and, if ever so sinful,
still infolded in some vague sphere of hope and
protection. Augustine solaced the dread anxieties
of trembling love by prayers offered for the dead,
in times when the Church above and on earth

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presented itself to the eye of the mourner as a
great assembly with one accord lifting interceding
hands for the parted soul.

But the clear logic and intense individualism
of New England deepened the problems of the
Augustinian faith, while they swept away all those
softening provisions so earnestly clasped to the
throbbing heart of that great poet of theology.
No rite, no form, no paternal relation, no faith or
prayer of church, earthly or heavenly, interposed
the slightest shield between the trembling spirit
and Eternal Justice. The individual entered eternity
alone, as if he had no interceding relation in
the universe.

This, then, was the awful dread which was constantly
underlying life. This it was which caused
the tolling bell in green hollows and lonely dells
to be a sound which shook the soul and searched
the heart with fearful questions. And this it was
that was lying with mountain weight on the soul
of the mother, too keenly agonized to feel that
doubt in such a case was any less a torture than
the most dreadful certainty.

Hers was a nature more reasoning than creative
and poetic; and whatever she believed bound
her mind in strictest chains to its logical results.
She delighted in the regions of mathematical
knowledge, and walked them as a native home,
but the commerce with abstract certainties fitted

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her mind still more to be stiffened and enchained
by glacial reasonings, in regions where spiritual
intuitions are as necessary as wings to birds.

Mary was by nature of the class who never
reason abstractly, whose intellections all begin in
the heart, which sends them colored with its warm
life-tint to the brain. Her perceptions of the same
subjects were as different from Mrs. Marvyn's as
his who revels only in color from his who is busy
with the dry details of mere outline. The one
mind was arranged like a map, and the other like
a picture. In all the system which had been explained
to her, her mind selected points on which
it seized with intense sympathy, which it dwelt
upon and expanded till all else fell away. The
sublimity of disinterested benevolence, — the harmony
and order of a system tending in its final
results to infinite happiness, — the goodness of
God, — the love of a self-sacrificing Redeemer, —
were all so many glorious pictures, which she revolved
in her mind with small care for their logical
relations.

Mrs. Marvyn had never, in all the course of
their intimacy, opened her mouth to Mary on the
subject of religion. It was not an uncommon incident
of those times for persons of great elevation
and purity of character to be familiarly known
and spoken of as living under a cloud of religious
gloom; and it was simply regarded as one more

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mysterious instance of the workings of that infinite
decree which denied to them the special illumination
of the Spirit.

When Mrs. Marvyn had drawn Mary with her
into her room, she seemed like a person almost in
frenzy. She shut and bolted the door, drew her
to the foot of the bed, and, throwing her arms
round her, rested her hot and throbbing forehead
on her shoulder. She pressed her thin hand over
her eyes, and then, suddenly drawing back, looked
her in the face as one resolved to speak something
long suppressed. Her soft brown eyes had
a flash of despairing wildness in them, like that
of a hunted animal turning in its death-struggle
on its pursuer.

“Mary,” she said, “I can't help it, — don't mind
what I say, but I must speak or die! Mary, I
cannot, will not, be resigned! — it is all hard,
unjust, cruel! — to all eternity I will say so! To
me there is no goodness, no justice, no mercy in
anything! Life seems to me the most tremendous
doom that can be inflicted on a helpless being!
What had we done, that it should be sent upon
us? Why were we made to love so, to hope so,—
our hearts so full of feeling, and all the laws
of Nature marching over us, — never stopping for
our agony? Why, we can suffer so in this life
that we had better never have been born!

“But, Mary, think what a moment life is! think

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of those awful ages of eternity! and then think
of all God's power and knowledge used on the
lost to make them suffer! think that all but the
merest fragment of mankind have gone into this,—
are in it now! The number of the elect is so
small we can scarce count them for anything!
Think what noble minds, what warm, generous
hearts, what splendid natures are wrecked and
thrown away by thousands and tens of thousands!
How we love each other! how our hearts weave
into each other! how more than glad we should
be to die for each other! And all this ends —
O God, how must it end? — Mary! it isn't my
sorrow only! What right have I to mourn? Is
my son any better than any other mother's son?
Thousands of thousands, whose mothers loved
them as I love mine, are gone there! — Oh, my
wedding-day! Why did they rejoice? Brides
should wear mourning, — the bells should toll for
every wedding; every new family is built over this
awful pit of despair, and only one in a thousand
escapes!”

Pale, aghast, horror-stricken, Mary stood dumb,
as one who in the dark and storm sees by the
sudden glare of lightning a chasm yawning under
foot. It was amazement and dimness of anguish;—
the dreadful words struck on the very centre
where her soul rested. She felt as if the point
of a wedge were being driven between her life

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and her life's life, — between her and her God.
She clasped her hands instinctively on her bosom,
as if to hold there some cherished image, and said,
in a piercing voice of supplication, “My God! my
God! oh, where art Thou?”

Mrs. Marvyn walked up and down the room
with a vivid spot of red in each cheek, and a
baleful fire in her eyes, talking in rapid soliloquy,
scarcely regarding her listener, absorbed in her own
enkindled thoughts.

“Dr. Hopkins says that this is all best, — better
than it would have been in any other possible
way, — that God chose it because it was for a
greater final good, — that He not only chose it,
but took means to make it certain, — that He ordains
every sin, and does all that is necessary to
make it certain, — that He creates the vessels of
wrath and fits them for destruction, and that He
has an infinite knowledge by which He can do it
without violating their free agency. — So much
the worse! What a use of infinite knowledge!
What if men should do so? What if a father
should take means to make it certain that his
poor little child should be an abandoned wretch,
without violating his free agency? So much the
worse, I say! — They say He does this so that
He may show to all eternity, by their example,
the evil nature of sin and its consequences! This
is all that the greater part of the human race

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have been used for yet; and it is all right, because
an overplus of infinite happiness is yet to
be wrought out by it! — It is not right! No possible
amount of good to ever so many can make
it right to deprave ever so few; — happiness and
misery cannot be measured so! I never can think
it right, — never! — Yet they say our salvation
depends on our loving God, — loving Him better
than ourselves, — loving Him better than our dearest
friends. — It is impossible! — it is contrary to
the laws of my nature! I can never love God!
I can never praise Him! — I am lost! lost!
lost! And what is worse, I cannot redeem my
friends! Oh, I could suffer forever, — how willingly! —
if I could save him! — But oh, eternity,
eternity! Frightful, unspeakable woe! No end!—
no bottom! — no shore! — no hope! — O God!
O God!”

