p713-014 CHAPTER I. IN WHICH WE ATTEND THE GREAT SEWING-UNION AT PTOLEMY.

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Never before had the little society of Ptolemy known so
animated a season. For an inland town, the place could not at
any time be called dull, and, indeed, impressed the stranger
with a character of exuberant life, on being compared with
other towns in the neighborhood. Mulligansville on the east,
Anacreon on the north, and Atauga City on the west, all fierce
rivals of nearly equal size, groaned over the ungodly cheerfulness
of its population, and held up their hands whenever its
name was mentioned. But, at the particular time whereof we
write—November, 1852—the ordinarily mild flow of life in
Ptolemy was unusually quickened by the formation of the great
Sewing-Union. This was a new social phenomenon, which
many persons looked upon as a long stride in the direction of
the Millennium. If, however, you should desire an opposite
view, you have but to mention the subject to any Mulligansvillain,
any Anacreontic, or any Atauga citizen. The simple
fact is, that the various sewing-circles of Ptolemy—three in
number, and working for very different ends—had agreed to
hold their meetings at the same time and place, and labor in
company. It was a social arrangement which substituted one

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large gathering, all the more lively and interesting from its
mixed constitution, in place of three small and somewhat
monotonous circles. The plan was a very sensible one, and it
must be said, to the credit of Ptolemy, that there are very few
communities of equal size in the country where it could have
been carried into effect.

First, the number of members being taken as the test of relative
importance, there was the Ladies' Sewing-Circle, for raising
a fund to assist in supporting a Mission at Jutnapore. It was
drawn mainly from the congregation of the Rev. Lemuel Styles.
Four spinsters connected with this circle had a direct interest
in four children of the converted Telugu parents. There was
a little brown Eliza Clancy, an Ann Parrott, and a Sophia
Stevenson, in that distant Indian sheepfold; while the remaining
spinster, Miss Ruhaney Goodwin, boasted of a (spiritual)
son, to whom she had given the name of her deceased brother,
Elisha. These ladies were pleasantly occupied in making
three mousseline-de-laine frocks, an embroidered jacket, and
four half-dozens of pocket handkerchiefs for their little Telugu
children, and their withered bosoms were penetrated with a
secret thrill of the lost maternal instinct, which they only
dared to indulge in connection with such pious and charitable
labors.

The second Circle was composed of ladies belonging to the
Cimmerian church, who proposed getting up a village fair,
the profits of which should go towards the repair of the Parsonage,
now sadly dilapidated. Mrs. Waldo, the clergyman's
wife, was at the head of this enterprise. Her ambition was
limited to a new roof and some repairs in the plastering, and
there was a good prospect that the Circle would succeed in
raising the necessary sum. This, however, was chiefly owing
to Mrs. Waldo's personal popularity. Ptolemy was too small
a place, and the Cimmerians too insignificant a sect, for the
Church, out of its own resources, to accomplish much for its
shepherd.

Lastly, there was the Sewing-Circle for the Anti-Slavery

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Fair, which was limited to five or six families. For the previous
ten years, this little community, strong in the faith, had
prepared and forwarded their annual contribution, not discouraged
by the fact that the circulation of their beloved
special organ did not increase at the Ptolemy Post-Office, nor
that their petitions to Congress were always referred, and
never acted upon. They had outlived the early persecution, and
could no longer consider themselves martyrs. The epithets
“Infidel!” “Fanatic!” and “Amalgamationist!” had been hurled
at them until their enemies had ceased, out of sheer weariness,
and they were a little surprised at finding that their importance
diminished in proportion as their neighbors became
tolerant. The most earnest and enthusiastic of the little band
were Gulielma Thurston, a Quaker widow, and her daughter
Hannah; Mrs. Merryfield, the wife of a neighboring farmer,
and Seth Wattles, a tailor in the village. Notwithstanding
the smallness of this circle, its members, with one exception,
were bright, clear-minded, cheerful women, and as the suspicions
of their infidelity had gradually been allayed (mainly by
their aptness in Biblical quotation), no serious objection was
made to their admittance into the Union.

The proposition to unite the Circles came originally, we
believe, from Mrs. Waldo, whose sectarian bias always gave
way before the social instincts of her nature. The difficulty
of carrying it into execution was much lessened by the fact
that all the families were already acquainted, and that, fortunately,
there was no important enmity existing between any
two of them. Besides, there is a natural instinct in women
which leads them to sew in flocks and enliven their labor by
the discussion of patterns, stuffs, and prices. The Union, with
from twenty-five to forty members in attendance, was found
to be greatly more animated and attractive than either of the
Circles, separately, had been. Whether more work was
accomplished, is a doubtful question; but, if not, it made
little difference in the end. The naked Telugus would not
suffer from a scantier supply of clothing; the Cimmerians

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would charge outrageous prices for useless articles, in any
case: nor would The Slavery Annihilator perish for want of
support, if fewer pen-wipers, and book-marks, inscribed with
appropriate texts, came from Ptolemy.

The Sewing-Union was therefore pronounced a great social
success, and found especial favor in the eyes of the gentlemen,
who were allowed to attend “after tea,” with the understanding
that they would contribute something to either of the
three groups, according to their inclinations. Mrs. Waldo, by
general acquiescence, exercised a matronly supervision over
the company, putting down any rising controversy with a
gentle pat of her full, soft hand, and preventing, with cheerful
tyranny, the continual tendency of the gentlemen to interrupt
the work of the unmarried ladies. She was the oleaginous
solvent, in which the hard yelk of the Mission Fund, the vinegar
of the Cimmerians, and the mustard of the Abolitionists
lost their repellant qualities and blended into a smooth social
compound. She had a very sweet, mellow, rounded voice,
and a laugh as comforting to hear as the crackling of a wood-fire
on the open hearth. Her greatest charm, however, was
her complete unconsciousness of her true value. The people
of Ptolemy, equally unconscious of this subduing and harmonizing
quality which she possessed, and seeing their lionesses
and lambs sewing peaceably together, congratulated themselves
on their own millennial promise. Of course everybody
was satisfied—even the clergymen in Mulligansville and
Anacreon, who attacked the Union from their pulpits, secretly
thankful for such a near example of falling from the stiff,
narrow, and carefully-enclosed ways of grace.

It was the third meeting of the Union, and nearly all the
members were present. Their session was held at the house
of Mr. Hamilton Bue, Agent of the “Saratoga Mutual” for
the town of Ptolemy, and one of the Directors of the Bank at
Tiberius, the county-seat. Mrs. Hamilton Bue was interested
in the contribution for the mission at Jutnapore, and the Rev.
Lemuel Styles, pastor of the principal church in the village,

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had been specially invited to come “before tea,” for the purpose
of asking a blessing on the bountiful table of the hostess.
The parlor, large as it was (for Ptolemy), had been somewhat
overcrowded during the afternoon; therefore, anticipating a
large arrival of gentlemen in the evening, Mrs. Bue had the
tables transferred from the sitting-room to the kitchen, locked
the hall door, and thus produced a suite of three apartments,
counting the hall itself as one. The guests were admitted at
the side-entrance, commonly used by the family. Two or
three additional lamps had been borrowed, and the general
aspect of things was so bright and cheerful that Mr. Styles
whispered to Mrs. Hamilton Bue: “Really, I am afraid this
looks a little like levity.”

“But it's trying to the eyes to sew with a dim light,” said
she; “and we want to do a good deal for The Fund this evening.”

“Ah! that, indeed!” he ejaculated, smiling blandly as he
contemplated Miss Eliza Clancy and Miss Ann Parrott, who
were comparing the dresses for their little brown namesakes.

“I think it looks better to be gored,” said the former.

“Well—I don't know but what it does, with that figure,”
remarked Miss Parrott, “but my Ann's a slim, growing girl,
and when you've tucks—and I'm making two of 'em—it
seems better to pleat.”

“How will this do, Miss Eliza?” asked Mrs. Waldo, coming
up at the moment with a heavy knitted snood of crimson
wool, which she carefully adjusted over her own abundant
black hair. The effect was good, it cannot be denied. The
contrast of colors was so pleasing that the pattern of the
snood became quite a subordinate affair.

“Upon my word, very pretty!” said the lady appealed to.

“Pity you haven't knit it for yourself, it suits you so well,”
Miss Parrott observed.

“I'd rather take it to stop the leak in my best bed-room,”
Mrs. Waldo gayly rejoined, stealing a furtive glance at her

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head in the mirror over the mantel-piece. “Oh, Miss Thurston,
will you let us see your album-cover?”

Hannah Thurston had caught sight of a quiet nook in the
hall, behind the staircase, and was on her way to secure possession
of it. She had found the warmth of the sitting-room
intolerable, and the noise of many tongues began to be distracting
to her sensitive Quaker ear. She paused at once, and
in answer to Mrs. Waldo's request unfolded an oblong piece
of warm brown cloth, upon which a group of fern-leaves,
embroidered with green silk, was growing into shape. The
thready stems and frail, diminishing fronds were worked
with an exquisite truth to nature.

“It is not much more than the outline, as yet,” she remarked,
as she displayed the embroidery before the eager
eyes of Mrs. Waldo and the two spinsters.

The former, who possessed a natural though uncultivated
sense of beauty, was greatly delighted. “Why it's perfectly
lovely!” she exclaimed: “if I was younger, I'd get you to
teach me how you do it. You must be sure and let me see
the book when it's finished.”

“I don't see why my Eliza couldn't make me one of the
flowers around Jutnapore,” said Miss Clancy. “I'll mention
it in my next letter to Miss Boerum—the missionary's wife,
you know. It would be such a nice thing for me to remember
her by.”

Meanwhile the gentlemen began to drop in. Mr. Merryfield
arrived, in company with the Hon. Zeno Harder, member of
the Legislature for Atauga county. Then followed the Rev.
Mr. Waldo, a small, brisk man, with gray eyes, a short nose,
set out from his face at a sharper angle than is usual with
noses, and a mouth in which the Lord had placed a set of
teeth belonging to a man of twice his size—for which reason his
lips could not entirely close over them. His face thus received
an expression of perpetual hunger. The air of isolation, common
to clergymen of those small and insignificant sects which
seem to exist by sheer force of obstinacy, was not very

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perceptible in him. It had been neutralized, if not suppressed,
by the force of a strong animal temperament. On that side
of his nature, there was no isolation.

A number of young fellows—bashful hobbledehoys, or
over-assured men of two or three and twenty, with rigorously
fashionable shirt-collars—now made their appearance and
distributed themselves through Mrs. Hamilton Bue's rooms.
In the rising noise of conversation the more timid ventured to
use their tongues, and the company soon became so animated
that all of Mrs. Waldo's authority was necessary, to prevent
the younger ladies from neglecting their tasks. The Cimmerians,
as a point of etiquette, were installed in the parlor,
which also accommodated a number of the workers for the
Mission Fund, the remainder being gathered in the sitting-room,
where Mr. Styles and Mr. Waldo carried on an exceedingly
guarded and decorous conversation. Hannah Thurston
had secured her coveted nook behind the staircase in the
hall, where she was joined by Mrs. Merryfield and Miss Sophia
Stevenson. Mrs. Waldo, also, kept a chair at the same table,
for the purpose of watching the expanding fern-leaves in the
intervals of her commandership. Seth Wattles tilted his chair
in a corner, eager for an opportunity to usurp the conversation.

Seth was an awkward, ungainly person, whose clothes were
a continual satire on his professional skill. The first impression
which the man made, was the want of compact form.
His clay seemed to have been modelled by a bungling apprentice,
and imperfectly baked afterwards. The face was
long and lumpy in outline, without a proper coherence between
the features—the forehead being sloping and contracted
at the temples, the skull running backwards in a high, narrow
ridge. Thick hair, of a faded brown color, parted a little on
one side, was brushed behind his ears, where it hung in stiff
half-curls upon a broad, falling shirt-collar, which revealed his
neck down to the crest of the breast-bone. His eyes were
opaque gray, prominent, and devoid of expression. His nose

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was long and coarsely constructed, with blunt end and thick
nostrils, and his lips, though short, of that peculiar, shapeless formation,
which prevents a clear line of division between them.
Heavy, and of a pale purplish-red color, they seemed to run
together at the inner edges. His hands were large and hanging,
and all his joints apparently knobby and loose. His skin
had that appearance of oily clamminess which belongs to such
an organization. Men of this character seem to be made of
sticks and putty. There is no nerve, no elasticity, no keen,
alert, impressible life in any part of their bodies.

Leaving the ladies of the Fund to hear Mrs. Boerum's last
letter describing the condition of her school at Jutnapore, and
the Cimmerians to consult about the arrangements for their
Fair, we will join this group in the hall. Mrs. Waldo had
just taken her seat for the seventh time, saying: “Well, I
never shall get any thing done, at this rate!”—when her attention
was arrested by hearing Hannah Thurston say, in answer
to some remark of Mrs. Merryfield:

“It is too cheerful a place, not to be the home of cheerful
and agreeable people.”

“Oh, you are speaking of Lakeside, are you not?” she
asked.

“Yes, they say it's sold,” said Mrs. Merryfield; “have you
heard of it?”

“I believe Mr. Waldo mentioned it at dinner. It's a Mr.
Woodbury, or some such name. And rich. He was related,
in some way, to the Dennisons. He's expected immediately.
I'm glad of it, for I want to put him under contribution. Oh,
how beautiful! Did you first copy the pattern from the
leaves, Hannah, or do you keep it in your head?”

“Woodbury? Related to the Dennisons?” mused Mrs.
Merryfield. “Bless me! It can't be little Maxwell—Max.
we always called him, that used to be there summers—well,
nigh twenty years ago, at least. But you were not here
then, Mrs. Waldo—nor you, neither, Hannah. I heard afterwards
that he went to Calcutty. I remember him very

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well—a smart, curly-headed youngster, but knowed nothing
about farming. Him and my poor Absalom”—here she
smothered a rising sigh—“used to be a good deal with
other.”

An unusual stir in the sitting-room interrupted the conversation.

There were exclamations—noises of moving chairs—indistinct
phrases—and presently the strong voice of the Hon.
Zeno Harder was heard: “Very happy to make your acquaintance,
Sir—very happy!” Mrs. Waldo slipped to the
door and peeped in, telegraphing her observations in whispers
to the little party behind the stairs. “There's Mr.
Hammond—the lawyer, you know, from Tiberius, and another
gentleman—a stranger. Tall and sunburnt, with a moustache—
but I like his looks. Ah!” Here she darted back to her
seat. “Would you believe it?—the very man we were talking
about—Mr. Woodbury!”

In accordance with the usages of Ptolemy society, the new-comers
were taken in charge by the host, and formally introduced
to every person present. In a few minutes the round
of the sitting-room was completed and the party entered the
hall. Miss Thurston, looking up with a natural curiosity, encountered
a pair of earnest brown eyes, which happened, at
the moment, to rest mechanically upon her. Mr. Hamilton
Bue advanced and performed his office. The stranger bowed
with easy self-possession and a genial air, which asserted his
determination to enjoy the society. Mrs. Waldo, who was no
respecter of persons—in fact, she often declared that she
would not be afraid of Daniel Webster—cordially gave him
her hand, exclaiming: “We were this minute talking of you,
Mr. Woodbury! And I wished you were here, that I might
levy a contribution for our Sewing-Circle. But you're going
to be a neighbor, and so I'll ask it in earnest, next
time.”

“Why not now?” said the gentleman, taking out his
purse. “First thoughts are often best, and you know the

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proverb about short settlements. Pray accept this, as a token
that you do not consider me a stranger.”

“Oh, thank you!” she cried, as she took the bank-note;
“but” (hesitatingly) “is this a donation to our Society, or
must I divide it with the others?” The peculiar tone in
which the question was put rendered but one answer possible.
No man could have uttered it with such artful emphasis.

The constitution of the Sewing-Union was explained, and
Mr. Woodbury purchased a universal popularity by equal
contributions to the three Circles. Had he been less impulsive—
less kindly inclined to create, at once, a warm atmosphere
around his future home—he would not have given so
much. The consequences of his generosity were not long in
exhibiting themselves. Two days afterwards, the Seventh-Day
Baptists, at Atauga City, waited on him for a subscription
towards the building of their new church; and even the
ladies of Mulligansville so far conquered their antipathy to
the Ptolemy district, as to apply for aid to the Mission at
Pulo-Bizam, in the Ladrone Islands, which was a subject of
their especial care.

The introduction of a new element into a society so purely
local as that of Ptolemy, is generally felt as a constraint.
Where the stranger is a man of evident cultivation, whose superiority,
in various respects, is instinctively felt, but would be
indignantly disclaimed if any one dared to assert it, there is,
especially, a covert fear of his judgment. His eye and ear are
supposed to be intensely alert and critical: conversation becomes
subdued and formal at his approach: the romping youths
and maidens subside into decorous and tedious common-places,
until the first chill of his presence is overcome. Mr. Woodbury
had tact enough to perceive and dissipate this impression.
His habitual manners were slightly touched with reserve, but
no man could unbend more easily and gracefully. To the few
who remembered him as “Little Max.”—among them Mrs.
Merryfield—he manifested the cordial warmth of an old
friend, and laughed with a delight which came from the

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heart, at their mention of certain boyish mishaps which marked
his summers at Lakeside. The laborers for the Mission
Fund were rejoiced to learn that, though he had never been at
Jutnapore, yet he had once seen Mr. Boerum, on that gentleman's
arrival at Calcutta. (“What a pity he did'nt go to
Jutnapore! He might have told me about my Eliza,” remarked
Miss Clancy, aside.) In short, the ice between Mr.
Woodbury and the rest of the company was broken so quickly
that even the formation of the first thin crust was scarcely
perceived. His introduction to Ptolemy society was—in the
social technology of Boston—“a success.”

Again the clacking of tongues rose high and shrill, lessening
only for a few minutes after the distribution of wedges of
molasses-cake, offered by Mrs. Hamilton Bue's black-mitted
hands. Mr. Hamilton Bue followed in her wake with a jingling
tray, covered with glasses of lemonade, which the ladies
sipped delicately. The four spinsters, observing that Mrs.
Lemuel Styles drank but the half of her glass, replaced theirs
also half-filled, though it went to their hearts to do so. The
needles now stood at ease, no longer marching, with even
stitch, over their parade-grounds of silk, or cotton, or mousseline-de-laine.
One straggler after another fell out of the
ranks, until it was finally declared that “we have done enough
for this evening.” Then came singing, commencing with
“From Greenland's Icy Mountains,” in which half the company
joined. Miss Sophia Stevenson, who had a good voice,
with—it must be admitted—an occasional tendency to sharps,
led the hymn; but the parts were unequally distributed,
which Mr. Woodbury perceiving, he struck in with a rich
baritone voice. This acquisition was immediately noticed,
and, at the conclusion of the hymn, Mrs. Waldo requested
that he would favor them with a solo.

“I prefer to listen,” he answered. “I know none but the
old, old songs, which you all have heard. But you are welcome
to one of them, if you will first let me hear something
newer and fresher.” Unconsciously, he had hit the custom

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of Ptolemy, never to sing until somebody else has first sung,
to encourage you. The difficulty is, to find the encourager.

Mrs. Waldo seized upon Seth Wattles, who, nothing loth,
commenced in a gritty bass voice:

“What in the world is the song about?” whispered Mr.
Woodbury.

“It's the Lament of the Indian Hunter,” said Mrs. Waldo:
“he always sings it. Now comes the chorus: it's queer:
listen!”

Thereupon, from the cavernous throat of the singer, issued
a series of howls in the minor key, something in this wise:

“Yo-ho—yo-ho! Yo-HO-O—yo-HO-ho-ho-ho!”

“After this,” thought Woodbury, “they can bear to hear
an old song, though a thousand times repeated.” And being
again pressed, he gave simply, without any attempt at brilliancy
of execution: “The Harp of Tara.”

