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The mists hung red along the blue basement of the October
sky, and now and then was heard the uncertain, impatient twitter
of some wild bird, that lingered behind its fellows, for the
last flocks had flown over the hills and faded off in the distance,
like clouds. The woods, not yet withered from their autumn
splendor, were beautiful exceedingly. The winds, crying for
the lost summer, ran along the tops of the long reaches of maples,
breaking their shivering wilderness of leaves into golden
furrows—low hedges of the red, glossy-leaved gum trees, ran in
among the forks of the hills, and the brown, shaggy vines of
the wild grape, full of black clusters, clambered about the sassafras
and elm, and the oak still towered in green magnificence.

The sun grew larger and larger, and went down, and gradually
the evening fell, with its solemn calm, over all the scene. Evening,
in autumn!

To most minds, the autumn is a melancholy time, sweeping
off the light and beauty from the summer, and leaving the
world, like Eden when the Fall swept thence the light, and the
dews of sorrow blotted out the footsteps of the angels.

In a stubble field, high and flat, bordered on two sides with
thick woods, on one by an open meadow, from which, just now,
the cows were wending their way slowly homeward, and on
the other, commanding a view of the homestead and the road,
Seth Milford was ploughing.

The air was all fragrant with the smell of fresh earth, as furrow
after furrow crumbled off, and the weary and jaded horses

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steadily walked backward and forward across the field, in obedience
to the hand of their master.

Twilight fell deeper and darker, and the silver ring of the
new moon was seen just over the western tree-tops, when Seth
paused at the edge of the field nearest the house, drew the
plough from the furrow on to the narrow border of grass that
edged the stubble, loosened the traces, and winding the long
rein about the slender and glossy neck of one of his horses, lowered
the bars, and the animals walked slowly homeward alone.

With arms folded across his bosom, and eyes bent on the
ground, the young ploughman remained for some time listlessly
leaning against the fence; and it was not until his good steeds,
having reached the next bars and found themselves unable to proceed
further, had once or twice neighed impatiently, that his
reverie, whatever its nature, was interrupted. Drawing his
rough boots backward and forward over the long and fallen
grass, by way of cleansing them of the moist earth that attached
to them in the furrows, he refolded his arms, lowered his hat a
little over his sullen brow, and was proceeding slowly and mechanically
homeward, when he was interrupted with the brisk,
lively salutation of “How are you, Seth?” He looked up, and
a smile, half sorrowful, half disdainful, passed across his regularly
handsome features, as though he scarcely knew whether
most to pity or despise any one who could be happy in this
world. The recipient of this dubious greeting was a young
neighboring farmer, with a round, rosy face, indicative of good
nature and good health, and large gray eyes, and the beginnings
of a yellowish beard. Cordially shaking the hand of his unsocial
neighbor, he apologized, a little bluntly, for crossing
without liberty his fields; for it must be owned, that Seth Milford
had, either justly or unjustly, obtained the reputation of
being a little selfish and particular as to who trespassed on his
premises. The young man was evidently arrayed in his best;
and whether the fashion of his garments was such as obtained
in the gay world or not, mattered to him very little. He was
going, he said, the distance of a mile or so, to “sit up with a
corpse,” and the direction he had taken materially shortened the
way.

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“Who is dead?” inquired Seth, manifesting for the first time
a little interest. “Humph!” he continued, on learning who it
was; “he was a young man—must have been younger than
I—and yet has been so blest as to die.”

“Yes,” said the happy farmer, without understanding or apparently
heeding the conclusion of the remark; “yes, he was
young; if he had lived till the twenty-second of January, he
would have been his own man. Good evening.”

Seth looked after the young watcher, and repeated, half aloud,
as he turned homeward,—

It seems, sometimes, as if we were but drifted here and there,
by blind chances, to perish, at last, like the flowers; and this
especially seems true, when, after striving earnestly but vainly
to pierce the darkness which lies between the farthest stretch of
imagination, and the eternal brightness about God, our thoughts
come back to our poor mortal being. Else it seems that we
were predestined from eternity to fill a certain round, from
which there is no escape; and, sick at heart, we turn from each
lofty endeavor. We have too little of the child's faith—too
little of simple and trustful reliance on “our Father.”

“The good are never fatalists—
The bad alone act by necessity,”
the poet says. There are some, however, not bad, who, partly
owing to an unhealthy temperament—moody and morbid—and
partly to the continually fretful contrasts of high aspirations and
inadequate powers, in the end believe in a blind fate.

One of this unfortunate class was Seth Milford. Born and
bred on the farm which he now inherited, and having never
been beyond the shadows of his native hills, he had nevertheless
“immortal longings in him.” Naturally diffident and shy,
and very imperfectly educated, he grew up to manhood, dissatisfied,
restless, wretched—despising and scorning the circle to

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which by habit and manner he belonged, and consciously fitted
for no other, though gifted with a mind superior to that of
thousands occupying high places in society, and looking down
upon him. He was not loved—even by his two sisters, with
whom he lived in the old homestead, and whom he supported,
not very elegantly, indeed, but according to his best ability. He
would have done better, but it was his fate to be as he was, and
to do no more than he did.

These sisters—Mary and Annie—better educated, and with
more of tact and ambition than he, had by various means succeeded
in elevating themselves considerably, as they thought,
above their awkward and ill-natured brother.

Seth was sensitively alive to their want of affection—to the
mortifying truth that they were sometimes ashamed of him,
and consequently made little effort towards their maintenance
in such style as they desired. When the spring time came
round, he scattered the seed with a listless hand; and when the
suns of summer ripened the harvest, he gathered it instinctively
in, but with no pious song—no thought of ampler threshing-floors.

It was a wise rule among the Jesuits, that would not permit
of two persons talking apart; and if these sisters had strictly
kept such a rule, how much happiness would have been gained,
how much misery avoided!

They complained, and with a good deal of justice, of their
brother's improvident and thriftless way of living; and by
dwelling on it often, and exaggerating real evils, a feeling of
indifference grew up against him, which he, on his part, made
no effort to break down. They seldom met, save at meals,
usually seanty enough, and then in silence.

The grounds comprising the farm were extensive and valuable,
but sadly neglected and unprofitable. Patches of
briers grew about the meadows, and the fences were so decayed
and fallen, that all the unruly pigs and cattle of the neighborhood
trespassed at will. Even the homestead, which had
originally had pretensions to gentility, now looked as if

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The paint was beaten from the weatherboards, some of the
chimneys were toppling, the shutters broken, and the railings
about the piazza half gone. The fence around the yard, in spite
of the props here and there, leaned one way and the other
towards the ground, and the front gate was quite off its hinges;
nevertheless, the flower-beds on either side the grass-grown
walk, and the snowy curtains at such of the windows as had unclosed
shutters, indicated that the place was inhabited—while
the great blue cloud of smoke, issuing just now from the kitchen
chimney, gave the place an unusually cheerful and home-like
aspect.

Mary was preparing the tea, bustling in and out, and up and
down the cellar—singing as she did so—and Annie was gone to
milk, for they lived humbly. Though, for the most part, the
brother and sisters went on in the silent unsympathizing manner
I have described, there were times when mutual good nature
melted away the ice between them, and an evening or a morning
passed pleasantly.

“Now tell us what hath chanced to-day, that Cæsar looks so
sad,” said Annie Milford, gaily, to Seth, as he came near where
she sat by the little spotted cow. Without heeding the gay
salutation, he threw open the gate, and, neglecting to slip his
hand through the bridle rein, as he should have done, he suffered
his horse to pass on in what direction he chose, and that
was so close to the little cow as to make her whirl suddenly
round, and thus upset the milk over the clean dress of Annie.
She was, however, in too pleasant a mood to be seriously vexed,
and called after Seth, saying—“Just stop, and see the ruin you
have wrought—when I was thinking, too, what color would best
suit my complexion.”

The young man passed on moodily without answering, and
seemingly without heeding her raillery; but a kind word is
never lost, and, affecting to busy himself, he waited till Annie's
pail was again flowing, when, passing as by accident, he took it
from her hand and carried it into the house.

“I think the air feels like rain,” said Annie, as she took the
milk to strain, and Seth replied that he thought so too; and
this was the first time he had spoken to her that day.

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By the time Seth had washed his face and hands in the tin
basin that always stood on the stone step at the door, and
Annie had strained the milk, and washed and turned down her
bright tin pail by the well-curb, the tea was ready, and though
the girls had made the most of a scanty larder, the board was
less substantially spread than suited the requirements of a hungry
man.

“Well, Seth,” said Mary, as she added the spoonful of sugar
to his cup of tea, which he liked to be sweet, “I gave away all
your old boots to-day, to Captain Hill, who wanted them to
smoke under the nose of a consumptive colt.” Seth could not
help laughing, though he tried hard to do so; and drawing
nearer to the table, he began to eat his supper, which he at first
manifested no disposition to do.

“He staid a good while with us,” continued Mary, “and
amused us very much with anecdotes of early times; relating,
amongst other things, how, when he retired from the militia
captaincy, he traded his regimentals for a steer.”

“Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen!” said Seth, as
he passed his cup to be refilled—a thing he was seldom known
to do. With light and lively talk of this sort, the supper
passed—so small a thing turns the current, sends it rippling
into the sunshine, or moving toward the shade. When the
meal was finished, Seth took up the market-basket, saying he
would go into the village and see if he could add anything to
their stock of provision.

“Not to-night,” said the sisters, both at once—“you look
tired—let it be to-morrow, or the next day.”

But the more they dissuaded him from going, the more he
was inclined to go—though a week's scolding could not have
induced him to do so—and he left the house, saying perhaps he
should gather a little harmless gossip to enliven the next evening
meal; and his heart and step were lighter than they had
been for many a day. Lifting the broken gate, to pass out, he
resolved to stop at the blacksmith's and order some new hinges.

The tea things were put by, and a little fire blazed cheerfully
on the hearth, for the evenings were growing chilly. Annie sat
knitting a sock of gray woollen yarn, beside the little

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oldfashioned work-table, and Mary was reading from a favorite
volume, when Seth returned, and, placing his well-filled basket
on the table, he took up a ham of partly-dried beef, saying,
“When I come home to-morrow night, I want some of this
broiled for supper; and here are some cranberries, too, to be
stewed.”

Mary said it should be as he wished, and kindly giving him
the rocking-chair, they sat together—Annie knitting, Mary
reading, and Seth rocking backwards and forwards before the
fire, and occasionally making some comment on the book, till
the old cock, from the cherry tree by the door, crowed for nine
o'clock.

Then, laying the embers together, they talked of various
plans for future improvements. The paling around the yard
was to be straightened up and whitewashed, the shrubbery
trimmed, and new gravel put in the walk. Then the shutters
were to be mended and painted, a rag carpet which the girls
had made was to be woven for the dining-room, a boy was to
be hired to milk the cows and assist about the farm, “and then,
Seth,” said the girls, “you will have more time for books and
thought.”

How bright the future looked to them all, for this strengthening
of each other's hands, by interchange of opinions, hopes,
and fears. How easy of execution seemed all their plans, as
they retired for the night, pleased with themselves and with
the world.

The next day found Seth in the stubble field as before, but
with a countenance more cheerful, a step more firm and elastic;
and now and then, as he stopped for his horse to rest and
browse from briers on the border of the field, while, taking a
book from his pocket, he sat down on the grass bank and read,
he really looked enviable—lord as he was of the acres around
him.

The sky was overcast, and the easterly wind blew chill and
dreary all day—the leaves fell fast, and drifted to great yellow
ridges along the woods—the nuts dropped off as a stronger gust
swept by—the cattle cowered from the blast in the fence

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corners and on the sides of the hills—it was gloomy, and uncomfortable,
all the time.

Having assigned himself a certain task, Seth continued to
plough, backward and forward, long after the sun was set. But
it was accomplished at last, and drawing his plough from the
furrow on to the border of grass as in the preceding evening, he
loosened the traces, and whistling some fragment of a song,
walked briskly homeward. When his horse had been cared
for, he took a bundle of hay under his arm for the little cow,
but, on going into the yard, he found she was not there, to his
regret, for it was already growing late, and clouds indicated a
speedy storm.

I can soon bring her, thought he—supper will not have to
wait long; and he hurried towards the meadow. But by the
time he reached it the darkness was so great he could not see
far, and so was obliged to walk round and round to discover
whether she were there. In doing this, he found the fence
thrown down next the woods, and, thinking she was doubtless
into them, he continued his search, though the darkness had
become dense, and the rain was falling steadily and cold. The
mildness of the morning had induced him to go to the field
without a coat, so that, though his search was finally successful,
it was not until he was completely drenched. The provoking
little cow was milked at last, and the flowing pail carried home—
and now for a warm fire and supper, thought Seth, as he
opened the door of the kitchen. But, to his surprise and discomfort,
he found neither. The dining-room was in the same
desolate and cheerless state, but the parlor was a-glow with
light and warmth, and the gay chattering of voices announced
the presence of strangers. Seth's brow clouded—unhappily,
the friends of his sisters were not his friends. Belonging for
the most part to a different grade of society, he neither knew
them nor cared to know them; and, in the present instance, he
was certainly in no guise to present himself. There was no
servant on whom to call for a change of garments—he knew not
where to find any himself, and so he sat down in the cheerless
kitchen, wet and cold as he was, to wait the departure or retiring
of the guests, as patiently as he could. This situation was

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very uncomfortable, and his mood was quickly in sympathy.
He thought over all the wrongs and slights he had ever known
or suffered—and they were not a few, and exaggerated the
difficulties and obstacles that beset him, until there seemed no
hope, no good worth living for. Before him and behind him
all was very dark. The time appeared insupportably long;
and, worn out at last, he retired to his room, half-wishing,
boyishly, that he was dead.

Irritation and chilliness at first kept him from sleep, and there
is no more wretched place than a sleepless pillow; then a violent
headache supervened, and he wore the long hours by tossing
and tumbling from one side of his bed to the other. But
wearied nature gave way at last, and towards morning he fell
into a broken and dreamy sleep, from which he did not wake
till the sun was shining broad and bright over the world. His
head was still aching, dull, and heavy, and his cheeks flushed
and burning with fever. Half rising, he drew back the curtain
from the window at the head of his bed, and looked out. His
faithful dog, Juno, that always slept beneath her master's window,
roused from her recumbent posture, and, raising herself
erect, with her fore-paws on the window sill, looked wistfully at
him some time, whining and wagging her tail. But he no
sooner lifted his hands toward her, caressingly, and turned fully
upon her his dull and heavy eyes, than her feet dropped from
the window, and, crouching upon the ground as before, she gave
a melancholy howl.

“An ill-omen,” said Seth; and he fell back upon his pillow
and groaned.

Meantime the girls had risen, and, finding no fire for the preparation
of breakfast, one of them had gone to the door of her
brother and, in a harsh tone, called him to get up and kindle it;
but he, yet asleep, did not of course either hear or answer. After
waiting some time, they succeeded, with much difficulty, in
kindling a fire themselves; and when at last the breakfast was
on the table, they sat down to it alone, saying, that if Seth were
not a mind to get up and make a fire, they were sure they
would not call him to eat.

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In so doing they were not happy, but, on the contrary, very
unhappy. Nevertheless, they felt this procedure to be a kind
of duty they owed to their insulted dignity.

The breakfast was eaten in silence, and the table cleared, and
yet Seth came not; but, seating themselves before the fire in
the dining-room, they soon, in recapitulating the events of the
previous evening, forgot all about him.

After an hour or so, the young man came from his chamber,
and passed through the room where they sat, but neither of the
sisters looked up, or in any way noticed him, until, hearing him
in the kitchen, pouring a cup of cold coffee, one of them said,
“If you had risen when you ought to, you might have had your
breakfast. As it is, you can go without.”

“I don't want any breakfast,” said Seth.

“You have grown very meek all at once,” replied the sister—
and no more was said.

After dragging himself about for some time, in the performance
of such little offices as required attention, he felt himself
obliged to return to his bed, which he did without receiving any
more notice than before.

“I wonder if Seth is sick?” said one of the sisters, when he
had gone back to his room.

But the other replied that he generally contrived to make
it known when he was sick, and the conversation flowed again
into its lively channel. Sadly jarred their mirthful tones and
laughter through the sick chamber, as the long hours passed
drearily from the young farmer.

Suffering from thirst—for though burning with fever the sick
man, remembering the harsh tone of the morning, delayed to
call for water—and so, voluntarily adding to his misery, he lay
tossing about until the day was nearly closed, when his audible
groans attracted the notice of Annie, who, from having spoken
harshly in the morning, was perhaps the more sensitively alive
to the possibility of his needing her attention; and, putting
down her work, she went at once to his room.

Startled and alarmed at the terrible change wrought in a single
day and night, she did everything in her power to alleviate

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his sufferings; clean linen was speedily brought, and when his
face and hands had been freely bathed in cold water, and his
pillows adjusted, he felt better; and Annie left him to prepare
tea, telling him that when he should have taken a little sleep it
would be ready, and then she was sure he would be well. But
the headache, which had been for a moment lulled, returned
with greater intensity, and the cheeks soon flushed back to a
hotter fever. “Oh, if Seth were only well!” said Mary, as she
went about the preparation of supper. It was no trouble now
to make everything as he liked it best. When it was ready,
and a chair for him set next the fire, she opened the door of his
room, and called him, saying, “You don't know what a nice
supper we have.”

“Oh, Mary,” replied Seth, “I shall never eat supper with you
any more.”

The words smote on her heart, and, hurrying to his bed, she
put her arms around his neck, and, weeping like a child, asked
his forgiveness for all her past neglect, her want of love—exaggerating
her own faults, and magnifying all his kindness, all
his forbearance—saying, over and over, “Oh, you must get well,
Seth; you must get well!”

He smiled faintly, and said his own faults were much greater
than hers; but if he were well, he might not do any better, and
his life had been long enough.

A week went by—the leaves were nearly all gone from the
trees, and lay in heavy and damp masses, the winds moaned
about the old homestead very dismally, the sky was clouded,
and the cold, melancholy rain of autumn, fell all day long. On
the grass border, at the edge of the stubble field, stood the
plough just where it had been left a week before, with the yellow
rust gathered thickly over the share.

Under the naked locust-trees, in the corner of the village
grave-yard, there was a heap of fresh earth, and close beside it
a long narrow mound.

Peace to the dead and the living! Let not me, frail and
erring, sit in judgment upon either.

I have told you, simply, a story of humble sorrows and

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sufferings. May it teach you to be kindly considerate to those
with whom you journey along this pilgrimage to death, and to
fall not out by the way; for there is no anguish like that which
comes upon us when we remember a wrong done, and feel our
utter impotence to lift the pallid forehead out of death, and
crown it with our sorrow and our love.

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It was just two o'clock of one of the warmest of the July
afternoons. Mrs. Hill had her dinner all over, had put on her
clean cap and apron, and was sitting on the north porch, making
an unbleached cotton shirt for Mr. Peter Hill, who always wore
unbleached shirts at harvest time. Mrs. Hill was a thrifty
housewife. She had been pursuing this economical avocation
for some little time, interrupting herself only at times to “shu!”
away the flocks of half-grown chickens that came noisily about
the door for the crumbs from the table-cloth, when the sudden
shutting down of a great blue cotton umbrella caused her to
drop her work, and exclaim—

“Well, now, Mrs. Troost! who would have thought you ever
would come to see me!”

“Why, I have thought a great many times I would come,”
said the visitor, stamping her little feet—for she was a little
woman—briskly on the blue flag stones, and then dusting them
nicely with her white cambric handkerchief, before venturing on
the snowy floor of Mrs. Hill. And, shaking hands, she added,
“It has been a good while, for I remember when I was here
last I had my Jane with me—quite a baby then, if you mind—
and she is three years old now.”