Mrs. Marvyn's eyes grew wilder, — she walked
the floor, wringing her hands, — and her words,
mingled with shrieks and moans, became whirling
and confused, as when in autumn a storm drives
the leaves in dizzy mazes.

Mary was alarmed, — the ecstacy of despair was
just verging on insanity. She rushed out and
called Mr. Marvyn.

“Oh! come in! do! quick! — I'm afraid her
mind is going!” she said.

“It is what I feared,” he said, rising from where

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he sat reading his great Bible, with an air of
heartbroken dejection. “Since she heard this news,
she has not slept nor shed a tear. The Lord hath
covered us with a cloud in the day of his fierce
anger.”

He came into the room, and tried to take his
wife into his arms. She pushed him violently
back, her eyes glistening with a fierce light.
“Leave me alone!” she said, — “I am a lost
spirit!”

These words were uttered in a shriek that went
through Mary's heart like an arrow.

At this moment, Candace, who had been anxiously
listening at the door for an hour past, suddenly
burst into the room.

“Lor' bress ye, Squire Marvyn, we won't hab
her goin' on dis yer way,” she said. “Do talk
gospel to her, can't ye? — ef you can't, I will.

“Come, ye poor little lamb,” she said, walking
straight up to Mrs. Marvyn, “come to ole Candace!” —
and with that she gathered the pale form
to her bosom, and sat down and began rocking
her, as if she had been a babe. “Honey, darlin',
ye a'n't right, — dar's a drefful mistake somewhar,”
she said. “Why, de Lord a'n't like what ye
tink, — He loves ye, honey! Why, jes' feel how I
loves ye, — poor ole black Candace, — an' I a'n't
better'n Him as made me! Who was it wore de
crown o' thorns, lamb? — who was it sweat great

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drops o' blood? — who was it said, `Father, forgive
dem'? Say, honey! — wasn't it de Lord dat
made ye? — Dar, dar, now ye'r' cryin'! — cry away,
and ease yer poor little heart! He died for Mass'r
Jim, — loved him and died for him, — jes' give up
his sweet, precious body and soul for him on de
cross! Laws, jes' leave him in Jesus's hands!
Why, honey, dar's de very print o' de nails in
his hands now!”

The flood-gates were rent; and healing sobs and
tears shook the frail form, as a faded lily shakes
under the soft rains of summer. All in the room
wept together.

“Now, honey,” said Candace, after a pause of
some minutes, “I knows our Doctor's a mighty
good man, an' larned, — an' in fair weather I ha'n't
no 'bjection to yer hearin' all about dese yer great
an' mighty tings he's got to say. But, honey, dey
won't do for you now; sick folks mus'n't hab
strong meat; an' times like dese, dar jest a'n't but
one ting to come to, an' dat ar's Jesus. Jes' come
right down to whar poor ole black Candace has
to stay allers, — it's a good place, darlin'! Look
right at Jesus. Tell ye, honey, ye can't live no
other way now. Don't ye 'member how He looked
on His mother, when she stood faintin' an' tremblin'
under de cross, jes' like you? He knows all
about mothers' hearts; He won't break yours. It
was jes' 'cause He know'd we'd come into straits

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like dis yer, dat he went through all dese tings, —
Him, de Lord o' Glory! Is dis Him you was a-talkin'
about? — Him you can't love? Look at
Him, an' see ef you can't. Look an' see what
He is! — don't ask no questions, and don't go to
no reasonin's, — jes' look at Him, hangin' dar, so
sweet and patient, on de cross! All dey could do
couldn't stop his lovin' 'em; he prayed for 'em
wid all de breath he had. Dar's a God you can
love, a'n't dar? Candace loves Him, — poor, ole,
foolish, black, wicked Candace, — and she knows
He loves her,” — and here Candace broke down
into torrents of weeping.

They laid the mother, faint and weary, on her
bed, and beneath the shadow of that suffering
cross came down a healing sleep on those weary
eyelids.

“Honey,” said Candace, mysteriously, after she
had drawn Mary out of the room, “don't ye go
for to troublin' yer mind wid dis yer. I'm clar
Mass'r James is one o' de 'lect; and I'm clar dar's
consid'able more o' de 'lect dan people tink. Why,
Jesus didn't die for nothin', — all dat love a'n't
gwine to be wasted. De 'lect is more'n you or I
knows, honey! Dar's de Spirit, — He'll give it to
'em; and ef Mass'r James is called an' took, depend
upon it de Lord has got him ready, — course
He has, — so don't ye go to layin' on your poor
heart what no mortal creetur can live under;

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'cause, as we's got to live in dis yer world, it's
quite clar de Lord must ha' fixed it so we can;
and ef tings was as some folks suppose, why, we
couldn't live, and dar wouldn't be no sense in
anyting dat goes on.”

The sudden shock of these scenes was followed,
in Mrs. Marvyn's case, by a low, lingering fever.
Her room was darkened, and she lay on her bed,
a pale, suffering form, with scarcely the ability to
raise her hand. The shimmering twilight of the
sick-room fell on white napkins, spread over stands,
where constantly appeared new vials, big and little,
as the physician made his daily visit, and
prescribed now this drug and now that, for a
wound that had struck through the soul.