There was profound silence, as his voice, strung with true
masculine fibre, rang through the rooms. Generally, the least
intellectual persons sing with the truest and most touching expression,
because voice and intellect are rarely combined: but
Maxwell Woodbury's fine organ had not been given to him at
the expense of his brain. It was a lucky chance of nature. His
hearers did not really know how admirably he interpreted that
sigh of the Irish heart, but they were pleased, and not niggardly
in their expressions of delight.

More songs were called for, and refused. There was the
usual coaxing, and a shocking prevalence of hoarseness, combined
with sudden loss of memory. One young lady commenced
with “Isle” (which she pronounced eye-heel) “of
Beauty,” but broke down at the end of the first verse, and all
the cries of: “Do go on!” “It's so pretty!” could not

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encourage her to resume. Finally some one, spying Hannah Thurston,
who had folded up her embroidery and was sitting in a shaded
corner, cried out:

“Oh, Miss Thurston! Give us that song you sang the last
time—that one about the mountains, you know.”

Miss Thurston started, as if aroused out of a profound
revery, while a flitting blush, delicate and transient as the
shadow of a rose tossed upon marble, visited her face. She
had felt and followed, word by word and tone by tone, the
glorious Irish lay. The tragic pathos of the concluding lines—


“For freedom now so seldom wakes,
The only throb she gives
Is when some heart indignant breaks,
To show that still she lives!”
—thrilled and shook her with its despairing solemnity. What
a depth of betrayed trust, of baffled aspiration, it revealed!
Some dormant sentiment in her own heart leapt up and answered
it, with that quick inner pang, which would be a cry
were it expressed in sound. Yet was the despair which the
melody suggested of a diviner texture than joy. It was that
sadness of the imaginative nature which is half triumph, because
the same illumination which reveals the hopelessness of
its desires reveals also their beauty and their divinity.

The request addressed to her was a shock which recalled
her to herself. It was so warmly seconded that refusal would
have been ungracious, and a true social instinct told her that
her revery, though involuntary, was out of place. She profited
by the little delay which ensued in order to secure silence—
for in our country communities silence always precedes the
song—to recover her full self-possession. There was no tremor
in her voice, which soared, with the words, into a still,
clear ether, in which the pictures of the song stood out
pure, distinct, and sublime. It was one of those lyrics of
Mrs. Hemans, which suggest the trumpet at woman's lips—
shorn of its rough battle-snarl, its fierce notes tenderly

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muffled, but a trumpet still. She sang, with the bride of the
Alpine hunter:

It was rather musical declamation, than singing. Her voice,
pure, sweet, and strong, distinctly indicated the melody, instead
of giving it positively, beyond the possibility of a mistaken
semitone. It was a ringing chant of that “upper world”
of the glaciers, where every cry or call is followed by a musical
echo,—where every sound betrays the thin air and the
boundless space. Hannah Thurston sang it with a vision of
Alpine scenery in her brain. She saw, gleaming in the paler
sunshine, beneath the black-blue heaven, the sharp horns of
frosted silver, the hanging ledges of short summer grass, the
tumbled masses of gray rock, and the dust of snow from falling
avalanches. Hence, he who had once seen these things in
their reality, saw them again while listening to her. She knew
not, however, her own dramatic power: it was enough that
she gave pleasure.

Maxwell Woodbury's eyes brightened, as the bleak and
lofty landscapes of the Bernese Oberland rose before him.
Over the dark fir-woods and the blue ice-caverns of the
Rosenlaui glacier, he saw the jagged pyramid of the Wetterhorn,
toppling in the morning sky; and involuntarily asked
himself what was the magic which had started that half-forgotten
picture from the chambers of his memory. How
should this pale, quiet girl who, in a musical sense, was no
singer, and who had assuredly never seen the Alps, have
caught the voice which haunts their desolate glory? But
these were questions which came afterwards. The concluding

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verse, expressing only the patience and humility of love in the
valley, blurred the sharp crystal of the first impression and
brought him back to the Sewing-Union without a rude shock
of transition. He cordially thanked the singer—an act rather
unusual in Ptolemy at that time, and hence a grateful surprise
to Hannah Thurston, to whom his words conveyed a more
earnest meaning than was demanded by mere formal courtesy.

By this time the assembled company had become very
genial and unconstrained. The Rev. Lemuel Styles had entirely
forgotten the levity of Mrs. Bue's illumination, and even indulged
in good-humored badinage (of a perfectly mild and
proper character) with Mrs. Waldo. The others were gathered
into little groups, cheerfully chatting—the young gentlemen
and ladies apart from the married people. Scandal was
sugar-coated, in order to hide its true character: love put on
a bitter and prickly outside, to avoid the observation of others:
all the innocent disguises of Society were in as full operation
as in the ripened atmosphere of great cities.

The nearest approach to a discord was in a somewhat heated
discussion on the subject of Slavery, which grew up between
Seth Wattles and the Hon. Zeno Harder. The latter was
vehement in his denunciation of the Abolitionists, to which
the former replied by quoting the Declaration of Independence.
The two voices—either of them alike unpleasant to a
sensitive ear—finally became loud enough to attract the attention
of Mrs. Waldo, who had a keen scent for opportunities
for the exercise of her authority.

“Come, come!” she cried, placing one hand on Seth's shoulder,
while she threatened the Honorable Zeno with the other:
“this is forbidden ground. The Sewing-Union would never
hold together, if we allowed such things. Besides, what's the
use? You two would talk together all night, I'll warrant, and
be no nearer agreeing in the morning.”

“No,” cried Seth, “because your party politicians ignore
the questions of humanity!”

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“And your fanatical abstractionists never look at any thing
in a practical way!” rejoined the Honorable Zeno.

“And both are deficient in a sense of propriety—I shall
have to say, if you don't stop,” was Mrs. Waldo's ready comment.

This little episode had attracted a few spectators, who
were so evidently on Mrs. Waldo's side, that “the Judge,”
as the Hon. Zeno was familiarly called, at once saw the politic
course, and rising magnificently, exclaimed: “Although we
don't advocate Women's Rights, we yield to woman's authority.”
Then, bowing with corpulent condescension, he passed
away. Seth Wattles, having no longer an opponent, was condemned
to silence.

In the mean time, it had been whispered among the company
that the next meeting of the Union would be held at the
Merryfield farm-house, a mile and a half from Ptolemy. This
had been arranged by the prominent ladies, after a good deal
of consultation. Mr. Merryfield still belonged to the congregation
of the Rev. Lemuel Styles, although not in very good
repute. His farm-house was large and spacious, and he was
an excellent “provider,” especially for his guests. Moreover,
he was the only one of the small clan of Abolitionists, who
could conveniently entertain the Union,—so that in him were
discharged all the social obligations which the remaining members
could fairly exact. The four spinsters, indeed, had exchanged
patient glances, as much as to say: “This is a cross
which we must needs bear.” Mr. Merryfield, be it known,
had refused to contribute to Foreign Missions, on the ground
that we had already too many black heathen at home. The
younger persons, nevertheless, were very well satisfied, and
thus the millennial advance of Ptolemy was not interrupted.

The more staid guests had now taken leave, and there was
presently a general movement of departure. The ladies put
on their bonnets and shawls in the best bedroom up-stairs, and
the gentlemen picked out their respective hats and coats from
the miscellaneous heap on the kitchen settee. The hall-door

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

was unlocked to facilitate egress, and lively groups lingered
on the stairs, in the doorway, and on the piazza. The gentlemen
dodged about to secure their coveted privilege of
escort: now and then a happy young pair slipped away in the
belief that they were unnoticed: there were calls of “Do
come and see us, now!”—last eager whispers of gossip, a great
deal of superfluous female kissing, and the final remarks to
Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Bue: “Good-bye! we've had a nice
time!”—as the company filtered away.

When the last guest had disappeared, Mr. Hamilton Bue
carefully closed and locked the doors, and then remarked to
his wife, who was engaged in putting out the extra lamps:
“Well, Martha, I think we've done very well, though I say it
that shouldn't. Mr. Styles liked your tea, and the cake must
have been pretty good, judging from the way they stowed it
out of sight.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bue; “I was afraid at one time, there
wouldn't be enough to go round. It's well I made up my
mind, at the last minute, to bake five instead of four. Molasses
is so high.”

“Oh, what's the odds of two shillings more or less,” her
husband consolingly remarked, “when you've got to make a
regular spread? Besides, I guess I'll clear expenses, by persuading
Woodbury to insure his house in our concern. Dennisons
always took the Etna.”

p713-031 CHAPTER II. MR. WOODBURY'S INTRODUCTION TO LAKESIDE.

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

On the very day when the Sewing-Union met in Ptolemy,
there was an unusual commotion at Lakeside. Only four or
five days had elapsed since the secluded little household had
been startled by the news that the old place was finally sold,
and now a short note had arrived from Mr. Hammond, of Tiberius,
who was the agent for the estate, stating that the new
owner would probably make his appearance in the course of
the day.

The first thing that suggested itself to the distracted mind
of Mrs. Fortitude Babb, the housekeeper, was immediately to
summon old Melinda, a negro woman, whose specialty was
house-cleaning. Had there been sufficient time, Mrs. Babb
would have scoured the entire dwelling, from garret to cellar.
A stranger, indeed, would have remarked no appearance of
disorder, or want of proper cleanliness, anywhere: but the
tall housekeeper, propping her hands upon her hips, exclaimed,
in despair: “Whatever shall I do? There 's hardly time to
have the rooms swep', let alone washin' the wood-work.
Then, ag'in, I dunno which o' the two bed-rooms he'd like
best. Why couldn't Mr. Hammond hold him back, till things
was decent? And the libery 's been shet up, this ever so
long; and there's bakin' to do—squinch tarts, and sich likes—
and you must kill two chickens, Arbutus, right away!”

“Don't be worried, Mother Forty,” replied Arbutus Wilson,
the stout young man whom Mrs. Babb addressed, “things
a 'n't lookin' so bad, after all. Max.—well, Mr. Woodbury, I
must say now, though it'll go rather queer, at first—was always
easy satisfied, when he was here afore.”

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

“I reckon you think people doesn't change in twenty year.
There's no tellin' what sort of a man he's got to be. But
here comes Melindy. I guess I'll open the libery and let it
air, while she fixes the bedrooms.”

Mrs. Babb's nervousness had a deeper cause than the condition
of the Lakeside mansion. So many years had elapsed
since she first came to the place as housekeeper, that it seemed
to have become her own property as surely as that of the
Dennison family. The death of Mrs. Dennison, eight months
before, recalled her to the consciousness of her uncertain tenure.
Now, since the estate was finally sold and the new
owner about to arrive, a few days, in all probability, would
determine whether her right was to be confirmed or herself
turned adrift upon the world. Although her recollections of
Maxwell Woodbury, whose last visit to Lakeside occurred
during the first year of her reign, were as kindly as was consistent
with her rigid nature, she awaited his arrival with a
mixture of jealousy and dread. True, he was somewhat
nearer to her than those relatives of Mrs. Dennison who had
inherited the property at her death, for the latter Mrs. Babb
had never seen, while him she had both gently scolded and
severely petted: but she felt that the removal of Arbutus
Wilson and herself from the place would be a shameful piece
of injustice, and the fact that such removal was possible indicated
something wrong in the world.

Arbutus, who was a hardy, healthy, strapping fellow, of
eight-and-twenty, was her step-step-son, if there can be such a
relation. His father, who died shortly after his birth, was one
of those uneducated, ignorant men, whose ears are yet quick to
catch and retain any word of grandiloquent sound. Nothing
delighted him so much as to hear the Biblical genealogies
read. He had somewhere picked up the word arbutus, the
sound of which so pleased him that he at once conferred it
upon his baby, utterly unconscious of its meaning. A year or
two after his death, the widow Wilson married Jason Babb,
an honest, meek-natured carpenter, who proved a good father

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

to the little Arbutus. She, however, was carried away by a
malignant fever, in the first year of her second marriage. The
widower, who both mourned and missed her, cherished her
child with a conscientious fidelity, and it was quite as much
from a sense of duty towards the boy, as from an inclination
of the heart, that he married Miss Fortitude Winterbottom, a
tall, staid, self-reliant creature, verging on spinsterhood.

The Fates, however, seemed determined to interfere with
Jason Babb's connubial plans; but the next time it was upon
himself, and not upon his wife, that the lot fell. Having no
children of his own, by either wife, he besought Fortitude,
with his latest breath, to be both father and mother to the
doubly-orphaned little Bute Wilson. It must be admitted
that Mrs. Babb faithfully performed her promise. The true
feeling of parental tenderness had never been granted to her,
and the sense of responsibility—of ownership—which came in
its stead—was a very mild substitute; but it impressed the
boy, at least, with a consciousness of care and protection,
which satisfied his simple nature. Mrs. Dennison, with her
kind voice, and gentle, resigned old face, seemed much more
the mother, while Mrs. Babb, with her peremptory ways and
strict idea of discipline, unconsciously assumed for him the
attitude of a father. The latter had come to Lakeside at a
time when Mr. Dennison's confirmed feebleness required his
wife to devote herself wholly to his care. Mrs. Babb, therefore,
took charge of the house, and Arbutus, at first a younger
companion of Henry Dennison, afterwards an active farm-boy,
finally developed into an excellent farmer, and had almost the
exclusive management of the estate for some years before Mrs.
Dennison's death.

Thus these two persons, with an Irish field-hand, had been
the only occupants of Lakeside, during the summer and autumn.
Arbutus, or Bute, as he was universally called in the
neighborhood, was well-pleased with the news of Mr. Woodbury's
purchase. He remembered him, indistinctly, as the
“town-boy” who gave him his first top and taught him how

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

to spin it, though the big fellow couldn't tell a thrush's egg
from a robin's, and always said “tortoise” instead of “tortle.”
Bute thought they'd get along together somehow—or, if they
didn't, he could do as well somewheres else, he reckoned.
Nevertheless, he felt anxious that the owner should receive a
satisfactory impression on his arrival, and busied himself, with
Patrick's assistance, in “setting every thing to rights” about
the barn and out-houses.

After all, there was scarcely need of such hurried preparation.
Mr. Hammond and Woodbury, detained by some
necessary formalities of the law, did not leave Tiberius until
the afternoon of that day. The town being situated at the
outlet of Atauga Lake, they took the little steamer to Atauga
City, near its head, in preference to the long road over the
hills. The boat, with a heavy load of freight, made slow progress,
and it was dusk before they passed the point on the
eastern shore, beyond which Lakeside is visible from the
water. On reaching Ptolemy by the evening stage from
Atauga City, Maxwell Woodbury found the new “Ptolemy
House” so bright and cheerful, that he immediately proposed
their remaining for the night, although within four miles of
their destination.

“I have a fancy for approaching the old place by daylight,”
said he to his companion. “Here begins my familiar ground,
and I should be sorry to lose the smallest test of memory.
Besides, I am not sure what kind of quarters I should be able
to offer you, on such short notice.”

“Let us stay, then, by all means,” said the lawyer. “I can
appreciate feelings, although I am occupied entirely with
deeds.” Here he quietly chuckled, and was answered by a
roar from the landlord, who came up in time to hear the
remark.

“Ha! ha! Good, Mr. Hammond!” exclaimed the latter.
“Very happy to entertain you, gentlemen. Mr. Woodbury
can have the Bridal Chamber, if he likes. But you should go
to the Great Sewing-Union, gentlemen. You will find all

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

Ptolemy there to-night. It's at Hamilton Bue's: you know
him, Mr. Hammond—Director of the Bank.”

The results of this advice have already been described.
After breakfast, on the following morning, the two gentlemen
set out for Lakeside in a light open carriage. It was one of
the last days of the Indian summer, soft and hazy, with a foreboding
of winter in the air. The hills, enclosing the head of
the lake, and stretching away southwards, on opposite sides
of the two valleys, which unite just behind Ptolemy, loomed
through their blue veil with almost the majesty of mountain
ranges. The green of the pine-forests on their crests, and of
those ragged lines of the original woods which marked the
courses of the descending ravines, was dimmed and robbed of its
gloom. The meadows extending towards the lake were still
fresh, and the great elms by the creek-side had not yet shed
all of their tawny leaves. A moist, fragrant odor of decay pervaded
the atmosphere, and the soft southwestern wind, occasionally
stealing down the further valley, seemed to blow the sombre
colors of the landscape into dying flickers of brightness.

As they crossed the stream to the eastward of the village,
and drove along the base of the hills beyond, Woodbury exclaimed:

“You cannot possibly understand, Mr. Hammond, how
refreshing to me are these signs of the coming winter, after
nearly fifteen years of unbroken summer. I shall enjoy the
change doubly here, among the scenes of the only country-life
which I ever knew in America,—where I was really happiest,
as a boy. I suppose,” he added, laughing, “now that the
business is over, I may confess to you how much I congratulate
myself on having made the purchase.”

“As if I did not notice how anxious you were to buy!” rejoined
the lawyer. “You must be strongly attached to the
old place, to take it on the strength of former associations. I
wish it were nearer Tiberius, that we might have more of your
society. Did you pass much of your youth here?”

“Only my summers, from the age of twelve to fifteen. My

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

constitution was rather delicate when I was young, and Mrs.
Dennison, who was a distant relative of my father, and sometimes
visited us in New York, persuaded him to let me try
the air of Lakeside. Henry was about my own age, and we
soon became great friends. The place was a second home to
me, thenceforth, until my father's death. Even after I went
to Calcutta, I continued to correspond with Henry, but my
last letter from Lakeside was written by his mother, after his
body was brought home from Mexico.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Hammond, “the old lady fairly broke
down after that. Henry was a fine fellow and a promising
officer, and I believe she would have borne his loss better, had
he fallen in battle. But he lingered a long time in the hospital,
and she was just beginning to hope for his recovery, when
the news of his death came instead. But see! there is Roaring
Brook. Do you hear the noise of the fall? How loud it
is this morning!”

The hill, curving rapidly to the eastward, rose abruptly from
the meadows in a succession of shelving terraces, the lowest of
which was faced with a wall of dark rock, in horizontal strata,
but almost concealed from view by the tall forest trees which
grew at its base. The stream, issuing from a glen which descended
from the lofty upland region to the eastward of the
lake, poured itself headlong from the brink of the rocky steep,—
a glittering silver thread in summer, a tawny banner of
angry sound in the autumn rains. Seen through the hazy air,
its narrow white column seemed to stand motionless between
the pines, and its mellowed thunder to roll from some region
beyond the hills.

Woodbury, who had been looking steadily across the meadows
to the north, cried out: “It is the same—it has not yet
run itself dry! Now we shall see Lakeside; but no—yet I
certainly used to see the house from this point. Ah! twenty
years! I had forgotten that trees cannot stand still; that
ash, or whatever it is, has quite filled up the gap. I am afraid
I shall find greater changes than this.”

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

His eyes mechanically fell, as the wheels rumbled suddenly
on the plank bridge over Roaring Brook. Mr. Hammond looked
up, gave the horse a skilful dash of the whip and shot past
the trees which lined the stream. “Look and see!” he presently
said.

The old place, so familiar to Woodbury, and now his own
property, lay before him. There was the heavy white house,
with its broad verandah, looking southward from the last low
shelf of the hills, which rose behind it on their westward
sweep back to the lake. The high-road to Anacreon and
thence to Tiberius, up the eastern shore, turned to the right
and ascended to the upland, through a long winding glen.
A small grove of evergreens still further protected the house
on its northwestern side, so that its position was unusually
sunny and sheltered. The head of the lake, the meadows
around Ptolemy and the branching valleys beyond, were all
visible from the southern windows; and though the hills to
the east somewhat obscured the sunrise, the evenings wore a
double splendor—in the lake and in the sky.

“Poor Henry!” whispered Woodbury to himself, as Mr.
Hammond alighted to open the gate into the private lane.
The house had again disappeared from view, behind the rise
of the broad knoll upon which it stood, and their approach
was not visible until they had reached the upper level, with
its stately avenue of sugar-maples, extending to the garden
wall.