“Is it possible?” said Mrs. Hill, untying the bonnet strings
of her neighbor, who sighed, as she continued, “Yes, she was
three along in February;” and she sighed again, more heavily
than before, though there was no earthly reason that I know of
why she should sigh, unless perhaps the flight of time, thus
brought to mind, suggested the transitory nature of human
things.

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Mrs. Hill laid the bonnet of Mrs. Troost on her “spare bed,”
and covered it with a little, pale-blue crape shawl, kept especially
for like occasions; and, taking from the drawer of the
bureau a large fan of turkey feathers, she presented it to her
guest, saying, “A very warm day, isn't it?”

“Oh, dreadful, dreadful; it seems as hot as a bake oven; and
I suffer with the heat all summer, more or less. But it's a
world of suffering;” and Mrs. Troost half closed her eyes, as if
to shut out the terrible reality.

“Hay-making requires sunshiny weather, you know; so we
must put up with it,” said Mrs. Hill; “besides, I can mostly
find some cool place about the house; I keep my sewing here
on the porch, and, as I bake my bread or cook my dinner, manage
to catch it up sometimes, and so keep from getting overheated;
and then, too, I get a good many stitches taken in the
course of the day.”

“This is a nice, cool place—completely curtained with vines,”
said Mrs. Troost; and she sighed again; “they must have cost
you a great deal of pains.”

“Oh, no—no trouble at all; morning-glories grow themselves;
they only require to be planted. I will save seed for
you this fall, and next summer you can have your porch as
shady as mine.”

“And if I do, it would not signify,” said Mrs. Troost; “I
never get time to sit down from one week's end to another;
besides, I never had any luck with vines; some folks have'nt,
you know.”

Mrs. Hill was a woman of a short, plethoric habit; one that
might be supposed to move about with little agility, and to find
excessive warmth rather inconvenient; but she was of a happy,
cheerful temperament; and when it rained she tucked up her
skirts, put on thick shoes, and waddled about the same as ever,
saying to herself, “This will make the grass grow,” or “it will
bring on the radishes,” or something else equally consolatory.

Mrs. Troost, on the contrary, was a little thin woman, who
looked as though she might move about nimbly at any season;
but, as she herself often said, she was a poor unfortunate creature,
and pitied herself a great deal, as she was in justice bound

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to do, for nobody else cared, she said, how much she had to
bear.

They were near neighbors—these good women—but their
social interchanges of tea-drinking were not of very frequent
occurrence, for sometimes Mrs. Troost had nothing to wear like
other folks; sometimes it was too hot, and sometimes it was
too cold; and then again, nobody wanted to see her, and she
was sure she didn't want to go where she wasn't wanted.
Moreover, she had such a great barn of a house as no other
woman ever had to take care of. But in all the neighborhood
it was called the big house, so Mrs. Troost was in some measure
compensated for the pains it cost her. It was, however,
as she said, a barn of a place, with half the rooms unfurnished,
partly because they had no use for them, and partly because
they were unable to get furniture. So it stood right in the sun,
with no shutters, and no trees about it, and Mrs. Troost said
she didn't suppose it ever would have. She was always opposed
to building it, but she never had her way about anything.
Nevertheless, some people said Mr. Troost had taken the
dimensions of his house with his wife's apron strings—but that
may have been slander.

While Mrs. Troost sat sighing over things in general, Mrs.
Hill sewed on the last button, and shaking the loose threads
from the completed garment, held it up a moment to take a
satisfactory view, as it were, and folded it way.

“Well, did you ever!” said Mrs. Troost; “you have made
half a shirt, and I have got nothing at all done. My hands
sweat so I can't use the needle, and it's no use to try.”

“Lay down your work for a little while, and we will walk
in the garden.”

So Mrs. Hill threw a towel over her head, and taking a little
tin basin in her hand, the two went to the garden—Mrs. Troost
under the shelter of the blue umbrella, which she said was so
heavy that it was worse than nothing. Beans, radishes, raspberries,
and currants, besides many other things, were there in
profusion, and Mrs. Troost said everything flourished for Mrs.
Hill, while her garden was all choked up with weeds. “And
you have bees, too—don't they sting the children, and give you

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

a great deal of trouble? Along in May, I guess it was, Troost
(Mrs. Troost always called her husband so) bought a hive, or
rather he traded a calf for one—a nice, likely calf, too, it was—
and they never did us one bit of good”—and the unhappy
woman sighed.

“They do say,” said Mrs. Hill, sympathizingly, “that bees
won't work for some folks; in case their king dies they are
very likely to quarrel, and not do well; but we have never had
any any ill luck with ours; and we last year sold forty dollars
worth of honey, besides having all we wanted for our own use.
Did yours die off, or what, Mrs. Troost?”

“Why,” said the ill-natured visitor, “my oldest boy got
stung one day, and, being angry, upset the hive, and I never
found it out for two or three days; and, sending Troost to put
it up in its place, there was not a bee to be found, high or low.”

“You don't tell! the obstinate little creatures! but they
must be treated kindly, and I have heard of their going off for
less things.”

The basin was by this time filled with currants, and they returned
to the house. Mrs. Hill, seating herself on the sill of
the kitchen door, began to prepare her fruit for tea, while Mrs.
Troost drew her chair near, saying, “Did you ever hear about
William McMicken's bees?”

Mrs. Hill had never heard, and expressing an anxiety to do
so, was told the following story:

“His wife, you know, was she that was Sally May, and it's
an old saying—

“Sally was a dressy, extravagant girl; she had her bonnet
`done up' twice a year always, and there was no end to her
frocks and ribbons and fine things. Her mother indulged her
in everything; she used to say Sally deserved all she got; that
she was worth her weight in gold. She used to go everywhere,
Sally did. There was no big meeting that she was not at, and
no quilting that she didn't help to get up. All the girls went
to her for the fashions, for she was a good deal in town at her

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

Aunt Hanner's, and always brought out the new patterns. She
used to have her sleeves a little bigger than anybody else, you
remember, and then she wore great stiffners in them—la, me!
there was no end to her extravagance.

“She had a changeable silk, yellow and blue, made with a
surplus front; and when she wore that, the ground wasn't good
enough for her to walk on, so some folks used to say; but I
never thought Sally was a bit proud or lifted up; and if anybody
was sick, there was no better-hearted creature than she;
and then, she was always good-natured-as the day was long,
and would sing all the time at her work. I remember, along
before she was married, she used to sing one song a great deal,
beginning

`I've got a sweetheart with bright black eyes;'

Mrs. Hill had by this time prepared her currants, and Mrs.
Troost paused from her story while she filled the kettle, and
attached the towel to the end of the well-sweep, where it waved
as a signal for Peter to come to supper.

“Now, just move your chair a leetle nearer the kitchen door,
if you please,” said Mrs. Hill, “and I can make up my biscuit,
and hear you, too.”

Meantime, coming to the door with some bread-crumbs in
her hand, she began scattering them on the ground, and calling,
“Biddy, biddy, biddy—chicky, chicky, chicky”—hearing which,
a whole flock of poultry was about her in a minute; and stooping
down, she secured one of the fattest, which, an hour afterwards,
was broiled for supper.

“Dear me, how easily you do get along!” said Mrs. Troost.

And it was some time before she could compose herself sufficiently
to take up the thread of her story. At length, however,
she began with—

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

“Well, as I was saying, nobody thought William McMicken
would marry Sally May. Poor man, they say he is not like
himself any more. He may get a dozen wives, but he'll never
get another Sally. A good wife she made him, for all she was
such a wild girl.

“The old man May was opposed to the marriage, and threatened
to turn Sally, his own daughter, out of house and home;
but she was headstrong, and would marry whom she pleased;
and so she did, though she never got a stitch of new clothes,
nor one thing to keep house with. No; not one single thing
did her father give her, when she went away, but a hive of bees.
He was right down ugly, and called her Mrs. McMicken whenever
he spoke to her after she was married; but Sally didn't
seem to mind it, and took just as good care of the bees as
though they were worth a thousand dollars. Every day in
winter she used to feed them—maple-sugar, if she had it; and
if not, a little Muscovade in a saucer or some old broken dish.

“But it happened one day that a bee stung her on the hand—
the right one, I think it was,—and Sally said right away that
it was a bad sign; and that very night she dreamed that she
went out to feed her bees, and a piece of black crape was tied
on the hive. She felt that it was a token of death, and told her
husband so, and she told me and Mrs. Hanks. No, I won't be
sure she told Mrs. Hanks, but Mrs. Hanks got to hear it some
way.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Hill, wiping the tears away with her
apron, “I really didn't know, till now, that poor Mrs. McMicken
was dead.”

“Oh, she is not dead,” answered Mrs. Troost, “but as well
as she ever was, only she feels that she is not long for this
world.” The painful interest of her story, however, had kept
her from work, so the afternoon passed without her having accomplished
much—she never could work when she went visiting.

Meantime Mrs. Hill had prepared a delightful supper, without
seeming to give herself the least trouble. Peter came precisely
at the right moment, and, as he drew a pail of water,
removed the towel, from the well-sweep, easily and naturally,
thus saving his wife the trouble.

p489-084

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

“Troost would never have thought of it,” said his wife;
and she finished with an “Ah, well!” as though all her tribulations
would be over before long.

As she partook of the delicious honey, she was reminded of
her own upset hive, and the crisp-red radishes brought thoughts
of the weedy garden at home; so that, on the whole, her visit,
she said, made her perfectly wretched, and she should have no
heart for a week; nor did the little basket of extra nice fruit,
which Mrs. Hill presented her as she was about to take leave,
heighten her spirits in the least. Her great heavy umbrella,
she said, was burden enough for her.

“But Peter will take you in the carriage,” insisted Mrs.
Hill.

“No,” said Mrs. Troost, as though charity were offered her;
“it will be more trouble to get in and out than to walk”—and
so she trudged home, saying, “Some folks are born to be
lucky.”

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

In the graveyard of Clovernook—for it is a simple rural
burial place without any poetic name, such as Shade Land, or
Vale of Rest—there is a high grass-grown mound, and on its
plain marble slab is inscribed the date of the birth and death
of one of our revolutionary sires. The epitaph was dictated by
himself, and though concise and unpretending, for the deceased
was a decided and punctilious democrat, fails not to mention
that he enlisted in the regular service at the age of seventeen,
and remained in it till the conclusion of the war. Not a little
proud of this distinction was uncle Dale, and he could not bear
that his friends and relations should have no memorial of it
when his voice should be for ever silent. I fancy too, that he
was fain to think the wearied traveller would sometimes stop
beneath the shadow of the great tree that is above him, and,
reading the inscription, feel that he gazed on the repository of
no common dust. Close beside the broad high swell of turf
beneath which he sleeps, there is a shorter and lower one, covered
with wild roses, but without any headstone at all.

The leaves of ten autumns have fallen bright about these
graves, lodging in the brier vines, and filling the hollow that is
between them, and then fading, and withering to dryness, and
blowing away on the wind, so that neither children, nor children's
children come any longer with tears, but occasionally the
long grass is trodden down about them by the one or the other,
as all his benevolent and generous qualities are talked over
very calmly, and his self-sacrifices, and heroic actions, proudly
remembered. Sometimes the roses are gathered from the

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

lesser mound, about which nothing is said, and laid upon the
larger.

Uncle Dale and three brothers were among the pioneer
settlers of Clovernook; so that many families in that now
flourishing hamlet, amongst which our own is one, are either
intimately or remotely connected with him. That I call him
“uncle Dale,” does not precisely indicate our relationship, as
many young persons who knew and loved him, were suffered
by his genial and sunny disposition to approach him thus
familiarly.

As I first remember him, he seemed to me a very old man,
but to childhood, the full prime of life seems a boundary that
we may scarcely ever reach, and between us and white hairs
there is a longer time than we can imagine.

Let me call up his picture: but I fear I shall not be able to
make you see him as I see him, for it is one of the most palpable
of my memories, and my pencil, which is not at all graphic,
can never delineate him as I see him through the years.
On the ivy-shaded porch to the west of our cottage, I have got
on his knees on many a summer afternoon, listening to stories
of sudden attacks and defences, defeats and victories, strange
encounters with wild beasts, huge lights made by prairie fires,
when the buffalo herds, as they cantered before it, shook the
earth, making a rumbling sound like that of an earthquake.
Often I have heard him tell of the first-night passed in the
wilderness, where afterward was reared his cabin. A fire was
kindled against the trunk of a giant tree, the shelving bark of
which was soon a-blaze to its top, and the red flames creeping
along the numerous boughs, which together with the live
sparkles dropping below or sweeping in bright trains across the
winds, illumined all the forest round about. There he and his
brothers proposed to cast their lines; it could not have seemed
a very pleasant place to them then, for they had no bed but a
heap of leaves, and their covering against the cold was very
scant. They did not dare to sleep without a sentinel, for the
fear of wild beasts, and of still wilder savages. Once or twice
indeed they saw the glitter of hungry eyes through the underbrush,
but whether of man or beast, they could not precisely

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

determine, and so with their sharp knives and loaded muskets
close at hand, they lay awake, or sat, it may be, the watches
through, telling stories to the long-drawn howl of the wolf and
the churlish growl of the panther.

The two pairs of young oxen, thin and jaded, which brought
over the mountains and across the long reach of woods all their
earthly effects, were turned loose to graze on reaching their
destination. The spot had been previously selected, but darkness
was over all the world when they arrived, and the owls
hooting discordantly to the faint moonlight.

A little clump of walnut trees, crowning the eminence near
which the proposed cabin was to be erected, had been girdled by
way of setting a mark on the premises, and the road leading to
the neighboring fort wound around them in a way not to be
mistaken. By this means alone the spot was recognised—the
general aspects of a vast waste of wilderness being very similar,
and such lines of division as existed, apparent only to the practised
eye of the hunter.

The oxen were very tired, and it was not supposed that they
would stray far from the camp, but, after browsing a little while
from the nearest young trees, lie down in the leaves and sleep.
For a time they were heard treading the underbrush, and
breaking with their teeth the green limbs of the beech, or the
tenderer sprays of the elm, but by and by they sank down, and
nothing was heard but their heavy breathing.

In the morning, however, one of them was gone, leaving his
mate useless, and though vigilant search was made in all directions,
no traces of him were ever discovered.

I could never imagine uncle Dale a vigorous young man,
felling trees, building houses, and killing wild beasts. But
building houses, in those days, was a trifling matter, requiring
only the bringing together of a few straight saplings, the mixing
of a little clay mortar, (which in their case the old ox did
for them), and the hewing of a few strong men for eight and
twenty hours or so. I could think of him only an old man with
thin white hairs, and hands crossed and checked with full blue
veins, and a complexion of that pallid even hue which seems to
indicate decay of the physical energies, but which, in his case,

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

I know not how to account for, since he was full of vigorous
life, and young at heart when three score years admonished
him of the limits of human life: young at heart, and a lover of
youth, as will be presently shown in the fact of his taking to
himself at that ripe age a youthful wife.

He was not for the fashion of these days, but in dress and
manner belonged to his own generation. Half his character
was in his dress; his predilection for the buff and blue remained
always, and his last request was, that no paler hue
might be substituted when the battle of life should be over,
and peace concluded with the last enemy. The antique style
of his apparel, never ceased to interest and amuse me: the
knot of ribbon which ornamented his cocked hat, and the silver
knee and shoe buckles, to say nothing of the bright buttons
adorning the blue coat, (the same set were used during half his
life) and the buff breeches, and the great white silk pockethandkerchief
with its border of eagles, served to fill all little
vacuities of thought, when, resting his check on the gold head of
his curiously carved cane, he forgot that he had broken off in
the middle of a story.

Sometimes on such occasions I would timidly put my hand
in his pocket, as if to steal his purse, and so recall him from
his reverie. This purse was of the museum character, having
been wrought long before by an Indian girl, named Willow-Flower,
beautiful, as uncle Dale said, and so named for her exceeding
grace. She had first come to his cabin as a spy, and
under pretence of offering roots for sale, adroitly possessed herself
of articles, not easily replaced in those times, and contrived
also to leave poison in the way of Warwick, the faithful watch-dog.
The poor brute refused food, drooped, and whined sorrowful
and monotonous for a day or two, and then, after licking
the hand of his master, went from the cabin and his kennel
altogether, and digging away the heavy masses of leaves and
bits of sticks in an obscure part of the woods, made his own
grave.

But Willow-Flower became afterwards penitent, and Warwick
had layers of bright moss above him in a circle of crimson
phlox. However, the penitence came not without softening

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

influences in two bright silk handkerchiefs; and a fleece of
wool for the linings of moccasins—for uncle Dale, having perceived
the wicked disposition of the maiden, forthwith journeyed
to Fort Washington, ten full miles, for the purchase of
trinkets, to offer her by way of antidote. The wool was of his
own flock, and in all the west, certainly he believed there was
none so white or fine. The presents were opportune. Willow-Flower
had visited the cabin during the absence of uncle Dale
and, as appeared by her subsequent confession, not thinking herself
equal to a wholesale robbery, conveyed to the lodge of her
kindred such intelligence that depredation was resolved on for
the ensuing night. It was near midnight when uncle Dale, who
had returned at twilight, tired and cold, for it was winter, was
awakened from sleep by a slight noise at the door. Rising
partly up, he threw the smouldering embers together, for he
slept on a bed of skins before the hearth—and the low room
was soon aglow with light. His apprehensions were presently
confirmed, not only by the jarring sound caused by footsteps
close by, but by the sudden darkening of the small uncurtained
window, as with the quick opening of some great black wing.
The nature, if not the extent, of the danger, was at once comprehended.
Willow-Flower had brought some of her tribe for
evil purposes; and it was her black tresses which the gust swept
across the window, as she listened for some sound from within.

Any attempt at defence was useless; there might be chances
of escape or secretion, but of these uncle Dale would not avail
himself; and, withdrawing from the reach of their arrows, if
aimed through the pane, he dressed hurriedly, and boldly opened
the door. This unexpected movement caused some confusion
among the invaders, six or seven in number, in a close group
near by, and one or two clubs were suddenly raised. “Willow-Flower—
pretty Willow-Flower!” called uncle Dale, for
she had learned of the settlers to understand English, and to
speak it brokenly. He then told her he had dreamed she was
come, and was glad to find it was not only true, but that she
had also brought her brothers: he had that day bought a present
for her, which he begged she would come in and accept. A
glimpse of the red handkerchiefs completed the conquest; and

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

the whole party were soon seated on the skins around the fire,
which cracked and blazed cheerily in the wide, stone fire-place,
partaking of the bread and meat which uncle Dale set before
them; and, it may be, of a flagon of whiskey also, though as
to that I am not perfectly informed. At daybreak, they harm
lessly returned, in real or apparent merriment, bearing the
fleece of wool and the red kerchiefs, uncle Dale having suffered
in nothing, but instead, having gained six or seven friends.

When Willow-Flower came again, her hair was bound with
hemlock, in token of sorrow, and she led by the birchen collar
a huge black dog of a wolfish aspect, which, alive and strong,
she said was better than the dead Warwick, who would never
growl though a thousand enemies were about the place. She
came often, thereafter, and the purse, knitted in part of her
own black tresses, in part of the golden fibres of some bark
from the forest, was one of her many tokens of friendliness.
How the pieces of gold, with convenient varieties of silver coin,
chanced always to be in this purse, I never questioned, and now
I am certainly unable to divine, for uncle Dale was not a-worker,
nor a prudent economist or wise manager. True, the hundreds
of acres of the wild land at the time I refer to, was become a
beautiful and richly cultivated farm, within six miles of which,
Fort Washington had extended itself, until the country called
her, for her beauty, the Queen of the West; and the rude cabin,
with the door broken off, and the window fallen away, was
standing still, thick woods all about it, for the county road had
not been made on the original track over which the oxen brought
uncle Dale, and consequently the old house was left on the
farthest verge of the lands; and, with something of the feeling
one might cherish for a first love, its projector and builder would
never hear of its removal. It was as much neglected also as
one's first love becomes sometimes: between the planks of the
floor the grass grew up; and neither Willow-Flower nor any
of her tribe came there any longer.

