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

They were sitting together, Helph and Jenny, with the twilight
deepening around them, speaking little, thinking much,
and gazing through the long vistas open to the sunshine, and
brighter than the western clouds. But they did not think of
the night that was falling, they did not hear the wind soughing
among the hot walls and roofs, and prophesying storm and
darkness.

Suddenly appeared before them a miserably clad little boy,
the one mentioned in a previous chapter as coming for money,
and now, after a moment's hesitation, on seeing a stranger, he
laid his head in the lap of Jenny, and cried aloud. Stooping
over him, she smoothed back his hair and kissed his forehead;
and in choked and broken utterances he made known his mournful
errand: little Willie was very sick, and Jenny was wanted
at home.

Few preparations were required. Helph would not hear of
her going alone; and in the new and terrible fear awakened
by the message of the child, all her pride vanished, and she did
not remonstrate, though she knew the wretchedness of poverty
that would be bared before him. Folding close in hers the
hand of her little brother, and with tears dimming her eyes,
she silently led the way to the miserable place occupied by her
family.

It was night, and the light of a hundred windows shone down
upon them, when, turning to her young protector, she said, in
a voice trembling with both shame and sorrow, perhaps, “This
is the place.” It was a large dingy building, five stories high
and nearly a hundred feet long, very roughly but substantially
built of brick. It was situated in the meanest suburb of the
city, on an unpaved alley, and opposite a ruinous graveyard,
and it had been erected on the cheapest possible plan, with
especial reference to the poorest class of the community.
Scarcely had the wealthy proprietor an opportunity of posting

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

bills announcing rooms to let, before it was all occupied; and
with its miserable accommodations, and crowded with people
who were almost paupers, it was a perfect hive of misery.
Porch above porch, opening out on the alley, served as dooryards
to the different apartments—places for the drying of
miserable rags—play-grounds for the children—and look-outs,
for the decrepit old women, on sunny afternoons.

Dish-water, washing suds, and every thing else, from tea and
coffee grounds to all manner of picked bones and other refuse,
were dashed down from these tiers of balconies to the ground
below, so that a more filthy and in all ways unendurable spectacle
can scarcely be imagined, than was presented in the vicinity
of this money-making device, this miserable house refuge.

Leaning against the balusters, smoking and jesting, or quarreling
and swearing, were groups of men, who might be counted
by tens and twenties; and the feeble and querulous tones of
woman, now and then, were heard among them, or from within
the wretched chambers. A little apart from one of these
groups of ignorant disputants sat an old crone combing her
gray hair by the light of a tallow candle, other females were
ironing or washing dishes, while others lolled listlessly and
gracelessly about, listening to, and sometimes taking part in,
the vile or savage or pitiable conversations.

Children, half naked, were playing in pools of stagnant
water, and now and then pelting each other with heads of fishes,
and with slimy bones, caught up at random; and one group,
more vicious than the others, were diverting themselves by
throwing stones at an old cat that lay half in and half out of a
puddle, responding, by feeble struggles, as the rough missiles
struck against her, and here and there were going on such fierce
contests of brutish force as every day illustrate the melancholy
truth that the poor owe so much of their misery to the indulgence
of their basest passions, rather than to any causes necessarily
connected with poverty.

Depravity, as well as poverty, had joined itself to that miserable
congregation. Smoke issued thick from some of the
chimneys, full of the odors of mutton and coffee, and as these
mixed with the vile stenches that thickened the atmosphere

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

near the scene, Helph, who had been accustomed to the free
air of the country, fresh with the scents of the hay-fields and
orchards, found it hard to suppress the exclamation of disgust
and loathing that rose to his lips, when he turned with Jenny
into the alley, and his senses apprehended in a twinkling what
I have been so long in describing.

Up the steep and narrow wooden stairs, flight after flight, they
passed, catching through the open doors of the different apartments
glimpses of the same squalid character—greasy smoking
stoves, dirty beds, ragged women and children, with here and
there dozing dogs, or men prostrate on the bare floors—either
from weariness or drunkenness—and meagerly-spread tables,
and cradles, and creeping, and crying, and sleeping babies, all
in close proximity.