The place was really unchanged, to all appearance. Perhaps
the clumps of lilac and snowball, along the northern
wall were somewhat higher, and the apple-trees in the orchard
behind the house more gnarled and mossy; but the house itself,
the turfed space before it, the flagged walk leading to the
door, the pyramids of yew and juniper, were the same as
ever, and the old oaks at each corner seemed, twig for twig,
to have stood still for twenty years. A few bunches of chrysanthemum,
somewhat nipped by the frost, gave their sober
autumnal coloring and wholesome bitter-sweet odor to the

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

garden-alleys. The late purple asters were shrivelled and
drooping, and the hollyhocks stood like desolate floral towers,
tottering over the summer's ruin.

For the first time in twenty years, Woodbury felt the almost
forgotten sensation of home steal through his heart.
Quickly and silently he recognized each familiar object, and
the far-off days of the past swept into the nearness of yesterday.
His ear took no note of Mr. Hammond's rattling remarks:
the latter was not precisely the man whose atmosphere
lures forth the hidden fragrance of one's nature.

As they drove along the garden-wall, a strong figure appeared,
approaching with eager strides. He glanced first at
the horse and carriage. “Fairlamb's livery—the bay,” was
his mental remark. The next moment he stood at the gate,
waiting for them to alight.

“How do you do, Mr. Hammond?” he cried. “You're
late a-comin': we expected ye las' night. And is this really
Mr. Maxwell, I mean Mr. Woodbury—well, I'd never ha
knowed him. I s'pose you don't know me, nuther, Mr.
Max.?”

“God bless me! it must be little Bute!” exclaimed Woodbury,
taking the honest fellow's hand. “Yes, I see it now—
man instead of boy, but the same fellow still.”

“Yes, indeed, that I be!” asserted the delighted Arbutus.
He meant much more than the words indicated.
Fully expressed, his thoughts would have run something in
this wise: “I guess we can git on together, as well as
when we was boys. If you ha'n't changed, I ha'n't. I'll
do my dooty towards ye, and you won't be disapp'inted in
me.”

In the mean time, Mrs. Fortitude Babb had made her appearance,
clad in the black bombazine which she had purchased
for Jason's funeral, and was waiting, tall and rigid, but
with considerable internal “flusteration” (as she would have
expressed it), on the verandah. One mental eye was directed
towards the new owner, and the other to the fowls in the

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

kitchen, which she had cut up the evening before, for a fricassee,
and which were thus rendered unfit for roasting. “Why,
he's a perfick stranger!” “If there's only time to make a pie
of 'em!” were the two thoughts which crossed each other in
her brain.

“Mrs. Babb! there's no mistaking who you are!” exclaimed
Woodbury, as he hastened with outstretched hand up the
flagged walk.

The old housekeeper gave him her long, bony hand in
return, and made an attempt at a courtesy, a thing which
she had not done for so long that one of her knee-joints
cracked with the effort. “Welcome, Sir!” said she, with becoming
gravity. Woodbury thought she did not recognize
him.

“Why, don't you remember Max.?” he asked.

“Yes, I recollex you as you was. And now I come to
look, your eyes is jist the same. Dear, dear!” and in spite
of herself two large tears slowly took their way down her
lank cheeks. “If Miss Dennison and Henry could be here!”
Then she wiped her eyes with her hand, rather than spoil the
corner of her black silk apron. Stiffening her features the
next moment, she turned away, exclaiming in a voice unnecessarily
sharp: “Arbutus, why don't you put away the
horse?”

The gentlemen entered the house. The hall-door had evidently
not been recently used, for the lock grated with a
sound of rust. The sitting-room on the left and the library
beyond, were full of hazy sunshine and cheerful with the
crackling of fires on the open hearth. Dust was nowhere to
be seen, but the chairs stood as fixedly in their formal places as
if screwed to the floor, and the old books seemed to be glued
together in regular piles. None of the slight tokens of habitual
occupation caught the eye—no pleasant irregularity of domestic
life,—a newspaper tossed here, a glove there, a chair
placed obliquely to a favorite window, or a work-stand or
foot-stool drawn from its place. Mrs. Babb, it is true, with a

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

desperate attempt at ornament, had gathered the most presentable
of the chrysanthemums, with some springs of arbor-vit
æ, and stuck them into an old glass flower-jar. Their
pungent odor helped to conceal the faint musty smell which
still lingered in the unused rooms.

“I think we will sit here, Mrs. Babb,” said Woodbury,
leading the way into the library. “It was always my favorite
room,” he added, turning to the lawyer, “and it has the finest
view of the lake.”

“I'm afeard that's all you'll have,” the housekeeper grimly
remarked. “Things is terrible upside-down: you come so
onexpected. An empty house makes more bother than a full
one. But you're here now, an' you'll have to take it sich as
it is.”

Therewith she retired to the kitchen, where Bute soon
joined her.

“Well, Mother Forty,” he asked, “how do you like his
looks? He's no more changed than I am, only on th' outside.
I don't s'pose he knows more than ever about farmin',
but he's only got to let me alone and things 'll go right.”

“Looks is nothin',” the housekeeper answered. “Handsome
is that handsome does, I say. Don't whistle till you're
out o' the woods, Bute. Not but what I'd ruther have him
here than some o' them people down to Po'keepsy, that never
took no notice o' her while she lived.”

“There's no mistake, then, about his havin' bought the
farm?”

“I guess not, but I'll soon see.”

She presently appeared in the library, with a pitcher of
cider and two glasses on a tray, and a plate of her best “jumbles.”
“There's a few bottles o' Madary in the cellar,” she
said; “but you know I can't take nothin' without your leave,
Mr. Hammond—leastways, onless it's all fixed.”

Woodbury, however, quietly answered: “Thank you, we
will leave the wine until dinner. You can give us a meal, I
presume, Mrs. Babb?”

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

“'T wo'nt be what I'd like. I'd reckoned on a supper las'
night, instid of a dinner to-day. Expect it 'll be pretty much
pot-luck. However, I'll do what I can.”

Mrs. Babb then returned to the kitchen, satisfied, at least,
that Mr. Maxwell Woodbury was now really the master of
Lakeside.

p713-042 CHAPTER III. AN EVENING OF GOSSIP, IN WHICH WE LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT THE PERSONS ALREADY MENTIONED.

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

After a long absence in India, Woodbury had come home
to find all his former associations broken, even the familiar
landmarks of his boyish life destroyed. His only near relative
was an older sister, married some years before his departure,
and now a stately matron, who was just beginning to enjoy a
new importance in society from the beauty of her daughters.
There was a small corner in her heart, it is true, for the exiled
brother. The floor was swept, there; the room aired, and
sufficient fire kept burning on the hearth, to take off the chill:
but it was the chamber of an occasional guest rather than of
an habitual inmate. She was glad to see him back again, especially
as his manners were thoroughly refined and his wealth
was supposed to be large (indeed, common report greatly
magnified it): she would have lamented his death, and have
worn becoming mourning for him—would even have persuaded
her husband to assist him, had he returned penniless.
In short, Woodbury could not complain of his reception,
and the absence of a more intimate relation—of a sweet,
sympathetic bond, springing from kinship of heart as well as
of blood, was all the more lightly felt because such bond had
never previously existed.

In the dreams of home which haunted him in lonely hours,
on the banks of the Hoogly or the breezy heights of Darjeeling,
Lakeside always first arose, and repeated itself most frequently
and distinctly. “Aunt Dennison,” as he was accustomed
to call her, took the place, in his affectionate memory,

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

of the lost mother whose features he could trace but dimly,
far back in the faint consciousness of childhood. There
seemed to be no other spot in the world to which he had a
natural right to return. The friends whom he had left, in
New York, as a young man of twenty-one, had become restless,
impetuous men of business, from whose natures every
element of calm had been shaken, while he had slowly and
comfortably matured his manhood in the immemorial repose
of Asia. The atmosphere of the city at first excited, then
wearied him. The wish to visit Lakeside was increasing in
his mind, when he was one day startled by seeing the property
advertised for sale, and instantly determined to become
the purchaser. A correspondence with Mr. Hammond ensued,
and, as there was another competitor in the field, Woodbury's
anxiety to secure the old place led him to close the
negotiations before he had found time to see it again. Now,
however, he had made arrangements to spend the greater part
of the winter there, as much on account of the certain repose
and seclusion which he craved, as from the physical necessity
of that tonic which the dry cold of the inland offered to his
languid tropical blood.

No disposal had yet been made of the stock and implements
belonging to the farm, which had not been included in the
purchase of the estate. Woodbury's object in buying the
land had no reference to any definite plan of his future life.
He had come back from India with a fortune which, though
moderate, absolved him from the necessity of labor. He simply
wished to have a home of his own—an ark of refuge to
which he could at any time return—a sheltered spot where
some portion of his life might strike root. His knowledge of
farming was next to nothing. Yet the fields could not be allowed
to relapse into wilderness, the house must have a housekeeper,
and the necessity of continuing the present occupants
in their respective functions was too apparent to be discussed.
For the present, at least, Mrs. Babb and Arbutus were indispensable
adherents of the property.

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

After dinner, Mr. Hammond paid them what was due from
the estate. Bute turned the money over uneasily in his hand,
grew red in the face, and avoided meeting the eye of the new
owner. Mrs. Babb straightened her long spine, took out a
buckskin purse, and, having put the money therein, began
rubbing the steel clasp with the corner of her apron. Woodbury,
then, with a few friendly words, expressed his pleasure
at having found them in charge of Lakeside, and his desire
that each should continue to serve him in the same capacity as
before.

Mrs. Babb did not betray, by the twitch of a muscle, the
relief she felt. On the contrary, she took credit to herself for
accepting her good fortune. “There's them that would like
to have me,” said she. “Mrs. Dennison never havin' said
nothin' ag'in my housekeepin', but the reverse; and I a'n't
bound to stay, for want of a good home; but somebody must
keep house for ye, and I'd hate to see things goin' to wrack,
after keerin' for 'em, a matter o' twenty year. Well—I'll
stay, I guess, and do my best, as I've always done it.”

“Et tu, Bute?” said Mr. Hammond, whose small puns
had gained him a reputation for wit, in Tiberius.

Bute understood the meaning, not the words. “I'm glad
Mr. Max. wants me,” he answered, eagerly. “I'd hate to leave
the old place, though I'm able to get my livin' most anywheres.
But it'd be like leavin' home—and jist now, with that twoyear
old colt to break, and a couple o' steers that I'm goin' to
yoke in the spring—it wouldn't seem natural, like. Mr. Max.
and me was boys together here, and I guess we can hitch
teams without kickin' over the traces.”

After arranging for an inventory and appraisal of the live
stock, farming implements, and the greater part of the furniture,
which Woodbury decided to retain, Mr. Hammond took
his departure. Mrs. Babb prepared her tea at the usual early
hour. After some little hesitation, she took her seat at the
table, but evaded participation in the meal. Mr. Woodbury
sat much longer than she was accustomed to see, in the people

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

of Ptolemy: he sipped his tea slowly, and actually accepted a
fourth cup. Mrs. Babb's gratification reached its height when
he began to praise her preserved quinces, but on his unthinkingly
declaring them to be “better than ginger,” her grimness
returned.

“Better than ginger! I should think so!” was her mental
exclamation.

Throwing himself into the old leather arm-chair before the
library fire, Woodbury enjoyed the perfect stillness of the November
evening. The wind had fallen, and the light of a half-moon
lay upon the landscape. The vague illumination, the
shadowy outlines of the distant hills, and that sense of isolation
from the world which now returned upon him, gratefully
brought back the half-obliterated moods of his Indian life. He
almost expected to hear the soft whish of the punka above his
head, and to find, suddenly, the “hookah-burdar” at his
elbow. A cheerful hickory-fed flame replaced the one, and a
ripe Havana cigar the other; but his repose was not destined
to be left undisturbed. “The world” is not so easy to
escape. Even there, in Ptolemy, it existed, and two of its
special agents (self-created) already knocked at the door of
Lakeside.

The housekeeper ushered Mr. Hamilton Bue and the Hon.
Zeno Harder into the library. The latter, as Member of the
Legislature, considered that this call was due, as, in some sort,
an official welcome to his district. Besides, his next aim was
the State Senate, and the favor of a new resident, whose
wealth would give him influence, could not be secured too
soon. Mr. Bue, as the host of the previous evening, enjoyed
an advantage over the agent of the “Etna,” which he was not
slow to use. His politeness was composed of equal parts of
curiosity and the “Saratoga Mutual.”

“We thought, Sir,” said the Hon. Zeno, entering, “that
your first evening here might be a little lonesome, and you'd
be glad to have company for an hour or so.”

The Member was a coarse, obese man, with heavy chaps,

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

thick, flat lips, small eyes, bald crown, and a voice which had
been made harsh and aggressive in its tone by much vigorous
oratory in the open air. The lines of his figure were rounded,
it is true, but it was the lumpy roundness of a potato rather
than the swelling, opulent curves of well-padded muscle.
Mr. Hamilton Bue, in contrast to him, seemed to be made of
angles. His face and hands had that lean dryness which suggests
a body similarly constructed, and makes us thankful for
the invention of clothing. He was a prim, precise business
man, as the long thin nose and narrow lips indicated, with a
trace of weakness in the retreating chin. Neither of these
gentlemen possessed a particle of that grapy bloom of ripe
manhood, which tells of generous blood in either cell of the
double heart. In one the juice was dried up; in the other it
had become thick and slightly rancid.

They were not the visitors whom Woodbury would have
chosen, but the ostensible purpose of their call demanded
acknowledgment. He therefore gave them a cordial welcome,
and drew additional chairs in front of the fire. The Hon.
Zeno, taking a cigar, elevated his feet upon the lower moulding
of the wooden mantel-piece, spat in the fire, and remarked:

“You find Ptolemy changed, I dare say. Let me see—
when were you here last? In '32? I must have been studying
law in Tiberius at that time. Oh, it's scarcely the same
place. So many went West after the smash in '37, and new
people have come in—new people and new idees, I may
say.”

“We have certainly shared in the general progression of
the country, even during my residence here,” said Mr. Hamilton
Bue, carefully assuming his official style. “Ten years
ago, there were but thirty-seven names on the books of the
Saratoga Mutual. Now we count a hundred and thirteen.
But there is a reason for it: the Company pays its loss punctually—
most punctually.”

Unconscious of this dexterous advertising, Woodbury

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

answered the Hon. Zeno: “Since I am to be, for a while, a
member of your community, I am interested in learning something
more about it. What are the new ideas you mentioned,
Mr. Harder?”

“Well, Sir,—I can't exactly say that Hunkerism is a new
thing in politics. I'm a Barnburner, you must know, and
since the split it seems like new parties, though we hold on to
the old principles. Then there's the Temperance Reform—
swep' every thing before it, at first, but slacking off just now.
The Abolitionists, it's hardly worth while to count—there's so
few of them—but they make a mighty noise. Go for Non-Resistance,
Women's Rights, and all other Isms. So, you see,
compared to the old times, when 'twas only Whig and Democrat,
the deestrict is pretty well stirred up.”

Mr. Bue, uncertain as to the views of his host upon some of
the subjects mentioned, and keeping a sharp eye to his own
interests, here remarked in a mild, placable tone: “I don't
know that it does any harm. People must have their own
opinions, and there's no law to hinder it. In fact, frequent
discussion is a means of intellectual improvement.”

“But what's the use of discussing what's contrary to Scriptur'
and Reason?” cried the Hon. Zeno, in his out-door voice.
“Our party is for Free Soil, and you can't go further under
the Constitution,—so, what's the use in talking? Non-Resistance
might be Christian enough, if all men was saints;
but we've got to take things as we find 'em. When you're
hit, hit back, if you want to do any good in these times. As
for Women's Rights, it's the biggest humbug of all. A
pretty mess we should be in, if it could be carried out! Think
of my wife taking the stump against Mrs. Blackford, and me
and him doing the washing and cooking!”

“Who was the Abolitionist—for such I took him to be—
with whom you were talking, last evening, at Mr. Bue's?”
Woodbury asked.

“Wattles—a tailor in Ptolemy—one of the worst fanatics
among 'em!” the irate Zeno replied. “Believes in all the

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

Isms, and thinks himself a great Reformer. It's disgusting to
hear a man talk about Women's Rights, as he does. I don't
mind it so much in Hannah Thurston; but the fact is, she's
more of a man than the most of 'em.”

“Hannah Thurston! Is not that the lady who sang—a
pale, earnest-looking girl, in a gray dress?”

“I did'nt notice her dress,” the Member answered. “She
sings, though—not much voice, but what she has tells amazingly.
Between ourselves, I'll admit that she's a first-rate
speaker—that is, for a woman. I was tempted to have a
round with her, at the last meeting they held; but then, you
know, a woman always has you at a disadvantage. You
daren't give it back to them as sharp as you get it.”

“Do you really mean that she makes public harangues?”
exclaimed Woodbury, who, in his long absence from home,
had lost sight of many new developments in American
society.

“Yes, and not bad ones, either, when you consider the subject.
Her mother used to preach in Quaker Meetings, so it
doesn't seem quite so strange as it might. Besides, she isn't
married, and one can make some allowance. But when Sarah
Merryfield gets up and talks of the tyranny of man, it's a
little too much for me. I'd like to know, now, exactly what
her meek lout of a husband thinks about it.”

“Is Mrs. Waldo, also, an advocate of the new doctrine?”

“She? No indeed. She has her rights already: that is,
all that a woman properly knows how to use. Though I don't
like the Cimmerian doctrine—Mr. Waldo is pastor of the
Cimmerians—yet I think she's a much better Christian than
the Merryfields, who still hang on to our Church.”

“What are the Cimmerians?” inquired Woodbury. “Are
they so called from the darkness of their doctrines?”

The Hon. Zeno did not understand the classical allusion.
“They're followers of the Rev. Beza Cimmer,” he said. “He
was first a Seceder, I believe, but differed with them on the
doctrine of Grace. Besides, they think that Baptism, to be

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

saving, must be in exact imitation of that of the Saviour.
The preacher wears a hair garment, like John the Baptist,
when he performs the ceremony, and the converts long, white
robes. They pick out some creek for their Jordan, and do
not allow outsiders to be present. They don't grow in numbers,
and have but a very small congregation in Ptolemy. In
fact, Mr. Waldo is considered rather shaky by some of the
older members, who were converted by Cimmer himself. He
don't hold very close communion.”

A part of this explanation was incomprehensible to Woodbury,
who was not yet familiar with the catch-words which
fall so glibly from the mouths of country theologians. He
detected the Member's disposition to harangue instead of
converse—a tendency which could only be prevented by a
frequent and dexterous change of subject. “Your church,”
he said:—“I take it for granted you refer to that of Mr.
Styles,—seems to be in a flourishing condition.”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Hamilton Bue, “we have prospered
under his ministry. Some have backslidden, it is true, but we
have had encouraging seasons of revival. Our ladies are now
very earnest in the work of assisting the Jutnapore Mission.
Mrs. Boerum is from Syracuse, and a particular friend of Miss
Eliza Clancy. I think Miss Eliza herself would have gone
if she had been called in time. You know it requires a
double call.”

“A double call! Excuse me if I do not quite understand
you,” said the host.

“Why, of course, they must first be called to the work;
and then, as they can't go alone among the heathen, they
must afterwards depend on a personal call from some unmarried
missionary. Now Miss Clancy is rather too old
for that.”

Woodbury could not repress a smile at this naïve statement,
although it was made with entire gravity. “I have seen something
of your missions in India,” he at last remarked, “and
believe that they are capable of accomplishing much good.

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

Still, you must not expect immediate returns. It is only the
lowest caste that is now reached, and the Christianizing of
India must come, eventually, from the highest.”

Rather than discuss a subject of which he was ignorant, the
Hon. Zeno started a new topic. “By the way, the next meeting
of the Sewing Union will be at Merryfield's. Shall you
attend, Mr. Woodbury?”

“Yes. They are among the few persons who have kept me
in good remembrance, though they, too, from what you have
said, must be greatly changed since I used to play with their
son Absalom. I am very sorry to hear of his death.”