Many the stories, like this, told to children by the old men of
the west. Where else and when, in all the various history of
the world, have its forest-invading founders been suffered to see
the meridian glories of a great empire, and in the midst of

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

ancient-states, to tell how the earliest seeds of civilization
were there first planted by their own hands! It is as if the
curious patrician had been suffered to drive along the Tiber
from mightiest Rome's long streets of collonaded palaces, to
question the still living Silvia of the traditions of kindness by
Faustulus to her wolf-nursed children.

p489-092

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

Of that aristocracy whose right to live above other people and
by means of other people, no body ever questions, Uncle Dale
glided smoothly along, and in some noiseless undefinable way
his necessities were all supplied; whether there were pressures
in the money market or not was all the same to him; the curious
purse described in the preceding chapter, contained about
the same amount from one year to another.

Along the western line of the Dale farm, lies the silver dust
of the broad and even turnpike, and near it, with a few trees
intervening, and crowning two neighboring eminences, stand
two beautiful mansions, embracing not only every degree of
rural comfort, but many of the refined elegances of more luxurious
life. There live John and Joseph Dale, sons of the old
soldier of whom I have been writing. There they live, now
that they inherit the estate, reaping the harvest in peace which
was sown long ago amid perils and difficulties. But they also
lived here, reaping the same advantages, while the father was
yet in the world. His home was sometimes beneath one roof,
sometimes beneath the other; but an old man is not always
petted and caressed, either by children who have grown up to
think their own ways best, or by grandehildren, who are sure to
think a father in the right, and a grandfather in the wrong, when
there is disagreement.

And so it chanced at times—not often, I hope—that clouds
came over the sunshine of Uncle Dale's life; and with one hand
on the head of his cane, and the other folded over that, and his
chin resting on both, he would sit for hours, silent, thoughtful—

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

his brow furrowed, and his lips compressed. One of these occasions
I shall never forget. Mrs. Joseph Dale had left him to
rock the cradle: for why could not grandfather tend it just as
easily as not? She had left to him this duty while she should
perform another, which country housewifes sometimes impose
on themselves, an unpleasant one, I fancy, even with no baby,
asleep in the cradle; it was nothing less than the yearly picking
of seventeen geese, and, perhaps, one or two ducks. The
good woman had been bred to habits of economy, and having
grown away from necessity, adhered nevertheless to primitive
customs. Her dozen beds were stuffed already to hardness with
feathers, but that mattered not—she would have thought as soon
of dispensing with her extra fine blue and red wool coverlids
with which all the chamber closets were heaped, and which
were only taken down about the tenth of July to garnish the
garden-fence and receive the benefit of sun and air, as with the
seventeen geese and two or three ducks. But passing these
peculiarities: herself, and the man servant, and the maid servant,
with the larger children, more or less, had succeeded, after
many crosses and drivings hither and thither, in lodging the
gabblers conveniently in the vacant room of an out-building,
denominated by common usage the goose-room, and clad in
an old-fashioned gown, used by her mother before her for a
similar purpose, and with her heavy brown hair ungracefully
wound beneath a closely-fitting cap of white muslin, Mrs.
Joseph Dale had but well commenced the picking, when the
cries of the baby aroused her motherly sympathies. For a
time she continued her work, trusting to the careful rocking of
grandfather—afterwards to the lulling influences of his gentle
talk and vibratory tossings—but all would not do: louder and
louder came the voice, till the angry mother, tossed from her
lap the gray goose whose neck had only in part been divested
of its graceful plumes, exclaiming, “Grandfather, I suppose,
means to let the baby cry itself to death!”

A moment after, she presented herself—her eyebrows full of
down, and a white fringe hanging all around the edges of her
hair; and taking the baby from his arms, in silence, bestowed on
the good old man a look that might have struck terror to a

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

regiment, as he tried to apologise, by saying he was not worth much
any more—that he had fallen asleep at his task, and the mischief
had occurred in consequence. “So it seems,” replied the
daughter-in-law, no wise softened—and added something about
its being seldom enough he was asked to do anything; which,
though he but imperfectly heard it, caused him to twist the rim
of his hat to a more angular shape, before adjusting it for a
walk to his other home, which he performed in a manner erect
and stately, as though neither gout nor rheumatism had ever
made his acquaintance.

The dinner at both houses was usually served punctually at
the moment when the sunshine, streaming straight in at the
south door, indicated the noon, but to-day there had been a little
variation—Mrs. Joseph Dale had delayed dinner in consequence
of her occupation, and Mrs. John Dale had served hers already
in consequence of a proposed visit.

Uncle Dale was fond of his dinner, and a prospect of fasting
till tea time, was not calculated to smooth down his turbulence
of spirit. After a brief salutation he seated himself, and
moodily leaning his head on his cane, as his fashion was when
his equanimity had been in any way ruffled, remained silent,
thinking that Mrs. John Dale must know he had not dined, and
did not wish to give herself trouble on his account.

In another temper he would have stated his necessities; but
to-day he expected them to be anticipated; he was, he felt, at
best but a useless and troublesome old man, whom nobody
wanted to be burdened with, and as he occasionally lifted up
his eyes he glanced toward the graveyard, half wishing he
already filled the little space which would presently be allotted
to him.

Meantime, Mrs. John Dale, seemingly unconscious of his
presence, was busily preparing for “going abroad,” as the
passing an afternoon with a relation and neighbor was described.
Very smart and tidy she looked in her new gingham and black
silk apron, and cap with the crimped ruffle and blue ribbon;
and as, with a little parcel of visiting work in her hand, (stuff
for making two table-cloths and a sheet), she got out precisely
as the clock from the mantle struck one, Uncle Dale smiled;

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

perhaps he thought there were other women in the world who
looked as well as she; but he may have smiled for the plenteous
harvest, or for any of a thousand other things. Affectionate
as Mrs. John Dale generally was, she had to-day made
no apology for leaving home—perhaps that her father-in-law
seemed engrossed with his own thoughts; and he, on his part
had declined telling her that her sister-in-law was not in trim
for receiving visitors, for that she had not informed him of her
intentions. Changing his position a little to ascertain whether
he had divined aright, he found that, just as he expected, she
turned to the south, passed across the hollow over the bridge,
ascended the hill, and opening the little gate made especially
for visitors, entered the domicile of Joseph, whose wife, with
the down in her eyebrows and about her hair, sat vainly endeavoring
to rock to sleep the most sleepless child in the world.
How inopportune! thought uncle Dale; I could have told her
so. But he was mistaken, as was quickly evident from the surprised
lady's laughter. A little gay chatting, and she took up
the baby, while the sister arranged herself in more seemly
guise; the geese were released, and marched in procession to
the brook; and Nancy, the maid, appeared on the porch before
the kitchen, beating eggs. All signs seemed propitious of a
most enjoyable afternoon.

This was all vexing to the old man, who, alone and hungry,
sat within view—nothing, he felt, done for his pleasure or accommodation,
then, or ever; for one little slight leads to exaggeration
of all the slights and mischances of life.

After a while he grew weary of his own thoughts, and for the
want of other occupation, or led by the regretful nature of his
reflections, strolled away toward the long deserted cabin. At
first he sighed heavily, seeing how the birds had built their nests
among the loose stones of the chimney, how the roof had fallen
away, and the rain beaten through the chinks, how the floor
was decayed, and the mildew creeping along the walls. Then he
began to think how it might be restored—a few shingles, a
little repairing about the chimney and hearth, some new flooring,
a little plaster and whitewash, with the resetting of the
glass, would completely renovate the house, make it as good as

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

new, and in fact better. Why should it not be done? only the
labors of a strong man for a day or two, and a trifling expenditure,
were needed, in fact, he believed he could well nigh
perform the whole task himself; and putting his cane aside,
and throwing off his blue coat, with the energy and earnestness
of twenty, he began heaping loose stones together, and
tearing out the floor as though the restoration of the old house
were a foregone conclusion, and he himself the architect and
mason, carpenter and glazier. His energies were soon exhausted,
however, for at sixty a man may not handle timbers
and stones as with the weight of forty less years upon him,
and at the spur of another resolution he ceased to work, as suddenly
as he had commenced. But his face, so far from expressing
regret, was full of light and satisfaction, and as he
briskly retraced his steps toward the house of his son, he looked
twenty years younger than when he left it.

During the long afternoon, while Mrs. John Dale wrought at
her table cloths and sheet, and Mrs. Joseph Dale sewed
together six great sacks for carrying wheat to the mill, they
naturally enough disclosed to each other their little trials,
many of which hinged upon the oddities and coming childishness
of the old man. Of course, neither wanted to say anything
unkind, nor would she, for the world; and yet when the
conversation had been repeatedly broken off, one or the other
would renew it by saying, “I must tell you of another thing
which to me is a great vexation;” whereupon followed some
little complaint—perhaps that grandfather would pass his cup
for more sugar in his tea—perhaps that he monopolized the
talk when visitors were present, or perhaps that he was stirring
too early in the morning.

True, Uncle Dale heard none of these things, but he felt instinctively
that they were likely to be said, and so they contributed
to his growing discomfort.

p489-097

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

When Mrs. John Dale returned home, at sunset, she found
that “Grandfather,” as she called uncle Dale, was not there.
All the members of the family were inquired of concerning him,
and it was at length ascertained that he had been last seen climbing
into the stage coach, but nothing further could be learned.
A week went by—ten days—two weeks—a month—when, one
evening, in the coach which took him away, in excellent health
and spirits, and dressed with more than his usual precision, Uncle
Dale returned. The two families felt as if some conspiracy
had been forming, and his reception was a little dubious, though
evidently there was an effort to seem pleased. More than ordinary
pains were taken for his satisfaction, but the politeness
was too formal, and the constraint was apparent.

When the workmen commenced repairing the cabin, no one
asked familiarly what he proposed to do; and when the children
climbed on his knees and teased about his intentions, they
were hushed and told they were quite too heavy for him.

This was not for any lack of curiosity; why should it be
so? certainly Uncle Dale had manifested no such interest for
years, as he did now in the restoration of the old house, assisting,
every day, himself, till all was complete, though for a long
time previously, he had been unused to any toil.

When it was done, he felicitated himself greatly on the cosy,
comfortable look it presented, but no one noticed or added anything
to his felicity; indeed there seemed an unconsciousness of
his movements, and even when he said it would look much
better when he should get the furniture home, there was still
the same apparent indifference.

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

This silence made him visibly uneasy; he was desirous of
being questioned; yet no one embraced the frequent opportunities
he gave for the purpose. In vain he said that John and
Joseph might have their big houses in welcome, and that he
would rather live in the old cabin than with either of them. At
length he became restlessly dissatisfied, sitting sometimes for
hours with his head resting on his cane, without speaking; at
other times going from John's to Joseph's, and from Joseph's
to John's, half a dozen times during the day. Neither of his
sons, however, opened the way for what he wished to communicate.

One morning as John was climbing into the wagon, with a
design of going to Clovernook on some little errand, (he always
harnessed two horses for the bringing home of six pounds of
sugar or a fresh cheese,) Uncle Dale said, in a sort of flurried
accent, “Can you spare your team to me for an hour or two to-day,
John?”

“Why, yes, I suppose so,” he answered; “but what do you
want to do?”

“Nothing much,” was the reply; “I thought of moving my
few effects out of your wife's way—that's all.”

“Humph!” said John, drawing the reins so tight that the
horses pushed the wagon back, crushing a beautiful young tree;
“where do you propose to move?”

“Into the cabin, to be sure: it's good enough for me.”

“But how do you intend to live?—not alone?”

“No, certainly not; I shall need a nurse and housekeeper,
and I have an excellent young woman engaged who will combine
both qualities.”

“The deuce you have!” exclaimed John, bringing down his
whip in a way that sent the horses briskly forward, and in a
few moments he was out of view, leaving Uncle Dale in a state
of troubled bewilderment. During the day, however, he managed
to communicate definitely his intentions; he was going to
be married, and to a pretty young woman of twenty-five. He
enlarged of course on her beauty and many amiable qualities;
but there seemed something he would fain say, which he did
not; for, many times, after speaking of an excellent trait, he

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

would say “but,” or, in the use of some other doubtful disjunctive,
convey the idea of something connected with his proposed
marriage, not altogether pleasant to think about.

Rejuvenated as much as might be, but without hearing any
“God speed you,” he set out in the evening coach on the bridal
expedition. Then it was that the tongues so silent before,
found utterance.

Mrs. John Dale and Mrs. Joseph Dale, exchanged little visits
daily, at which a thousand comments were made, and a thousand
speculations indulged in reference to the new phase of
things. They were not only displeased, but in fact outraged.
An unwarrantably foolish thing was about to be done, and that
too, without their having been in the least degree consulted;
but all the anxiety and suspense, and gossip, must be passed
over, or left to the reader's fancy. Little preparation was
made in either house for the entertainment of the bride; Mrs.
John Dale thought probably the first visit would be to Mrs.
Joseph Dale's, and Mrs. Joseph Dale thought likely the first
visit would be to Mrs. John Dale's. So they excused themselves.
At any rate, a cup of tea and a piece of bread and
butter were all the old man wanted, and as for the young wife,
why, nobody was going to give themselves trouble for her.

Uncle Dale had been absent two or three weeks when, one
evening, as the family of John were seated around the supper
table, one of the children came breathlessly in, saying, that
grandfather had come, and brought a woman and a little girl
with him. Neither son nor son's wife went forth to relieve
him of any embarrassment; and, indeed, I think he would have
preferred to encounter a British regiment forty years before, to
facing the little party now before him, and presenting his wife
to them. There was no alternative however, and the ceremony
was gone through with awkwardly enough, and the little blueeyed
trembling girl dropt into the most out-of-the-way place she
saw, and taking on her lap the little girl brought with her—five
years old, perhaps, with a pale face and dark mournful eyes—
she smoothed the black hair from her forehead, and remained
silent.

There was nothing of the bridish appearance in the young

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

wife, against which Mrs. Dale had set her heart; on the contrary,
her dress was a mourning one, and simply, it may be a
little old-fashionedly made. White frills about the wrists, and
fitting close to the neck, relieved the otherwise sombre effect,
for she wore no ornament but a wealth of luxuriant chestnut
hair, which, though put plainly away, lay in wavy masses along
the brow, that was white, and shaded with sorrow.

In spite of her resolved obduracy, Mrs. Dale was slightly
softened, obviously so, when the moisture gathered to the eyes
of the young wife, though she endeavored to conceal it; and
more so when the dark-eyed little girl, putting her arms around
her neck, said softly, “Mother, what makes you cry?”

A flush of crimson mounted to the face of the young mother,
and the tears, held back till then, dropped heavily one by one
on the head of the girl, who, leaning against her bosom, presently
fell asleep.

Uncle Dale turned away and said something hurriedly about
the sunset; and the children came about his knees saying,
“Who is she, grandfather?” and “What makes her cry?”

Without answering the last question, Uncle Dale said he had
brought them a new aunt; they must call her Aunt Polly: so
it soon became a natural and familiar thing to say grandfather
and Aunt Polly, for Mrs. Dale caught the instruction conveyed
to the children, and with a woman's tact said Aunt Polly too.

I remember of visiting them after they were domiciled in
the cabin; how comfortable and homelike it all was—the
bright rag carpet on the floor—the small and plain table on
which lay the Bible and hymn-book—the cupboard with its
open doors, where the china and britannia were wisely set for
show—and Uncle Dale's cushioned chair—I can see it all
before me as plainly as I see the appointments of my own
room. And Uncle Dale and Aunt Polly—I can see them, just
as they used to look—she, meek, and gentle, and devoted, for
she was of a quiet nature, and had the kindest heart I ever
knew, engaged with knitting or sewing, or in the performance
of some household duty, while Uncle Dale sat by the door, or
at the fireside, as the season might be, reading aloud from the
newspaper, or telling stories of olden times.

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

Aunt Polly was not mentally gifted; in truth, she could not
fathom half her husband said to her; but her reverential love
prompted the liveliest and most implicit obedience to his
wishes; and they glided smoothly, and I think happily along.

Mrs. Joseph Dale, and Mrs. John Dale, became measurably
reconciled to the new order of things, and to the young wife,
for she won upon all hearts, and though they sometimes said
she was not much like grandmother, (whom they had never
seen) they supposed they ought not to complain—and surely
there was no reason why they should do so.

But for the little girl there was no kind word; no pet
names; they had little children too, but they did not like her
to play with them. This was the felt if not the expressed
understanding, and the child wandered lonesomely about the
woods, or sat by the brookside in the sun all day, till the summer
was faded, and the autumn gone, and the winter whitening
all the hills. Then it was that, digging down through the snow
they made her a grave, and she needed no playmates nor kind
words thenceforward. When the spring came round, the violets
sprung up at her head and her feet, and quite overrun the little
yellow heap of earth that was above her, blooming and blossoming
as brightly as over the heir of a hundred kings—she
had never other monument.

In the little white-washed cabin the widowed wife yet lives,
training the roses at the windows, and keeping all things just as
“grandfather” liked to have them when he sat in the great arm
chair, telling her stories of battles and pioneer life: all things
that were his, are held sacred; the bridal dress is hung carefully
aside, and she wears it only when she visits the two graves
under the locust. But the mourning has never been changed—
never will be, I think, and the look of patient meekness she
wears still, only with more of sorrow in it. She is “Aunt
Polly” to every body, and all love and respect her.

p489-102

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

I should very imperfectly fulfil the duty I have undertaken
of sketching the various society of Clovernook, if I omitted altogether
some notices of ecclesiastical affairs, which constitute
so interesting and important a portion of all history. So I
shall here devote a chapter to the dignitaries of our church, which,
like establishments in greater scenes, has had its share of vicissitudes.

It was the time of the full moon of the harvest—winrows of
sweet-smelling hay ridged the meadows, and the golden waves
of the wheat fields rose and fell as the winds ran in and out.
The flocks, shorn of their heavy fleeces, and scarcely yet accustomed
to their new state, bleated along the hill sides, while the
heifers buried their sleek flanks in great beds of clover, and the
oxen, to me ever patient and beautiful, bowed their necks to the
yoke, for the ingathering of the dry hay and the bound sheaves;


“The steer forgot to graze,
And, where the hedgerow cuts the pathway, stood,
Leaning his horns into the neighboring field,
And lowing to his fellows.”
But though it was the time of harvest, and of a plenteous harvest,
there was no great deal of joy in the family of Deacon
Whitfield. The possessor of an ample fortune, he neither enjoyed
it himself, nor suffered his family to do so. This way of
managing affairs was perfectly consonant to the feelings of Mrs.
Whitfield; and, sick or well, day after day she wrought on, like
a suffering martyr, without any thought of shifting the burden

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

which, as a part of her destiny, she meekly accepted; but the
children were sometimes sadly rebellious. There was never
rest nor respite from labor; if they grew tired of one thing,
they were told to do another, and that would be rest enough.
Sundays, there was no work, it is true, but there was no play.
The Pilgrim's Progress, Baxter's Saint's Everlasting Rest, and
one or two other volumes, comprised the Deacon's library, and
were supposed to be sufficiently interesting for all times and
seasons. The same coats, hats, and dresses, were expected to
serve, and did serve, for two or three years. Now, most persons
feel uncomfortable when they are conscious of looking so
peculiar in any way as to make them the pointed objects of observation.
But the Deacon was singularly free from this weakness;
and when sometimes Mrs. Whitfield ventured to suggest,
in a gentle way, that his outer man required to be renewed, he
invariably replied, that his father never had so fine a suit as was
his, and that what was good enough for his father, was good
enough for himself: and so the good woman was silent, if not
convinced.