From the third landing they turned into a side door, and such
a picture presented itself as the young man had never seen
hitherto: the windows were open, but the atmosphere was close,
and had a disagreeable smell of herbs and medicines; a single
candle was lighted, and though the shapes of things were not
distinctly brought out, enough was visible to indicate the extreme
poverty and wretchedness of the family.

It was very still in the room, for the children, with instinctive
fear, were huddled together in the darkest corner, and spoke in
whispers when they spoke at all; and the mother, patient and
pale and wan, sat silent by the bed, holding the chubby sunburned
hands of her dying little boy.

“Oh, mother,” said Jenny, treading softly and speaking low.
Tears filled the poor woman's mild blue eyes, and her lips
trembled as she answered, “It is almost over—he does not
know me any more.”

And forgetting, in the blind fondness of the mother, the
darkness and the sorrow and the pain, and worst of all, the contagion
of evil example, from which he was about to be free,
she buried her face in her hands, and shook with convulsive
agony. All the deprivation and weariness and despair, that
had sometimes made her, with scarce a consciousness of what
she was doing, implore the coming of death, or annihilation, were
in this new sorrow as nothing: with her baby laughing in her

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

arms, as he had been but the last week, she would be strong to
front the most miserable fate.

Tie after tie may be unbound from the heart, while our steps
climb the rough steep that goes up to power, for the sweet
household affections unwind themselves more and more as the
distance widens between aspiration and contentment, and over
the tide that sweeps into the shining haven of ambition there
is no crossing back. The brow that has felt the shadow of the
laurel, will not be comforted by the familiar kisses of love;
and struggling to the heights of fame, the rumble of clods
against the coffin of some mate of long ago, comes softened of
its awfulest terror; but where the heart, unwarped from its
natural yearnings, presses close, till its throbbings bring up
echoes from the stony bottom of the grave, and when, from
the heaped mound, reaches a shadow that darkens the world
for the humble eyes that may never look up any more—these
keep the bleeding affections, these stay the mourning that the
great cannot understand. Where the wave is narrow, the
dropping of even a pebble of hope sends up the swelling circles
till the whole bosom of the stream is agitated; but in the
broader sea, they lessen and lessen till they lose themselves
in a border of light. And over that little life, moaning itself
away in the dim obscurity of its birth-chamber, fell bitterer
tears, and bowed hearts aching with sharper pains, than they
may ever know whose joys are not alike as simple and as few.
“Oh, Willie, dear little Willie,” sobbed Jenny, folding her
arms about him and kissing him over and over, “speak to me
once, only once more!” Her tears were hot on his whitening
face, but he did not lift his heavily-drooping eyes, nor turn towards
her on the pillow. The children fell asleep, one on
another, where they sat. In the presence of the strong healthy
man they were less afraid, and nestling close together, gradually
forgot that little Willie was not among them—and so came
the good gift which God giveth his beloved in nights of sorrow.

In some chink of the wall the cricket chirped to itself the
same quick short sound, over and over, and about the candle
circled and fluttered the gray-winged moths, heedless of their
perished fellows, and on the table stood a painted bucket half

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

filled with tepid water, and beside it a brown jug and broken
glass.

Now and then the mother and daughter exchanged anxious
looks, as a footstep was heard on the stairs, but when it turned
aside to some one of the adjoining chambers, they resumed
their watching, not speaking their hopes or fears, if either had
been awakened.

From the white dome of St. Peter's sounded the silvery
chime of the midnight; the sick child had fallen asleep an
hour before, but now his eyes opened full on his mother, and
his white lips worked faintly; “Jenny,” she said, in a tone of
low but fearful distinctness—for with her head on the bedside
she was fast dozing into forgetfulness—“he is going—going
home.”

“Home,” he repeated, sweetly, and that was the last word
he ever said.

The young man came forward hastily—the soft light of a
setting star drifted across the pillow, and in its pale radiance
he laid the hands together, and smoothed the death-dampened
curls.