“It is a pity,” replied the Member, biting off the end of a
fresh cigar. “Absalom was really a fine, promising fellow,
but they spoiled him with their Isms. They were Grahamites
for a year or two—lived on bran bread and turnips, boiled
wheat and dried apples. Absalom took up that and the
water-cure, and wanted to become a patent first-class reformer.
Now, Temperance is a good thing—though I can't quite go
the Maine Law—but water inside of you and outside of you,
summer and winter alike, isn't temperance, according to my
idee. He had a spell of pleurisy, one winter, and doctored
himself for it. His lungs were broken up, after that, and he
went off the very next fall. They set a great deal of store
by him.”

“Is it possible that such delusions are held by intelligent
persons?” exclaimed Woodbury, shocked as well as surprised.
“I hope these theories are not included in the general
progress of which Mr. Bue spoke. But I have almost forgotten
my duty as a host. The nights are getting cold, gentlemen,
and perhaps you will take a glass of wine.”

The Hon. Zeno's small eyes twinkled, and his lips twitched
liquorously. “Well—I don't care if I do,” said he.

Mr. Hamilton Bue was silent, and slightly embarrassed. He
had found it necessary to join the Temperance Society, because
the reform was a popular one. He always went with
the current as soon as it became too strong to stem

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

conveniently. But the temptation to indulge still lurked in his
thin blood. It was evident that the Member, for his own
sake, would not mention the circumstance, and Mr. Woodbury,
in all probability, would never think of it again.

Some of Mrs. Babb's “Madary” presently twinkled like
smoky topaz in the light of the wood-fire. Mr. Bue at first
sipped hesitatingly, like a bather dipping his toes, with a
shudder, into the waters of a cold river; but having once
reached the bottom of the glass—so quickly, indeed, that it
excited his own surprise—he made the next plunge with the
boldness of a man accustomed to it.

“You will attend church, I presume, Mr. Woodbury?”
said he. “Of course you have convictions.”

“Certainly,” Woodbury answered, without a clear idea of
what was meant by the word—“very strong ones.”

“Of course—it could not be otherwise. I shall be very
glad if you will now and then accept a seat in my pew. Mr.
Styles is a great authority on Galatians, and I am sure you
will derive spiritual refreshment from his sermons.”

Here the Hon. Zeno rose and commenced buttoning his
coat, as a signal of departure. Growing confidential from his
inner warmth, he placed one hand affectionately on Woodbury's
shoulder, somewhat to the latter's disgust, and said:
“Now you are one of us, Woodbury, you must take an active
part in our political concerns. Great principles are at stake,
Sir, and the country has need of men like you. Let me warn
you against the Hunkers—their game is nearly played out.
I'll be most happy, Sir, to explain to you the condition of
parties. You'll find me well posted up.”

Mr. Bue took occasion to make a parting hint in the interest
of the Saratoga Mutual. “If you wish to have your house insured,
Mr. Woodbury,” said he, “I shall be glad to send you
our pamphlets. The Company is so well known, fortunately,
that its name is a sufficient recommendation.”

The owner of Lakeside stood on the verandah, watching
his guests drive down the maple avenue. As the sound of

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

their wheels sank below the brow of the hill, the muffled
voice of Roaring Brook came softly to him, across the dark
meadows. A part of Atauga Lake threw back the light of
the descending moon. “Here,” thought he, “is the commencement
of a new existence. It is not the old, boyish life
of which I dreamed, but something very different. I foresee
that I shall have to accustom myself to many features of this
society, which are not attractive—some of them even repugnant—
and perhaps the only counterbalancing delight left to
me will be the enjoyment of this lovely scenery, the peace of
this secluded life. Will that be sufficient? Or will these
oaks and pines at last pall upon my eye, like the palms and
banyans of the East? No: one cannot be satisfied with external
resources. I must study, with a liberal human interest,
the characteristics of this little community, however strange
or repellant they may seem; and certainly, after making
friends among the fossilized Brahmins, there must be a few
among my fellow-Christians and fellow-countrymen, whom I
can heartily respect and love. Those long Indian years must
be placed in a closed Past, and I must adapt myself to habits
and associations, which have become more foreign than
familiar to me.”

p713-053 CHAPTER IV. AN INTERVIEW ON THE ROAD, AND A NEW HOUSEHOLD.

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

The Indian Summer still held its ground, keeping back the
winter's vanguard of frost and keen nor'westers. Day by
day the smoky air became more densely blue and still, and
the leaves, long since dead, hung upon the trees for want of a
loosening wind. The hickory-nuts fell by their own weight,
patterning here and there in the woods, in single smart raps,
and giving out a vigorous balsamic odor, as their cleft rinds
burst open. Only at night a gathering chill and a low moaning
in the air gave the presage of an approaching change in
the season.

On one of those warm forenoons which almost reproduce
the languor and physical yearning of the opening Spring,
Bute Wilson, mounted on Dick, the old farm-horse, jogged
slowly along the road to Ptolemy, whistling “The Rose that
All are Praising,” a melody which he had learned at the
singing-school. Bute was bound for the village, on a variety
of errands, and carried a basket on his arm. Dick's deliberate
gait seemed to be in harmony with the current of his
thoughts. The horse understood his rider, and knew very
well when to take his ease, and when to summon up the little
life left in his stiff old legs. Horses are better interpreters of
one's moods than the most of one's human friends.

Bute was a very good specimen of the American countryman.
A little over the average height, and compacted of
coarse, hardy fibre, he possessed, in spite of the common
stock from which he had sprung, the air of independent self-respect
which a laboring man can only acquire in a

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

community where caste is practically ignored. His independence,
however, had not degenerated into impudence: he knew his
deficiencies of nature and education, and did not attempt to
off-set them by a vulgar assertion of equality. He could sit
at Mr. Woodbury's table (using the knife a little too freely)
without embarrassment, and could take his dinner in the
kitchen without being conscious of degradation. His horses,
cattle, and crops occupied the first place in his mind—himself—
no, another person had the second place—and his own
personality gave him the least trouble. He was a general
favorite in the neighborhood, and his position was, perhaps,
more fortunate than he knew, though the knowledge of it
would not have made him happier than he was. He was honestly
respected by those below, and not looked down upon by
those above him. This consideration was won by his thorough
frankness, simplicity, and kindness of heart. His face was too
broad and his nose too thick, to be called handsome; but
there were fewer eyes into which men looked with more satisfaction
than the pair of large blue-gray ones, divided by the
nose aforesaid. His forehead was rather low, but open and
smooth, and his yellow hair, curling a little at the ends, grew
back from the temples with a sturdy set, as if determined that
they should not be hidden. Add to these traits a voice mellow
in spite of its volume—the cattle understood its every inflection—
and it is easy to perceive that Bute was in especial
favor with the opposite sex. From head to foot, Nature had
written upon him: This man is a male.

Bute had climbed the rise beyond Roaring Brook, when his
reveries, whatever they might have been, were interrupted by
the sight of a woman, walking towards Ptolemy, a short distance
in advance of him. Although no other person was near,
to play the spy, he felt the blood creeping up to his ears, as
he looked keenly and questioningly at the little figure, in its
dark-blue merino dress, tripping forward with short, quick
steps. Dick noticed the change in his master, and broke into
a trot down the gentle slope. At the sound of hoofs, the figure

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

turned, disclosing a bunch of brown ringlets and a saucy little
nose, then drew to one side of the road and stopped.

“Good-morning, Miss Carrie!” cried Bute, as he drew rein,
on approaching: “I thought it was you. Goin' to Ptolemy?
So am I. Git up on the bank, and I'll take ye on behind me.
Dick'll carry double—he's as quiet as a lamb. Here, I'll jerk
off my coat for you to set on.” And he had his right arm out
of the sleeve before he had finished speaking.

“Ah!” cried the lady, affecting a mild scream; “No, indeed,
Mr. Wilson! I am so afraid of horses. Besides, I don't
think it would look right.”

It suddenly occurred to Bute's mind, that, in order to ride
as he had proposed, she would be obliged to clasp him with
both arms. Heaving a sigh of regret, he drew on his coat and
jumped off the horse.

“Well, if you won't ride with me, I'll walk with you, any
how. How's your health, Miss Carrie?” offering his hand.

“Very well, I thank you, Mr. Wilson. How's Mrs. Babb?
And I hear that Mr. Woodbury has come to live with you.”

Miss Caroline Dilworth was too well satisfied at meeting with
Bute, to decline his proffered company. She was on her way
from the house of a neighboring farmer, where she had been
spending a fortnight as seamstress, to the cottage of the widow
Thurston, who lived on the edge of the village. The old
lady's health was declining, and Miss Dilworth occasionally
rendered a friendly assistance to the daughter. They were
both always glad to see the lively, chattering creature, in spite
of her manifold weaknesses and affectations. She was tewenty-five
years of age, at least, but assumed all the timidity and inexperience
of a girl of sixteen, always wearing her hair in a
mesh of natural ringlets which hung about her neck, and talking
with a soft childish drawl, unless—which rarely happened—
she was so very much in earnest as to forget herself. Her
nose was piquantly retroussé, her mouth small and cherry-red,
and her complexion fair (for she took great care of it); but
her eyes inclined to pale-green rather than blue, and she had

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

an affected habit of dropping the lids. Perhaps this was to
conceal the unpleasant redness of their edges, for they were
oftentimes so inflamed as to oblige her to suspend her occupation.
Her ambition was, to become a teacher—a post for
which she was not at all qualified. Hannah Thurston, however,
had kindly offered to assist her in preparing herself for
the coveted career.

What it was that attracted Bute Wilson to Miss Dilworth,
he was unable to tell. Had the case been reversed, we should
not wonder at it. Only this much was certain; her society
was a torment to him, her absence a pain. He would have cut
off his little finger for the privilege of just once lifting her in
his strong arms, and planting a kiss square upon the provoking
mouth, which, as if conscious of its surplus of sweetness,
could say so many bitter things to him. Bute had never
spoken to her of the feeling which she inspired in him. Why
should he? She knew just how he felt, and he knew that she
knew it. She played with him as he had many a time played
with a big trout at the end of his line. Over and over again
he had been on the point of giving her up, out of sheer worriment
and exhaustion of soul, when a sudden look from those
downcast eyes, a soft word, half whispered in a voice whose
deliberate sweetness tingled through him, from heart to fingerends,
bound him faster than ever. Miss Dilworth little suspected
how many rocks she had sledged to pieces, how many
extra swaths she had mowed in June, and shocks of corn she
had husked in October, through Bute Wilson's arm. If Mr.
Woodbury were a cunning employer, he would take measures
to prolong this condition of suspense.

On the present occasion, the affected little minx was unusually
gracious towards her victim. She had a keen curiosity
to gratify. “Now, Bute,” said she, as they started together
towards Ptolemy, Bute leading Dick by the bridle; “I want
you to tell me all about this Mr. Woodbury. What kind of a
man is he?”

“He's only been with us three or four days. To be sure, I

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

knowed him as a boy, but that's long ago, and I may have to
learn him over ag'in. It won't be a hard thing to do, though:
he's a gentleman, if there ever was one. He's a man that'll
always do what's right, if he knows how.”

“I mean, Bute, how he looks. Tall or short? Is he handsome?
Isn't he burnt very black, or is it worn off?”

“Not so many questions at once, Miss Carrie. He a'n't
blacker 'n I'd be now, if I was complected like him. Tall, you
might call him—nigh two inches more'n I am, and a reg'lar
pictur' of a man, though a bit thinner than he'd ought to be.
But I dunno whether you'd call him handsome: women has
sich queer notions. Now, there's that Seth Wattles, that you
think sich a beauty—”

“Bute Wilson! You know I don't think any such thing!
It's Seth's mind that I admire. There's such a thing as moral
and intellectual beauty, but that you don't understand.”

“No, hang it!—nor don't want to, if he's got it! I believe
in a man's doin' what he purtends to do—keepin' his mind on
his work, whatever it is. If Seth Wattles lays out to be a
tailor, let him be one: if he wants to be a moral and intellectual
beauty, he may try that, for all I keer—but he can't do
both to once't. I wish he'd make better trowsus, or give up
his business.”

Miss Dilworth knew her own weakness, and carefully avoided
entering into a discussion. She was vexed that one of the
phrases she had caught from Hannah Thurston, and which she
had frequently used with much effect, had rattled harmlessly
against the hard mail of Bute's common sense. At another
time she would have taken—or have seemed to take—offence,
at his rough speech; but she had not yet heard enough of Mr.
Woodbury.

“Well, never mind Seth,” she said, “you've not finished telling
me about your new master.”

If she had intended to prick Bute with this word, she utterly
failed. He quietly resumed the description: “Every man
that I like is handsome to me; but I think any woman would

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

admire to see Mr. Max. He's got big brown eyes, like them
o' the doe Master Harry used to have, and a straight nose, like
one o' the plaster heads in the libery. He wears a beard on
his upper lip, but no whiskers, and his hair is brown, and sort
o' curlin'. He's a man that knows what he's about, and can
make up his mind in five minutes, and looks you straight in
the face when he talks; and if he'd a hard thing to say (though
he's said nothin' o' the kind to me), he'd say it without flinchin',
a little worse to your face than what he'd say behind y'r back.
But what I like best in him, is, that he knows how to mind his
own business, without botherin' himself about other folks's.
You wouldn't ketch him a pitchin' into me because I chaw
tobacco, like Seth Wattles did, with all his moral and intellectual
beauty.”

“Oh, but, Bute, you know it's so unhealthy. I do wish
you'd give it up.”

“Unhealthy! Stuff and nonsense—look at me!” And, indeed
Bute, stopping, straightening himself, throwing out his
breast, and striking it with a hard fist until it rang like a muffled
drum, presented a picture of lusty, virile strength, which
few men in the neighborhood of Ptolemy could have matched.
“Unhealthy!” he continued; “I s'pose you'd call Seth
healthy, with his tallow face, and breast-bone caved in. Why,
the woman that marries him can use his ribs for a wash-board,
when she's lost her'n. Then there was Absalom Merryfield,
you know, killed himself out and out, he was so keerful o' his
health. I'd ruther have no health at all, a darned sight, than
worry my life out, thinkin' on it. Not that I couldn't give
up chawin' tobacco, or any thing else, if there was a good
reason for it. What is it to you, Carrie, whether I chaw or
not?”

Miss Dilworth very well understood Bute's meaning, but
let it go without notice, as he knew she would. The truth is,
she was not insensible to his many good qualities, but she was
ambitious of higher game. She had not attended all the meetings
held in Ptolemy, in favor of Temperance, Anti-Slavery

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

and Women's Rights, without imbibing as much conceit as
the basis of her small mind could support. The expressions
which, from frequent repetition, she had caught and retained,
were put to such constant use, that she at last fancied them
half original, and sighed for a more important sphere than
that of a sempstress, or even a teacher. She knew she could
never become a speaker—she was sure of that—but might she
not be selected by some orator of Reform, as a kindred soul,
to support him with her sympathy and appreciation? Thus
far, however, her drooping lids had been lifted and her curls
elaborately tangled, in vain. The eloquent disciples, not
understanding these mute appeals, passed by on the other side.

She drew the conversation back to Mr. Woodbury, and
kept it to that theme until she had ascertained all that Bute
knew, or was willing to tell; for the latter had such a strong
sense of propriety about matters of this kind, as might have
inspired doubts of his being a native-born American. By this
time they had reached the bridge over East Atauga Creek,
whence it was but a short distance to the village.

“There is Friend Thurston's cottage, at last,” said Miss
Dilworth. “Have you seen Miss Hannah lately? But, of
course, she can't visit Lakeside now.”

“I'm sorry for it,” Bute remarked. “She's a fine woman,
in spite of her notions. But why can't she?”

“It would not be proper.”

“Wouldn't it be proper for a man to visit us?”

“To be sure. How queer you talk, Bute!”

“Well—she says a woman should be allowed to do whatever
a man does. If Women's Rights is worth talkin' about,
it's worth carryin' out. But I guess Miss Hannah's more of a
woman than she knows on. I like to hear her talk, mighty
well, and she says a good many things that I can't answer,
but they're ag'in nature, for all that. If she was married and
had a family growin' up 'round her, she wouldn't want to be a
lawyer or a preacher. Here we are, at the gate. Good-by,
Miss Carrie!”

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

“Good-by, Bute!” said Miss Dilworth, mechanically,
pausing at the gate to see him spring into the saddle and trot
rapidly down the street. She was confounded, and a little
angry, at the nonchalance with which he treated her oracle.
“I wish it had been Hannah Thurston, instead of me,” she
said to herself, with a spiteful toss of her head—“she has
an answer ready for everybody.”

The plot of ground in front of the cottage already wore
its winter livery. The roses were converted into little obelisks
of straw, the flower-beds were warmly covered, and only
the clumps of arbor-vitæ and the solitary balsam-fir were allowed
to display their hardy green. Miss Dilworth passed
around the house to the kitchen entrance, for she knew the
fondness of the inmates for warmth and sunshine, and the
sitting-room which they habitually occupied looked southward,
over the vegetable garden, to the meadows of the eastern
valley. Every thing was scrupulously neat and ordered.
The tops of vegetables left for seed and the dead stalks of
summer flowers had been carefully removed from the garden.
The walks had been swept by a broom, and the wood-shed,
elsewhere more or less chaotic in its appearance, was here
visited by the same implement. Its scattered chips seemed
to have arranged themselves into harmonious forms, like the
atoms of sand under the influence of musical tones.

In the kitchen a girl of thirteen—the only servant the
house afforded—was watching the kettles and pans on the
cooking-stove. This operation might have been carried on in
the parlor just as well, so little appearance was there of the
usual “slops” and litter of a kitchen. This was Friend
Thurston's specialty as a housekeeper—her maxim was, that
there should be no part of a house where a visitor might not
be received. Her neighbors always spoke of her kitchen with
an admiration wherein there was a slight mixture of despair.

The sitting-room, beyond, was made cheerful by windows
opening to the south and east; but more so by the homely
simplicity and comfort of its arrangement. Every object

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

spoke of limited means, but nothing of pinched self-denial.
The motley-colored rag carpet was clean, thick, and warm;
the chintz sofa was relieved by inviting cushions; the old-fashioned
rocking-chair was so stuffed and padded as to remedy
its stiffness; the windows were curtained, and a few brands were
smouldering among white ashes in the grate. A shelf inside
the southern window held some tea-roses in pots, mignionette,
heliotrope, and scarlet verbenas. There were but three pictures—
a head of Milton, an old wood-engraving of the cottage where
George Fox was born, and a tolerable copy of the Madonna
della Seggiola. On a stand in the corner were the favorite
volumes of the old lady, very plainly bound, as was meet, in
calf of a drab color—Job Scott's Works, Woolman's Journal,
and William Penn's “No Cross, No Crown.” A swinging
book-shelf, suspended on the wall, contained a different collection,
which evidently belonged to the daughter. Several
volumes of Carlyle, Margaret Fuller, Shelley, Bettina von
Arnim, De Staël's “Corinne,” the “Record of Woman,”
Milton, George Sands' “Consuelo,” Mrs. Child's “Letters
from New York,” Hugh Miller, and bound numbers of the
“Liberty Bell,” were among them. Had a certain drawer
been opened, one would have found files of The Slavery Annihilator,
Mrs. Swisshelm's Saturday Visitor, and the weekly
edition of the New-York Tribune. A rude vase of birch
bark, on a bracket, was filled with a mass of flowering grasses,
exquisitely arranged with regard to their forms and colors,
from pale green and golden-gray to the loveliest browns and
purples. This object was a work of art, in its way, and shed
a gleam of beauty over the plainness of the apartment.

Friend Gulielma Thurston, leaning back in the rocking-chair,
had suffered her hands, with the knitting they held, to sink
into her lap, and looked out upon the hazy valley. Her thin
face, framed in the close Quaker cap, which barely allowed her
gray hair to appear at the temples, wore a sweet, placid expression,
though the sunken eyes and set lips told of physical
suffering. The spotless book-muslin handkerchief, many-folded,

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

covered her neck and breast, and a worsted apron was tied
over her drab gown, rather from habit than use. As she basked
in the balmy warmth of the day, her wasted fingers unconsciously
clasped themselves in a manner that expressed patience
and trust. These were the prominent qualities of her nature—
the secret of her cheerfulness and the source of her courage.