The same articles of furniture, few and simple, with which
they originally commenced housekeeping, served still, and were,
in fact, as the Deacon said, though the oldest son was now
twenty, good as new. Only one innovation had been made, in
the purchase of a fashionable sofa, which, in the midst of its
slender and old-fashioned associates, looked sadly out of place—
a sort of “jewel in an Ethiop's ear.” It was a great surprise—
a shock, as it were—to the family, when the Deacon announced
his intention of buying it. The dairy had become
overstocked, it was becoming late in the season, and the cows,
the Deacon said, would eat their own heads off before spring,
and he should just turn two of them into a sofa “for your
mother here”—conveying the startling intelligence rather to the
children than to the wife.

“What, father! did you say a sofa?” said Sally Whitfield,
letting her knitting drop in her lap.

“Yes, I said so; a sofa for your mother here,” he replied.

“Mother don't want any sofa,” said Mrs. Whitfield, turning
away and wiping the tears from her eyes; for such considerate

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

kindness, on the part of her husband, quite melted her heart.
“What could have put that into your head, Samuel?”

“I guess father has tapped the wrong cider barrel,” said Jerry
Whitfield to his sister, in a low tone; but his mother caught it,
low as it was, and turning upon him her serious, rebuking countenance,
she said, simply, “Jeremiah Whitfield!” There was
no need that she should say more.

All men have generous moods sometimes, and Deacon Whitfield
had his, though they occurred but once in twenty years or
so. And a few days after this little conversation, he mounted
his market wagon, dressed in his Sunday's best, and proceeded
staidly and soberly to town, while Jerry followed behind, driving
two cows.

But at the opening of our story, it was, as I have said, harvest-time
at the Deacon's, and there was a sort of general dissatisfaction
and ill-humor, in consequence of additional labor,
and no additional help.

The whole family, that is, the Deacon and his wife, and their
son and daughter, Jerry and Sally, were seated on the porch in
the moonlight, cutting apples to dry—for, as the father and son
returned from the harvest-field in the evening, they brought regularly,
each, a basket of apples, which were duly prepared for
drying the next day—so that all the time was turned to good
account.

They worked in silence, and as at a task, which in fact it was,
voluntarily assumed on the part of the old people, and quietly
submitted to on that of the young. A low but belligerent
growl of the great brindled watch-dog that lay at the front gate
night and day, caused in the little group a general sensation,
which became especially lively when it was followed by the
click of the latch at the gate, and the sound of a briskly approaching
footstep.

“Who on earth can be coming, this time of night?” exclaimed
the Deacon, in some alarm, for it was eight o'clock.

“I am afraid somebody is sick, or dead,” said Mrs. Whitfield;
but she was kept in suspense only a moment, when the
genial salutation of “Good evening, neighbors,” dispelled all
fears.

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

The visitor was Deacon White, a short, good natured, blue-eyed
man, who wore a fashionable coat and hat every day, and
didn't cut apples of nights. Jerry immediately vacated his
chair, in behalf of the guest, and seating himself on a great
speckled pumpkin, with an arch look at Sally, continued his
work in silence; for the children, as they were always called,
never presumed to talk in the presence of superiors—that is,
older people. The two neighbors talked about everything:
crops in general, the wheat harvest in particular, and the probable
prices of oats and potatoes; then of the various changes
which had taken place in the neighborhood within their remembrance,
who had come from the east, and who had gone west,
and who had been married, and who had died, until Sally began
to think she never should find out what Deacon White had
come for. At last, however, he revealed his errand, making it
a sort of parenthesis in the body of his conversation, as though
it were a mere trifle, and he was used to such things every day,
whereas it had doubtless troubled his mind from the beginning,
and he expected its announcement to create some sensation,
which, to his evident disappointment and mortification, it failed
to do; or, if it did, Deacon Whitfield suffered not the slightest
emotion to betray itself—a degree of impassibility being one
of the strong points of his character on which he particularly
prided himself.

“Do you think our folks will go, Jerry?” said Sally, as she
helped her brother carry away the basket of apple-parings.

“Yes, I guess not,” said Jerry; and then added, in a bitterer
tone, “I'm glad he did not ask me—I wouldn't have gone, if he
had.”

The reader must know that the old-fashioned minister of the
Clovernook church, having become dissatisfied with the new-fangled
follies that had crept into the midst of his people, had
lately shaken the dust from his feet and departed, after preaching
a farewell sermon from the text, “Oh, ye generation of
vipers!” upon which, a young man, reputed handsome, and of
charmingly social and insinuating manners, had been invited to
take the charge, and his approaching installation was about to
be preceded by a dinner at Deacon White's, he himself

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

extending to his brother deacons the invitations in person. He had
secretly felt little edified for several years past with the nasal
exhortations of the old pastor, which invariably closed with
“A few more risings and settings of the sun,” &c., and being
pleased with the change himself, he naturally wished all the
congregation to be so; and the dinner and merry-making at his
house, he meant as a sort of peace-offering to those who were
likely to be disaffected; nevertheless, some few, among whom
was Deacon Whitfield, were likely to prove stiff-necked.

A dinner-party at five o'clock! That was the beatenest thing
he had heard of. He took supper at four.

But though the old people manifested no disposition to encourage
with their presence such a nonsensical procedure, Sally,
naturally enough, was anxious to go. She had never seen anything
so fine as she supposed that would be; and her curiosity
as to who would be there, and what they would wear, and how
they would act, served continually to increase her desire. But
day after day went by—for the invitations were given five days
before the great event—without seeing any indications favorable
to her wishes. She feared desperately for the result, but, notwithstanding,
tried to assure herself that she was going. In her
chamber, a dozen times over, she reviewed her wardrobe, and
from a stock, somewhat scanty, selected a white muslin, which
she thought would do if she only had a new neck-ribbon; but
how to get one, that was the difficulty. She thought over a
thousand expedients, but none of them seemed feasible. At
last, as the day drew near, she resolved on a bold venture; and
just as her father was leaving the house, after supper, she said,
as though it had just occurred to her, and in a lively tone, to
veil somewhat the feeling with which she made the request,
“Oh! see here, father, I want you to give me a half a dollar.”

The Deacon stopped short, sat down on the door-sill, and deliberately
took off his shoes, from which he emptied a considerable
quantity of hay-seed; he then replaced them, tied
them tight, and, without looking at or answering Sally, who all
the while stood drawing the hem of her apron through her fingers,
took his way to the field.

Perhaps he did not hear me, thought she. I will ask again;

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

and the resolve required great courage, for she secretly felt
that he did hear her, and that a second repulse might not be so
silent. When he returned, however, her heart misgave her, and
all the evening she sat and cut apples in silence; but when the
last basket-full was finished, she ventured to hint softly of what
was most engrossing in her thoughts, by saying, “We ought to
work later to-night than usual.”

“I don't see why,” said the Deacon, after a long pause.

Sally felt that it was useless to tell why, and so said—“Oh!
just because—”

“Sally Whitfield!” said the mother, thus sufficiently expressing
reproof for her freedom of speech.

The poor child felt mortified, and baffled, and so went to bed,
and, half in tears, half vexed, at length fell asleep. But sleep
is a wonderful restorative, especially to the young, and the following
morning she felt fully determined to renew her application.
The great day was come. At the latest possible moment
she said—“Father, are you not going to give me the money I
asked you for?”

“What do you want of it, child?” he asked.

A little encouraged, she replied that she wanted to get a new
neck-ribbon, to wear to Deacon White's.

“It's a pretty story,” said the father, “if you are to be
dressed up, and sent to dinner-parties at five o'clock, and your
mother and me at home at work. You don't want a new ribbon
any more than you want a new head. You had better wish you
were a better girl, than to be wishing for new ribbons.”

Her spirit was roused, and she said, “You promised me a
present long ago, for helping you winnow up the wheat.”

“And haven't you had presents every day? Who gives you
your dinners and suppers, and gets you new shoes and
dresses?”

She felt that these were not the presents promised for the
hard days' labor spoken of, but she said nothing further.

All day she went about her work with a heavy heart; but at
dinner her father said, “Well, Sally, I have brought you that
present to-day!” and a weight fell from her heart, and a vision
of the party rose bright and distinct before her, but faded

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

painfully as he went on to say, “It is no foolish gewgaw, but a
nice sandstone, with which you may scour the churn and pails
this afternoon, as bright as you please.”

Feeling her bosom tremble with a storm of emotions, the
young girl left the table, and seating herself under a cherry-tree
that grew by the kitchen door, began picking the clover
blossoms which clustered thick about her feet, until she had
fifty, for she had counted them over and over again, for the
want of anything else to do. While she was thus employed,
her father, whose sey the hung in the hough over her head, came
towards her, and seeing her clouded brow and her idleness, rebuked
her severely, and concluded by saying, “Now, go out
of my sight, and don't let me see your face till you can act
better.”

A little from the main road, and out of view of the house,
was a beautiful grove of elms, and to their pleasant shade,
more from habit than motive, for she often went there, she bent
her steps.

Unconsciously she had taken with her the clover buds; and
seating herself beneath a low beech overrun with wild grapevines,
she began braiding her blossoms to a wreath. She was
not beautiful, or more so than deep, dark eyes, a wealth of
nut-brown curls, youth, and health, might make any one. The
wood was dreamy and still; the heavy shadows stretched longer
and longer over the thick, green grass, as the day went down;
the spider wove his pale, slender net-work from bough to bough,
entangling the golden sunlight; the birds quickened and deepened
their songs, at first few and drowsy, till the trees shook
with melody; and the winds blew the curls about her cheeks, and
played with the wreath in her lap, as they would. The time
and place had had a softening and soothing effect, and, after
locking her hands together, and humming over all the hymns
she knew, leaning her head against the trunk of the tree beneath
which she sat, she had fallen asleep.

Neither the winds nor the birds disturbed her; but when at
length a human voice, though very low and gentle, addressed
her, the dream was broken, and the blushes beneath her locks

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

burnt crimson, when, looking up, she saw before her the young
village clergyman.

Gracefully, and somewhat gaily for his sacred profession, he
apologized for the intrusion, saying he was not aware that the
fair forest was presided over by a still fairer divinity; and that,
being on the way to meet for the first time the little flock over
which he had been called to preside, he had been tempted by
the exceeding beauty of the grove to turn aside, and hold communion
with the the scene and his own heart. “But do you
not live hereabout, and shall I not meet you at our festival?”
he continued.

The tears came to her eyes in spite of all efforts to keep
them back, as, pointing across the hills to the old-fashioned
mansion where she lived, she said—“I wanted to go, but”—

She made no further explanation; and, pulling her wreath of
clover to pieces, scattered it on the ground.

“The flowers of the grass perish,” said the minister, “and
our hopes, young damsel, are often like them.” Then, in a
livelier tone, as though some pleasant fancy crossed his mind,
“Do you come here often?”

“Oh, very often; but as I have never before had any company
here save winter and rough weather, surprise has kept me
from offering you my mossy seat, which I beg you will now
accept.”

She was rising, when the young man motioned her to retain
her place, saying, “I will take a part of it, though I fear I am
already waited for.”

What they talked of I do not know, and cannot guess; but
it must have been interesting, for, to the great annoyance of
Mrs. White, who liked to have things just so, the Deacon
had drawn the curtain aside twenty times, to see if the minister
were not coming; and the disaffected old ladies had whispered
to each other, that the new preacher was a little too fashionable.
The young ladies were out of patience, as their hair was out of
curl, and a general damp was thrown over the spirits of all, by
the suggestion of a prim, favorably disposed maiden, that the
clergyman had gone to preach a funeral sermon, for that old
Mr. Peters had been thrown from his horse the day previous,

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

and killed; and she particularly emphasized the fact, that he
never once spoke after he was carried into the house. The
silence which succeeded this untimely intelligence was broken
just five minutes before five, by a quick step on the threshold,
and then appeared the smiling face of the clergyman, who, in
answer to the numerous inquiries, said he had not been to
preach a funeral sermon, but that accidental circumstances,
which he did not explain, had a little while detained him. However,
the apology was satisfactory to all, and things went on
charmingly. The dinner did honor to Mrs. White, and the
guests did honor to the dinner. Some of the old persons thought
him a little too worldly-minded for a preacher, but the young
people all admired him; and, on the whole, the impression
he made was more favorable than he could have hoped.

Supper had been over for an hour at Deacon Whitfield's,
when Sally made her appearance, presenting, to the surprise of
her parents, no traces of sorrow or disappointment, but seeming,
on the contrary, to be in an unusually happy and cheerful
mood.

Sabbath after Sabbath went by, and though Deacon Whitfield
and his wife were regular in their attendance at church,
they never tarried to shake hands with the new preacher; not
that his talents and eloquence failed of softening their hearts,
but they felt that a proffering of civility would be a tacit acknowledgment
that they had been wrong, and they were not
yet prepared so to humble their pride.

The young preacher, however, seemed nowise offended by
their coldness, if, indeed, he noticed it, and among his earliest
pastoral visits, was one to Deacon Whitfield's, on which occasion
that gentleman greased his shoes, put on his best coat,
and entertained him in the parlor, where Mrs. Whitfield also
made her appearance shortly before tea, in clean cap and gown;
but Sally was not permitted to go into the parlor, nor even to
come to the tea-table. Though past sixteen, she was, in the
estimation of her parents, a giddy little girl.

Soon after supper, the minister took leave, saying he hoped
hereafter to see all the Deacon's family, at church.

But the next Sabbath the young lady was not in her father's

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

pew, nor the next, nor the next, and the whole summer went
by without her being once there.

Early one September morning, the Deacon and his wife went
to town, taking with them in the market wagon two live claves,
two barrels of apples, and a sack of oats with them to feed the
horses.

Sally expected a new dress and bonnet, without which she
said she would not go to church till Doomsday. And the old
ones she had worn a good while, it is true.

After dinner, Jerry went to the village, to borrow a book of
the clergyman: it mattered not to him what, whether poetry or
science, romance or history: something within him, he felt, required
food, and so he determined to borrow a book. Soon
and cheerfully the household duties were performed, and Sally,
arrayed in her white muslin dress and blue gingham apron, sat
down to sew, while Jerry, who had very soon returned, read to
her from his book, Jerusalem and the Holy Land; not long,
however, for they were interrupted by the coming of the
minister, who had very kindly brought another book to Jerry,
which, he said, he had thought the young man would find of
greater interest than the one he previously selected. Jerry
felt as if he had an everlasting mine from which to draw; and,
retiring to the stoop, seated himself on the speckled pumpkin,
and read away the afternoon—first from one book, and then
from the other.

Autumn went by, and winter and spring, and it was again the
time of the full moon of the harvest. The young clergyman
had won the love of all his people, even that of Deacon Whitfield
and his wife, to whose house he had been a very frequent
visitor. But his fame had extended beyond his little flock, and
he was about to go to a wider field—having been called to the
charge of a wealthy society in the neighboring city.

All were sorry to part with their beloved pastor, but Sally
was more sorry than she dared to say; she felt

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

And when the day came for the farewell visit, she knew that
her heart would betray itself, and, resolving to spare herself the
torture of a last interview, she tied on her bonnet and went
alone to the elm grove, that the cloud of her sorrow might fall
on her heavily as it would. Engrossed with her own thoughts,
and her eyes blinded with tears, she did not notice, till close on
her rural bower, that it was already occupied. The pastor had
preceded her. She would have turned aside, but it was too
late.

Sad and half-reproachful was the tone, as the young man,
offering her a part of the moss-bank on which they sat a year
before said—“It was scarcely kind thus to avoid seeing me, as
you would have done, for you knew of my visit.”

“I would have spared myself the pain of saying farewell,”
said the girl, her lip trembling, and her eyes full of tears.

“And can you not spare yourself that pain? Yes—even till
death shall part us?”

And the cheek of the listener was not angrily turned away
from the kiss that followed the interrogation.

What Sally answered I can only infer from the circumstances;
for when the Deacon shook hands that night with the
young minister, he said—“All I can give you I do freely—my
prayers.”

“I thank you very sincerely,” said the pastor, “but there is
yet another and greater blessing you could give me.”

“Well, mother,” said the Deacon, as he entered the parlor,
and, seating himself on the sofa, drew his wife close to his side,
and kissed her thin, pale cheek with all of long-ago fondness,
“I guess for the futer we'll have to do without Sally.”

p489-113

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

Not unlike the Whitfields, were a family in another direction
from Clovernook, named Tompkins. The Tompkinses were
not quite so respectable as the deacon's folks; they were not so
well-to-do in the world, and were by no means regular in their
attendance at meeting; and their relations, generally, were of a
lower level. Nevertheless the two families were in many respects
very much alike, and, as this chapter will show, liable to
similar experiences.

It was dark and chilly out of doors, as it well might be, for
the sun had been set an hour, and the snow was falling in great
heavy flakes. The little branches of the sweet-brier that grew
close under the window, were bending lower and lower, and the
cherry-trees, beside the house, looked like pyramids, so much
snow had lodged in their limbs. On the sill, the great watch-dog
lay crouched from the cold, and whined sometimes, as he
heard the merry laughter of the children within, who, in the
warm sunshiny days, were often his play-fellows. These children
were three, the eldest, a girl of above fifteen, silently knitting
by the firelight, for the hickory logs blazed brightly on the
great stone hearth, making the silver spoons, fancifully set up
in a kind of paling along the open dresser, and before the carefully
outspread china, to glow and glitter in the warm cheerful
light. The other children were boys of nine and eleven, as like
as two peas, with the exception of a slight difference in size.
Their hair was a sandy-yellow, cut in a straight line over the
forehead, and an inch or so above their big gray eyes; and
never was it perceptibly longer or shorter, for once a month, at
the time of the new moon, their good mother, combing it very

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

smoothly, tied it down with a string, and trimmed it off with
mathematical precision. Their faces were round, and completely
gray with freckles; their cheeks standing out with fatness,
and shining as if just washed; and their hands of the
chubby sort, red, and checked off, just now, with the cold.
When they were tired of play—for they had been for an hour
boisterously chasing each other about the room, tearing up the
carpet in every direction, and tumbling and jostling against
their sister, who, knitting quietly, did not seem to heed them—
they lay down before the fire, and commenced a kind of whining
cry, which, as one ceased, from exhaustion, the other took up.

“I say, Susan, give me something to eat; give me something,
I say; I'm hungry, I am; Susan, give me some cake—I'll tell
mammy—see if I don't.”

“You had better be still,” said Susan, at last, quite worn out;
“I hear your father coming.” Susan never said “father,” when
speaking to her brothers, but “your father,” as though she were
a great deal older, and a great deal wiser than they—quite out
of the reach of paternal authority, in fact, which was by no
means the case, she being yet considered a mere child by her
parents, though she had attained the stature and full development
of womanhood and in every way her privileges were
much more circumscribed than were those of her saucy brothers;
and it cannot be denied that she sometimes exercised the power
she found herself possessed of, in something such sort as she
was accustomed to feel, and if her brothers had continued their
sniveling all night, they would not have obtained the cake with
her permission; and though she threatened them with the approach
of their father, it was on her own account, and not theirs,
for she well knew they would not have to repeat the request in
his hearing.

In a moment there was a muffled stamping on the snowy
door-steps, and Mr. Tompkins, with a very red face, and an
unusually surly expression, presented himself. Now, Mr.
Tompkins was of the most bland and genial manner imaginable,
when he went visiting, or to mill, or to meeting, but at
home, he maintained the most uncompromising austerity, only
relaxing a little when some neighbor chanced to drop in. He

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

evidently thought the least talk with his children, on terms of
equality, an abatement of proper dignity, and so he seldom
talked, and never smiled, for that might seem to imply a willingness
to talk. To Mrs. Tompkins, he sometimes yielded a
little, because she would talk whether he responded or not.