Mary remained many days at the white house,
because, to the invalid, no step, no voice, no hand
was like hers. We see her there now, as she sits
in the glimmering by the bed-curtains, — her head
a little drooped, as droops a snowdrop over a
grave; — one ray of light from a round hole in
the closed shutters falls on her smooth-parted hair,
her small hands are clasped on her knees, her
mouth has lines of sad compression, and in her
eyes are infinite questionings.

CHAPTER XXIV. MYSTERIES.

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When Mrs. Marvyn began to amend, Mary returned
to the home cottage, and resumed the
details of her industrious and quiet life.

Between her and her two best friends had faller
a curtain of silence. The subject that filled all her
thoughts could not be named between them. The
Doctor often looked at her pale cheeks and drooping
form with a face of honest sorrow, and heaved
deep sighs as she passed; but he did not find
any power within himself by which he could
approach her. When he would speak, and she
turned her sad, patient eyes so gently on him, the
words went back again to his heart, and there,
taking a second thought, spread upward wing in
prayer.

Mrs. Scudder sometimes came to her room after
she was gone to bed, and found her weeping; and
when gently she urged her to sleep, she would wipe
her eyes so patiently and turn her head with such
obedient sweetness, that her mother's heart utterly

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failed her. For hours Mary sat in her room with
James's last letter spread out before her. How
anxiously had she studied every word and phrase
in it, weighing them to see if the hope of eternal
life were in them! How she dwelt on those last
promises! Had he kept them? Ah! to die without
one word more! Would no angel tell her? —
would not the loving God, who knew all, just
whisper one word? He must have read the little
Bible! What had he thought? What did he feel
in that awful hour when he felt himself drifting on
to that fearful eternity? Perhaps he had been regenerated, —
perhaps there had been a sudden change;—
who knows? — she had read of such things; —
perhaps — Ah, in that perhaps lies a world of
anguish! Love will not hear of it. Love dies for
certainty. Against an uncertainty who can brace
the soul? We put all our forces of faith and
prayer against it, and it goes down just as a buoy
sinks in the water, and the next moment it is up
again. The soul fatigues itself with efforts which
come and go in waves; and when with laborious
care she has adjusted all things in the light of
hope, back flows the tide, and sweeps all away.
In such struggles life spends itself fast; an inward
wound does not carry one deathward more surely
than this worst wound of the soul. God has
made us so mercifully that there is no certainty,
however dreadful, to which life-forces do not in

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time adjust themselves, — but to uncertainty there
is no possible adjustment. Where is he? Oh,
question of questions! — question which we suppress,
but which a power of infinite force still
urges on the soul, who feels a part of herself torn
away.

Mary sat at her window in evening hours, and
watched the slanting sunbeams through the green
blades of grass, and thought one year ago he
stood there, with his well-knit, manly form, his
bright eye, his buoyant hope, his victorious mastery
of life! And where was he now? Was his
heart as sick, longing for her, as hers for him?
Was he looking back to earth and its joys with
pangs of unutterable regret? or had a divine
power interpenetrated his soul, and lighted there
the flame of a celestial love which bore him far
above earth? If he were among the lost, in what
age of eternity could she ever be blessed? Could
Christ be happy, if those who were one with Him
were sinful and accursed? and could Christ's own
loved ones be happy, when those with whom they
have exchanged being, in whom they live and feel,
are as wandering stars, for whom is reserved the
mist of darkness forever? She had been taught
that the agonies of the lost would be forever in
sight of the saints, without abating in the least
their eternal joys; nay, that they would find in it
increasing motives to praise and adoration. Could

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it be so? Would the last act of the great Bridegroom
of the Church be to strike from the heart
of his purified Bride those yearnings of self-devoting
love which His whole example had taught her,
and in which she reflected, as in a glass, His own
nature? If not, is there not some provision by
which those roots of deathless love which Christ's
betrothed ones strike into other hearts shall have
a divine, redeeming power? Question vital as
life-blood to ten thousand hearts, — fathers, mothers,
wives, husbands, — to all who feel the infinite
sacredness of love!

After the first interview with Mrs. Marvyn, the
subject which had so agitated them was not renewed.
She had risen at last from her sick-bed,
as thin and shadowy as a faded moon after sunrise.
Candace often shook her head mournfully, as
her eyes followed her about her daily tasks. Once
only, with Mary, she alluded to the conversation
which had passed between them; — it was one day
when they were together, spinning, in the north
upper room that looked out upon the sea. It was
a glorious day. A ship was coming in under full
sail, with white gleaming wings. Mrs. Marvyn
watched it a few moments, — the gay creature, so
full of exultant life, — and then smothered down
an inward groan, and Mary thought she heard her
saying, “Thy will be done!”

“Mary,” she said, gently, “I hope you will

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forget all I said to you that dreadful day. It had to
be said, or I should have died. Mary, I begin to
think that it is not best to stretch our minds with
reasonings where we are so limited, where we can
know so little. I am quite sure there must be
dreadful mistakes somewhere.

“It seems to me irreverent and shocking that a
child should oppose a father, or a creature its Creator.
I never should have done it, only that, where
direct questions are presented to the judgment, one
cannot help judging. If one is required to praise
a being as just and good, one must judge of his
actions by some standard of right, — and we have
no standard but such as our Creator has placed in
us. I have been told it was my duty to attend to
these subjects, and I have tried to, — and the result
has been that the facts presented seem wholly
irreconcilable with any notions of justice or mercy
that I am able to form. If these be the facts, I
can only say that my nature is made entirely opposed
to them. If I followed the standard of right
they present, and acted according to my small
mortal powers on the same principles, I should be
a very bad person. Any father, who should make
such use of power over his children as they say
the Deity does with regard to us, would be looked
upon as a monster by our very imperfect moral
sense. Yet I cannot say that the facts are not so.
When I heard the Doctor's sermons on `Sin a

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Necessary Means of the Greatest Good,' I could
not extricate myself from the reasoning.