Late married, she had lost her first child, and shortly after
the birth of her daughter Hannah, her husband also. The latter
was a stern, silent man, rigid in creed and in discipline, but
with a concealed capacity for passion which she had not understood
while she possessed him. Her mind first matured in
the sorrow of his loss, and she became, from that natural
need which is content with no narrower comfort, a speaker in
the meetings of her sect. The property she inherited at her
husband's death was very small, and she was obliged to labor
beyond her strength, until the bequest of an unmarried brother
relieved her from pressing want. Hannah, to whom she had
managed to give a tolerably thorough education, obtained a
situation as teacher, for which she proved so competent that
a liberal offer from the Trustees of the Young Ladies' Seminary
at Ptolemy induced both mother and daughter to remove
thither. Her earnings, added to the carefully husbanded property,
finally became sufficient to insure them a modest support,
so that, when her mother's failing health obliged Hannah
to give up her place, there was no serious anxiety for the
future to interfere with her filial duty.

The daughter was seated at the eastern window, beside a
small table, which was covered with gorgeously tinted autumn
leaves. She was occupied in arranging them in wreaths and
groups, on sheets of card-board, which were designed to form
an album, and to wear, as binding, the embroidery of fern-leaves,
upon which we first found her engaged. Such an
album, contributed by her to the Anti-Slavery Fair, the previous
year, had enriched the treasury of the Society by the sum
of ten dollars, and the managers had begged a second donation
of the same kind.

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

Catching a glimpse of Miss Dilworth through the window,
she rose to receive her. In stature, she was somewhat above
the average height of women, though not noticeably tall, and
a little too slender for beauty. Her hands were thin, but
finely formed, and she carried them as if they were a conscious
portion of herself, not an awkward attachment. Her face
would have been a perfect oval, except that the forehead, instead
of being low and softly rounded, was rather squarely
developed in the reflective region, and the cheeks, though not
thin, lacked the proper fulness of outline. Her hair was of a rich,
dark-brown, black in shadow, and the delicate arches of the
eye-brows were drawn with a clear, even pencil, above the
earnest gray eyes, dark and deep under the shadow of their
long lashes. The nose was faultless, and the lips, although no
longer wearing their maidenly ripeness and bloom, were so
pure in outline, so sweetly firm in their closing junction, so
lovely in their varying play of expression, that the life of her
face seemed to dwell in them alone. Her smile had a rare
benignity and beauty. The paleness of her face, being, to
some extent, a feature of her physical temperament, did not
convey the impression of impaired health: a ruddy tint would
not have harmonized with the spiritual and sensitive character
of her countenance. No one would have dreamed of calling
Hannah Thurston a beauty. In society nine men would have
passed her without a thought; but the tenth would have stood
still, and said: “Here is a woman `to sit at a king's right
hand, in thunder-storms,'” and would have carried her face in
his memory forever.

The severest test of a woman is to play an exceptional part
in the world. Her respect, her dignity, her virtue itself, become
doubtful, if not mythical, in the eyes of men. In the
small circle of Ptolemy, Hannah Thurston had subjected herself
to this test, and it was no slight triumph for her, had she
known it, that, while her views were received with either horror
or contempt, while the names of her fellow priestesses or
prophetesses were bandied about in utter disrespect, she was

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

never personally ridiculed. No tongue dared to whisper an
insinuation against either her sincerity or her purity. This,
however, was partly owing to the circumstances of her life in
the place. She had first achieved popularity as a teacher, and
honor as a daughter. Among other things, it was generally reported
and believed that she had declined an offer of marriage,
advantageous in a worldly point of view, and the act was set
down to her credit as wholly one of duty towards her mother.

In her plain brown dress, with linen collar and cuffs, the
only ornament being a knot of blue ribbon at the throat, she
also, appeared to be a Quakeress; yet, she had long since perceived
that the external forms of the sect had become obsolete,
and no longer considered herself bound by them. Some concession
in dress, however, was still due for her mother's sake,
beyond whose rapidly shortening span of life she could see no
aim in her own, unless it were devoted to righting the wrongs
of her sex. She had had her girlish dreams; but the next
birthday was her thirtieth, and she had already crossed, in resolve,
that deep gulf in a woman's life.

Miss Caroline Dilworth, in her blue dress, came as if dipped
in the Indian Summer, with a beryl gleam in her eyes, as she
darted into the sitting-room. She caught Hannah Thurston
around the waist, and kissed her twice: she was never known
to greet her female friends with less. Then, leaning gently
over the rocking-chair, she took the old woman's hand.

“Take off thy bonnet, child,” said the latter, “and push
thy hair back, so that I can see thy face. I'm glad thee's
come.”

“Oh, Friend Thurston, I was so afraid I couldn't get away
from Parkman's. It's a lonely place, you know, over the hill,
and she's hard of hearing. Ah! I'm out of breath, yet”—and
therewith heaving a sigh of relief, the little creature threw off
her shawl and untied the strings of her bonnet.

Their life had so much in it that was grave and earnest—
their conversation naturally turning to the past rather than
the future—that the Thurstons always felt themselves cheered

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

by Miss Dilworth's visits. She dropped her affectations in
their presence, and became, for the time, a light-hearted, amiable,
silly woman. She never arrived without a fresh budget
of gossip, generally of slight importance, but made piquant by
her rattling way of telling it.

“How thee does run on!” Friend Thurston would sometimes
say, whereupon the sempstress would only toss her curls
and run on all the more inveterately.

“Oh, I must tell you all about Lakeside and the new owner!”
she exclaimed, as she settled herself into a chair.

Hannah Thurston could probably have told her more about
Mr. Woodbury than she already knew; but it would have
been unkind to cut short the eager narrative, and so Bute's report,
with many additions and variations, was served out to
them in chapters, during the afternoon.

p713-066 CHAPTER V. IN WHICH MR. WOODBURY HEARS A WOMAN SPEAK.

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

In his intercourse with the society of his new home, Woodbury
found fewer distasteful circumstances to be overlooked,
than he had at first feared. The novelty of the experience
had its charm, and, as his mind recovered something of that
active interest in men which he had almost unlearned, he was
surprised to find how vital and absorbing his relations with
them became. From the very earnestness of his views, however,
he was reticent in the expression of them, and could with
difficulty accustom himself to the discussion, in mixed society, of
subjects which are usually only broached in the confidential intimacy
of friends. Not merely “Fate, free-will, foreknowledge
absolute,” but the privacy of individual faiths, doubts, and aspirations,
became themes of discussion; even the shrinking
sanctity of love was invaded, and the ability to converse
fluently was taken by the community of Ptolemy as a sign of
capacity to feel deeply on these subjects.

At the dinners and evening parties of the English, an intellectual
as well as a social propriety is strictly observed, and the
man who makes a habit of producing for general inspection,
his religious convictions or his moral experiences, is speedily
voted a bore. Maxwell Woodbury, whose long residence in
Calcutta had fixed his habits, in this respect, was at first more
amused than shocked, at the abandon with which spiritual
intimacies were exchanged, in the society of Ptolemy. He soon
learned, however, that much of this talk was merely a superficial
sentimentalism, and that the true sanctities of the speakers'

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

hearts were violated more in appearance than in fact. Nevertheless,
he felt no inclination to take part in conversation of
this character, and fell into the habit of assuming a mystical,
paradoxical tone, whenever he was forcibly drawn into the
discussion. Sometimes, indeed, he was tempted to take the
opposite side of the views advocated, simply in order to extort
more reckless and vehement utterances from their defenders.
It is not surprising, therefore, that his lack of earnestness,—as
it seemed to the others—was attributed by many to a stolid
indifference to humanity. Seth Wattles even went so far as
to say: “I should not wonder if he had made his money in
the accursed opium traffic.”

The two topics which, for him, possessed an intrinsically repellant
character, happened to be those which were at that
time most actively discussed: Spiritualism and Women's
Rights. He had seen the slight-of-hand of the Indian jugglers,
far more wonderful than any feats supernaturally performed
in the presence of mediums, and the professed communications
from the world of spirits struck him as being more inane
twaddle than that which fell from the lips of the living believers.
He had not lived thirty-six years without as much
knowledge of woman as a single man may profitably acquire;
and the better he knew the sex, the more tender and profound
became his regard. To him, in his strength, however, the relation
of protector was indispensable; the rudest blows of life
must first fall upon his shield. The idea of an independent
strength, existing side by side with his, yet without requiring
its support, was unnatural and repulsive. Aunt Dennison, in
her noble self-abnegation as wife and mother, was more queenly
in his eyes, than Mary Wollstonecraft or Madame de Staël.
It was difficult for him to believe how any truly refined and
feminine woman could claim for her sex a share in the special
occupations of man.

There is always a perverse fate which attracts one into the
very situations he wishes to avoid. On the evening when the
Sewing-Union met at Merryfield's, Woodbury happened to be

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

drawn into a group which contained Mrs. Waldo, Hannah
Thurston, and the host. The latter was speaking of a plan
for a Female Medical College.

“It is the first step,” said he, “and its success will overthrow
the dynasty of ideas, under which woman has been
crushed, as it were.” The phrase: “dynasty of ideas,” he
had borrowed from a recent lecturer.

“Well”, said Mrs. Waldo, musingly, “if it went no further
I should not have much to say against it, for we know that
women are the best nurses, and they may make tolerable doctors.
But I should prefer that somebody else than myself
made the beginning.”

“You are right,” remarked Woodbury; “it is not pleasant
to think of a woman standing at a dissecting-table, with a
scalpel in her hand, and a quarter of a subject before her.”

Hannah Thurston shuddered inwardly, but at once took up
the gauntlet. “Why not?” she asked. “Are not women
capable of this, and more than this, for the sake of knowledge
that will enable them to do good? Or is it because their
minds are too weak to grapple with the mysteries of science?”

Woodbury, to avoid a discussion to which he was so
strongly averse, assumed a gay, bantering tone. “In the
presence of ladies,” he said, smiling, and partly directing his
words to Mrs. Waldo, “there is only one way of answering
the latter question.”

Hannah Thurston was of too earnest a nature to endure
trifling—for such seemed his reply. Her gray eyes kindled
with an emotion a very little milder than contempt. “So!”
she exclaimed, “we must still endure the degradation of
hollow compliment. We are still children, and our noise can
be quieted with sugar-plums!”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Thurston!” Woodbury gravely
answered. “My apparent disrespect was but a shift to avoid
discussing a subject which I have never seriously considered,
and which, I will only say, seems to me a matter of instinct
rather than of argument. Besides,” he added, “I believe

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

Mrs. Waldo, as our dictatress, prohibits debate on these
occasions.”

The lady referred to immediately came to his assistance.
“I do prohibit it;” said she, with a magisterial wave of the
hand; “and you cannot object to my authority, Hannah,
since you have a chance to defend our sex, and cover with
confusion all such incorrigible bachelors as Mr. Woodbury, on
Thursday next. I'm sure he's a misanthrope, or—mis—whatever
you call it.”

“A misogynist?” Woodbury gayly suggested. “No, no,
Mrs. Waldo. Do not you, as a clergyman's wife, know that
there may be a devotional feeling so profound as to find the
pale of any one sect too narrow?”

Hannah Thurston looked earnestly at the speaker. What
did he mean?—was that also jest? she asked herself. She
was unaccustomed to such mental self-possession. Most of
the men she knew would have answered her with spirit, considering
that to decline a challenge thrown down by a woman
was equivalent to acknowledging the intellectual equality of
the sexes—this being the assertion which they most strenuously
resisted. Mr. Woodbury, however, had withdrawn as
a matter of taste and courtesy. She had given him the
opportunity of doing so, a little to her own discomfiture, and
was conscious that her self-esteem was wounded by the result.
She could not quite forgive him for this, though his manner,
she felt, compelled respect. At the risk of having her silence
misinterpreted, she made no reply.

Woodbury, who had not understood Mrs. Waldo's allusion,
took an opportunity, later in the evening, to ask for an explanation.

“I thought you had heard,” said she. “There is to be a
meeting in favor of Women's Rights, on Thursday afternoon,
at the Hall, in Ptolemy. Mr. Bemis, the great advocate of
the reform, is to be there, and I believe they expect Bessie
Stryker.”

“Who is Bessie Stryker?”

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

“Mr. Woodbury! It's well you did not ask Hannah Thurston
that question. You've been out of the country—I had
forgotten that; but I should think you must have heard of
her in Calcutta. She has travelled all over the country,
lecturing on the subject, and has made such a name as a
speaker that everybody goes to hear her. She is quite pretty,
and wears the new Bloomer dress.”

“Really, you excite my curiosity. I must attend this
meeting, if only to show Miss Thurston that I am above the
vulgar prejudice which I presume she imputes to me.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Woodbury. Hannah Thurston is not unjust,
whatever faults she may have. But you should know that she
has a dislike—morbid, it seems to me—of the compliments
which you men generally pay to us women. For my part, I
see no harm in them.”

“Both of you, at least, are candid,” replied Woodbury,
laughing, “and that trait, with me, covers a multitude of
weaknesses.”

Woodbury went to the meeting on the following Thursday,
much as he would have attended a Brahminical festival in
honor of the Goddess Unna-Purna. He felt no particular
interest in the subject to be treated, except a curiosity to know
how it could be rendered plausible to a semi-intelligent
auditory. Of Ptolemy, privately and socially, he had seen
something, but he had not yet mingled with Ptolemy in
public.

“The Hall,” as it was called (being the only one in the
place), was a brick building, situated on the principal street.
Its true name was Tumblety Hall, from the builder and owner,
Mr. Jabez Tumblety, who had generously bestowed his name
upon it in consideration of receiving ten per cent. on his investment,
from the lease of it to phrenologists, the dancing
school, Ethiopian Minstrels, exhibitors of laughing gas, lecturers
on anatomy (the last lecture exclusively for gentlemen),
jugglers, temperance meetings, caucuses of the Hunkers and
Barnburners, and, on Sundays, to the Bethesdeans in the

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

morning and the Spiritualists in the evening. Its internal
aspect was rather shabby. The roughly-plastered walls offered
too great a temptation for the pencils and charcoal of unfledged
artists, when bored by a windy orator. Various
grotesque heads, accompanied by names and dates, made up
for the absence of frescoes, but the talent thus displayed did
not seem to be appreciated, for under some of them was
written, in a later hand: “he is a fool.” The benches were
of unpainted pine, with long back-rails, which, where they
had not been split off by the weight of the leaning crowd,
were jagged with whittled notches. Along the further end
of the hall ran a platform, raised three feet above the floor,
and containing a table, three arm-chairs, and two settees. The
floor might have been swept, but had not recently been
washed, to judge from the stains of tobacco-juice by which it
was mottled.

When Woodbury entered, the seats were nearly all occupied,
an audience of five hundred persons being in attendance.
Most of them were evidently from the country; some, indeed,
who were favorably inclined to the cause, had come from Mulligansville
and Atauga City. All the loafers of Ptolemy were
there, of course, and occupied good seats. The few members
of the respectable, conservative, moneyed class, whose curiosity
drew them in, lingered near the door, on the edges of the
crowd, in order that they might leave whenever so disposed,
without attracting attention to their presence.

Mr. Merryfield occupied the middle chair on the platform,
with a heavy-faced, bald-templed, belligerent looking gentleman
on his right, and a middle-aged lady in black silk, on his left.
The settees were also occupied by persons of both sexes who
were interested in the cause. Among them was Hannah
Thurston.

A whispered consultation was carried on for some time
among the party on the platform, the belligerent gentleman
evidently having the most to say. Finally Mr. Merryfield
arose, thumped upon the table, and after waiting a minute

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

for the “she!” to subside, announced: “The meeting will now
come to order!”

The meeting being already in order, no effect was produced
by this announcement.

“As we have assembled together, as it were,” he continued,
“principally to listen to the noble advocates of the glorious
cause who are to appear before us, my friends suggest that—
that there should be no—that we should dispense, as it were,
with a regular organization, and proceed to listen to their
voices. The only—I would suggest, if the meeting is willing,
that we should appoint—that is, that a committee should be
named, as it were, to draw up resolutions expressing their—
our sense on the subject of Women's Rights. Perhaps,” he
added, turning around, “some one will make the motion.”

“I move that a committee of six be appointed!” “I second
the motion!” were heard, almost simultaneously.

“Those in favor of that motion will signify their assent by
saying `Aye!'” said Mr. Merryfield.

“Aye!” rang through the house with startling unanimity,
all the boys expressing their enthusiastic assent.

“Contrary—`No!'”

Dead silence.

“The Ayes have it. Who shall the Committee be composed
of.”

“Both sexes must be represented. Three men and three
women,” said the belligerent gentleman, suddenly, half rising
from his seat.

In a short time the members of the Committee were appointed,
and, there being no further business on hand, Mr. Merryfield
said: “I have now the pleasure, as it were, of introducing
to the audience the noble advocate of Women's Rights, Isaiah
Bemis, who—whose name is—is well known to you all as the
champion of his—I mean, her—persecuted sex.” Mr. Merryfield
was so disconcerted by the half-suppressed laughter which
followed this blunder, that the termination of his eulogium became
still more confused. “The name of Isaiah Bemis,” he

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

said, “does not need my condem — commendation. When
Woman shall fill her true spere, it will shine—will be written
among the martyrs of Reform, as it were, for Truth, crushed
to Earth, rises up in spite of—of—though the heavens fall!”

Mr. Bemis, who was no other than the gentleman of belligerent
aspect, already mentioned, at once arose, bowing
gravely in answer to a slight, hesitating, uncertain sound of
applause. The Ptolemy public had not listened for years to
speakers of all kinds, and on all subjects, without acquiring
some degree of critical perception. They both enjoyed and
prided themselves on their acumen, and a new man, whatever
his doctrines might be, was sure that he would find a full
house to receive him. If he possessed either eloquence or
humor, in any appreciable degree, he had no reason to complain
of his reception. The class of hearers to which we refer
did not consider themselves committed to the speaker's views
by their manifestations of applause. Off the platform, there
were not twenty advocates of Women's Rights in the whole
audience, yet all were ready to hear Mr. Bemis, and to approve
a good thing, if he should happen to say it.

A few minutes, however, satisfied them that he was not the
kind of speaker they coveted. He took for his text that maxim
of the Declaration of Independence, that “all governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed,” first
proved the absolute justice of the theory, and then exhibited
the flagrant violation of it in the case of woman. She is
equally obliged, with man, to submit to the laws, he said, but
has no voice in making them; even those laws which control
her property, her earnings, her children, her person itself, are
enacted without consultation with her. She not only loses her
name, but her individual privileges are curtailed, as if she belonged
to an inferior order of beings. The character of his
harangue was aggressive throughout. He referred as little
as possible, to any inherent difference in the destinies of sex;
men and women were simply human beings, and in Society, and
Law, and Government, there should be no distinction made

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

between them. There was a certain specious display of logic
in his address; the faulty links were glozed over, so that his
chain of argument appeared sound and strong, from end to
end. Granting his premises, indeed, which he assumed with
an air, as if they were beyond dispute—all the rest readily followed.
Those who believed with him, not perceiving the defect
in his basis, were charmed with the force and clearness of
his views.

A crowd feels, not reasons, and the auditors, after an hour
of this talk, began to manifest signs of weariness. Even
Woodbury, to whom the whole scene was a study—or, rather,
a show—only kept his place from a desire to hear the famous
Bessie Stryker.

Mr. Bemis at last sat down, and some further whispering
ensued. There was a slight hitch in the proceedings, it was
evident. In a few minutes, Mr. Merryfield again arose. “My
friends,” said he; “I regret to be able to state that we are
disappointed, as it were, in listening—in the arrival of Bessie
Stryker. We expected her in the afternoon stage coming from
Cephalonia, and was to have lectured there last night, but has
arrived without her. But I hope, nevertheless, that you will—
that it will be agreeable to you, as it were, to hear a few
words from our friend, Hannah Thurston, who requires—whom
you know already.”