Drawing off his great coat, he shook out the snow, some of
which fell on the upturned faces of the two boys, and some in
the lap of Susan, making her needles grate under their yarn
stitches. This accomplished, he hung it on the back of a chair
before the fire to dry, and taking off his hat, shook it roughly
over his hand, by way of loosening the snow from the little fur
that remained on it. Mr. Tompkins never got a new hat, at
least not since I remember, though his wife wore fine shawls
and dresses.

William and John, meantime, kept up their cry for the cake,
but not till Mr. Tompkins had been sometime seated before the
fire, and quite a little puddle of water had thawed from his
boots, and soiled the bluestone hearth, did he sanction their appeal—
not by words, but by slowly and gravely turning his
head toward Susan, and slightly elevating his eyebrows, perceiving
which, she at once put down her work, lighted a tallow
candle, and went to the cellar, to do which, she was obliged to
go out of doors, and half-way round the house, whence she presently
returned with her light blown out by the wind, and a
great rent in her apron, caused by its catching, in the dark, on a
loose hoop of the vinegar-barrel. The tears came to her eyes,
partly from anger, partly from sorrow, for the apron was of
silk, and made with special reference to a gathering of friends,
which was to take place the next evening at Dr. Haywood's.
It was made of old material to be sure, being composed of two
breadths of her mother's brown wedding dress; but she had
done her best for it, dipping it in water, and ironing it, while
wet, and setting it off with knots of ribbon, which, by the way,
it would have looked much better without, as they were of
an unsuitable color, in some places of very deep dye, and in
others pale, from having been worn one summer on the bonnet
of Mrs. Tompkins, and two on that of Susan. But how should
she know, poor child! She had seen Mary Haywood wear an

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

apron similarly adorned, and naturally wished to be in the
fashion. She was by no means in the habit of wearing a silk
apron at home, but she had completed this in her mother's absence,
and under pretence of showing its effect—a harmless
stratagem—as a quiet reminder of the approaching party, she
had ventured to wear it for one evening.

In every neighborhood there must be one family more fashionable,
more aristocratic, than the rest. This family, in Clovernook,
was the Haywoods. Owing more to fallen fortunes, than
for the sake of free air and exercise for the children—the ostensible
motive—they had but lately removed from the city, where
they had previously resided, to the farm adjoining that of Mr.
Tompkins. The dilapidated homestead, with the addition of
new wings, piazzas, shutters, and some green and white paint,
was speedily made to assume a cottage-like and comfortable
appearance. The main entrance was adorned with a silver
plate, on which was engraved, the name of Dr. Haywood, and
this, with the bell-handle, completed the effect: no other house
in the neighborhood boasting such superfluous ornaments.

Dr. Haywood, naturally of a social and democratic manner,
and a little influenced, it may be, by the hope of professional
success, was not long in making himself a very popular man.
He even condescended to accept the office of trustee of the district
school—attending on set occasions, and inspecting copybooks
and geographies, and listening to the children's rhetorical
readings from Peter Parley's First Book of History, with an easy dignity, as though

“Native and to the manner born.”

Still there were some malcontents, who persisted in calling
the family “big-bugs,” for that Mrs. Haywood wore flowers in
her cap every day, kept a negro woman in the kitchen, and had
visitors from town. Moreover, the Doctor, though he had been
seen in his shirt-sleeves among the hay-makers, very rarely, it

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

must be owned, wrought with his own hands. But the prejudice
almost ended, when he made a great raising for his new
barn, to which he invited all the men and boys, in person, very
often repeating the jest, that a farmer must have a barn whether
he had any house or not. At the conclusion of the raising, a
very excellent supper was provided—Mrs. Haywood doing the
honors of the coffee-urn, and inviting all the men to come and
bring their wives, regretting her own poor efforts to make the
neighborhood social.

This dissolved much of the unkind feeling, but any innovation
on established custom, is likely to meet opposition among
much wiser people than those of whom I write, and Mr. and
Mrs. Tompkins could or would not be reconciled to folks who
stuck themselves up with their waiters and door-bells. Mrs.
Haywood, waiving ceremony, had herself made the first call,
and the Doctor had made informal visits to Mr. Tompkins, in
the barn, repeatedly, with no effect.

Susan, however, had none of the obstinacy of her parents,
and consequently when she received a written invitation, to
honor, with her presence, Mary Haywood's birth-day, she was
on tip-toe with the desire to go. To her great discomfort, she
had as yet received but little encouragement, her father treating
the whole thing as preposterous, and her mother, though there
was sometimes a yielding in her look, seeming to feel that her
dignity required her to present an unshaken front against all
temptations. So the probabilities of the gratification of Susan's
darling wish were exceedingly dubious, up to the time referred
to in the beginning of this chapter, which was the evening preceding
the “Haywood fandango,” as Mrs. Tompkins was
pleased to describe it.

Stealthily, time and again, had Susan examined her scanty
wardrobe, trying on all her old summer dresses to see which
would look the best; but as they were all faded calicoes, it was
difficult to make choice. In her own mind, at last, she decided
on a pink, and bringing it from its winter quarters to press it
off, and make it look as smart as possible, her mother, as if
without the remotest conception of its intended use, dampened,
and almost prostrated all her hopes, by inquiring what she

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

intended to do with that thin gewgaw, this time of year. The poor
child could not summon courage to say what she felt her
mother already knew, and so, simply remarking that she wanted
to see how it looked, carried it away, and hung it in its accustomed
place. In a day or two her hopes revived, and she
made up the brown apron, with which she felt pretty well
satisfied, picturing to herself how it would look with the pink
dress, until the fatal hour it received that “envious rent.”

There was one hope left: if her mother would only let her
wear her Sunday silk! True, it might not fit precisely, but no
body would notice that; she would ask, as soon as her mother
came home; at any rate, there was a bare possibility of success.
Stimulated with this hope, and revolving in her mind in what
way she should approach the subject, she again took up her
knitting, and tried to forget her ruined apron, but her courage
sadly misgave her, when, towards eight o'clock, looking as
blustery as the storm through which she had been plodding, her
mother returned. She had been to the village—for Tompkins's
house was nearly a mile from Clovernook—to look at a corpse.

“Well, mother, doesn't it snow pretty hard?” said Mr.
Tompkins, breaking silence for the first time during the evening.
“Why, no,” said the good woman; “there's now and
then a flake, but I think it's quite too warm to snow.” She
thought the remark implied a reproof to her for being out.

“I hope it will stop before to-morrow night,” said Susan, and
her fingers flew faster than before; and receiving no notice, she
continued, after a moment, “because I can't go to the party if
it snows.”

“I guess you can't if it don't snow,” said Mrs. Tompkins, and
Susan felt it almost a relief, when one of the children, rising
from his recumbent posture on the carpet, said, “Mammy,
Susan tore her new silk apron, she did.” “I'll dare say, Susan
is always doing mischief—how did it happen, child?” she continued,
querulously, taking the torn apron in her hand, and fitting
it together. Susan explained how it chanced, but her
mother said, “if she had not had it on, as she had no business
to have it, this would not have happened.”

There is no telling how long she would have gone on, but for

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

the boy's asking her why she didn't get him something pretty,
to which she replied, “Something pretty costs money: do you
think it grows on bushes? Your father and me have to get
you shoes, and coats, and something to eat, and to pay your
schooling, and I don't know what all, before we get pretty things.”
Mrs. Tompkins always talked to her children as if they were
greatly to blame for wanting anything, or, in fact, for being in
the world at all; and it did not soften her present mood when
the child continued, that Walter Haywood had a knife, and he
wanted one.

“Walter Haywood,” she replied, “has a great many things
that you can't have; and if you had everything he has, you
couldn't be Walter Haywood: they are rich folks.”

Mr. and Mrs. Tompkins embraced every opportunity of impressing
their children with the consciousness of their humility
and unworthiness; and, in keeping with this, she on the present
occasion told her little boy that he could not be Walter Haywood—
as though he belonged to quite a different order of
beings.

The little fellow sat down and hung his head, feeling very uncomfortable.
At length he asked his mother when he should
grow big—thinking, childishly, perhaps, of some great thing he
might then do. “La, child,” she said, “I don't know any more
than the man in the moon: here, Susan, take him to bed—it's
time little boys were asleep.”

So he was reluctantly dragged away, without any sort of idea
when he should become a man, and feeling that most likely he
could not be like Walter Haywood, if he were one.

When Susan returned, she found her parents engaged in an
unusually lively conversation about the recent death, and the
time of the funeral, and who would preach, and Mrs. Tompkins
concluded by saying “it was a very pretty corpse, and looked
just as natural.”

Mrs. Tompkins went to look at every body who died within
four or five miles—a peculiar taste, that of hers—and Susan
thought her mother's heart must be softened, and was about to
ask if she might go to the party, when she suddenly turned the
conversation in a different channel by exclaiming in a very

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

earnest tone—“Have you heard, father, of the great robbery
last night?”

“No, mother, I can't say that I have; I've been busy in my
barn, winnowing up a few bushels of oats.” There was another
evident reproof, and Mrs. Tompkins was silent, perceiving
which, he asked where the robbery was, and what its nature.

“At Mr. Miller's;” and the offended was again silent.

“What was lost?”

“Some hams, I believe, and other things?”

“How many hams, and what other things?”

“I don't ask how many; a fine shirt was taken, too.”

“Do they suspect anybody in particular?”

“Yes.”

“Who is it? somebody about here?”

“Not very far off.”

“Ah, indeed!” and Mr. Tompkins seemed to feel no further
curiosity. Whereupon, Mrs. Tompkins put the embers together
and related all she knew of the matter.

“I expect,” she said, “I have the story pretty straight: Mrs.
Miller told me herself about it. She says she thinks she was
awake at the very time. She had some toothache, along the
fore part of the night, and didn't get to sleep till almost midnight,
and then she got into a kind of a doze, and dreamed, she
said, that all the cattle had broke into the door-yard, and the
dog was trying to drive them out; and then, she said, she
thought one of the cows hooked open the smokehouse-door, and
she was scared, for she thought she would eat up a bag of buckwheat
that had been put in there that day; and she woke up
with a kind of start, she said, and the dog was barking and
making a dreadful racket, and she thought at first she would get
up, and then she thought it was foolish—it was just some of
the neighbor's dogs or something or other, and so she lay still
and went to sleep. When she got up in the morning, she said,
she saw the smokehouse-door open, but she thought the wind
had blown it open, likely, and didn't think anything till she
went out to cut the ham for breakfast, and found them all gone,
and the bag of buckwheat into the bargain. It seems likely it
was somebody that had some spite against them, she says, for

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

Mr. Troost had his hams there being smoked, and not one of
them was touched.”

“That is strange,” said Mr. Tompkins; “we must get a padlock;
they'll be after us next. Mr. Miller is pretty spunky; I
shouldn't wonder, mother, if he got out a sarch-warrant.”

“There has a family lately moved into Mr. Hill's old house,
that people think are no better than they should be,” said Mrs.
Tompkins. “They don't work, they say, and no body knows
how they live; but we all know they must eat, and some think
they get it between two days. Did you bring the towels off
the line, Susan?”

Mr. Tompkins put on his great-coat, and taking the hammer
from the mantel where it always lay, went out and nailed up
the door of the smokehouse, and chained the dog to the cellar
door—making him a kennel of an old barrel, which he turned
down for the purpose, and partly filled with straw, for he was
merciful to his beasts. This done, he wound up his watch, hung
it under the looking-glass, after first holding it to his ear a moment,
and retired. Mrs. Tompkins stirred up a little jar of
batter-cakes for breakfast, covering it with a clean towel, and
placing it on the hearth to rise; and, telling Susan it was time
for little girls to be sleepy, went to bed.

After thinking over the chances for the next evening—whether
she should be able to go, and if so, whether her mother would
let her have the dress, and in that case how it would look—that
young lady betook herself to her chamber.

In the morning she arose bright and early, and had the breakfast
nearly prepared when her mother came down, for she hope
in that way to merit a little extra indulgence. Cheerfully she
flew about the house, doing everything, and more than everything,
that was required of her—singing snatches of songs, and
running after the children, who were always ready with, “Susan,
give me something.”

Dinner came and passed just as usual, and Mrs. Tompkins
prepared to go to the funeral without speaking of the evening.
While she was gone, Susan put all her best things where she
could readily get them, combed and arranged her hair in the
most tasteful manner imaginable, and made ready the tea, so

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

that nothing should detain her. She could not eat any supper,
and finding longer suspense intolerable, said abruptly, “Mother,
may I go?”

“Go where, child?”

“To Mary Haywood's party: all the girls are going, and I
want to go.”

“It's a pretty story, if you are to be running about to parties
of nights, child as you are! What do you think Mary Haywood
wants of you? besides, I have use for you at home.”

Poor Susan; it would be in vain to attempt a description of
her feelings, but they availed nothing, and with a terrible
headache she sat down to her knitting—her brothers saying
every now and then, “Eh, Susan, I knew you wouldn't get to
go, if you did comb your hair so nice!”

The crickets chirped under the hearth—the boughs of the
cherry-trees creaked against the panes, as the rough wind went
and came: to Susan it had never seemed so lonesome, and she
scarcely could help the wish she were out of the world. Suddenly
the dog rattling his chain, barked furiously, then was still
for a moment, and then barked louder than before. There was
a stamping at the door, and a loud quick knock. “Come in,”
said Mr. Tompkins.

He was a dark handsome fellow, of perhaps twenty—in one
hand holding a small knapsack, and in the other a fine rifle,
highly polished and profusely plated with silver, together with
a string of dead birds. He bowed gracefully to the old people,
and something more than gracefully to Susan; and then asked
Mr. Tompkins if he were the proprietor of the farm—and
whether he would like to hire an assistant. Mr. Tompkins
said he “believed not; he had not much to do in the winter;
was not very well able to hire,” &c. But Mrs. Tompkins was
generally opposed to her husband in every thing, and said she
“thought for her part there was plenty to do; all the fences
were out of repair, which would be work enough for one man

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

for six months—then it would soon be sugar-making, and what
could one man do without help?”

“I don't know but you are right, mother,” said the husband;
“what may be your terms, young man?”

This the young man scarcely knew; he was not a farmer,
but was willing to do his best, and receive whatever should be
right. So it was agreed that he should remain for a month,
and putting by knapsack and gun, he drew up to the fire, and
was soon quite at home—relating odd adventures of travel,
and talking of different countries, and, also, saying something
of himself. He was, as the conversation developed, a Frenchman,
who coming to this country to seek his fortune, had exhausted
his means, and finding himself slightly out of health,
had resolved to spend some months in the country for the
benefit of both.

In listening to his stories of sea and land—for he talked well,
Susan forgot Mary Haywood and her party; and when he bid
her goodnight, he called her Miss Tompkins, producing a new
and altogether charming sensation, for every one had called her
Susan, or Miss Susan, till then.

The next day Mr. Maurice Doherty, for that was his name,
accompanied Mr. Tompkins to mill, taking his rifle to bring
down any game that might chance to put itself in his way.
During the day, Susan found time to mend her apron, and also
to press with extra care her black flannel frock, in which, having
prepared tea, she arrayed herself, and sat down with her
knitting, as usual, but listened very eagerly for the rumbling of
the mill wagon. At last it came, and when the horses were
duly stabled, and the bags deposited in the barn, Maurice presented
himself, with three birds in his hand, their wings dropping
loose and sprinkled with blood. These he presented to
Susan, giving her directions as to the best method of dressing
them, which she engaged to undertake, for his breakfast.

She was not handsome, being short and chubby, but she was
sprightly, intelligent, of an exceeding fair complexion—which,
when talking, especially when talking to Maurice, became roseate—
and she really looked pretty.

At breakfast the birds were forthcoming, and Mr. Doherty

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

said he had never before eaten any that were so deliciously
seasoned. He understood much better than Dr. Haywood,
how to ingratiate himself with the old people and was not long
in becoming a great favorite with them; so that when the month
of his engagement was expired, he was re-engaged for three
months longer.

Time wore on—the fences were propt and mended, stumps
uprooted, apple-trees trimmed, and many other things done,
making Mr. Tompkins feel how much better than one, two persons
could attend to his farm.

He should never try to get along alone again, and now that
he had assistance, he proposed building a little cabin in the
edge of the sugar-camp, which would be an admirable convenience
during the sugar making, and could afterwards when
Maurice was gone, be let to a tenant. The young man entered
heartily into the merits of the plan, and the work immediately
began. But Maurice insisted on its being well done; “it was,”
he said, “the first house he had ever built, and it must be
worthily executed: a carpenter must be had to make the door
and windows, to lay the floor and put in a closet or two, and a
mason to build the chimney and lay down the hearth. Mr.
Tompkins contended stoutly that it was all a useless expense;
it was only for a tenant; but Maurice urged the propriety of
its being comfortable and durable, and finally carried the point;
and when it was completed, it was really a convenient and
habitable looking cottage, especially when the fire was made
on the hearth for the sugar-making.

During the season, Susan was often sent down to tend the
kettles, while Maurice went to the house, to attend the evening
chores. But the cottage was all bright with fire-light, and
Maurice entertained his guest so pleasantly, that she sometimes
chanced to stay after he returned. One twilight, toward the
close of the sugaring, Susan tied on her bonnet, and taking a
little basket of apples and cakes with which Maurice might regale
himself and wile away the time, went to the “camp.”

All the way she was thinking, The sugar-making will soon be
over, and Maurice will go away; and she felt very sad; she
did not ask herself why, she only knew she had never been so

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

happy as while he was there, and she would be very lonesome
when he was gone.

“Why, what is the matter with my little wood-nymph?”
said Maurice, as she presented the basket and was sorrowfully
turning away; “you must sit down and tell me.”

She did sit down, and half turning away her face, said simply,
“I was thinking that we might, perhaps, never boil sugar here
any more.”

“Perhaps not,” said Maurice, putting his arm about her
neck and turning her cheek to his lips, “but couldn't we live
here without boiling sugar?”

The following morning after breakfast, he told Mr. Tompkins
if he was still disposed to let the cottage, he and Susan would
take it.

p489-126

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

The moon, nearly at the full, was going down behind the
withered woods—for it was late in October—and thick shining
gum leaves lay here and there in red and heavy masses, while
the lighter foliage of the maple surged, as the gust rose and
fell, now in eddying heaps, now in long wavering drifts, and
now like a cloud of birds, fluttering and filling all the air.

The moon, as I said, was sinking in the west, and the woods,
to which I refer, skirted a lot of damp low meadow-ground,
along the eastern declivity of which ran the narrow grass-grown
road, leading to a neighboring market-town, near which, in a
little hollow, stood a small and antiquated farm-house, the location
of which must have been decided on account of a spring
of fresh, ever-flowing water, that, running through an ample
brick milk-house, with steep mossy roof, and door of slabs,
fastened with chain and padlock, had more than once facilitated
the making of the premium butter for the county fair.

The homestead was simply and roughly built, of unhewn logs
in the rear, though the front, or parlor, was of squared timber,
and two stories high, with a very narrow and high door, painted
a dark, brown red, on either side of which was a window, nearly
square with casings of the same color. Along the whole front
ran a low portico, supported at each end by an apple-tree, answering
the double purpose of shade and column, around which
still twined the blackened vines of the morning glory; but the
beautiful blue flowers were gone, and the leaves crisped and
withered, though evincing yet the care of gentle and loving

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hands, whose little attempts at grace may in some sort render
a habitation, however rude, homelike and pleasant.