“I have thought, in desperate moments, of giving
up the Bible itself. But what do I gain? Do
I not see the same difficulty in Nature? I see
everywhere a Being whose main ends seem to be
beneficent, but whose good purposes are worked
out at terrible expense of suffering, and apparently
by the total sacrifice of myriads of sensitive creatures.
I see unflinching order, general good-will,
but no sympathy, no mercy. Storms, earthquakes,
volcanoes, sickness, death, go on without regarding
us. Everywhere I see the most hopeless, unrelieved
suffering, — and for aught I see, it may be
eternal. Immortality is a dreadful chance, and I
would rather never have been. — The Doctor's
dreadful system is, I confess, much like the laws
of Nature, — about what one might reason out
from them.

“There is but just one thing remaining, and
that is, as Candace said, the cross of Christ. If
God so loved us, — if He died for us, — greater
love hath no man than this. It seems to me
that love is shown here in the two highest
forms possible to our comprehension. We see
a Being who gives himself for us, — and more
than that, harder than that, a Being who consents
to the suffering of a dearer than self.
Mary, I feel that I must love more, to give up

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one of my children to suffer, than to consent to
suffer myself. There is a world of comfort to me
in the words, `He that spared not his own Son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not
with him also freely give us all things?' These
words speak to my heart. I can interpret them
by my own nature, and I rest on them. If there
is a fathomless mystery of sin and sorrow, there
is a deeper mystery of God's love. So, Mary, I
try Candace's way, — I look at Christ, — I pray to
Him. If he that hath seen Him hath seen the
Father, it is enough. I rest there, — I wait. What
I know not now I shall know hereafter.”

Mary kept all things and pondered them in her
heart. She could speak to no one, — not to her
mother, nor to her spiritual guide; for had she
not passed to a region beyond theirs? As well
might those on the hither side of mortality instruct
the souls gone beyond the veil as souls outside a
great affliction guide those who are struggling in
it. That is a mighty baptism, and only Christ can
go down with us into those waters.

Mrs. Scudder and the Doctor only marked that
she was more than ever conscientious in every
duty, and that she brought to life's daily realities
something of the calmness and disengagedness of
one whose soul has been wrenched by a mighty
shock from all moorings here below. Hopes did
not excite, fears did not alarm her; life had no

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force strong enough to awaken a thrill within;
and the only subjects on which she ever spoke
with any degree of ardor were religious subjects.

One who should have seen moving about the
daily ministrations of the cottage a pale girl,
whose steps were firm, whose eye was calm,
whose hands were ever busy, would scarce imagine
that through that silent heart were passing
tides of thought that measured a universe; but it
was even so. Through that one gap of sorrow
flowed in the whole awful mystery of existence,
and silently, as she spun and sewed, she thought
over and over again all that she had ever been
taught, and compared and revolved it by the light
of a dawning inward revelation.

Sorrow is the great birth-agony of immortal
powers, — sorrow is the great searcher and revealer
of hearts, the great test of truth; for Plato has
wisely said, sorrow will not endure sophisms, — all
shams and unrealities melt in the fire of that
awful furnace. Sorrow reveals forces in ourselves
we never dreamed of. The soul, a bound
and sleeping prisoner, hears her knock on her cell-door,
and wakens. Oh, how narrow the walls!
oh, how close and dark the grated window! how
the long useless wings beat against the impassable
barriers! Where are we? What is this prison?
What is beyond? Oh for more air, more light!
When will the door be opened? The soul seems

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to itself to widen and deepen; it trembles at its
own dreadful forces; it gathers up in waves that
break with wailing only to flow back into the
everlasting void. The calmest and most centred
natures are sometimes thrown by the shock of a
great sorrow into a tumultuous amazement. All
things are changed. The earth no longer seems
solid, the skies no longer secure; a deep abyss
seems underlying every joyous scene of life. The
soul, struck with this awful inspiration, is a mournful
Cassandra; she sees blood on every threshold,
and shudders in the midst of mirth and festival
with the weight of a terrible wisdom.

Who shall dare be glad any more, that has
once seen the frail foundations on which love and
joy are built? Our brighter hours, have they
only been weaving a network of agonizing remembrances
for this day of bereavement? The heart
is pierced with every past joy, with every hope of
its ignorant prosperity. Behind every scale in
music, the gayest and cheeriest, the grandest, the
most triumphant, lies its dark relative minor; the
notes are the same, but the change of a semitone
changes all to gloom; — all our gayest hours are
tunes that have a modulation into these dreary
keys ever possible; at any moment the key-note
may be struck.

The firmest, best-prepared natures are often beside
themselves with astonishment and dismay,

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when they are called to this dread initiation
They thought it a very happy world before, — a
glorious universe. Now it is darkened with the
shadow of insoluble mysteries. Why this everlasting
tramp of inevitable laws on quivering life?
If the wheels must roll, why must the crushed be
so living and sensitive?

And yet sorrow is godlike, sorrow is grand and
great, sorrow is wise and far-seeing. Our own
instinctive valuations, the intense sympathy which
we give to the tragedy which God has inwoven
into the laws of Nature, show us that it is with
no slavish dread, no cowardly shrinking, that we
should approach her divine mysteries. What are
the natures that cannot suffer? Who values them?
From the fat oyster, over which the silver tide
rises and falls without one pulse upon its fleshy
ear, to the hero who stands with quivering nerve
parting with wife and child and home for country
and God, all the way up is an ascending scale,
marked by increasing power to suffer; and when
we look to the Head of all being, up through
principalities and powers and princedoms, with
dazzling orders and celestial blazonry, to behold
by what emblem the Infinite Sovereign chooses
to reveal himself, we behold, in the midst of the
throne, “a lamb as it had been slain.”

Sorrow is divine. Sorrow is reigning on the
throne of the universe, and the crown of all

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crowns has been one of thorns. There have been
many books that treat of the mystery of sorrow,
but only one that bids us glory in tribulation, and
count it all joy when we fall into divers afflictions,
that so we may be associated with that
great fellowship of suffering of which the Incarnate
God is the head, and through which He is
carrying a redemptive conflict to a glorious victory
over evil. If we suffer with Him, we shall
also reign with Him.