Hearty signs of approbation greeted this announcement.
Thus appealed to, Hannah Thurston, who at first made a movement
of hesitation, rose, quietly removed her bonnet, and
walked forward to the table. Her face seemed a little paler
than usual, but her step was firm, and the hand which she
placed upon the table did not tremble. After a pause, as if
to collect and isolate her mind from external impressions, she
commenced speaking, in a voice so low that only its silver
purity of tone enabled her to be heard. Yet the slight tremulousness
it betrayed indicated no faltering of courage; it was
simply a vibration of nerves rather tensely strung.

“I will not repeat,” she began, “the arguments by which

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

the eloquent speaker has illustrated the wrongs endured by
woman, under all governments and all systems of law, whether
despotic or republican. These are considerations which lie
further from us; we are most concerned for those injuries
which require an immediate remedy. When we have removed
the social prejudices which keep our sex in a false position—
when we have destroyed the faith of the people in the tyrannical
traditions by which we are ruled—the chains of the law
will break of themselves. As a beginning to that end, woman
must claim an equal right to education, to employment, and reward.
These are the first steps in our reform, to reach the
sources of those evils which cause our greatest suffering. We
can endure a little longer, to be deprived of the permission to
vote and to rule, because the denial is chiefly an assault upon
our intelligence; but we need now—at once—and, my friends,
I am pleading for millions who cannot speak for themselves—
we need an equal privilege with man, to work and to be justly
paid. The distinction which is made, to our prejudice, renders
us weak and helpless, compared with our brethren, to whom
all fields are open, and who may claim the compensation which
is justified by their labor, without incurring ridicule or contempt.
They are even allowed to usurp branches which, if
the popular ideas of woman's weakness, and man's chivalry
towards her be true, should be left for us. Even admitting
that our sphere is limited—that there are only a few things
which we may properly do—is it generous, is it even just, that
man, who has the whole range of life to choose from, should
crowd us out from these few chances of earning our bread?
Or to force us to perform the same labor for a smaller remuneration,
because we are women? Could we not measure a
yard of calico as rapidly, or choose a shade of zephyr as correctly
as the elegant young men who stand behind the counter?
With our more sensitive physical organization, might
not all tasks requiring quickness, nicety of touch, and careful
arrangement, be safely confided to our hands?”

At this point the audience, which had quite lost its air of

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

weariness, broke into subdued but cordial applause. Hannah
Thurston's voice, as she acquired possession of her subject, increased
in strength, but at no time appeared to rise above a
conversational tone. Her manner also, was simply conversational.
The left hand slightly touched the table, as if she only
wished to feel a support at hand, not use it; while she now
and then, involuntarily, made a simple movement with the
right. The impression she produced was that of a woman
compelled by some powerful necessity or duty to appear
before a public assembly, not of one who coveted and enjoyed
the position. Woodbury was profoundly interested in the
speaker, and in her words. Both were equally new to him.

“What we now ask, therefore, my friends,” she continued,
“is that the simple justice be meted out to us, which we feel
that man—without adopting any of our views concerning the
true position of woman—is bound to give. We ask that his
boasted chivalry be put into practice, not merely in escorting
us to concerts, or giving us his seat in a railroad-car, or serving
us first at the table—or in all other ways by which the
reputation of chivalry and gallantry towards our sex is earned
at little cost; but in leaving open to us those places which he
confesses we are fitted to fill—in paying us, as teachers, clerks,
tailors, or operatives, the same wages for the same work which
men do!”

This was so simply and fairly stated, that the audience again
heartily approved. There was nothing, in fact, of the peculiar
doctrines of Women's Rights in what she said—nothing to
which they could not have individually assented, without compromising
their position in regard to the main point. Mr.
Bemis, however, drew down his heavy brows, and whispered
to the chairman: “Very good, so far as it goes, but timidly
stated. We must strike the evil at its root.”

After dwelling for some time on this aspect of the question,
and illustrating it by a number of examples, Hannah Thurston
went a step further.

“But we deny,” she said, “that Man has any natural right

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

to prescribe the bounds within which Woman may labor and
live. God alone has that right, and His laws govern both
sexes with the same authority. Man has indeed assumed it,
because he disbelieves in the intellectual equality of women.
He has treated her as an older child, to whom a certain amount
of freedom might be allowed, but whom it was not safe to
release entirely from his guardianship. He has educated her
in this belief, through all the ages that have gone by since the
creation of the world. Now and then, women have arisen, it
is true, to vindicate the equal authority of their sex, and have
nobly won their places in history; but the growth of the truth
has been slow—so slow, that to-day, in this enlightened maturity
of the world, we must plead and prove all that which
you should grant without our asking. It is humiliating that
a woman is obliged to collect evidence to convince men of her
equal intelligence. She, who is also included in the one word,
Man! Placed side by side with him in Paradise—Mother of
the Saviour who came to redeem his fallen race—first and
holiests among the martyrs and saints! Young men! Think
of your own mothers, and spare us this humiliation!”

These words, uttered with startling earnestness, produced a
marked sensation in the audience. Perhaps it was a peculiarity
springing from her Quaker descent, that the speaker's voice
gradually assumed the character of a musical recitative, becoming
a clear, tremulous chant, almost in monotone. This
gave it a sad, appealing expression, which touched the emotional
nature of the hearer, and clouded his judgment for the
time being. After a pause, she continued in her ordinary
tone:

“The pages of history do not prove the superiority of man.
When we consider the position which he has forced woman to
occupy, we should rather wonder that she has so often resisted
his authority, and won possession of the empire which he
had appropriated to himself. In the earliest ages he admitted
her capacity to govern, a power so high and important in its
nature, that we should be justified in claiming that it embraces

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

all other capacities, and in resting our defence on that alone.
Such women as Semiramis and Zenobia, Margaret of Denmark,
and Elizabeth of England, Maria Theresa, and Catharine of
Russia, are not the least—not second, even—among great
rulers. Jael and Judith, and the Maid of Orleans stand no
less high among the deliverers of nations, than Leonidas and
William Tell. The first poet who sang may have been Homer,
but the second was Sappho.* Even in the schools of Philosophy,
the ancients had their Hypatia, and the scholars of the
Middle Ages honored the learning of Olympia Morata. Men
claim the field of scientific research as being exclusively their
own; but the names of Caroline Herschel in England, and
Maria Mitchell in America, prove that even here women cannot
justly be excluded. Ah, my friends! when God calls a
human being to be the discoverer of His eternal laws, or the
illustrator of His eternal beauty, He does not stop to consider
the question of sex! If you grant human intellect at all to
Woman, you must grant the possibility of inspiration, of genius,
of a life divinely selected as the instrument of some great
and glorious work. Admitting this, you may safely throw
open to us all avenues to knowledge. Hampered as Woman
still is—circumscribed in her spheres of action and thought
(for her false education permanently distorts her habits of
mind)—she is yet, at present, far above the Saxon bondmen
from whom the most of you are descended. You know that
she has risen thus far, not only without injury to herself, but
to your advantage: why check her progress, here? Nay, why
check it any where? If Man's dominion be thereby limited,
would his head be less uneasy, if the crown he claims were
shared with another? Is not a friend better than a servant?
If Marriage were a partnership for Woman, instead of a clerkship,
the Head of the House would feel his burthen so much
the lighter. If the physician's wife were competent to prepare
his medicines, or the merchant's to keep his books, or the

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

lawyer's to draw up a bond, the gain would be mutual. For Woman,
to be a true helpmeet to Man, must know all that Man
knows; and, even as she is co-heir with him of Heaven—receiving,
not the legal `Third part,' but all of its infinite blessedness,—
so she should be co-proprietor of the Earth, equally
armed to subdue its iniquities, and prepare it for a better
future!”

With these words, Hannah Thurston closed her address.
As she quietly walked back to her seat and resumed her bonnet,
there was a stir of satisfaction among the audience, terminating
in a round of applause, which, however, she did not
acknowledge in any way. Although, in no part of the discourse,
had she touched the profounder aspects of the subject,
especially the moral distinctions of sex, she had given utterance
to many absolute truths, which were too intimately connected,
in her mind, with the doctrine she had adopted, for
her to perceive their real independence of it. Thus, most of
her hearers, while compelled to agree with her in many respects,
still felt themselves unconvinced in the main particular.
She was not aware of her own inability to discuss the question
freely, and ascribed to indifference or prejudice that reluctance
among men, which really sprang from their generous
consideration for her sex.

As for Woodbury, he had listened with an awakened interest
in her views, which, for the time, drew his attention
from the speaker's personality. Her first appearance had
excited a singular feeling of compassion—partly for the trial
which, he fancied, she must undergo, and partly for the
mental delusion which was its cause. It was some time before
he was reassured by her calmness and self-possession.
At the close, he was surprised to discover in himself a lurking
sensation of regret that she had not spoken at greater length.
“I was wrong the other night,” he thought. “This woman
is in severe earnest, and would have been less offended if I
had plumply declined her challenge, instead of evading it. I
have yet something to learn from these people.”

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

The Committee of Six now made their report. Seth Wattles,
who was one of the number, and had assumed to himself
the office of Chairman, read a string of Resolutions, setting
forth, That: Whereas, this is an Age of Progress, and no reform
should be overlooked in the Great Battle for the Right:
Therefore, Resolved—That we recognize in this movement
for the Equal Rights of Woman a cause without the support
of which no other cause can be permanently successful: and,
Resolved, That we will in every way help forward the good
work, by the Dissemination of Light and Information, tending
to set forth the claims of Woman before the Community: also,
Resolved, That we will circulate petitions to the State Legislature,
for the investment of Woman with all civil and political
rights: and, lastly, Resolved, That, we will use our best endeavors
to increase the circulation of The Monthly Hollyhock,
a journal devoted to the cause of Women's Rights.

Mr. Merryfield arose and inquired: “Shall the Report of
the Committee be adopted?” He fortunately checked himself
in time not to add: “as it were.”

“I move its adoption!” “I second the motion!” were immediately
heard from the platform.

“All who are in favor of adopting the Resolutions we have
just heard read, will signify their assent by saying `Aye!'”

A scattering, irregular fire of “Ayes” arose in reply. The
boys felt that their sanction would be out of place on this occasion,
with the exception of two or three, who hazarded their
voices, in the belief that they would not be remarked, in the
general vote. To their dismay, they launched themselves into
an interval of silence, and their shrill pipes drew all eyes to
their quarter of the house.

“Contrary,—`No!'”

The opponents of the movement, considering that this was
not their meeting, refrained from voting.

“Before the meeting adjourns,” said Mr. Merryfield, again
rising, “I must—I take the liberty to hope, as it were, that
the truths we have heard this day may spread—may sink

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

deeply into our hearts. We expect to be able to announce,
before long, a visit from Bessie Stryker, whose failure—whom
we have missed from among our eleg—eloquent champions.
But we trust she is elsewhere, and our loss is their gain. I
thank the audience for your attendance—attention, I should
say, and approbation of our glorious reform. As there is no
further business before the meeting, and our friends from Mulligansville
and Atauga City have some distance to return home,
we will now adjourn in time to reach their destination.”

At this hint the audience rose, and began to crowd out the
narrow door-way and down the steep staircase. Woodbury,
pushed and hustled along with the rest, was amused at the
remarks of the crowd: “He?—oh, he's a gassy old fellow!”
“Well, there's a good deal of truth in it!” “Bessie Stryker?
I'd rather hear Hannah Thurston any day!” “He didn't half
like it!” “She has a better right to say such things than he
has!”—and various other exclamations, the aggregate of which
led him to infer that the audience felt no particular interest in
the subject of Women's Rights, but had a kindly personal feeling
towards Hannah Thurston.

p713-082 CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH LAKESIDE BECOMES LIVELY.

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

Winter at last set in—the steady winter of Central New
York, where the snow which falls at the beginning of December
usually covers the ground until March. Ptolemy, at least,
which lies upon the northern side of the watershed between
the Susquehanna and the rivers which flow into Lake Ontario,
has a much less variable winter temperature than the great
valley, lying some thirty miles to the southward. Atauga
Lake, in common with Cayuga and Seneca, never freezes,
except across the shallows at its southern end; but its waters,
so piercingly cold that they seem to cut the skin like the blade
of a knife, have no power to soften the northern winds. The
bottoms between Ptolemy and the lake, and also, in fact, the
Eastern and Western Valleys, for some miles behind the village,
are open to the North; and those sunny winter days
which, in more sheltered localities, breathe away the snow,
here barely succeed in softening it a little. On the hills it is
even too deep for pleasure. As soon as a highway has been
broken through the drifts, the heavy wood-sleds commence
running, and very soon wear it into a succession of abrupt
hollows, over which the light cutters go pitching like their
nautical namesakes in a chopping sea.

Woodbury, in obedience to a promise exacted by his sister,
went to New York for the holidays, and, as might have been
anticipated, became entangled in a succession of social engagements,
which detained him until the middle of January. He
soon grew tired of acting as escort to his two pretty, but (it

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

must be confessed, in strict confidence), shallow nieces, whose
sole æsthetic taste was opera—and in opera, especially Verdi.
After a dozen nights of “darling Bosio,” and “delightful Beneventano,”
and “all the rest of them,” he would have been
glad to hear, as a change, even the “Taza be-taza” of the Hindoo
nautch-girls. A season of eastern rains and muddy streets
made the city insupportable, and—greatly to the wonder of
his sister's family—he declined an invitation to the grand
Fifth Avenue ball of Mrs. Luther Leathers, in order to return
to the wilderness of Ptolemy.

Taking the New York and Erie express-train to the town
of Miranda, he there chartered a two-horse cutter, with an
Irish attachment, and set out early the next morning. He
had never before approached Ptolemy from this side, and the
journey had all the charm of a new region. It was a crisp,
clear day, the blood of the horses was quickened by the frosty
air, and the cutter slid rapidly and noiselessly over the wellbeaten
track. With a wolf-skin robe on his knees, Woodbury
sat in luxurious warmth, and experienced a rare delight in
breathing the keen, electric crystal of the atmosphere. It was
many years since he had felt such an exquisite vigor of life
within him—such a nimble play of the aroused blood—such
lightness of heart, and hope, and courage! The snow-crystals
sparkled in the sunshine, and the pure shoulders of the hills
before him shone like silver against the naked blue of the sky.
He sang aloud, one after another, the long-forgotten songs,
until his moustache turned to ice and hung upon his mouth
like the hasp of a padlock.

Rising out of the Southern valleys, he sped along, over the
cold, rolling uplands of the watershed, and reached Mulligansville
towards noon. Here the road turned westward, and a
further drive of three miles brought him to the brink of the
long descent to East Atauga Creek. At this point, a superb
winter landscape was unfolded before him. Ptolemy, with its
spires, its one compactly-built, ambitious street, its scattered
houses and gardens, lay in the centre of the picture. On the

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

white floor of the valley were drawn, with almost painful
sharpness and distinctness, the outlines of farm-houses, and
barns, fences, isolated trees, and the winding lines of elm and
alder which marked the courses of the streams. Beyond the
mouth of the further valley rose the long, cultivated sweep of
the western hill, flecked with dull-purple patches of pine forest.
Northward, across the white meadows and the fringe of trees
along Roaring Brook, rose the sunny knoll of Lakeside, sheltered
by the dark woods behind, while further, stretching far
away between the steep shores, gleamed the hard, steel-blue
sheet of the lake. The air was so intensely clear that the distance
was indicated only by a difference in the hue of objects,
not by their diminished distinctness.

“By Jove! this is glorious!” exclaimed Woodbury, scarcely
conscious that he spoke.

“Shure, an' it's a fine place, Surr!” said the Irish driver, appropriating
the exclamation.

Shortly after commencing the descent, a wreck was descried
ahead. A remnant of aristocracy—or, at least, a fondness for
aristocratic privilege—still lingers among our republican people,
and is manifested in its most offensive form, by the drivers
of heavy teams. No one ever knew a lime-wagon or a wood-sled
to give an inch of the road to a lighter vehicle. In this
ease, a sled, on its way down, had forced an ascending cutter
to turn out into a deep drift, and in attempting to regain the
track both shafts of the latter had been snapped off. The sled
pursued its way, regardless of the ruin, and the occupants of
the cutter, a gentleman and lady, were holding a consultation
over their misfortune, when Woodbury came in sight of them.
As the gentleman leading his horse back into the drift to give
room, turned his face towards the approaching cutter, Woodbury
recognized, projecting between ear-lappets of fur, the curiously-planted
nose, the insufficient lips, and the prominent
teeth, which belonged to the Rev. Mr. Waldo. The recognition
was mutual.

“My dear, it is Mr. Woodbury!” the latter joyfully cried,

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

turning to the muffled lady. She instantly stood up in the
cutter, threw back her veil, and hailed the approaching deliverer:
“Help me, good Samaritan! The Levite has wrecked me, and
the Priest has enough to do, to take care of himself!”

Woodbury stopped his team, sprang out, and took a survey
of the case. “It is not to be mended,” said he; “you must
crowd yourselves in with me, and we will drive on slowly, leading
the horse.”

“But I have to attend a funeral at Mulligansville—the child
of one of our members,” said Mr. Waldo, “and there is no
time to lose. My dear, you must go back with Mr. Woodbury.
Perhaps he can take the harness and robes. I will
ride on to Van Horn's, where I can borrow a saddle.”

This arrangement was soon carried into effect. Mr. Waldo
mounted the bare-backed steed, and went off up the hill, thumping
his heels against the animal's sides. The broken shafts
were placed in the cutter, which was left “to be called for,”
and Mrs. Waldo took her seat beside Woodbury. She had
set out to attend the funeral, as a duty enjoined by her husband's
office, and was not displeased to escape without damage
to her conscience.

“I'm glad you've got back, Mr. Woodbury,” she said, as
they descended the hill. “We like to have our friends about
us, in the winter, and I assure you, you've been missed.”

“It is pleasant to feel that I have already a place among
you,” he answered. “What is the last piece of gossip? Is
the Great Sewing-Union still in existence?”

“Not quite on the old foundation. Our fair has been held—
by the bye, there I missed you. I fully depended on selling
you a quantity of articles. The Anti-Slavery Fair is over, too;
but they are still working for the Jutnapore Mission, as there
is a chance of sending the articles direct to Madras, before
long; and so the most of us still attend, and either assist them
or take our own private sewing with us.”

“Where do you next meet?”

“Ah, that's our principal trouble. We have exhausted all

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

the available houses, besides going twice to Bue's and Wilkinson's.
Our parsonage is so small—a mere pigeon-house—that
it's out of the question. I wish I had some of your empty
rooms at Lakeside. Now, there's an idea! Capital! Confess
that my weak feminine brain is good at resorts!”

“What is it?” Woodbury asked.

“Can't you guess? You shall entertain the Sewing-Union
one evening. We will meet at Lakeside: it is just the thing!”

“Are you serious, Mrs. Waldo? I could not, of course, be
so ungracious as to refuse, provided there is no impropriety
in compliance. What would Ptolemy say to the plan?”

“I'll take charge of that!” she cried. “Impropriety! Are
you not a steady, respectable Member of Society, I should like
to know? If there's any thing set down against you, we must
go to Calcutta to find it. And we are sure there are no trapdoors
at Lakeside, or walled-up skeletons, or Blue Beard chambers.
Besides, this isn't Mulligansville or Anacreon, and it is
not necessary to be so very straight-laced. Oh yes, it is the
very thing. As for the domestic preparations, count on my
help, if it is needed.”

“I am afraid,” he replied, “that Mrs. Babb would resent
any interference with her authority. In fact,” he added,
laughing, “I am not certain that it is safe to decide, without
first consulting her.”

“There, now!” rejoined Mrs. Waldo. “Do you remember
what I once told you? Yes, you bachelors, who boast of
your independence of woman, are the only real slaves to the
sex. No wife is such a tyrant as a housekeeper. Not but
what Mrs. Babb is a very honest, conscientious, proper sort of
a person,—but she don't make a home, Mr. Woodbury. You
should get married.”