Nearly in front of the house, and divided from it by the public
road, was the large barn, surrounded with cribs, stack-yards, &c.,
all of which evinced the proprietor a man of means and enterprise;
while the lean rough-haired colts, and drove of starving
cattle, told of a master's hand less accustomed to distribute
than to acquire. And near, in the edge of a scrubby and untrimmed
orchard, was the cider-press, serving, in the winter, to shelter
the wagon, with yokes for the oxen, plows, hoes, sythes, and
all the various implements of farming. Here, too, was the receptacle
of all useless household furniture, which, I have observed,
some families preserve with pious attention; and this
particular cider-press was always well supplied with such articles.
In one place hung a bottomless chair, and in another a little
old-fashioned side-saddle, worn out, and broken in such a manner
that it never could be repaired, though it had been thus
preserved ten or fifteen years—an illustration of some peculiar
feeling that I never could define. Ranged along the beams,
wisely kept for show, no doubt, were various pieces of broken
crockery; also, children's shoes, and men's boots, stiffened by
time and covered with mildew; old hats, of a variety of styles;
all of which were examined once or twice a year, and carefully
replaced—kept, as the owner was wont to say, for the good they
had done. Really, a lover of antiquities might find the scene
worth visiting.

The master of the barn, the cattle, colts, and cider-press, and
the occupant of the log-house, was Joseph Heaton, a man who
might truly be denominated a worker—one who worked
not only for the love of gain, but for the mere love of work.
Early and late, winter and summer, he was busy; and every
man, woman, and child, who did not engage in toil to the same
degree he did himself, was esteemed by him not only a useless
appendage of society, but a vile creature, whom he was bound
by every consideration of duty to despise.

A helpmeet for him, was Mrs. Heaton—a woman after his
own heart. Whether the memory that the cow and side-saddle
were the only marriage portion she had brought her husband,

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while he was the proprietor of all that parcel of land on which
they still resided, filled her heart with an overwhelming sense
of gratitude, or whether it was the consciousness of her husband's
unapproachable wisdom, or it was a combination of these
causes, I know not, but she was ever submissive and obedient,
to that degree which esteems servility a privilege. It
was not the habit of Mr. Heaton to make known his wishes by
the voice—he had no such vulgar habit—but the cold blue eyes
of his wife could readily interpret his signs, and words were
seldom necessary between them. When she saw him in the
inevitable black cravat and drab-colored vest, and observed
signs of getting out the carriage, she knew his intention to visit
the city, and accordingly named over to him such little articles
as housekeeping makes necessary to be procured from time to
time; only expecting, however, that he would bring the smaller
part of them—it being a convenient habit of Mr. Heaton's to
forget, when remembrance made necessary a disbursement of
money.

At night, when he laid aside the Bible or the newspaper—
and he never read save in one or the other—Mrs. Heaton put
away her work, and silently covered the embers, when the whole
family retired: this part of the domestic discipline being usually
enforced about eight o'clock. No marvel that the children of
such parents felt their presence a restraint, being in some way
compelled to keep down, under their observance, all natural
emotions of joy or sorrow, and thus learning, in youth, those first
lessons in hyprocrisy, which might be learned in the cradle, if
the infant mind were sufficiently capable of retaining impressions.

If ever, by any possibility, it chanced that Laughter, holding
both his sides, found ingress to the domicile of the Heatons,
they felt themselves outraged, their dignity trampled on, and
their parental authority wrested away; and on all such occasions
the observance of a more rigid discipline followed, for a
fortnight at least, in order to bring under due subjection the
spirit of such rebellion.

Every day, “long ere the morn, in russet mantle clad, walked
o'er the dew of the high eastern hills,” a rap on the door of

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the chamber dispelled all dreams, and called the inmates back
to cheerless toll—that saw, down the long future, no mitigation,
or hope of reward. If ever they wearied of the dull routine,
they were asked, reproachfully, if in that way they expected to
repay their parents for the trouble and anxiety they had occasioned.

There are sufferings to be endured in the world, that take no
shape, and have no name. Living witnesses of this were the
children of Joseph Heaton—Samuel, and Annie, and Mary;
but there was another inmate of the family—Binder, as everybody
called him, from his being an apprentice, but whose real
name was Mills Howard—who might also have testified of these
things.

But that setting of the moon, referred to in the beginning of
this chapter, was to usher in a happy day for him—a day that
would see him a man, and a freeman. No wonder he could
not sleep that night: he was too happy. Perhaps, too,
there was another cause to keep sleep from his pillow; he
sighed, as the moon went down on the last night of his bondage,
and half wished the coming day were not so near.

Nor was he the only one who watched the sinking of the
moon, till it was quite lost in the thick woods, where so many
autumns he had gathered ripe nuts and red hawthorn apples to
pour into the lap of Annie or Mary; for, whether or not he
liked one of the young girls better than the other, he never
failed to present any such little offering to the one he first met,
though, when given to Annie, he always said, “for you and
Mary;” while, when Mary received the gift, he rarely mentioned
the name of Annie. Her deep-blue eyes, from the chamber
adjoining his, watched the going down of that moon. She was
not like


“A holy hermit, dreaming,
Half asleep and half awake;”
for her voice had almost a startling distinctness, though very
low, as laying her hand caressingly on the snowy shoulder of
her sister, she called twice or thrice, “Mary,” ere the latter
drowsily answered, “Did you call, Annie? Is it morning?”

“No, it is not morning. Forgive my calling you; but I

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could not sleep; I don't know why; and I thought perhaps you
might be awake,” she said, as she suffered her head to slip
almost from the pillow, till her long, black tresses, falling loosely
down, swept the floor. In certain states of mental restlessness,
we find a sort of relief in making ourselves physically
uncomfortable. Something of this feeling was, perhaps, hers;
for, without changing her position, she continued, as if talking
to herself, “I wish the moon was down. To me, there is
always something lonesome in the moonlight;” and, pushing
aside the muslin curtains of her bed, the light streamed broad
and full over the faces of the sisters. They were not beautiful,
except to the degree that youth and health constitute beauty.

Annie, the elder, was slightly formed, with deep-blue melancholy
eyes, long, heavy tresses of jetty black hair, and that peculiar
cast of countenance which made her seem the saddest when
she smiled. Her manner was quiet and subdued; ordinarily the
result, as most persons would suppose, of unambitious contentment,
but arising, in fact, from a want of interest in the things
about her, and a consciousness of the utter hopelessness of
all effort. She was a dreamer; and under her calm exterior
lay a heart ever rocking on the stormiest waves of passion.
She rarely spoke of what she felt; when she did, it was with
a deep earnestness that moistened her eyes, and with that faint,
sad smile, which she seemed to put on as an assurance to herself
that she was stronger than she appeared.

Only for the eyes of one had she put off the deceitfulness of
her accustomed manner, and shown herself as she really was,
giving utterance to

In hearing of successful endeavor, in listening to eloquence,
in reading chance fragments that embodied her own feelings,
she found all her happiness. Sometimes she found a delight in
exaggerating the evils of her position, fighting battles with
imaginary difficulties. Sometimes the glory of a sunset, the
beauty of autumn woods, or the plenty smiling from a field,
threw over her heart a spirit of adoration, and she poured out all
her soul in prayer. But, in other moods, the beauty of the

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world seemed to her a mockery; and if she prayed at all it was
with an eagerness that demanded to be answered, and with outstretched
hands, that would have pressed open the gates of
paradise.

Mary, younger by several years, was of a gayer temperament,
with black, mischief-loving eyes, and glossy ringlets, the
beauty of which she was wont to set off with knots of bright-red
flowers, or the shining berries of the honeysuckle—the striking
contrasts producing a pleasing effect. Fond of showy dress,
and a little given to coquetry, she would have been as happy as
her nature was capable of being, if the means of gratifying
these propensities had been placed within her reach. As it was,
she was disposed to make the best of circumstances; and,
when they were most against her wishes, she had always a reserve
force of laughter. She did not often dare indulge her
mirthfulness; but the knowledge of its being forbidden made
the inclination irrepressible, and often, in the presence of her
father, screened from his observant eyes by closet, door, or friendly
curtain, she would take what she termed a “benefit.” Often
she gave utterance to feelings she dared not express in her own
language, in pious quotations from psalms and hymns, which
she gave with arch expression and reverent voice. In this way
she was fond of giving flow to her exuberance of spirit when
Binder was at hand, as he never failed, by look or gesture, to
assure her that her tact was appreciated. Even Annie was
thus sometimes cheated into a smile. But so opposite were the
sisters in character and disposition, that, though all in all to
each other now, neither would have been much dependent on
the other for happiness, could they have been placed in circumstances
agreeable to their tastes.

So there they lay—those two sisters—under the silver
tissue of the moonlight; the black tresses of Annie sweeping
from the pillow, and the little white hands of Mary locked behind
her own moist curls, revealing a bust of peculiar grace,
rounded to the perfect fulness of beauty.

They talked of dreams. Mary had dreamed that a strange
man came to the house, while she was without shoes, in her
hurry to obtain which she ran over her father's great chair, and

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for so offending was shut up in the smoke-house; and with the
fright of her imprisonment she awoke. “And,” she continued,
with greater animation, “I dreamed that Binder was gone, and
that, as he was going, he asked me for this very curl,” pulling
one from her forehead, and winding it about her fingers.
“Wasn't it an odd dream, Annie?”

“I don't know,” was the half-pettish answer. “But what
makes you call him Binder? I am sure he always calls you
by your right name.”

“No, he don't. He calls me gipsy, and deary, and what
not, when father don't hear him.”

“I was not aware of his fond titles to you.”

“Well, I was,” was the provoking reply, and they relapsed
into silence, which was broken at last by Mary, who, conscious
of the annoyance her words had caused her sister, said kindly,
“What are you thinking of, Annie?”

“I was thinking, as I watched that little glimmer of moonlight
on the wall, and saw it lessening, and fading out, before
the dark, how much it was like all my hopes—gleaming for a
moment, and then lost in the darkness.”

“You must not think so; or, even if your hopes be like that,
remember it is only gone for a little while, and to-morrow
night—for the moon is not yet full—will come back larger and
brighter than before. I am sure your hopes will grow brighter
and brighter: you are so good, so wise.”

The fountain of her heart was full, and it only needed a kind
word to make it overflow, and, she buried her face in her pillow.
The moon went down, and when, at length, Annie looked up,
the moonlight had ceased to glimmer on the wall, and all was
dark. But folding her arms tightly over her bosom, as if she
held beneath something the powers of darkness should not
wrest away, she said, “You are right, Mary; I will hope.”

What a relief to Mary were those words! she was forgiven;
and she turned over in her mind a thousand offices of kindness,
she meant to perform as an atonement. She knew she had
purposely wounded the sensitive nature of her sister, and she
determined to make reparation, without any open confession.
Perhaps she was not aware herself of this, as the morning came,

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bending over Annie, she gathered the heavy tresses away from
her forehead, and wound them into the simple knot, in which
she was accustomed to wear them, not failing, as she did so, to
praise their beauty. When she had smoothed them all away,
she said abruptly, as though the thought had just occurred to
her, “Oh, this is the day that Mills is going to leave us! How
lonesome we shall be! But Annie, he will sometimes write to
you, won't he?”

“He says so; but perhaps he will forget it, when he is away.
He will be gone a long while, you know—five years; that is
long enough to forget us all, I am sure.”

“Long enough, perhaps; but I defy him to forget me in that
time. I expect to be the same laughing girl, when he comes
back, that I am now—not much wiser, I am afraid, but so happy
to see him! I wish the time were all gone, and this were the
day of his return. Let me see: in five years I shall be just
twenty-one—as old as he is now.”

“And I,” said Annie, with an ill-boding sigh, “shall be
twenty-five.”

Stealthily the light of the morning brightened; and as it was
followed by the accustomed summons, the sisters rose, Annie
in silence, and Mary saying, laughingly,


“Dear me! is this my certain doom,
And am I still secure—
This marching to the breakfast-room,
And yet prepared no more?”
Passing the door of the freed apprentice's chamber, she said, in
a suppressed whisper, “farewell, Binder! Good morning Mr.
Mills Howard: I hope, sir, you are very well;” and as she ran
laughingly by Annie, she added, “I wish I had told him to
pray for father, he has been so good to him.”

“What do you say?” said Mr. Heaton, who stood combing
his iron-gray hair, at the foot of the stairs.

“I said,” replied Mary, readily, “it was good to get up
early;” and hurrying by him, she screened her face behind the
accustomed curtain, whence, as soon as her laughter subsided,

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

she emerged, making some commonplace observation about the
beauty of the morning.

Not many minutes were required for making ready the
breakfast, the honors of which were done in silence by Mrs.
Heaton, except for Mr. Heaton, who always prepared his own
coffee. Meals were announced by blowing a horn, which always
hung on the same nail at the end of the portico, and over which
Samuel invariably deposited his hat, while eating, and on Sundays.
He was a precise youth. When Binder appeared in the
breakfast-room, he talked with unusual spirit, as though going
out alone and friendless into the world were a very trifling
matter; in fact, he thought nothing about it. But he was not
in his usual work-day dress, and this must have made him painfully
conscious of his new position; but was arrayed in his
“freedom suit,” the material of which was of a bluish-gray
color, home-made; and the workmanship of a country tailoress;
of a coarse, heavy texture, it sat so ungracefully, that the form
and likeness of the man were quite lost. But, though appearing
in this guise, and bringing with him all his worldly effects,
which, in fact, consisted of a stout walking-stick of hickory, and
some articles of clothing tied in a yellow-and-red cotton handkerchief,
no remark relative to his departure was elicited from
the elder Heatons; and only a quiet exchange of glances,
among the younger group, showed that they, though silent,
were not unobservant.

Mills seemed to relish the breakfast unusually well, speedily
passing his cup for coffee, though he never drank more than one
cup before; but the mirth was gone from the lips of Mary, and
Annie had no appetite that morning. Mills, as he appeared in
his new clothes, must have provoked a smile from any uninterested
beholder; but what was it to them? They only
thought of his honest heart—his generous sacrifices in their behalf.
They had trodden together a long, rough way, which
was often smoothed by his genial humor or kind encouragement;
they had eaten at the same table, and slept beneath the
same roof; he had known all their sorrows, and shared them;
and now, it would never be so any more!

In parting, even from persons for whom we have no particular

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liking, we feel some degree of sorrow; we find they had a hold
on us of which we were not till then aware; sometimes we
even watch the passing traveller with an almost painful interest,
arising from the very fact that we shall probably never
see him again; but when we part from those we love, especially
if there be few who love us, few whom we love, the burden is
increased a thousand-fold. How, at such times,

“Comes, like a planet's transit o'er the sun,”

“I hope,” said Mr. Heaton, as he took leave of Mills, “I
hope, young man, you may never go to jail: a Heaton was
never in jail, sir, never;” and having delivered himself of this
speech, the longest he was ever known to make, he took up his
axe—he always kept it in one corner of the best room—and proceeded
to the woods. He had no time to spend in useless
ceremonies.

It was now Mrs. Heaton's turn to take leave, and taking the
proffered hand, much as she would have taken the broomstick,
she hoped he would remember the advice of Joseph Heaton.
But the frank grasp of Samuel seemed to impart to him something
of its own strength; and the cordial “good-bye” and
“God bless you” came to him like a benediction.

Poor Mary—there were a thousand kind wishes for his happiness
in her heart; but she had no words, and turning away,
she hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears, that made
tremulous the lip which whispered, “You are a good, kind
girl, Mary, and may Heaven bless you!”

Defiant of the cold, blue eyes of her mother, Annie tied on
her bonnet, and announced her intention of accompanying Mills
as far as the elm-tree. For some minutes they walked on in
silence, for the hearts of both were full, and the elm-tree was
reached almost before they had interchanged a word. Pausing
in the shadow that fell thin and brokenly across the road, and

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taking in his the trembling hand of Annie, he said, “My past
life has been a very hard one, and perhaps I have sometimes
thought it more so than it was; for it seems to me, now, that I
could be almost happy there, in the old house which I used to
think so desolate. Yes, I am sure I could be happy any where
with you.”

“You think so now,” replied the young girl, half mournfully,
half reproachfully, “but after you have been gone a little while
you will forget me. No one remembers me or loves me long;
and, indeed, there is no reason why they should. I am not
pretty, nor accomplished, nor attractive in any way;” and with
tears starting to her eyes, she turned away, and would have
left him, but that, drawing her to his bosom, and kissing her
cheek and forehead, he told her how much her doubts of his
fidelity did him wrong. He had nothing, he said, to live for
but her, and he would live for her and be worthy of her. In
five years—five little years—he would come back, and they
would be so happy!

“And you will think about me, sometimes?”

“Often; and I know, dear Annie, you will think of me also;
and whenever life seems weary and hopeless, forget not the
happiness that waits for us in the future.”

“I will think of you always, love you always, pray for you
always: you know that, Mills,” she said, “you know it well;”
and placing in his hand a small package, she told him not to open
it till he reached the place of his destination: “It will at least
remind you of me.”

He placed it in his bosom, kissed, passionately, the now unresisting
lips, and, with a “God bless you!” falteringly uttered,
was gone; and there in the thin shadow of the elm stood the
almost heart-broken girl, watching his receding form.

Once, and only once, he paused, looked back, and seeing her
still standing just as he left her, turned quickly away, and was
soon hidden by a winding of the road from her view.

“My dear sister!” said Mary, running to meet her as she
returned, “do not cry: it makes me so sad to see your tears!”
and putting her arm about her neck she did all she could to
soothe and encourage her; and whether she was or was not

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soothed and encouraged, she seemed to be so, and from that
day went about her household tasks much as usual; but though
she oftener smiled that sad smile, her step was more listless,
her thin cheek more colorless, than before. And the time wore
on. The last leaves faded off from the woods, that rose, naked
and desolate, against the cold sky; the cattle stood shivering
about the stack-yards; and the winds moaned in the apple-trees
at the door, all day and all night; then came the snows
drifting far and near; and it was dreary and desolate winter.

The hickory logs crackled and glowed on the hearth-stone.
Mrs. Heaton busied herself with her knitting. Mr. Heaton
mended the old harness, and repaired the farming implements
against the coming spring. They should have, he often said, to
work harder now; Binder had been of some use to them, and
now they must depend upon themselves. The Heatons had
always made enough to keep out of jail.

During the winter, Samuel, a youth of nineteen, and Mary,
went to the district school, so that all domestic care devolved
on Annie. For her there was no school-time and no holiday.
She had, her father was accustomed to tell her, more learning
than her mother, and could not do half so much work. Books
would not keep any body in bread. Samuel, in a spirit of unbounded
liberality, he designed to educate: that is, to send him
to school for three months every winter, till he should be
twenty-one. At the end of that time, if education could do any
good, he hoped Samuel could take care of himself. But
Samuel usually forgot, in the course of the nine months of hard
labor, what he learned in the three devoted to study. And so
each succeeding winter they plodded over pretty much the
same ground. But, notwithstanding their slight educational advantages,
the children of Mr. Heaton were not without very respectable
acquirements, obtained, it is true, “in the sharp
school of want,” for they had never a sufficiency of any thing
save coarse food; but naturally intelligent and observant, and
disposed to avail themselves of every opportunity for the acquisition
of knowledge, they were, to a degree, self-educated.

And all this while Mills had not been heard of. One day,
when her father was going to the post-town, or when, from

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sundry indications, she suspected such to be his intention,
Annie, after various efforts, gathered courage to ask him if he
would inquire at the post-office for a letter for her. He made
no answer—did not even look up from his work, which was the
smoothing of an ax-helve with a broken piece of glass; and
after waiting some time for an answer, she resumed her interrupted
task, wondering if he heard her, and if he did, if he
would do as she desired; and whether there would be a letter.
But the solution of none of these wonders being possible, she
tried to wait patiently. For three hours he was busily engaged
with the ax-helve, turning it from side to side, and smoothing
the same places over and again. At the end of that time, however,
cutting his hand on the piece of broken glass, he took up
his hat, and hastily left the house; and Annie, half glad of the
accident, for she thought he would delay his going no longer—
called to him, “Stop, father! let me get a piece of linen, and
bandage your hand: only see how it is bleeding!” but taking
no notice whatever of the kindly offer, he hurried toward the
barn, to get the horse. Annie thought “he is going!” and her
heart beat quicker.