Even in the very making up of our physical
nature, God puts suggestions of such a result.
“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh
in the morning.” There are victorious powers
in our nature which are all the while working for
us in our deepest pain. It is said, that, after the
sufferings of the rack, there ensues a period in
which the simple repose from torture produces a
beatific trance; it is the reaction of Nature, asserting
the benignant intentions of her Creator.
So, after great mental conflicts and agonies must
come a reaction, and the Divine Spirit, co-working
with our spirit, seizes the favorable moment, and,
interpenetrating natural laws with a celestial vitality,
carries up the soul to joys beyond the ordinary
possibilities of mortality.

It is said that gardeners, sometimes, when they
would bring a rose to richer flowering, deprive it
for a season, of light and moisture. Silent and

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dark it stands, dropping one fading leaf after another,
and seeming to go down patiently to death.
But when every leaf is dropped, and the plant
stands stripped to the uttermost, a new life is
even then working in the buds, from which shall
spring a tender foliage and a brighter wealth of
flowers. So, often in celestial gardening, every
leaf of earthly joy must drop, before a new and
divine bloom visits the soul.

Gradually, as months passed away the floods
grew still; the mighty rushes of the inner tides
ceased to dash. There came first a delicious
calmness, and then a celestial inner clearness, in
which the soul seemed to lie quiet as an untroubled
ocean, reflecting heaven. Then came the fulness
of mysterious communion given to the pure
in heart, — that advent of the Comforter in the
soul, teaching all things and bringing all things
to remembrance; and Mary moved in a world
transfigured by a celestial radiance. Her face, so
long mournfully calm, like some chiselled statue
of Patience, now wore a radiance, as when one
places a light behind some alabaster screen sculptured
with mysterious and holy emblems, and
words of strange sweetness broke from her, as if
one should hear snatches of music from a door
suddenly opened in heaven. Something wise and
strong and sacred gave an involuntary impression
of awe in her looks and words; — it was not the

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childlike loveliness of early days, looking with
dovelike, ignorant eyes on sin and sorrow; but
the victorious sweetness of that great multitude
who have come out of great tribulation, having
washed their robes and made them white in the
blood of the Lamb. In her eyes there was that
nameless depth that one sees with awe in the
Sistine Madonna, — eyes that have measured infinite
sorrow and looked through it to an infinite
peace.

“My dear Madam,” said the Doctor to Mrs.
Scudder, “I cannot but think that there must be
some uncommonly gracious exercises passing in
the mind of your daughter; for I observe, that,
though she is not inclined to conversation, she
seems to be much in prayer; and I have, of late,
felt the sense of a Divine Presence with her in a
most unusual degree. Has she opened her mind
to you?”

“Mary was always a silent girl,” said Mrs.
Scudder, “and not given to speaking of her own
feelings; indeed, until she gave you an account of
her spiritual state, on joining the church, I never
knew what her exercises were. Hers is a most singular
case. I never knew the time when she did
not seem to love God more than anything else. It
has disturbed me sometimes, — because I did not
know but it might be mere natural sensibility, instead
of gracious affection”

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“Do not disturb yourself, Madam,” said the
Doctor. “The Spirit worketh when, where, and
how He will; and, undoubtedly, there have been
cases where His operations commence exceedingly
early. Mr. Edwards relates a case of a young
person who experienced a marked conversion when
three years of age; and Jeremiah was called from
the womb. (Jeremiah, i. 5.) In all cases we must
test the quality of the evidence without relation
to the time of its commencement. I do not generally
lay much stress on our impressions, which
are often uncertain and delusive; yet I have had
an impression that the Lord would be pleased to
make some singular manifestations of His grace
through this young person. In the economy of
grace there is neither male nor female; and Peter
says (Acts, ii. 17) that the Spirit of the Lord
shall be poured out and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy. Yet if we consider that
the Son of God, as to his human nature, was
made of a woman, it leads us to see that in matters
of grace God sets a special value on woman's
nature and designs to put special honor upon it.
Accordingly, there have been in the Church, in all
ages, holy women who have received the Spirit
and been called to a ministration in the things of
God, — such as Deborah, Huldah, and Anna, the
prophetess. In our own days, most uncommon
manifestations of divine grace have been given to

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holy women. It was my privilege to be in the
family of President Edwards at a time when
Northampton was specially visited, and his wife
seemed and spoke more like a glorified spirit than
a mortal woman, — and multitudes flocked to the
house to hear her wonderful words. She seemed
to have such a sense of the Divine love as was
almost beyond the powers of nature to endure.
Just to speak the words, `Our Father who art in
heaven,' would overcome her with such a manifestation
that she would become cold and almost
faint; and though she uttered much, yet she told
us that the divinest things she saw could not be
spoken. These things could not be fanaticism, for
she was a person of a singular evenness of nature,
and of great skill and discretion in temporal
matters, and of an exceeding humility, sweetness,
and quietness of disposition.”

“I have observed of late,” said Mrs. Scudder,
“that, in our praying circles, Mary seemed much
carried out of herself, and often as if she would
speak, and with difficulty holding herself back. I
have not urged her, because I thought it best to
wait till she should feel full liberty.”

“Therein you do rightly, Madam,” said the
Doctor; “but I am persuaded you will hear from
her yet.”