“That is easily said, Mrs. Waldo,” he replied, with a laugh
which covered, like a luxuriant summer vine, the entrance to
a sighing cavern,—“easily said, and might be easily done, if
one were allowed to choose a wife for her domestic qualities
valued at so much per month.”

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

“Pshaw!” said she, with assumed contempt. “You are
not a natural cynic, and have no right to be single, at your
age, without a good reason.”

“Perhaps there is a good reason, Mrs. Waldo. Few persons,
I imagine, remain single from choice. I have lost the
susceptibility of my younger days, but not the ideal of a true
wedded life. I should not dare to take the only perfect
woman in the world, unless I could be lover as well as husband.
I sincerely wish my chances were better: but would
you have me choose one of the shallow, showy creatures I
have just been visiting, or one of your strong-minded orators,
here in Ptolemy?”

Mrs. Waldo understood both the earnest tone of the speaker,
and the veiled bitterness of his concluding words. She read
his heart at a glance, thorough woman as she was, and honored
him then, and forever thenceforth.

“You must not take my nonsense for more than it is worth,
Mr. Woodbury,” she answered softly. “Women at my age,
when God denies them children, take to match-making, in the
hope of fulfilling their mission by proxy. It is unselfish in us,
at least. But, bless me! here we are, at the village. Remember,
the Sewing-Union meets at Lakeside.”

“As soon as the Autocrat Babb has spoken,” said he, as he
handed her out at the Cimmerian Parsonage, “I will send
word, and then the matter will rest entirely in your hands.”

“Mine? Oh, I am a female General Jackson—I take the
responsibility!” she cried, gayly, as the cutter drove away.

Woodbury, welcomed at the gate of Lakeside by the cheery
face of Bute Wilson, determined to broach the subject at once
to the housekeeper. Mrs. Fortitude Babb was glad to see
him again, but no expression thereof manifested itself in her
countenance and words. Wiping her bony right-hand on her
apron—she had been dusting the rooms, after sweeping—she
took the one he offered, saying: “How's your health, Sir?”
and then added: “I s'pose you've had a mighty fine time,
while you was away?”

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

“Not so fine but that I'm glad to get home again,” he
answered. The word “home” satisfied Mrs. Babb's sense of
justice. His sister, she was sure, was not the housekeeper
she herself was, and it was only right that he should see and
acknowledge the fact.

“I want your advice, Mrs. Babb,” Woodbury continued.
“The Sewing-Union propose to meet here, one evening.
They have gone the round of all the large houses in Ptolemy,
and there seems to be no other place left. Since I have
settled in Lakeside, I must be neighborly, you know. Could
we manage to entertain them?”

“Well—comin' so suddent, like, I don't hardly know what
to think. Things has been quiet here for a long time:” the
housekeeper grimly remarked, with a wheezy sigh.

“That is true,” said Woodbury; “and of course you must
have help.”

“No!” she exclaimed, with energy, “I don't want no help—
leastways only Melindy. The rooms must be put to rights—
not but what they're as good as Mrs. Bue's any day; and
there'll be supper for a matter o' twenty; and cakes and
things. When is it to be?”

“Next Friday, I presume; but can you get along without
more assistance?”

“'Taint every one that would do it,” replied Mrs. Babb,
“There's sich a settin' to rights, afterwards. But I can't have
strange help mixin' in, and things goin' wrong, and me to have
the credit of it. Melindy's used to my ways, and there's not
many others that knows what housekeepin' is. Sich a mess as
some people makes of it!”

Secretly, Mrs. Babb was well pleased at the opportunity of
publicly displaying her abilities, but it was not in her nature
to do any thing out of the regular course of her housekeeping,
without having it understood that she was making a great
sacrifice. She was not so unreasonable as to set herself up for
an independent power, but she stoutly demanded and maintained
the rights of a belligerent. This point having once

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

been conceded, however, she exhibited a wonderful energy in
making the necessary preparations.

Thanks to Mrs. Waldo, all Ptolemy soon knew of the arrangement,
and, as the invitation was general, nearly everybody
decided to accept it. Few persons had visited Lakeside
since Mrs. Dennison's funeral, and there was some curiosity
to know what changes had been made by the new owner.
Besides, the sleighing was superb, and the moon nearly full.
The ladies connected with the Sewing-Union were delighted
with the prospect, and even Hannah Thurston, finding that
her absence would be the only exception and might thus seem
intentional, was constrained to accompany them. She had
seen Woodbury but once since their rencontre at Merryfield's,
and his presence was both unpleasant and embarrassing to her.
But the Merryfields, who took a special pride in her abilities,
cherished the hope that she would yet convert him to the true
faith, and went to the trouble of driving to Ptolemy in order
to furnish her with a conveyance.

Early in the afternoon the guests began to arrive. Bute,
aided by his man Patrick, met them at the gate, and, after a
hearty greeting (for he knew everybody), took the horses and
cutters in charge. Woodbury, assuming the character of host
according to Ptolemaic ideas, appeared at the door, with Mrs.
Babb, rigid in black bombazine, three paces in his rear. The
latter received the ladies with frigid courtesy, conducted them
up-stairs to the best bedroom, and issued the command to
each of them, in turn: “lay off your Things!” Their
curiosity failed to detect any thing incomplete or unusual in
the appointments of the chamber. The furniture was of the
Dennison period, and Mrs. Fortitude had taken care that no
fault should be found with the toilet arrangements. Miss
Eliza Clancy had indeed whispered to Miss Ruhaney Goodwin:
“Well, I think they might have some lavender, or baywater,
for us,”—but the latter immediately responded with
a warning “sh!” and drew from her work-bag a small
oiled-silk package, which she unfolded, producing therefrom a

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

diminutive bit of sponge, saturated with a mild extract of
lemon verbena. “Here,” she said, offering it to the other
spinster, “I always take care to be pervided.”

The spacious parlor at Lakeside gradually filled with
workers for the Mission Fund. Mrs. Waldo was among the
earliest arrivals, and took command, by right of her undisputed
social talent. She became absolute mistress for the
time, having, by skilful management, propitiated Mrs. Babb,
and fastened her in her true place, at the outset, by adamantine
chains of courtesy and assumed respect. She felt herself,
therefore, in her true element, and distributed her subjects
with such tact, picking up and giving into the right hands the
threads of conversation, perceiving and suppressing petty
jealousies in advance, and laughing away the awkwardness or
timidity of others, that Woodbury could not help saying to
himself: “What a queen of the salons this woman would
have made!” It was a matter of conscience with her, as he
perhaps did not know, that the occasion should be agreeable,
not only to the company, but also to the host. She was responsible
for its occurrence, and she felt that its success would
open Lakeside to the use of Ptolemy society.

There was also little in the principal parlor to attract the
attention of the guests. The floor was still covered by the old
Brussels carpet, with its colossal bunches of flowers of impossible
color and form,—the wonder of Ptolemy, when it was
new. There were the same old-fashioned chairs, and deep
sofas with chintz covers: and the portraits of Mrs. Dennison,
and her son Henry, as a boy of twelve, with his hand upon the
head of a Newfoundland dog, looked down from the walls.
Woodbury had only added engravings of the Madonna di San
Sisto and the Transfiguration, neither of which was greatly admired
by the visitors. Mrs. Hamilton Bue, pausing a moment
to inspect the former, said of the Holy Child: “Why, it looks
just like my little Addy, when she's got her clothes off!”

In the sitting-room were Landseer's “Challenge” and Ary
Scheffer's “Francesca da Rimini.” Miss Ruhaney Goodwin

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

turned suddenly away from the latter, with difficulty suppressing
an exclamation. “Did you ever?” said she to Miss Eliza
Clancy; “it isn't right to have such pictures hung up.”

“Hush!” answered Miss Eliza, “it may be from Scripture.”

Miss Ruhaney now contemplated the picture without hesitation.
It was a proof before lettering. “What can it be, then?”
she asked.

“Well—I shouldn't wonder if 'twas Jephthah and his
daughter. They both look so sorrowful.”

The Rev. Lemuel Styles and his wife presently arrived.
They were both amiable, honest persons, who enjoyed their
importance in the community, without seeming to assume it.
The former was, perhaps, a little over-cautious lest he should
forget the strict line of conduct which had been prescribed for
him as a theological student. He felt that his duty properly
required him to investigate Mr. Woodbury's religious views,
before thus appearing to endorse them by his presence at
Lakeside; but he had not courage to break the dignified reserve
which the latter maintained, and was obliged to satisfy
his conscience with the fact that Woodbury had twice attended
his church. Between Mr. Waldo and himself there
was now a very cordial relation. They had even cautiously
discussed the differences between them, and had in this way
learned, at least, to respect each other's sincerity.

The last of all the arrivals before tea was Mr. and Mrs. Merryfield,
with Hannah Thurston. The latter came, as already
mentioned, with great reluctance. She would rather have
faced an unfriendly audience than the courteous and self-possessed
host who came to the door to receive her. He oppressed
her, not only with a sense of power, but of power
controlled and directed by some cool faculty in the brain,
which she felt she did not possess. In herself, whatever of
intellectual force she recognized, was developed through the
excitement of her feelings and sympathics. His personality,
it seemed to her, was antagonistic to her own, and the knowledge
gave her a singular sense of pain. She was woman

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

enough not to tolerate a difference of this kind without a
struggle.

“Thank you for coming, Miss Thurston,” said Woodbury,
as he frankly offered his hand. “I should not like any member
of the Union to slight my first attempt to entertain it. I
am glad to welcome you to Lakeside.”

Hannah Thurston lifted her eyes to his with an effort that
brought a fleeting flush to her face. But she met his gaze,
steadily. “We owe thanks to you, Mr. Woodbury,” said she,
“that Lakeside still belongs to our Ptolemy community. I
confess I should not like to see so pleasant a spot isolated, or—
what the people of Ptolemy would consider much worse,”
she added, smiling—“attached to Anacreon.”

“Oh, no!” he answered, as he transferred her to the charge
of Mrs. Babb. “I have become a thorough Ptolemaic, or a
Ptolemystic, or whatever the proper term may be. I hurl defiance
across the hill to Anacreon, and I turn my back on the
south-east wind, when it blows from Mulligansville.”

“Come, come! We won't be satirized;” said Mrs. Waldo,
who was passing through the hall. “Hannah, you are just in
time. There are five of the Mission Fund sitting together, and
I want their ranks broken. Mr. Woodbury, there will be no
more arrivals before tea; give me your assistance.”

“Who is the tyrant now?” he asked.

“Woman, always, in one shape or other,” she answered,
leading the way into the parlor.

After the very substantial tea which Mrs. Babb had prepared,
and to which, it must be whispered, the guests did
ample justice, there was a pause in the labors of the Union.
The articles intended for the Jutnapore Mission were nearly
completed, in fact, and Mrs. Waldo's exertions had promoted
a genial flow of conversation, which did not require the aid of
the suggestive needle. The guests gathered in groups, chatting
at the windows, looking out on the gray, twilight landscape,
or watching the approach of cutters from Ptolemy, as
they emerged from the trees along Roaring Brook. Mr.

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

Hamilton Bue and the Hon. Zeno Harder were the first to
make their appearance, not much in advance, however, of the
crowd of ambitious young gentlemen. Many of the latter were
personally unknown to Woodbury, but this was not the least
embarrassment to them. They gave him a rapid salutation,
since it was not to be avoided, and hurried in to secure advantageous
positions among the ladies. Seth Wattles not only
came, to enjoy a hospitality based, as he had hinted, on the
“accursed opium traffic,” but brought with him a stranger
from Ptolemy, a Mr. Grindle, somewhat known as a lecturer
on Temperance.

The rooms were soon filled and Woodbury was also obliged
to throw open his library, into which the elderly gentlemen
withdrew, with the exception of the Rev. Mr. Styles. Mr.
Waldo relished a good story, even if the point was somewhat
coarse, and the Hon. Zeno had an inexhaustible fund of such.
Mr. Bue, notwithstanding he felt bound to utter an occasional
mild protest, always managed to be on hand, and often, in his
great innocence, suggested the very thing which he so evidently
wished to avoid. If the conversation had been for some
time rather serious and heavy, he would say: “Well, Mr.
Harder, I am glad we shall have none of your wicked stories
to-night”—a provocation to which the Hon. Zeno always responded
by giving one.

Bute Wilson, after seeing that the horses were properly
attended to, washed his hands, brushed his hair carefully, and
put on his Sunday frock-coat. Miss Caroline Dilworth was
one of the company, but he had been contented with an occasional
glimpse of her through the window, until the arrival of
Seth Wattles. The care of the fires in the grates, the lamps,
and other arrangements of the evening, gave him sufficient
opportunity to mix with the company, and watch both his
sweetheart and his presumed rival, without appearing to do so.
“Darn that blue-gilled baboon!” he muttered to himself; “I
believe his liver's whiter than the milt of a herrin', an' if you'd
cut his yaller skin, he'd bleed whey 'stid o' blood.”

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

Seth Wattles, nevertheless, was really guiltless of any designs
on the heart of the little seamstress. Like herself, he was ambitious
of high game, and, in the dreams of his colossal conceit,
looked forward with much confidence to the hour when
Hannah Thurston should take his name, or he hers: he was
prepared for either contingency. To this end he assumed a
tender, languishing air, and talked of Love, and A Mission,
and The Duality of The Soul, in a manner which, in a more
cultivated society, would have rendered him intolerable. He
had a habit of placing his hand on the arm or shoulder of the
person with whom he was conversing, and there were in
Ptolemy women silly enough to be pleased by these tokens of
familiarity. Hannah Thurston, though entirely harmonizing
with him as a reformer, and therefore friendly and forbearing
in her intercourse, felt a natural repugnance towards him
which she could not understand. Indeed, the fact gave her
some uneasiness. “He is ugly,” she thought; “and I am so
weak as to dislike ugliness—it must be that:” which conclusion,
acting on her sensitive principle of justice, led her to
treat him sometimes with more than necessary kindness. Many
persons, the Merryfields included, actually fancied that there
was a growing attachment between them.

“Miss Carrie,” whispered Bute, as he passed her in the hall,
“Do you like your lemonade sweet? We're goin' to bring it
in directly, and I'll git Mother Forty to make a nice glass of
it, o' purpose for you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wilson: yes, if you please,” answered the
soft, childish drawl and the beryl-tinted eyes, that sent a thousand
cork-screw tingles boring through and through him.

Bute privately put six lumps of sugar into one glass, which
he marked for recognition; and then squeezed the last bitter
drops of a dozen lemons into another.

The latter was for Seth Wattles.

p713-095 CHAPTER VII. WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE EVENING.

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

Woodbury had prudently left the preparations for the refreshment
of his numerous guests in the hands of Mrs. Babb,
who, aided by the sable Melinda, had produced an immense
supply of her most admired pastry. By borrowing freezers
from the confectioner in Ptolemy, and employing Patrick to do
the heavy churning, she had also succeeded in furnishing very
tolerable ices. The entertainment was considered to be—and,
for country means, really was—sumptuous. Nevertheless, the
housekeeper was profuse in her apologies, receiving the abundant
praises of her guests with outward grimness and secret
satisfaction.

“Try these crullers,” she would say: “p'r'aps you'll find
'em better 'n the jumbles, though I'm afeard they a'n't hardly
done enough. But you'll have to put up with sich as there
is.”

“Oh, Mrs. Babb!” exclaimed Mrs. Hamilton Bue, “don't
say that! Nobody bakes as nice as you do. I wish you'd
give me the receipt for the jumbles.”

“You're welcome to it, if you like 'em, I'm sure. But it
depends on the seasonin', and I don't never know if they're
goin' to come out right.”

“Mrs. Babb,” said Woodbury, coming up at this moment,
“will you please get a bottle of Sherry. The gentlemen, I see,
have nothing but lemonade.”

“I told Bute to git some for them as likes it.”

“A-hm!” Mrs. Bue ejaculated, as the housekeeper departed
to look after the wine; “I think, Mr. Woodbury, they
don't take any thing more.”

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

“Let me give them a chance, Mrs. Bue. Ah, here comes
Bute, with the glasses. Shall I have the pleasure?” offering
her one of the two which he had taken.

“Oh, dear me, no—not for any thing!” she exclaimed, looking
a little frightened.

“Mr. Bue,” said Woodbury, turning around to that gentleman,
“as Mrs. Bue refuses to take a glass of wine with me,
you must be her substitute.”

“Thank you, I'd—I'd rather not, this evening,” said Mr.
Bue, growing red in the face.

There was an embarrassing pause. Woodbury, looking
around, perceived that Bute had already offered his tray to the
other gentlemen, and that none of the glasses upon it had been
taken. He was about to replace his own without drinking,
when the Hon. Zeno Harder said: “Allow me the pleasure,
Sir!” and helped himself. At the same moment the Rev. Mr.
Waldo, in obedience to a glance from his wife, followed his
example.

“I have not tasted wine for some years,” said the latter,
“but I have no objection to its rational use. I have always
considered it sanctioned,” he added, turning to Mr. Styles,
“by the Miracle of Cana.”

Mr. Styles slightly nodded, but said nothing.

“Your good health, Sir!” said the Hon. Zeno, as he emptied
his glass.

“Health?” somebody echoed, in a loud, contemptuous
whisper.

Woodbury bowed and drank. As he was replacing his
glass, Mr. Grindle, who had been waiting for the consummation
of the iniquity, suddenly stepped forward. Mr. Grindle
was a thin, brown individual, with a long, twisted nose, and a
voice which acquired additional shrillness from the fact of its
appearing to proceed entirely from the said nose. He had occasionally
lectured in Ptolemy, and was known,—by sight, at
least,—to all the company. Woodbury, however, was quite
ignorant of the man and every thing concerning him.

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

“I am surprised,” exclaimed Mr. Grindle, with his eyes
fixed on vacancy, “that a man who has any regard for his
reputation will set such a pernicious example.”

“To what do you refer?” asked Woodbury, uncertain
whether it was he who was addressed.

“To that!” replied the warning prophet, pointing to the
empty wine-glass—“the source of nine-tenths of all the sin
and suffering in the world!”

“I think you would have some difficulty in finding Sherry
enough to produce such a result,” Woodbury answered,
beginning to understand the man.

“Sherry, or Champagne, or Heidsick!” retorted Mr. Grindle,
raising his voice: “it's all the same—all different forms
of Rum, and different degrees of intemperance!”

Woodbury's brown eyes flashed a little, but he answered
coolly and sternly: “As you say, Sir, there are various forms
of intemperance, and I have too much respect for my guests
to allow that any of them should be exhibited here. Mrs.
Waldo,” he continued, turning his back on the lecturer, and
suddenly changing his tone, “did you not propose that we
should have some music?”

“I have both persuaded and commanded,” she replied, “but
singers, I have found, are like a flock of sheep. They huddle
together and hesitate, until some one takes the lead, and then
they all follow, even if it's over your head. You must be
bell-wether, after all.”

“Any thing for harmony,” he answered, gayly. “Ah! I
have it—a good old song, with which none of our friends can
find fault.”

And he sang, in his mellow voice, with an amused air, which
Mrs. Waldo understood and heartily enjoyed: “Drink to me
only with thine eyes.”

Mr. Grindle, however, turned to Seth Wattles and said,
sneeringly: “It's easy enough to shirk an argument you can't
answer.” A fortnight afterwards he exploited the incident in
a lecture which he gave before the Sons of Temperance, at

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

Ptolemy. Commencing with the cheap groggeries, he gradually
rose in his attacks until he reached the men of wealth and
education. “There are some of these in our neighborhood,”
he said: “it is not necessary for me to mention names—men
whom perhaps we might excuse for learning the habit of rumdrinking
on foreign shores, where our blessed reform has not
yet penetrated, if they did not bring it here with them, to corrupt
and destroy our own citizens. Woe unto those men, say I!
Better that an ocean of fire had rolled between those distant
shores of delusion and debauchery and this redeemed land, so
that they could not have returned! Better that they had perished
under the maddening influence of the bowl that stingeth
like an adder, before coming here to add fresh hecatombs to the
Jaws of the Monster!” Of course, everybody in Ptolemy
knew who was meant, and sympathizing friends soon carried
the report to Lakeside.