After an hour, however, when she began to think he would
soon be home again, he entered the house, not having been
away, took up the paper, and began reading at the first article,
with the evident intention, as his custom was, of reading it all.
The clock struck four: “there is not time to go before tea,”
thought Annie; “I will prepare it early, and perhaps he will go
afterward.” Acting upon this suggestion, she had partially
effected her arrangements, when Mary came from school, and
with her face all aglow, inquired if her father had been to the
office.

“No,” said Annie; “and he is not going;” and she related
his very provoking conduct.

“I'll see about that: there is a letter there, and you shall
have it.”

“How do you know there is a letter?”

“Because I feel it in my heart; and I intend to see it with my
eyes. Now, what are we out of?” and running to the pantry,
she rumaged through boxes and bottles, exclaiming, directly,

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“Good! here is no saleratus, and only two or three drawings
of tea! Where is mother?” and away she ran to the milk-house,
saying, “Mother, father is going to the village, and we
are out of saleratus and tea. Shall I tell him to get them?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Heaton. “It seems to me we are out very
soon. Tell him to get a quarter of tea, and ten cents' worth of
saleratus.”

“I don't care how little!” thought Mary; and hurrying back,
she said to her father, “if you are going to the village, mother
wants you to get some tea and saleratus.”

“Mother can make known her own wants,” said that gentleman,
and continued reading.

“Mother told me to tell you,” said Mary, determined not to
be baffled; “and I don't know as there is tea enough for
supper.”

Now Mr. Heaton liked a cup of tea, and Mary knew she had
resorted to the last means in her power, and so withdrew, feeling,
too, that he would make no motion while she observed
him. After some further delay, and when the supper arrangements
were nearly completed, he set out. It was long after
dark before he returned. They had waited two hours for him;
the biscuits were nearly cold, and heavy, and every body, and
Annie in especial, out of patience. At last he came; but it
was some time before his horse was cared for. Then, laying
aside his great-coat, he seated himself before the fire, and
spreading his hands over the blaze, waited till twice or thrice
called, before going to the table. Annie looked inquiringly at
Mary, and Mary at Annie, but neither ventured to ask what
both were so anxious to know; and the supper was concluded
in silence.

“If he has a letter for me,” thought Annie, “he will certainly
give it to me; but he has none; I am sure he has not.” But
to Mary the suspense had become intolerable, and taking up
the sugar-bowl, to remove from the table, she said, “Father,
did you go to the post-office?” After a minute's silence, he replied
that he did, but said nothing further. Toward the close
of the evening, however, he arose, and taking up his great-coat,
began fumbling in the pockets. Both the girls were on tiptoe,

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but destined to disappointment; for, taking thence the little
packages of tea and saleratus, he resumed his seat. Despair
came down on the hearts of the sisters, and they sat before the
fire in solemn silence till the evening was quite spent; that is,
till Mrs. Heaton covered the embers.

“Come, girls,” said Mr. Heaton, “don't be wasting candles
to-night and sunlight in the morning;” whereupon he and his
spouse retired.

“Ah, Mary!” said Annie, when they were gone, “you said
there was a letter.”

“And I believe there is,” said Mary; “father, I thought, was
half disposed to hand it to you, when he took the tea from his
pocket; he had something in his hand, once, I am sure;” and
seizing the great-coat, she thrust her hand, first in one pocket,
then in the other. Annie was smiling her old, sad smile, and
looking at Mary, who, sure enough, drew forth a letter, and
holding it up to the light, exclaimed, exultingly, “Post-paid!
`Miss Annie Heaton,' etc.”

“O, let me see!” exclaimed Annie, eagerly. “Yes, it is his
writing! No, it is a much fairer hand; it can not be his.”

“Break the seal, and see,” said Mary, impatiently.

But, as if to torment herself to the last, Annie continued
turning it in the light, and examining it in every point of view.
Mary trimmed the light, and drew her chair close to that of
Annie, who, unsealing the letter, read as follows:

“Dearest Annie,—I am sitting in a pleasant little room in
the Academy; for, you must know, I am become a student.
Before me is a table, covered with books, papers, and manuscripts,
finished and unfinished. The fire is burning brightly in
the grate, and I am content—almost happy. But to whom am
I indebted for all this happiness? Ah, Annie! that little package
you gave me at parting! How shall I ever repay you?
I will not trouble you now by relating my hard experience for
two months after leaving you; for, during that time, I did not
unseal the package, which I looked at daily, wondering what it
could contain, and pleasing myself with various conjectures.
At last, one night, I opened it, and, to my joy and sorrow,

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

discovered its contents to be what only the most adverse fortune
could have compelled me to avail myself of. But, with a
sense of humiliation, I did make use of your self-sacrificing
generosity. Dear Annie! what do I not owe to you? I still
keep the envelope; and, when I return, I intend to bring you
the precise amount, as a bridal present, which you have so
kindly, so considerately bestowed on me. Close application,
this session, will enable me to teach for a part of the time; so
that hereafter I shall be able to rely on myself. I have some
glorious plans for the future, but none, Annie, disconnected
with you. Every exertion that is made, shall be with reference
to the future that must be ours. And do you think of me
often? or ever? Ah, I will not wrong you by the inquiry!
I know you do. Well, hope on. Time, faith, and energy, will
do for us every thing. And is Mary the same merry-hearted
girl? I hope so. For my sake, tell her she must love you
very kindly. And Samuel—does he miss me, or ever speak
of me? He will find some memento, I think, that may serve
to remind him of me, in that cabinet of curiosities, the cidermill.
As for Mr. Joseph Heaton, I have no doubt but that he
has `kept out of jail.' Forgive me, Annie, that there are persons
whose wrongs I can not quite forget. I was greatly edified
last Sabbath by a discourse on forgiveness. The clergyman,
young and handsome—Mary, I think, would have fallen in love
with him—spoke with an earnestness indicating a conviction of
the truth of his doctrine, which was, that we are no where in
the Scriptures required to forgive our enemies. Even Christ,
he said, only prayed for his enemies, inasmuch as they were
ignorant: `Forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
This idea was curious, and to me new; and I suffered my mind
to be relieved, without inquiring very deeply into the theology.
Forgive this little episode. I did not intend it, but know that I
shall not feel myself bound to forgive you in this world or the
next, if you forget to love me. It is night—late—and I must
close—not to save candles, Annie, but that some sleep is necessary.
I shall perhaps dream of you.”

And with some tender and impassioned words, and promises

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

to write often, entreaties of punctual responses, and assurances
of unending devotion, the letter closed.

Lighter than it had been for a long while, was the heart of
Annie Heaton that night and the next day, and for many a day
thereafter. Through her agency the way had been brightened, the
wishes facilitated, for one dearer to her than all else in the world.
Annie bore the name of her maternal grandmother, and for this
honor the good old lady, on her death-bed, did solemnly bequeath
and give to her most beloved granddaughter Annie, a
silver watch, which had been the property of her deceased husband.
This bequest, not, it is true, in the fashion of our days,
was, nevertheless, of some value. A thousand little schemes,
all based on this legacy, Annie, at different times had revolved
in her mind. None, however, had been put in execution; and
when she saw Binder dismissed friendlessly on the world, her
woman's instinct was quick to suggest that it might be of use
to him; and, through means of this—trifle as it was—his present
fortunate position had been obtained. What a crown of
beauty, hiding away from remembrance a thousand weaknesses
and frailties, making bright the saddest eyes, and sweet the
faintest smile, is the love of woman! What were home without
it! what were life, what the world, or what all we conceive
of heaven without it!

Late one afternoon of the summer which followed the opening
of this simple history, as the two girls sat together in the shadow
of one of the apple-trees, on the portico—one reading the
painfully interesting story of Eugene Aram, the other attaching
a knot of bright ribbon to a snowy and carefully crimped frill,
which, by way of trying the effect, she occasionally put round
her neck, smiling, as she did so, in a way that indicated no very
deep absorption in the tale to which she pretended she was
listening—their attention was arrested by the sudden drawing
up of a very handsome equipage before the gate. The new-comers—
a middle-aged, self-sufficient looking man, in spectacles,
and a pale-faced woman, slightly lame, wearing a dress of
black, and inordinately heavy and large earrings—proved to
be relations of Mrs. Heaton, residents of one of the eastern
cities, wealthy, and what is termed fashionable people, who,

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now visiting the neighboring town, had taken a fancy to ride
into the country, regale themselves with bread and milk, and
see how prospered their poor connexions.

Mrs. Heaton, not a little proud of their appearance, received
them with unusual courtesy, laying her best table-cloth, and
untying the honey-jar. Mr. Heaton was not slow in imparting
to them the fact that he had enough to keep him out of jail; to
which the gentleman in spectacles said, “O, yes, sir; yes, sir;
we should think so.” The lame lady, “Yes, indeed,” and Mrs.
Heaton, that “Joseph had enough, she was sure—if he hadn't
quite so much as some folks—to keep him out of jail.” “Certainly,
madam, certainly,” said the gentleman in spectacles;
and the lame lady repeated, “Certainly.”

Annie, she scarce knew why, felt half insulted by this visit.
Their air, manner, even their dress, indicated a strata of society
so different from hers—so superior, as she felt, to hers, that she
was dissatisfied with herself, and dissatisfied, of course, with
them. All their affable overtures she regarded as condescensions,
and received them with ungracious reserve. “They
would not like me, do as I would, and I will make no effort to
please them.” Accordingly, she kept apart from them, bitterly
repeating to herself,


“Where soil is, men grow,
Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me
There is no depth to strike in.”
Annie was a dull girl, they thought, suited to her position;
but Mary was sprightly—quite pretty—and it was a pity she
had not greater advantages! She, of course, was delighted,
when, toward the conclusion of their visit, she was invited to
accompany them home. Mr. Heaton said “Mary was of little
use; Annie would do more work without her;” and Mrs.
Heaton concurred, “Yes; Annie would do better without her.”
Mary said, “It would not be much harder for one than both.”
So it was determined she should go. Such little preparations
as could be were soon made. Annie, wiping tears from her
eyes, looked over her own scanty wardrobe, and selected whatever
was better than the rest, saying, “Take these, too, Mary;
I shall not need them; I shall never go from home, now.”

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

When the motes were dancing in the sunbeams that stretched
from the western woods to the old house, Annie was alone.
Dimmer and dimmer fell the shadows; darker and darker the
night; and dimmer and darker than either were her thoughts;
when her reverie was broken by Samuel, whom she beheld,
pale, and staggering toward her, with one hand bandaged in his
pocket handkerchief, through which the blood was streaming,
held up in the other. “Oh, Samuel! Samuel!” she said, running
to meet him and supporting him into the house, “what is
the matter? what have you done?”

He had been reaping in the harvest-field, when a slip of the
sickle had nearly severed two of the fingers of his hand. Wrapping
his handkerchief about it as he best might, he started to
go to the house, when, seeing a gay equipage at the gate, he was
impelled to stop. His natural bashfulness, always painfully
embarrassing, was increased a thousand-fold by the remembrance
of his torn straw hat and patched trowsers; and taking
some sheaves for a pillow, he lay down in the shadow of some
briers, to await the departure of the guests, which not occurring
till nearly night, he was, as may be supposed, almost fainting
from loss of blood, on reaching the house. The village doctor
was sent for, and the fingers amputated; and the next morning
Samuel was burning with a fever, that grew more fierce and
dangerous the next day, and the next, and the next. For six
long weeks Annie was his constant watcher and attendant. At
the end of that time he began to grow better; but her own
overtaxed strength gave way, and for her sick-bed there were
no kind hands. True, her mother did what she thought her
duty; but duty, with her, required punctual attendance on all
domestic affairs, to the neglect of her sick child. “If you want
any thing, Annie,” she would say, “you can call me. I can
do no good by staying here;” and so the poor girl lay alone
frequently for hours.

She had nothing to live for, she often said; no desire to live;
yet at the end of three months she began slowly to recover, and,
at the end of six, was quite restored to health, though with the
loss of her long black tresses, and with partial blindness. Sometimes
she was cheered by a letter from Mills, who always wrote

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kindly, but, as the years wore by, spoke less often of the future,
and less definitely. He had left the Academy, and engaged in
some mercantile pursuit, which promised better for the future
than he had ever dared to hope. So the time passed on, and
the summer faded into the autumn of his return. Mary was
coming, too. What a happy meeting they would have! and
Annie, despite her distrustful and desponding nature, gave her
heart once more to hope.

Mary came first. Scareely might you recognise, in the well-bred,
showily dressed woman, with her shoulders so graceful in
their contour, covered only with a flood of ringlets, and her fair
round arms, gleaming with bracelets, the simple country maiden
of five years ago.

“Do not, Annie, quite crush me,” she said, as, on her arrival,
she drew herself, coldly, almost haughtily, from her embrace.
From that hour she had no need of similar reproach.

“In a week more,” thought Annie, “Mills will be here, and
I shall find consolation;” and a long week was gone, and the
long, long anticipation was over. Mills was come; but was he
the same Mills from whom she parted in the broken shadows
of the old elm? Was her dream realized? From their first
meeting his manner to her was kindly, very kindly, but unsatisfactory.
He spoke often of his deep indebtedness to her,
of his everlasting gratitude, but said little of the future—nothing
definite. His time, in fact, was so occupied with rambling through
the beautiful autumn woods, playing at graces and the like,
with her sister, that he had little time for serious thought.

One day, seeing them seated together under an orchard tree,
Annie tied on her bonnet, and went out to join them. She
walked softly, thinking to surprise them; and as she came
near, Mills, coqueting the while with one of the bright, graceful
curls of Mary, said, “I wish, Mary, that Annie were more like
you; she is quite too staid and serious; but I suppose she
feels the loss of earlier attractions. And, Mary, I wish you
would give her some lessons in the mysteries of the toilet:
that bright-colored dress of hers is positively shocking!”

Annie waited to hear no more. The last illusion of her
dream was past. And when Mary's visit at home was ended,

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she was not surprised to hear Mills announce his intention to
accompany her back. Only for one moment her heart beat
quicker, and hope threw over her its mocking glow, when, as
he took leave, Mills put into her hand the self-same envelop
which inclosed her parting gift five years before; but, alas! it
contained only a note of similar value, reiterations of gratitude
for the past, and many kind hopes and wishes for the future—a
mockery all!

And Annie Heaton lived on—hopelessly, aimlessly. Few
persons knew her—none loved her. All that autumn, and for
many succeeding autumns, she saw the moonlight stealing
through her window, gleaming and trembling on the opposite
wall, and at last fading out before the darkness, thinking ever,
“Yes, it was like my hopes!”

p489-147

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It was the middle month of the autumn. A blue, smoky
haze hung all day over the withering woods—there a cluster of
maples standing against the horizon, with their bright, yellow
leaves looking like a cloud of gold—here an oak, towering above
its fellows, with a few tufts of crimson among its still green
foliage; and stunted gum trees, with their shining red leaves
clinging thickly yet, glowing all along the hills like pyramids
of fire. Loaded wains were driven slowly homeward from
orchards and cornfields, heaped high with bright apples or yellow
corn; the barns were full of new hay; every thing betokened
plenty.

Along the dusty thoroughfare, toward the close of one of
the mildest days of the season, a little hard-featured man was
driving, in a rude, unpainted cart. His dress seemed to indicate
a person suddenly overtaken by a frosty morning, without
having made any preparation. Over his slightly gray hair he
wore a fur cap, evidently a boy's; and his coat, a great deal
too large for him, was of summer-cloth, shining from long wear,
and from its fashion probably never intended for him. His
trowsers, much too short, were of a blue and white cotton plaid,
and on his feet he wore heavy shoes, one of them partly cut
away toward the toe, probably for the benefit of corns. He
wore no hose whatever, and from the leather-like color of the
instep, apparently, never had worn any. His horse, lean and
shaggy, seemed quite run out with years and service, and, from
a constant inclination to turn to one side, most likely blind in
one eye. His master, nevertheless, appeared to experience

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

much pleasure in goading him forward, by means of a large
withe, cut from a thorn. After each application, the poor beast
trotted forward for a few minutes, and then, suffering his head
to droop almost to the ground, relapsed into a walk, when a
renewed application of the whip, and a sudden tightening of the
rein, again urged him onward.

Sitting by the old man was a little pale-faced boy. His
clothes, much too thin for the season, were patched with different
colors, and ragged still. His hat was of white fur, and had,
as it seemed, originally been too large, but by means of scissors,
needle and thread, and the rude ingenuity, probably, of
some female hand, had been made to assume a reduced size.
He wore no coat or jacket, but, instead, a faded shawl was
wrapped about his shoulders, the ends of which, crossing in
front, were tied in a close knot behind. The seat on which he
sat was much too high for his convenience; and his little naked
feet, as they rode forward, dangled about in most uncomfortable
sort.

“Well, my son,” said the old man, breaking silence for almost
the first time during the journey, as he suffered his jaded
horse to stand still before an avenue bordered with elms, and
leading to a white cottage which stood on an eminence a little
way from the road—“Well, my son, this is your uncle Jason's;
this is to be your home. You will never come to much,”
he continued, lifting the boy from the cart—“so very puny and
wite-faced; but I've done my duty by you, the same as if you
had been, like your father, smart and woluble of tongue. Yes,
this is a handsome prowision I've made for you;” and taking
the child by the hand, and walking so fast that it required the
little fellow to run, they proceeded up the avenue. Two little
boys, in bright jackets set off with black buttons, and velvet
caps with heavy tassels falling on one side, were trundling
hoops in the path. On seeing the new-comers, one of them
called out to the coachman, who sat near, watching their sport,
“John! Oh, John! look quick! here comes an old man leading
an Ingen boy!”

“Hush!” said John, coming forward, and pushing the boy, a
little rudely, one side; “more like you yourself are an Ingen!

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

How do you do, my little man?” he continued, taking the hand
of the strange child.

The little old man then asked John whether Jason Harris
were at home; and being told that he was, continued to say,
that he was the brother of Jason, but that he had been less fortunate
than he, and had now come to make him a present of the
little “wite-faced boy.”

When they had nearly reached the house, he paused and said,
“Here, John, or whatever your name is, take this boy into the
house, and tell Jason that his poor old brother is about to cross
the Rocky Mountains, as a ttrapper, and that he gives this little
fellow to him;” and resigning the trembling boy to John, he
turned away, and mounting his little cart, drove on.

Poor little boy! he felt very strange and uncomfortable in
that great, fine house. He had never seen so fine a house, with
such bright carpets and curtains; and his new uncle, who was
a proud, haughty man, made him almost tremble with fear, so
that he could hardly find words to answer, when he said,

“What is your name, boy?”

The little boy said, meekly, that his name was Peter Harris.

On hearing this, the two little boys in bright jackets laughed
immoderately, saying that Peter was the name of the black boy
that tended their cows.

“Well, boy,” continued the stiff man, “since my little boys
laugh at your name, we shall have to call you Pete. How old
are you, Pete?”

At this, the two boys laughed louder than before, one of them
saying to the other,

“Peter, Peter! pumpkin-eater!'

Peter crossed his hands behind him, and said that he was
eight years old.

“I suppose you have never been to school, Pete. May-be
you don't know what a school is?”

“No, sir,” said Peter; “I have never been to school; but I
know what it is, and I should like to go.”

“I suppose,” said the uncle, “you would like a great many
things.”