“Oh, my children!” cried Mrs. Mitchel, bending over the
huddled sleepers, and calling them one by one to awake, “your
poor little brother is dead—he will never play with you any
more.”

“Let them sleep,” said Jenny, whose grief was less passionate,
“they cannot do him any good now, and the time will come
soon enough that they cannot sleep.”

“I know it, oh, I know it!” she sobbed, “but this silence
seems so terrible; I want them to wake and speak to me, and
yet,” she added, after a moment, “I know not what I want. I
only know that my little darling will not wake in the morning.
Oh,” she continued, “he was the loveliest and the best of
all—he never cried when he was hurt, like other children, nor
gave me trouble in any way;” and she then recounted, feeding
her sorrow with the memory, all his endearing little ways, from

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

his first conscious smiling to the last word he had spoken; numbered
over the little coats he had worn, and the color of them,
saying how pretty he had thought the blue one, and how proud
he had been of the pink one with the ruffled sleeves, and how
often she had lifted him up to the broken looking-glass to see
the baby, as he called himself, for that he always wanted to
see the curls she made for him. Sometimes she had crossed
him; she wished now she had never done so; and sometimes
she had neglected him when she had thought herself too busy
to attend to his little wants; but now that was all irreparable,
she blamed herself harshly, and thought how much better she
might have done.

The first day of his sickness she had scolded him for being
fretful, and put him roughly aside when he clung about her
knees, and hindered the work on which their bread depended;
she might have known that he was ailing, she said, for that he
was always good when well, and so should have neglected every
thing else for him; if she had done so in time, if she had tried
this medicine or that, if she had kept his head bathed, one night,
when she chanced to fall asleep, and waked with his calling her
“mother,” and saying the fire was burning him; in short, if she
had done any thing she had not done, it might have been better,
her darling Willie might have got well.

“The dear baby,” she said, taking his cold, stiffening feet
in her hand, “he never had any shoes, and I promised so often
to get them.”

“He does not need them now,” interposed Jenny.

“I know it, I know it,” she answered, and yet she could not
subdue this grief that her boy was dead, and had never had the
shoes that he thought it would be so fine to have.

“Oh, mother, do not cry so,” Jenny said; “I will come
home and we will love each other better, we who are left, and
work together and try to live till God takes us where he has
taken the baby—home, home!” but in repeating his dying
words, her voice faltered, and hiding her face in the lap of her
mother, she gave way to agony that till then she had kept down.

But, alas, it was not even their poor privilege to weep uninterruptedly,
and, shuddering, they grew still when, slowly and

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

heavily climbing the narrow and dark stairs, sounded the well-known
step of the drunken husband and father. A minute the
numb and clumsy hand fumbled about the door-latch, and then
with a hiccup, and a half articulate oath, the man, if man he
should be called, staggered and stumbled into the room.

His dull brain apprehended the case but imperfectly, and
seeing his wife, he supposed her to be waiting for him, as he
had found her a thousand times before; and mixing something
of old fondness with a coarse and brutal familiarity, he put his
arm about her neck, saying, “Why the hell are you waiting
for me, Nancy, when you know them fellers won't never let
me come home? Daughter,” he continued, addressing Jenny,
“just hand me that jug, that's a good girl, I feel faint like,”
and putting his hand to his temple, where the blood was oozing
from a recent cut, he finished his speech with an oath.

“Hush, father, hush,” beseechingly said the girl, pointing to
the bed; but probably supposing she meant to indicate it as a
resting-place for him, he reeled towards and half fell upon it,
one arm thrown across the dead child, and the blood dripping
from his bruised and distorted face, muttering curses and threatening
revenge against the comrades who, he said deprecatingly,
made him drink when he told them he wanted to go home, d—n
them! In such imprecations and excuses he fell into a dreadful
unconsciousness.

Not knowing whom else to call, Helphenstein summoned
Aunt Kitty, and with the aid of his arm and a crutch, but more
than all leaning on her own zeal to do good, she came, and in
her kindly but rude fashion comforted the mourners, partly by
pictures of the glory “ober Jordan,” and partly by narratives
of the terriblest sufferings she had known, as taking the child
on her knees she dressed it for the grave, decently as might be.