It came at length, the hour of utterance. And
one day, in a praying circle of the women of

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the church, all were startled by the clear silver
tones of one who sat among them and spoke with
the unconscious simplicity of an angel child, calling
God her Father, and speaking of an ineffable
union in Christ, binding all things together in one,
and making all complete in Him. She spoke of a
love passing knowledge, — passing all love of lovers
or of mothers, — a love forever spending, yet
never spent, — a love ever pierced and bleeding,
yet ever constant and triumphant, rejoicing with
infinite joy to bear in its own body the sins and
sorrows of a universe, — conquering, victorious love,
rejoicing to endure, panting to give, and offering
its whole self with an infinite joyfulness for our
salvation. And when, kneeling, she poured out
her soul in prayer, her words seemed so many
winged angels, musical with unearthly harpings
of an untold blessedness. They who heard her had
the sensation of rising in the air, of feeling a celestial
light and warmth descending into their
souls; and when, rising, she stood silent and with
downcast drooping eyelids, there were tears in all
eyes, and a hush in all movements as she passed,
as if something celestial were passing out.

Miss Prissy came rushing homeward, to hold a
private congratulatory talk with the Doctor and
Mrs. Scudder, while Mary was tranquilly setting
the tea-table and cutting bread for supper.

“To see her now, certainly,” said Miss Prissy,

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“moving round so thoughtful, not forgetting anything,
and doing everything so calm, you wouldn't
'a' thought it could be her that spoke those blessed
words and made that prayer! Well, certainly
that prayer seemed to take us all right up and
put us down in heaven! and when I opened my
eyes, and saw the roses and asparagus-bushes on
the manteltree-piece, I had to ask myself, `Where
have I been?' Oh, Miss Scudder, her afflictions
have been sanctified to her! — and really, when I
see her going on so, I feel she can't be long for
us. They say, dying grace is for dying hours;
and I'm sure this seems more like dying grace
than anything that I ever yet saw.”

“She is a precious gift,” said the Doctor; “let
us thank the Lord for his grace through her. She
has evidently had a manifestation of the Beloved,
and feedeth among the lilies (Canticles, vi. 3);
and we will not question the Lord's further dispensations
concerning her.”

“Certainly,” said Miss Prissy, briskly, “it's never
best to borrow trouble; `sufficient unto the day' is
enough, to be sure. — And now, Miss Scudder, I
thought I'd just take a look at that dove-colored
silk of yours to-night, to see what would have to
be done with it, because I must make every minute
tell; and you know I lose half a day every
week for the prayer-meeting. Though I ought not
to say I lose it, either; for I was telling Miss

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General Wilcox I wouldn't give up that meeting
for bags and bags of gold. She wanted me to
come and sew for her one Wednesday, and says
I, `Miss Wilcox, I'm poor and have to live by
my work, but I a'n't so poor but what I have
some comforts, and I can't give up my prayer-meeting
for any money, — for you see, if one gets
a little lift there, it makes all the work go lighter,—
but then I have to be particular to save up
every scrap and end of time.”

Mrs. Scudder and Miss Prissy crossed the kitchen
and entered the bedroom, and soon had the dove-colored
silk under consideration.

“Well, Miss Scudder,” said Miss Prissy, after
mature investigation, “here's a broad hem, not cut
at all on the edge, as I see, and that might be
turned down, and so cut off the worn spot up by
the waist, — and then, if it is turned, it will look
every bit and grain as well as a new silk; — I'll
sit right down now and go to ripping. I put my
ripping-knife into my pocket when I put on this
dress to go to prayer-meeting, because, says I to
myself, there'll be something to do at Miss Scudder's
to-night. You just get an iron to the fire,
and we'll have it all ripped and pressed out before
dark.”

Miss Prissy seated herself at the open window
as cheery as a fresh apple-blossom, and began
busily plying her knife, looking at the garment she

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was ripping with an astute air, as if she were
about to circumvent it into being a new dress by
some surprising act of legerdemain. Mrs. Scudder
walked to the looking-glass and began changing
her bonnet cap for a tea-table one.

Miss Prissy, after a while, commenced in a
mysterious tone.

“Miss Scudder, I know folks like me shouldn't
have their eyes open too wide, but then I can't
help noticing some things. Did you see the Doctor's
face when we was talking to him about
Mary? Why, he colored all up and the tears
came into his eyes. It's my belief that that blessed
man worships the ground she treads on. I don't
mean worships, either, — 'cause that would be
wicked, and he's too good a man to make a
graven image of anything, — but it's clear to see
that there a'n't anybody in the world like Mary to
him. I always did think so; but I used to think
Mary was such a little poppet — that she'd do
better for — Well, you know, I thought about
some younger man; — but, laws, now I see how
she rises up to be ahead of every body, and is so
kind of solemn-like. I can't but see the leadings
of Providence. What a minister's wife she'd be,
Miss Scudder! — why, all the ladies coming out of
prayer-meeting were speaking of it. You see, they
want the Doctor to get married; — it seems more
comfortable-like to have ministers married; one

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feels more free to open their exercises of mind
and as Miss Deacon Twitchel said to me, — `If
the Lord had made a woman o' purpose, as he
did for Adam, he wouldn't have made her a bit
different from Mary Scudder.' Why, the oldest of
us would follow her lead, — 'cause she goes before
us without knowing it.”

“I feel that the Lord has greatly blessed me in
such a child,” said Mrs. Scudder, “and I feel disposed
to wait the leadings of Providence.”

“Just exactly,” said Miss Prissy, giving a shake
to her silk; “and as Miss Twitchel said, in this
case every providence seems to p'int. I felt dreadfully
for her along six months back; but now I
see how she's been brought out, I begin to see
that things are for the best, perhaps, after all. I
can't help feeling that Jim Marvyn is gone to
heaven, poor fellow! His father is a deacon, —
and such a good man! — and Jim, though he did
make a great laugh wherever he went, and sometimes
laughed where he hadn't ought to, was a
noble-hearted fellow. Now, to be sure, as the
Doctor says, `amiable instincts a'n't true holiness';
but then they are better than unamiable
ones, like Simeon Brown's. I do think, if that
man is a Christian, he is a dreadful ugly one; he
snapped me short up about my change, when he
settled with me last Tuesday; and if I hadn't felt
that it was a sinful rising, I should have told him