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

Peter said, “I would like a great many things,” and the
whole family laughted outright.

“Do not,” said Mrs. Harris, checking her laughter, and
speaking as though she had not laughed at all, “do not act as
foolish as the boy.”

Peter did not know how he had acted foolish, but thinking
that he must have acted so, began to cry.

“What a good warm fire hickory wood does make!” said
Mrs. Harris, stirring the embers; but Peter felt nothing of the
genial warmth, as he sat a long way from the fire, shivering,
partly with fear and partly with cold, wiping away the tears
with his faded shawl.

“What makes you act so foolishly?” continued Mrs. Harris,
who was a very stately lady; “sitting there, and crying like a
calf!” and then, turning to her husband, added, “I hope you
feel better. You have made the boy cry. You ought, I am
sure, to be very grateful [a pious woman was Mrs. Harris] for
the privilege of snatching him like a brand from the burning;”
and she called Peter to her, saying, “I suppose, my little
heathen, you have had little moral or religious culture.”

Peter, trying in vain to cease crying, said that he did not
know.

“Well, you would like to be very grateful to your uncle and
me, would you not?”

Peter said he did not know what grateful was.

“Poor heathen! I suppose not,” said the aunt. “You must
feel as if the consecration of all your energies to your uncle and
me could never repay us. You will feel so, will you not?”

Here Peter was quite at a loss. He knew no more than he
knew what grateful was, what his energies were, or how to consecrate
them to his uncle and aunt; but he said he would try.

“There must be no try about it. You must do it, or be
whipped every day, till you do;” and calling her little son, who
sat on the floor, sticking pins in the paws of her lap-dog, the
lady told him to come and teach his poor little heathen cousin
to say,

“Now I lay me down to sleep;”

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

but the boy said he did not know it, and continued at his work
of torment. After some further instruction, Mrs. Harris called
Sally, the maid, and told her to take Peter out to John's room;
he would lodge there.

“Shall I get him some supper before I take him there?” said
the maid.

“It would not be worth while,” Mrs. Harris said; he had
no doubt eaten fruit enough to keep him from being hungry;
and she added, addressing Peter, “You don't want any thing to
eat, do you?”

Peter said that he had not had any dinner, and that he was
hungry.

“I'll warrant it,” said his aunt; “children never know what
they want. You may give him a piece of bread, Sally—a very
little piece, without any butter. I don't think butter is good
for children—not for little boys, especially.”

Sally took the child into the kitchen, and cutting a large slice
from a fresh loaf, buttered it nicely, saying, as she gave it to
Peter, “I like to see bread buttered smooth, don't you?” and
taking the candle from the table, and holding her hand between
it and the wind, so as to prevent its going out, they made their
way to John's room, which was a little, uncomfortable apartment
over the stable; but in one corner a bright fire was burning;
and John said his straw bed was wide enough for them
both; and drawing up one of his two chairs, gave it to Peter,
who sat down before the blaze, and ate his bread and butter,
feeling quite at home.

John, who was really very kind-hearted, gave Peter a long
piece of twine and a very red apple. He then took from his
pocket several little slips of paper, which seemed to have been
cut from newspapers at different times, and stirring the embers
till they blazed brightly, for he had no candle, sat down on a
peck measure close to the hearth, and, by way of amusing his
little guest, read:

“A drove of twenty buffaloes recently passed through one of the western
cities. They were as gentle to drive as cows.”

He then asked Peter if he had ever seen a buffalo, telling

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

him they were a kind of wild oxen, that lived in the western
woods and prairies, where they were often seen in herds of from
twenty to fifty; and taking another slip, he read:

“We have always liked short pie-crust; but we saw a woman making a
pie, the other day, without crust enough to cover the dish. This we thought
quite too short.”

At this Peter laughed, and John laughed, too, as heartily as
though he had never before read it, saying, it was the shortest
pie-crust he ever heard of. Unfolding another scrap, he read:

“Of all the old maids in the world, and their name is legion, the oldest is,
undoubtedly, Miss Ann Thrope. The reformers are trying to effect a marriage,
with some hopes of success, they think, betwixt her and one Ben Evolence;
but Ma Levolence is so bitterly opposed, that it is feared the union
may never take place.”

John said he had known many old maids who were not
named Legion, and proceeded to read:

“A man, being watched by a watchman for stealing a watch, watched
when the watchman was off watch, and with the watch escaped the watchman.”
“A fellow named Marks, who was riding a little ass, became so enraged
at the stubbornness of the animal, that he threw himself from his
back, with such violence as to dash out his brains, thus making a great ass
of himself.”

On looking up, after some further reading, and seeing Peter
fast asleep in his chair, John folded and put away the scraps,
and taking up the child, laid him carefully in bed.

One morning late in November, Peter, dressed in the castoff
clothes of his little cousin, and bearing on one arm a small
blue-and-red basket, in which was a piece of apple pie and a
primer, set out for the district school, a distance from home of
over a mile. All the girls and boys looked so hard at the
“new scholar,” that Peter, who was naturally a timid child,
could hardly speak, when the master, a tall, dark-faced man,
called him to his desk, and asked him the following questions:

“You come to this school to be taught the rudiments of an
English education, I suppose?”

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

Peter knew he came to be taught something, and tremblingly
answered, “Yes, sir.”

“ `Yes, sir, if you please,' ” said the teacher; and Peter said,
“Yes, sir, if you please.”

“Where do you live?”

“At uncle Jason's, if you please.”

“Why, boy, you must be a numskull. You must say, `if
you please,' if it's appropriate. What is your name?”

“Peter Harris, if you please, if it's appropriate.”

“The boy is a blockhead!” said the master; and boys and
girls, putting their books before their faces, joined in a general
titter.

“Come, come! that will do!” said the master, looking over
the school, and frowning with great severity. Then taking a
limber switch from his desk, and shaking it over the head of
Peter, in a menacing manner, he told him, that all the scholars
got whipped who did not mind and study their lessons. He
then told him to go to his seat, and study his book.

This seat was a high, wooden bench, without any back; and
Peter found sitting there, for four hours at once, very tiresome,
especially as he did not know a from b, and, consequently,
could not study. After a while, he was called to say his lesson,
but not knowing one of the letters, was made to stand on a
high stool for ten minutes, and all the children were required to
point their fingers at him, the master laying his watch on the
desk, to see the time. At its expiration, he was sent back to
his seat, and told to see if he could study now; but he could
not study any better than before; and when the boys went out
to play, he was “kept in.”

At noon-time Peter was told, that boys who would not study
must not eat; and taking his pie from the little blue-and-red
basket, the master fed it to a pig that chanced to be near the
door. Merrily rang the laughter of the boys without; but not
even while the sweeping filled the house with an impenetrable
cloud of dust, was Peter allowed to leave his seat, one of the
larger boys being stationed at the door as sentinel, while the
master went to dine.

Toward the middle of the afternoon, weary and exhausted,

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

the poor boy was bending down over his book, when the master
said, “Peter Harris, have you got a weakness in the chest? I
judge, from your posture, that you must be afflicted with weakness
in the chest. Sit upright, sir! and if I catch you bending
in that way again, I will strengthen you by an application on
the back.”

For a while Peter did sit upright, but, forgetting at last, sank
down in his old position; on which he was called to the master,
and asked if he did not think he deserved a whipping. “I take
no pleasure in chastising you,” he said; “but I feel it to be my
duty.” He then ordered Peter to take off his coat, and inflicted
upon him a merciless beating.

When school was dismissed at night, a southerly gust was
blowing, and the sky quite covered with black clouds, indicating
a speedy approach of rain; but Peter was detained half an
hour after the rest, so that it was almost dark, and some drops
already falling, when he was permitted to go home. When he
reached there, he was drippingly wet; but John made a bright
fire, and bringing forward the peck measure, told Peter to sit
down and dry his clothes, while he went to the kitchen and procured
for him some supper. Presently he returned with a dish
of warm toast, which he said Sally had kindly sent; but Peter,
still sitting on the peck measure, in a cloud of steam, said that
his head ached very much—that he was not hungry, and would
rather go to bed.

The night was stormy; the driving winds howled loud, and
the rain beat through the roof till the straw bed was quite wet,
so that, in the morning, Peter had a worse head-ache, together
with a sore throat and a burning fever. John procured all the
remedies he could, and watched by the bed as much of the
time as he could spare; but he was often obliged to leave him,
and the poor boy lay, sometimes for hours, moaning and fretting
alone.

When Mrs. Harris was told of the illness of the child, she
said the ground was too damp to admit of her going to see him,
but that she would send him another blanket; as to medicine,
she thought children did not require it, especially little boys.

A week went by. The wind was blowing roughly down from

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

the north; the door shook in its frame, and the branches of an
old elm swayed to and fro, creaking against the window-panes
all night.

Sometimes a flake of snow, drifting through roof or crevice,
fell on the face of little Peter; but his pale hands, locked
meekly together, were not lifted to brush it away. The fire
burned brightly on the hearth. John had drawn the bed close
before it, and sitting on the peck measure, with his head leaning
against the foot of the bed, was fast asleep. Dimmer and
dimmer burned the embers on the hearth; fainter and fainter
glimmered the shadows on the opposite wall, till they faded
quite away.

No call disturbed the worn watcher, and he slept on—slept,
till the gray light of the morning streamed, broad and cold,
through the uncurtained window, when, starting up, he went to
the bedside, bent noiselessly over it for a moment, and turning
away, brushed some tears from his eyes, saying, as he rekindled
the fire, “Poor little Peter! he will never be sick any
more.”

p489-156

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I have read a story of Blake, the painter, that sometimes
when engaged on a picture, an imaginary being, or the haunting
memory of a face, unseen perhaps for years, would thrust
itself between the canvas and his pencil, and force him to
abandon his work until the visionary portrait, or whatever it
was, was sketched. So it is with me this morning: I had other
scenes in hand, but the story I am about to write will not be
put aside, and therefore, as best I may, I will fulfil a sorrowful
task.

In one of the many beautiful valleys of the West, not far
from Clovernook, stands an old-fashioned cottage, half hidden
among tall slender-trunked maples, gnarled oaks, and flowing
elms—spared monuments of the forest growth, of which the
cool shadows drop on the grass beneath, all the long summer,
grateful to the little naked feet of the children that frolic there,
carelessly picking from where they are sunken among the turf
the round clover blossoms, red and white, and building playyards,
with boundaries of slender weeds, and broken bits of
china for ornament.

The house, and all that pertains to it, are now falling sadly to
decay, but the vestiges, here and there, speak of more affluent
and prosperous days. The paint is washed from the weatherboards;
the shutters, broken and left without fastening, beat
backward and forward with every storm, the fences are leaning
to the ground, and a desolate and ruinous look is everywhere.
Blue thistles bloom about the meadows, and some straggling
roses and unpruned lilacs tell where the garden was in other
times.

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But my story has little to do with the place as it is now. I
must go back a little. Ten years ago, everything around the
cottage was as bright and pretty as you can imagine, and Margaret,
the sunshine of the house, the brightest and prettiest of
all. Yet she was not beautiful, as most persons estimate
beauty, having nothing of that physical and showy development
which is commonly admired; but in her eyes lay a depth of
tenderness and a world of thought; and in her face was a blending
of intellectuality and the most exquisite refinement. She was
now an only child, though she had been one of two children, to
that time when the buds of childhood are opening to full bloom,
and a cloud had then swept across her early womanhood. How
often, as I went to school, after her playmate was gone, have I
seen her sitting in the shadows of the old trees about the door,
her hands lying idly on her lap, and her eyes on the ground.
She was never mirthful, even before the fountain of sorrow had
been struck open in her heart, by that hand that no love can
turn away, but now she was more quiet, and pensive almost to
melancholy. Her mother had been for years an invalid, and
one of those restless, querulous, dissatisfied invalids, whom few
persons find pleasure in attending. Scarcely was Margaret
suffered to leave her presence half-an-hour at a time; now a
cup of water was wanted, which only Margaret could bring,
and when it was brought it was sure to be too hot or too cold—
not enough, or too much—and then the dear child who was
gone, was always contrasted with the present in a way to give
the latter pain.

Margaret must read to her, and she did by the hour, from
works she felt no interest in herself. Theological discussions
were the passion of Mrs. Fields, but the arguments which supported
her previously established views were the only ones she
could endure. That the dissenter was annihilated, admitted of
no doubt, so it was of no use, wasting time over his puerility.
But at the conclusion of these intermittent and unsatisfactory
readings, there were no kind words or thanks for Margaret—
she had read so fast or so slow that her poor mother had had little enjoyment. If she stayed at home she was a sad mope,
so unlike the dear child that was in heaven—if she went abroad,

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she had so little consideration for the stricken and afflicted invalid
at home, and was still so unlike the dear departed. Poor
Margaret! it is no wonder she was sad.

The summer of which the fading blossoms should bring her
seventeenth birthday, was come. At the window of her
mother's chamber Margaret sat alone, for the invalid had been
busy with reproaches all the morning, and was fallen asleep.
The girl was unusually sad—she had been looking across the
hills to the dark line of woods that skirted the village graveyard,
where the willow trailed, and the now fast-fading violets lay
about the modest head-stone. She had been looking to that
spot, not as to an awful end, from which to shrink tremblingly
away, but rather as to the only spot in which peace, deep and
eternal, is to be embraced by the over wearied and lonely. I
would not call thee back, lost one! she said—to front again, it
may be with unequal strength, the beleaguering hosts that take
arms against us at our birth—to suffer, to struggle, to hope,
to fear, to falter, to fail, and to die; I would rather unlock
the door of thy dark chamber, and cover my eyes forever with
the silent whiteness of thy shroud.

Are these strange thoughts for youth and beauty? for she
was young, and I remember no face of more loveliness than
hers; for myself, I do not think them very strange. Her
father, in attending to the increase of his folds, and the gathering
of his harvests and the enlargement of his threshing-floors,
forgot his child, and her mother, a troubled and troublesome
invalid, never spoke to her in any words of tenderness, or called
her any gentle names. The fountain of her sisterly affection
had been choked with the dust of death, and that stronger feeling,
the strongest that attaches mortality to earth, had never
touched her heart. A time was very close at hand when she
should hear gladness in the song of the harvester that she had
never heard, and feel a warmth and joyousness in the sunshine
that had drifted before her coldly as the clouds. Love was
already brightening in her skies, and a new and beautiful garniture
was presently to adorn her world. Now, as she sat, the
light fell over the valleys, gilded the hill-tops, shimmered along
the meadows, played on the window-sill beneath her eyes, and

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sunk among her long, chestnut lock sunheeded. They are small
things that make up the sum of human happiness or misery; a
smile, or a kind word, may strengthen us for the tasks and
duties of the day, more than the fresh airs of summer, more
than the shelter of a broad roof, or daintiest viands, or most
delicious and inspiring wines. A reproachful glance, any untoward
event, a ruthful conviction, falls on the hands like paralysis,
on the heart like mildew; and the landscape fades not so
much with the slant rains of autumn beating cold against its
flowers, as for the presence of any of these.

Beneath the window where Margaret sat, a man was spading
the fresh earth, and the peculiar and invigorating odor impregnated
all the air. He was singing to himself snatches of old
songs:

Her attention was arrested, and she said, as she resumed the
task with which she had been occupied, “You are right, old man,
sing while you may—there is an end of all our thoughtless
singing ere we think.” He had thrown up a ridge of earth
against some roots, to protect them from frost, and brushing
gray hairs from his forehead, that was wrinkled with care and
time, he resumed his labor and the song.

“Ah, yes,” said Margaret, smiling and taking up her again
neglected work, “it is better than play.” Her mood was becoming
more genial from seeing the gardener's cheerful labor.
Presently he was joined by his boy. “Here, take the spade,”
said he, and lighting his pipe, with a match and flint he carried
in his pocket, he sat down to smoke, while the youth went on
with the service, after the manner of his father, yet how differently.
He was a wiry lad, with yellow curls blowing over his
eyes, and hands like ill-shapen bones, with a warted and brown

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skin about them. His eyes were yellowish gray, his complexion,
the tint of a blackened rose, and his only clothing a
shirt of small-specked calico, and blue cotton trowsers. He
wore no shoes, and as he endeavored to force the spade in the
ground, constantly bruised and hurt his feet in such way as
caused repeated exclamations of vaxation, after which he would
pause a moment, and look with dissatisfied scowl all about him.
Meantime the old man had leaned against the fence of the
garden, and with closed eyes seemed to enjoy the fragrant ex-halations
of his pipe. “Some people have easy times,” said
the boy, “ding it all!” and walking slily near his father, set up
the spade in the ground, and then, touching it with his hand
lightly, caused it to fall and push the pipe from the mouth of
the smoker, who, starting from his agreeable reverie, gave a
half-reproachful look to the lad, and one of sorrow to the broken
pipe, and seizing the spade, resumed his work with more earnestness,
and his song with more unction, than before: “It is better
to work than play.”

Having found release from the labor which he seemed not to
love, the boy stole beneath the window, and on a hollow reed
began piping a simple air, doubtless for the ear of the fair lady
above.

“Ezra,” said her sweet voice, as she leaned from the window,
“that is a pretty song, but I heard Josiah singing from the garden
a little time ago; though his voice was tremulous, he was so tired,
the song was more cheerful than yours; and if you will take
his place for an hour, and I am sure you will, your song may
become happy as his.” The boy said not a word, overcome, as it
seemed, by such condescension, but gliding away, he took the
spade, with some words of apology, from the weary hands of
the old man, and began working in good earnest without once
saying, “ding it all,” a favorite exclamation in which his dissatisfaction
usually found vent.

“A pleasant song you have been singing, Josiah,” said Margaret,
as the old man hobbled by towards his own cottage,
“and this is to pay you;” handing him from the window a new
pipe—a very pretty one, as Josiah thought—for he looked at it
in what seemed a bewilderment of admiration, and said, “

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Nobody in the sound of the church bell is half so good or half so
beautiful as Miss Margaret.” “Ah, you must not give me any
flattery,” she answered, laughingly, “for I have heard that wiser
heads than mine have been spoiled thereby, and hereafter I may
only be giving you presents for the sake of fair words.”

The happy old man went toward his cottage, happy for that
he had a new pipe, and also for the new kindness of his son—
whom, he thought, some supernatural visitant must have influenced.
While working in the garden with earnestness and
cheerfulness by no means habitual to him, the ill-natured but
simple-minded boy looked now and then at the window, where
Margaret was busy with her sewing, humming the words of
Josiah—“It is better to work than play.” She was probably
conscious that the boy was busy beneath the window, but
she was so much engrossed, that she did not notice the passing
of the young village clergyman on his accustomed walk. Glad
to arrest her attention for a moment, even though it were to
divert it from himself, Ezra gathered, and threw in at the window
a sprig of rue, saying, “Look yonder, Miss Fields.” She
looked in the direction indicated, and the color came rushing
into her cheeks as she did so, for she saw that her glance was
observed. The road on which the Fields' cottage was situated,
was not the main one, but was what is usually termed a crossroad,
for the convenience of out of the way farmers, and it
struck into the more frequented thoroughfare, leading to the
village on the one hand, and to the city on the other, at the
distance of about half a mile westward from the cottage; and
on this road, full of dusty travel, stood, at the distance of a
quarter of a mile to the south, a large and fashionable house, of
very red bricks, and with inside blinds of white, a style of finish
of which no other in the whole neighborhood could boast.
Here lived Mr. Ralph Middleton, a descendant of one of the
royalist families of the Revolution, and strongly tincutred with
aristocratic feeling. He kept the best coach in the county, in
fact there were but one or two others, and he drove the finest
horses, bred the best cattle, and was acknowledged the great
man of all that region; and his acquaintance was esteemed even
by Deacon White and Doctor Haywood, as an especial honor.

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