“She had lost a baby, too,” she said, “and when her breasts
were aching with the milk, she felt as if she wanted to be
gwine to it wharever it were, for that she couldn't 'xist without
it no ways, but she did, and arter a while she got over it.
Another son,” she said, “was spared to grow up and do a heap
of hard work; he was away from her a piece down the river,
and kep a liberty stable, and at last, when he had saved a'most

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

money enough, to buy himself, a vile-tempered critter kicked
out his brains, and dat ar was his last. And so,” said Aunt
Kitty, “it was wust for de one dat growed up, arter all.”

The stars grew motionless, the heavy clouds loomed in sombre
and far-reaching masses, and the night went by drearily,
wearily, painfully, till gray began to divide the heavy darkness,
and through the gaps of the thick woods away over the
eastern hills, the chilly river of morning light came pouring in.

The funeral was over, and it was almost night when Mr.
Randall returned from the country, having availed himself more
largely of the horse and buggy than he at first intended, by
taking several widely separate points, where errands called him,
in his route. Mrs. Randall came too, and with her the great
basket, but not empty, as she had taken it.

The poor animal had been driven mercilessly, and, dripping
with sweat, and breathing hard, gladly turned to his young
master and rubbed his face against his caressing hand.

It was no very cordial greeting which the son gave the
parents, and they in turn were little pleased with him, for any
special liking is not to be concealed even from the commonest
apprehension, and the attachment of Helph and Jenny had
lately become an unquestionable fact.

“What in the devil's name are we to do with that girl, mother?
she don't earn her salt,” said Mr. Randall.

Their first inquiries on entering the house had been for Jenny,
and Helph, with provoking purpose, had simply said she was
not at home. Words followed words, sharper and faster, until
Mr. Randall, with an affirmation that need not be repeated, said
he would suffer his house to be her home no longer; if she
could not be trusted with the care of it for a day, she was not
worthy to have any better place than the pig-sty in which her
parents lived.

“I always told you,” interposed the wife, “that girl was a
mean, low-lived thing; and it was none of my doings, the taking

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

her from the washing-tub, where she belongs, and making her
as good as any of us. I tell you them kind of folks must be
kept down, and I always told you so.”

“You always told me great things,” said the husband, coloring
with rage; “what in the devil's name is there you don't
tell me, or you don't know, I wonder!”

“Well, sir,” she answered, speaking with a subdued sullenness,
“there is one thing I did not know till it was too late.”

With all his blustering, Mr. Randall was a coward and
craven at heart, and turning to the sideboard he imbibed a
deeper draught of brandy than usual, diverting his indignation
to Jenny, whom he called a poor creep-louse, that had infested
his home long enough.

“If you were not my father,” answered Helph, who had
inherited a temper capable of being ungovernably aroused,
“I'd beat you with as good a will as I ever beat iron to a
horse-shoe.”

“What in the devil's name is the girl to you, I'd like to
know?”

“Before you are a month older you will find out what she
is to me,” replied the youth, drawing himself up to his full
height, and passing his hand proudly across his beard.

“My son, your father has a great deal to irritate him, and
he is hasty sometimes, but let bygones be bygones; but what
business had the girl away?”

And with a trembling hand, Mr. Randall presented a glass
of brandy as a kind of peace-offering to his son. But, for the
first time in his life, the young man refused; he had seen its
brutalizing effects the previous night, saw them then, and had
determined to be warned in time. In answer to the question respecting
Jenny, however, he related briefly and simply the melancholy
event which had called and still detained her from her
usual employments.

“A good thing,” said Mr. Randall; “one brat less to be
taken care of; but that's no reason the girl should stay away;
if the young one is dead, she can't bring it to life, nor dig a
hole to put it in, either.”

Mrs. Randall, having adjusted her lace cap, and ordered

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

Aunt Kitty to keep the basket out of the reach of the big
boys, and to remember and not eat all there was in it herself,
ascended the stairs to ascertain how Jenny had progressed with
her shirt-making.