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I'd never put foot in his house again; I'm glad,
for my part, he's gone out of our church. Now
Jim Marvyn was like a prince to poor people;
and I remember once his mother told him to settle
with me, and he gave me 'most double, and
wouldn't let me make change. `Confound it all,
Miss Prissy,' says he, `I wouldn't stitch as you
do from morning to night for double that money.'
Now I know we can't do anything to recommend
ourselves to the Lord, but then I can't help feeling
some sorts of folks must be by nature more
pleasing to Him than others. David was a man
after God's own heart, and he was a generous,
whole-souled fellow, like Jim Marvyn, though he
did get carried away by his spirits sometimes and
do wrong things; and so I hope the Lord saw fit
to make Jim one of the elect. We don't ever
know what God's grace has done for folks. I
think a great many are converted when we know
nothing about it, as Miss Twitchel told poor old
Miss Tyrel, who was mourning about her son, a
dreadful wild boy, who was killed falling from mast-head;
she says, that from the mast-head to the deck
was time enough for divine grace to do the work.”

“I have always had a trembling hope for poor
James,” said Mrs. Scudder, — “not on account of
any of his good deeds or amiable traits, because
election is without foresight of any good works, —
but I felt he was a child of the covenant, at

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least by the father's side, and I hope the Lord
has heard his prayer. These are dark providences;
the world is full of them; and all we can do is
to have faith that the Lord will bring infinite
good out of finite evil, and make everything better
than if the evil had not happened. That's
what our good Doctor is always repeating; and
we must try to rejoice, in view of the happiness
of the universe, without considering whether we
or our friends are to be included in it or not.”

“Well, dear me!” said Miss Prissy, “I hope,
if that is necessary, it will please the Lord to
give it to me; for I don't seem to find any powers
in me to get up to it. But all's for the best,
at any rate, — and that's a comfort.”

Just at this moment Mary's clear voice at the
door announced that tea was on the table.

“Coming, this very minute,” said Miss Prissy,
bustling up and pulling off her spectacles. Then,
running across the room, she shut the door mysteriously,
and turned to Mrs. Scudder with the air
of an impending secret. Miss Prissy was subject
to sudden impulses of confidence, in which she
was so very cautious that not the thickest oakplank
door seemed secure enough, and her voice
dropped to its lowest key. The most important
and critical words were entirely omitted, or supplied
by a knowing wink and a slight stamp of
the foot.

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In this mood she now approached Mrs. Scudder,
and, holding up her hand on the door-side to
prevent consequences, if, after all, she should be
betrayed into a loud word, she said, “I thought
I'd just say, Miss Scudder, that, in case Mary
should — the Doctor, — in case, you know,
there should be a — in the house, you must
just contrive it so as to give me a month's notice,
so that I could give you a whole fortnight to fix
her up as such a good man's — ought to be.
Now I know how spiritually-minded our blessed
Doctor is; but, bless you, Ma'am, he's got eyes.
I tell you, Miss Scudder, these men, the best of
'em, feel what's what, though they don't know
much. I saw the Doctor look at Mary that night
I dressed her for the wedding-party. I tell you
he'd like to have his wife look pretty well, and
he'll get up some blessed text or other about it,
just as he did that night about being brought
unto the king in raiment of needle-work. That
is an encouraging thought to us sewing-women.

“But this thing was spoken of after the meeting.
Miss Twitchel and Miss Jones were talking
about it; and they all say that there would be
the best setting-out got for her that was ever seen
in Newport, if it should happen. Why, there's
reason in it. She ought to have at least two real
good India silks that will stand alone, — and you'll
see she'll have 'em too; you let me alone for that,

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and I was thinking, as I lay awake last night, of
a new way of making up, that you will say is
just the sweetest that ever you did see. And
Miss Jones was saying that she hoped there
wouldn't anything happen without her knowing it,
because her husband's sister in Philadelphia has
sent her a new receipt for cake, and she has tried
it and it came out beautifully, and she says she'll
send some in.”

All the time that this stream was flowing, Mrs.
Scudder stood with the properly reserved air of a
discreet matron, who leaves all such matters to
Providence, and is not supposed unduly to anticipate
the future; and, in reply, she warmly pressed
Miss Prissy's hand, and remarked, that no one
could tell what a day might bring forth, — and
other general observations on the uncertainty of
mortal prospects, which form a becoming shield
when people do not wish to say more exactly what
they are thinking of.

CHAPTER XXV. A GUEST AT THE COTTAGE.

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Nothing is more striking, in the light and
shadow of the human drama, than to compare the
inner life and thoughts of elevated and silent natures
with the thoughts and plans which those by
whom they are surrounded have of and for them.
Little thought Mary of any of the speculations
that busied the friendly head of Miss Prissy, or
that lay in the provident forecastings of her prudent
mother. When a life into which all our
life-nerves have run is cut suddenly away, there
follows, after the first long bleeding is stanched, an
internal paralysis of certain portions of our nature.
It was so with Mary: the thousand fibres that
bind youth and womanhood to earthly love and
life were all in her as still as the grave, and only
the spiritual and divine part of her being was
active. Her hopes, desires, and aspirations were
all such as she could have had in greater perfection
as a disembodied spirit than as a mortal
woman. The small stake for self which she had
invested in life was gone, — and henceforward all
personal matters were to her so indifferent that she

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scarce was conscious of a wish in relation to her
own individual happiness. Through the sudden
crush of a great affliction, she was in that state
of self-abnegation to which the mystics brought
themselves by fastings and self-imposed penances,—
a state not purely healthy, nor realizing the
divine ideal of a perfect human being made to
exist in the relations of human life, — but one of
those exceptional conditions, which, like the hours
that often precede dissolution, seem to impart to
the subject of them a peculiar aptitude for delicate
and refined spiritual impressions. We could
not afford to have it always night, — and we must
think that the broad, gay morning-light, when meadow-lark
and robin and bobolink are singing in
chorus with a thousand insects and the waving
of a thousand breezes, is on the whole the most
in accordance with the average wants of those
who have a material life to live and material
work to do. But then we reverence that clear-obscure
of midnight, when everything is still and
dewy; — then sing the nightingales, which cannot
be heard by day; then shine the mysterious stars.
So when all earthly voices are hushed in the soul,
all earthly lights darkened, music and color float
in from a higher sphere.