The unpleasant episode was soon forgotten, or, from a natural
sense of propriety, no longer commented upon. Even the
strongest advocates of Temperance present felt mortified by
Mr. Grindle's vulgarity. Hannah Thurston, among others,
was greatly pained, yet, for the first time, admired Woodbury's
coolness and self-possession, in the relief which it gave
her. She wished for an opportunity to show him, by her manner,
a respect which might in some degree counterbalance the
recent rudeness, and such an opportunity soon occurred.

She was standing before the picture of Francesca da Rimini,
lost in the contemplation of the wonderful grace and pathos
of the floating figures, when Woodbury, approaching her, said:

“I am glad that you admire it, Miss Thurston. The picture
is a great favorite with me.”

“The subject is from Dante, is it not?” she asked; “that
figure is he, I think.”

Woodbury was agreeably surprised at her perception, especially
as she did not say “Dant,” which he might possibly have
expected. He explained the engraving, and found that she
recollected the story, having read Cary's translation.

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

“Since you are so fond of pictures, Miss Thurston,” said
he, “let me show you another favorite of mine. Here, in the
library.”

Taking a large portfolio from its rack, he opened it on the
table, under a swinging lamp. There were views of Indian
scenery—strange temples, rising amid plumy tufts of palm;
elephants and tigers grappling in jungles of gigantic grass;
pillared banians, with gray-bearded fakirs sitting in the
shade, and long ghauts descending to the Ganges. The glimpses
she caught, as he turned the leaves, took away her breath
with sudden delight.

At last he found the plate he was seeking, and laid it before
her. It was a tropical brake, a tangle of mimosa-trees,
with their feathery fronds and balls of golden down, among
which grew passion-flowers and other strange, luxuriant vines.
In the midst of the cool, odorous darkness, stood a young Indian
girl of wonderful beauty, with languishing, almond-shaped
eyes, and some gorgeous unknown blossom drooping from
her night-black hair. Her only garment, of plaited grass or
rushes, was bound across the hips, leaving the lovely form bare
in its unconscious purity. One hand, listlessly hanging among
the mimosa leaves, which gradually folded up and bent away
where she touched them, seemed to seek the head of a doe,
thrust out from the foliage to meet it. At the bottom of the
picture a fawn forced its way through the tangled greenery.
The girl, in her dusky beauty, seemed a dryad of the sumptuous
forest—the child of summer, and perfume, and rank,
magnificent bloom.

“Oh, how beautiful!” exclaimed Hannah Thurston, at once
impressed by the sentiment of the picture: “It is like the scent
of the tube rose.”

“Ah, you comprehend it!” exclaimed Woodbury, surprised
and pleased: “do you know the subject?”

“Not at all, but it scarcely needs an explanation.”

“Have you ever heard of Kalidasa, the Hindoo poet?”

“I have not, I am sorry to say,” she answered; “I have

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

sometimes found references to the old Sanscrit literature in
modern authors, but that is all I know about it.”

“My own knowledge has been derived entirely from translations,”
said he, “and I confess that this picture was the cause
of my acquaintance with Kalidasa. I never had patience to
read their interminable epics. Shall I tell you the story of
Sakontala, this lovely creature?”

“Certainly, if you will be so kind: it must be beautiful.”

Woodbury then gave her a brief outline of the drama, to
which she listened with the greatest eagerness and delight.
At the close, he said:

“I am sorry I have not a copy of the translation to offer
you. But, if you would like to read another work by the
same poet, I think I have the `Megha-Duta,' or `Cloud-Messenger,
' somewhere in my library. It is quite as beautiful a
poem, though not in the dramatic form. There are many characteristic
allusions to Indian life, but none, I think, that you
could not understand.”

“Thank you, Mr. Woodbury. It is not often that I am
able to make the acquaintance of a new author, and the pleasure
is all the greater. I know very little of literature outside
of the English language, and this seems like the discovery of
a new world in the Past. India is so far-off and unreal.”

“Not to me,” he answered, with a smile. “We are creatures
of habit to a greater extent than the most of us guess.
If you could now be transplanted to India, in less than five
years you would begin to imagine that you were born under
the lotus-leaf, and that this life in Ptolemy had occurred only
in the dreams of a tropical noonday.”

“Oh, no, no!” said she, with earnestness. “We cannot so
forget the duties imposed upon us—we cannot lose sight of
our share in the great work intrusted to our hands. Right,
and Justice, and Conscience, are everywhere the same!”

“Certainly, as absolute principles. But our individual duties
vary with every change in our lives, and our individual action
is affected, in spite of ourselves, by the influences of the

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

external world. Are you not—to take the simplest evidence of this
fact—cheerful and hopeful on some days, desponding and
irresolute on others, without conscious reason? And can you
not imagine moods of Nature which would permanently color
your own?”

Hannah Thurston felt that there was a germ of harsh, material
truth in his words, beside which her aspirations lost
somewhat of their glow. Again she was conscious of a painful,
unwelcome sense of repulsion. “Is there no faith?” she
asked herself; “are there no lofty human impulses, under this
ripe intelligence?” The soft, liquid lustre faded out of her
eyes, and the eager, animated expression of her face passed
away like the sunshine from a cloud, leaving it cold and gray.

Woodbury, seeing Miss Eliza Clancy, in company with
other ladies, entering the library, tied up the portfolio and
replaced it in its rack. Mrs. Waldo, pressing forward at the
same time, noticed upon the table a Chinese joss-stick, in its
lackered boat. She was not a woman to disguise or restrain
an ordinary curiosity.

“What in the world is this?” she asked, taking the boat in
her hands. The other ladies clustered around, inspecting it
from all sides, but unable to guess its use.

“Now,” said Woodbury, laughing, “I have half a mind to
torment you a little. You have all read the Arabian Nights?
Well, this is an instrument of enchantment.”

“Enchantment! Do the Indian jugglers use it?” asked
Mrs. Waldo.

“I use it,” said he. “This rod, as it appears to be, is made
of a mysterious compound. It has been burned at one end,
you see. When lighted, it is employed to communicate fire
to another magical substance, through which the Past is
recalled and the Future made clear.”

Miss Clancy and the other spinsters opened their eyes wide,
in wonderment. “Provoking! Tell us now!” cried Mrs.
Waldo.

“It is just as I say,” he answered. “See, when I light the

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

end—thus—it burns with a very slow fire. This single piece
would burn for nearly a whole day.”

“But what is the other magical substance?” she asked.

“Here is a specimen,” said he, taking the lid from a circular
box of carved bamboo, and disclosing to their view some cigars.

The spinsters uttered a simultaneous exclamation. “Dreadful!”
cried Mrs. Waldo, in affected horror. “Hannah, can
you imagine such depravity?”

“I confess, it seems to me an unnatural taste,” Hannah
Thurston gravely answered; “but I presume Mr. Woodbury
has some defence ready.”

“Only this,” said he, with an air between jest and earnest,
“that the habit is very agreeable, and, since it produces a
placid, equable tone of mind, highly favorable to reflection,
might almost be included in the list of moral agencies.”

“Would it not be more satisfactory,” she asked, “if you
could summon up the same condition of mind, from an earnest
desire to attain the Truth, without the help of narcotic drugs?”

“Perhaps so,” he replied; “but we are all weak vessels, as
you know, Mrs. Waldo. I have never yet encountered such a
thing as perfect harmony in the relations between body and
mind. I doubt, even, if such harmony is possible, except at
transient intervals. For my part, my temper is so violent and
uncontrollable that the natural sedative qualities of my mind
are insufficient.”

Mrs. Waldo laughed heartily at this assertion, and the
serious tone in which it was uttered. Hannah Thurston, to
whom every fancied violation of the laws of nature was more
or less an enormity, scarcely knew whether to be shocked or
amused. She had determined to carefully guard herself against
committing such an indiscretion as Mr. Grindle, but it was
hard to be silent, when Duty demanded that she should bear
a stern testimony against evil habits.

“You should be charitable, ladies,” Woodbury continued,
“towards some of our masculine habits, seeing that we do not
interfere with yours.”

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

“Bless me! what habits have we, I should like to know!”
exclaimed Mrs. Waldo.

“A multitude: I don't know the half of them. Crochetwork,
and embroidery, and patterns, for instance. Tea is
milder than tobacco, I grant, but your systems are more sensitive.
Then, there are powders and perfumes; eau de Cologne,
lavender, verbena, heliotrope, and what not—against all of
which I have nothing to say, because their odors are nearly
equal to that of a fine Havana cigar.”

Miss Eliza Clancy and Miss Ruhaney Goodwin exchanged
glances of horror. They were both too much embarrassed to
reply.

“You understand our weaknesses,” said Hannah Thurston,
with a smile in which there was some bitterness.

“I do not call them weaknesses,” he answered. “I should
be glad if this feminine love of color and odor were more common
among men. But there are curious differences of taste,
in this respect. I have rarely experienced a more exquisite
delight than in riding through the rose-fields of Ghazeepore, at
the season for making attar: yet some persons cannot endure
the smell of a rose. Musk, which is a favorite perfume with
many, is to me disagreeable. There is, however, a physical
explanation for this habit of mine, which, perhaps, you do not
know.”

“No,” said she, still gravely, “I know nothing but that it
seems to me unnecessary, and—if you will pardon me the
word—pernicious.”

“Certainly. It is so, in many cases. But some constitutions
possess an overplus of active nervous life, which suggests the
use of a slight artificial sedative. The peculiar fascination of
smoking is not in the taste of the weed, but the sight of the
smoke. It is the ear of corn which we hold out to entice into
harness the skittish thoughts that are running loose. In the
Orient, men accomplish the same result by a rosary, the beads
of which they run through their fingers.”

“Yes!” interrupted Mrs. Waldo: “My brother George,

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

who was always at the head of his class, had a habit of twisting
a lock of his hair while he was getting his lessons. It
stuck out from the side of his head, like a horn. When
mother had his hair cut, he went down to the foot, and he
never got fairly up to head till the horn grew out again.”

“A case in point,” said Woodbury. “Now, you, ladies,
have an exactly similar habit. Sewing, I have heard, is oftentimes
this soothing agent, but knitting is the great feminine
narcotic. In fact, women are more dependent on these slight
helps to thought—these accompaniments to conversation—
than men. There are few who can sit still and talk a whole
evening, without having their hands employed. Can you not
see some connecting link between our habits?”

The spinsters were silent. The speaker had, in fact, rather
gone beyond their depth, with the exception of Mrs. Waldo,
whose sympathy with him was so hearty and genial that she
would have unhesitatingly accepted whatever sentiments he
might have chosen to declare. Hannah Thurston was not a
little perplexed. She scarcely knew whether he was entirely
sincere, yet his views were so novel and unexpected that she
did not feel prepared to answer them. Before this man's appearance
in Ptolemy, her course had been chosen. She had
taken up, weighed, and decided for herself the questions of
life: a period of unpleasant doubt and hesitation had been
solved by the acceptance of (to her) great and important theories
of reform. Was a new and more difficult field of doubt to
be opened now?—more difficult, because the distinctions of the
sexes, which had been almost bridged over in her intercourse
with reformers of kindred views, were suddenly separated by
a new gulf, wider than the old.

Woodbury, noticing something of this perplexity in her countenance,
continued in a lighter tone: “At least, Miss Thurston,
I think you will agree with me that a physical habit,
if you prefer to call it so, is not very important in comparison
with those vices of character which are equally common and
not so easy to eradicate. Is not the use of a `narcotic drug'

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

less objectionable than the systematic habit of avarice, or envy,
or hypocrisy?”

“Yes, indeed!” said Mrs. Waldo, recollecting his generous
donation to the Cimmerians, “and I, for one, will not prohibit
the use of your magical ingredients.”

“I cannot judge for you, Mr. Woodbury,” said Hannah
Thurston, feeling that some response was expected; “but have
you no duty towards those who may be encouraged in the
same habit, to their certain injury, by your example?”

“There, Miss Thurston, you touch a question rather too
vague to enter practically into one's life. After accepting, in
its fullest sense, the Christian obligation of duty towards our
fellow-men, there must be a certain latitude allowed for individual
tastes and likings. Else we should all be slaves to each
other's idiosyncrasies, and one perverted or abnormal trait
might suppress the healthy intellectual needs of an entire community.
Must we cease to talk, for example, because there is
scarcely a wholesome truth which, offered in a certain way,
might not operate as poison to some peculiarly constituted
mind? Would you cease to assert an earnest conviction from
the knowledge that there were persons unfitted to receive
it?”

“I do not think the analogy is quite correct,” she answered,
after a moment's pause, “because you cannot escape the recognition
of a truth, when it has once found access to your
mind. A habit, which you can take up or leave off at will, is
a very different thing.”

“Perhaps, then,” said Woodbury, who perceived by the
rising shade on Mrs. Waldo's smooth brow that it was time to
end the discussion, “I had best plead guilty, at once, to being
something of an Epicurean in my philosophy. I am still too
much of an Oriental to be indifferent to slight material comforts.”

“In consideration of your hospitality,” interposed Mrs.
Waldo, brightening up, “the Sewing Union will not judge
you very severely. Is it not so, Miss Clancy?”

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“Well—really—oh no, we are under obligations to Mr.
Woodbury;” said the spinster, thus unexpectedly appealed to,
and scarcely knowing how to reply.

“Our community have reason to congratulate themselves,
Sir,” here broke in the Hon. Zeno Harder, who had entered
the library in time to hear the last words.

Woodbury bowed dryly and turned away.

Soon afterwards, the sound of sleigh-bells in front of the
house announced the first departures. The company became
thinner by slow degrees, however, for the young gentlemen
and ladies had found the large parlor of Lakeside full of convenient
nooks, which facilitated their habit of breaking into
little groups, and were having such agreeable conversation that
they would probably have remained until the small hours, but
for the admonitions of the older folks. Among the earliest to
leave were the Merryfields, taking with them Hannah Thurston
and Miss Dilworth, greatly to Bute's regret. The latter,
unable to detect any signs of peculiar intimacy between Seth
Wattles and the little seamstress, became so undisguised in his
fondness for her society as to attract, at last, Mrs. Babb's attention.
The grim housekeeper had a vulture's beak for
scenting prey of this kind. While she assisted Mrs. Styles to
find her “Things,” in the bedroom up-stairs, she steadfastly
kept one eye on the snowy front yard, down which the Merryfield
party were moving. Bute, as she anticipated, was hovering
around the last and smallest of the hooded and cloaked
females. He put out his arm two or three times, as if to
steady her steps. They had nearly reached the cutter, where
Patrick was holding the impatient horses, when she saw
another male figure hurry down the walk. There was a sudden
tangle among the dim forms, and one of them, she noticed,
plunged full length into a bank of snow.

Mrs. Babb was so agitated by this tableau, that she suddenly
threw up her hands, exclaiming: “Well, if that don't
beat all!”

Mrs. Styles, carefully muffled for the journey home, had just

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turned to say good-night to the housekeeper, and stood petrified,
unable to guess whether the exclamation was one of admiration
or reproach. She slightly started back before the
energy with which it was uttered.

“Well, to be sure, how I do forgit things!” said Mrs. Babb,
coming to her senses. “But you know, Ma'am, when you're
not used to havin' company for a while, y'r head gits bothered.
'Pears to me I haven't been so flustered for years. You're
sure, Ma'am, you're right warm. I hope you won't take no
cold, goin' home.”

The scene that transpired in front of the house was sufficiently
amusing. Bute Wilson, as deputy-host, escorted Miss
Dilworth to the cutter, and was delighted that the slippery
path gave him at least one opportunity to catch her around the
waist. Hearing rapid footsteps behind him, he recognized
Seth Wattles hard upon his track, and, as the ungainly tailor
approached, jostled him so dexterously that he was tumbled
headlong into a pile of newly-shovelled snow.

“Ah! Who is it? Is he hurt?” exclaimed Miss Dilworth.

A smothered sound, very much resembling “Damn!” came
from the fallen individual.

“Let me help you up,” said Bute; “you pitched ag'in me
like an ox. Why, Seth, is it you? You ha'n't tore your
trowsus, nor nothin', have you?”

Seth, overwhelmed before the very eyes of Hannah Thurston,
whom he was hastening to assist into the cutter, grumbled:
“No, I'm not hurt.” Meantime, Bute had said good-night
to the party, and the cutter dashed away.

“Well, it's one comfort that you can always mend your own
rips,” the latter remarked, consolingly.

Finally, the last team departed, and the sound of the bells
diminished into a faint, fairy sweetness, as if struck by the
frosty arrows of the starlight from the crystals of the snow.
Lakeside returned to more than its wonted silence and seclusion.
Woodbury closed the door, walked into his library,
lighted a cigar at the still burning piece of joss-stick, and

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

threw himself into a chair before the fire. Now and then
puffing a delicate, expanding ring of smoke from his lips, he
watched it gradually break and dissolve, while reviewing, in
his thoughts, the occurrences of the evening. They were not
wholly agreeable, yet the least so—Mr. Grindle's rude attack,—
was not to be dismissed from the mind like an ordinary piece
of vulgarity. It was a type, he thought, of the manners which
self-constituted teachers of morality must necessarily assume
in a community where intellect is characterized by activity
rather than development. Society, in its broader sense, is unknown
to these people,—was his reflection. In the absence of
cultivation, they are ruled by popular ideas: Reforms are
marshalled in, as reserve corps, behind the ranks of Religion,
and not even the white flag of a neutral is recognized in the
grand crusade. “Join us and establish your respectability,
or resist us and be cut down!” is the cry.

“Yet”—he mused further—“is it not something that, in a
remote place like this, Ideas have vitality and power? Admitting
that the channels in which they move are contracted,
and often lead in false directions, must they not rest on a basis
of honest, unselfish aspiration? The vices which spring from
intolerance and vulgar egotism are not to be lightly pardoned,
but, on the other hand, they do not corrupt and demoralize like
those of the body. One must respect the source, while resisting
the manifestation. How much in earnest that Quaker girl
seemed! It was quite a serious lecture she gave me, about
such a trifle as this” (puffing an immense blue ring into the
air). “But it was worth taking it, to see how she enjoyed
the Sakontala. She certainly possesses taste, and no doubt
thinks better than she talks. By the by, I quite forgot to
give her the translation of the Megha-Duta.”

Springing up, Woodbury found the volume, after some
search, and soon became absorbed, for the second time, in its
pages.

“Bute,” said Mrs. Babb, as she wiped the dishes, and carefully
put away the odds and ends of the refreshments; “'Pears

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

to me you was gallivantin' round that Carrline Dilwuth, more
than's proper.”

Bute, standing with legs spread out and back to the fire,
answered, as he turned around to face it, whereby, if he
blushed, the evidence was covered by the glow of the flame:
“Well, she's a gay little creetur, and 'taint no harm.”

“I dunno about that,” sharply rejoined the housekeeper.
“She's a cunnin', conceited chit, and 'll lead you by the nose.
You're just fool enough to be captivated by a piece o' waxwork
and curls. It makes me sick to look at 'em. Gals used
to comb their hair when I was young. I don't want no sich
a thing as she is, to dance at my buryin'.”

“Oh, Mother Forty, don't you go off about it!” said Bute,
deprecatingly. “I ain't married to her, nor likely to be.”

“Married! I guess not! Time enough for that when I'm
dead and gone. Me that brought you up, and to have somebody
put over my head, and spendin' all your earnins on fine
clothes, and then hankerin' after my money. But it's locked
up, safe and tight, I can tell you that.”

“I'm man-grown, I reckon,” said Bute, stung into resistance
by this attack, “and if I choose to git married, some day or
other, I don't see who can hinder me. It's what everybody
else does, and what you've done, yourself.”

Bute strode off to bed, and the housekeeper, sitting down
before the fire, indulged in the rare luxury of shedding several
tears.