No veiled nun, with her shrouded forehead and
downcast eyes, ever moved about a convent with
a spirit more utterly divided from the world than

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Mary moved about her daily employments. Her
care about the details of life seemed more than
ever minute; she was always anticipating her
mother in every direction, and striving by a thousand
gentle preveniences to save her from fatigue
and care; there was even a tenderness about her
ministrations, as if the daughter had changed feelings
and places with the mother.

The Doctor, too, felt a change in her manner
towards him, which, always considerate and kind,
was now invested with a tender thoughtfulness
and anxious solicitude to serve which often brought
tears to his eyes. All the neighbors who had been
in the habit of visiting at the house received from
her, almost daily, in one little form or another,
some proof of her thoughtful remembrance.

She seemed in particular to attach herself to
Mrs. Marvyn, — throwing her care around that
fragile and wounded nature, as a generous vine
will sometimes embrace with tender leaves and
flowers a dying tree.

But her heart seemed to have yearnings beyond
even the circle of home and friends. She longed
for the sorrowful and the afflicted, — she would go
down to the forgotten and the oppressed, — and
made herself the companion of the Doctor's secret
walks and explorings among the poor victims of
the slave-ships, and entered with zeal as teacher
among his African catechumens

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Nothing but the limits of bodily strength could
confine her zeal to do and suffer for others; a
river of love had suddenly been checked in her
heart, and it needed all these channels to drain
off the waters that must otherwise have drowned
her in the suffocating agonies of repression.

Sometimes, indeed, there would be a returning
thrill of the old wound, — one of those overpowering
moments when some turn in life brings
back anew a great anguish. She would find unexpectedly
in a book a mark that he had placed
there, — or a turn in conversation would bring
back a tone of his voice, — or she would see on
some thoughtless young head curls just like those
which were swaying to and fro down among the
wavering seaweeds, — and then her heart gave one
great throb of pain, and turned for relief to some
immediate act of love to some living being. They
who saw her in one of these moments felt a surging
of her heart towards them, a moisture of the
eye, a sense of some inexpressible yearning, and
knew not from what pain that love was wrung,
nor how that poor heart was seeking to still its
own throbbings in blessing them.

By what name shall we call this beautiful twilight,
this night of the soul, so starry with heavenly
mysteries? Not happiness, — but blessedness.
They who have it walk among men “as sorrowful,
yet alway rejoicing, — as poor, yet making

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many rich, — as having nothing, and yet possessing
all things.”

The Doctor, as we have seen, had always that
reverential spirit towards women which accompanies
a healthy and great nature; but in the constant
converse which he now held with a beautiful
being, from whom every particle of selfish
feeling or mortal weakness seemed sublimed, he
appeared to yield his soul up to her leading with
a wonderful humility, as to some fair, miraculous
messenger of Heaven. All questions of internal
experience, all delicate shadings of the spiritual
history with which his pastoral communings in
his flock made him conversant, he brought to her
to be resolved with the purest simplicity of trust.

“She is one of the Lord's rarities,” he said, one
day to Mrs. Scudder, “and I find it difficult to
maintain the bounds of Christian faithfulness in
talking with her. It is a charm of the Lord's hidden
ones that they know not their own beauty,
and God forbid that I should tempt a creature
made so perfect by divine grace to self-exaltation,
or lay my hand unadvisedly, as Uzzah did, upon
the ark of God, by my inconsiderate praises!”

“Well, Doctor,” said Miss Prissy, who sat in
the corner, sewing on the dove-colored silk, “I do
wish you could come into one of our meetings
and hear those blessed prayers. I don't think you
nor anybody else ever heard anything like 'em.”

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“I would, indeed, that I might with propriety
enjoy the privilege,” said the Doctor.

“Well, I'll tell you what,” said Miss Prissy,
“next week they're going to meet here; and I'll
leave the door just ajar, and you can hear every
word, just by standing in the entry.”

“Thank you, Madam,” said the Doctor; “it
would certainly be a blessed privilege, but I cannot
persuade myself that such an act would be
consistent with Christian propriety.”

“Ah, now do hear that good man!” said Miss
Prissy, after he had left the room; “if he ha'n't
got the making of a real gentleman in him, as
well as a real Christian! — though I always did
say, for my part, that a real Christian will be a
gentleman. But I don't believe all the temptations
in the world could stir that blessed man one
jot or grain to do the least thing that he thinks
is wrong or out of the way. Well, I must say,
I never saw such a good man; he is the only
man I ever saw good enough for our Mary.”

Another spring came round, and brought its
roses, and the apple-trees blossomed for the third
time since the commencement of our story; and
the robins had rebuilt their nest, and began to
lay their blue eggs in it; and Mary still walked
her calm course, as a sanctified priestess of the
great worship of sorrow. Many were the hearts
now dependent on her, the spiritual histories, the

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threads of which were held in her loving hand, —
many the souls burdened with sins, or oppressed
with sorrow, who found in her bosom at once
confessional and sanctuary. So many sought her
prayers, that her hours of intercession were full,
and often needed to be lengthened to embrace
all for whom she would plead. United to the
good Doctor by a constant friendship and fellowship,
she had gradually grown accustomed to
the more and more intimate manner in which
he regarded her, — which had risen from a simple
“dear child,” and “dear Mary,” to “dear friend,”
and at last “dearest of all friends,” which he frequently
called her, encouraged by the calm, confiding
sweetness of those still, blue eyes, and that
gentle smile, which came without one varying
flutter of the pulse or the rising of the slightest
flush on the marble cheek.

One day a letter was brought in, post-marked
“Philadelphia.” It was from Madame de
Frontignac; it was in French, and ran as follows: —