Such family altercations, it is to be hoped, are exceedingly
rare; but I have not exaggerated the common experience of
these specimens of the “self-made aristocracy.” Ignorant, passionate,
vulgar—nothing elevated them from the lowest grade
of society but money, and this was in most cases an irresistible
influence in their favor.

In all public meetings, especially those having any reference
to the poor, Mr. Randall was apt to be a prominent personage;
on more occasions than one he had set down large figures for
charitable purposes; in short, his position was that of an eminently
liberal and honorable citizen, when, in fact, a man guilty
of more little meannesses and knaveries, a man in all ways
so debased, could scarcely anywhere be found. The drunkard
whom he affected to despise had often a less depraved appetite
than his own, and though he did not reel and stagger and
lie in the gutter, it was only an habitual indulgence in strong
drinks which rendered him superior to their more debilitating
effects. He lay on the sofa at home, and swore and grumbled
and hiccuped, and drank, and drank, and drank. His
children did not respect him, and how could they, when the
whole course of his conduct was calculated to inspire disgust
and loathing in every heart endowed with any natural ideas of
right. The two bullying and beardless sons who had grown up
under his immediate influence, were precociously wicked, and
possessed scarcely a redeeming quality, and the younger ones
were treading close in their footsteps.

Helph, however, had some of the more ennobling attributes
of manhood. He was blunt and plain and rustic to be sure,
but he was frank and honest and sincere, industrious, sober,
and affectionate, alike averse to the exactions and impositions
of his mother, and the pitiful penuriousness of his father.
He was neither ashamed of the toil-hardened hands that earned
his daily bread, nor proud because his mother's earrings dangled
to her shoulders, or that her dress was gay and expensive,

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

or that his father was president of a bank, and lived in a fine
house. Independent and straightforward, and for the most part
saving enough, so that he might give himself some trouble to
find a lost shilling, yet where he saw actual need, he would give
it, with as much pleasure as he had in finding it.

Toward evening Jenny returned home, pale and sad and suffering,
but there were no little kindnesses, nor any softness of word
or manner to greet her; she was required at once to resume her
work, and admonished to retrieve lost time, for that crying
would only make her sick, and do no good; Helph, however,
subdued his bluff gentleness into tenderness never manifested for
her before, and his occasional smile, through tears, was an over
payment for the cruelty of the rest.

Mr. Randall and his wife began to be seriously alarmed, lest
a hasty marriage of the parties should bring on themselves
irretrievable disgrace. A long consultation was held, therefore,
and it was resolved to postpone, by pretended acquiescence,
any clandestine movement, until time could be gained to frustrate
hopelessly the design which was evidently meditated by
the son.

“We have been talking of our own love,” said they; “how
hard we should have thought it to be parted; and seeing that
you really are attached to each other, we oppose no obstacle;
a little delay is all we ask: Jenny shall go to school for a year,
and you, Helph, will have, by-and-by, more experience, and
more means, perhaps, at your command.”

Much more they said, in this conciliatory way; the dishonesty
was successful; and that night, instead of stealing away
together as they had proposed, Helph slept soundly in his
country home, and Jenny dreamed bright dreams of coming
years.

Midnight overspread the city; the clouds hung low and
gloomy, and the atmosphere was close and oppressive, when a
man past the prime of life, miserably clad, might have been
seen stealthily threading through by-ways and alleys, now

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

stopping and looking noiselessly backward and forward, and
then, with trembling and unsteady steps, gliding forward. He
wore no hat, his gray hair was matted, and over one eye was
a purple and ghastly cut, from which he seemed to have torn
the bandage, for in one hand he held a cloth spotted with blood.
He apparently thought himself followed by an enemy, from
whom he was endeavoring to escape, and now and then he huddled
in some dark nook whence his eyes, bright with insanity,
peered vigilantly about. So, by fits and starts, he made his
way to the old graveyard where the poor are buried. The
trees stood still together, for there was scarcely a breath of air,
and he proceeded noiselessly among the monuments and crosses
and low headstones, never pausing, till he came to a little new
grave, the rounded mound of which was smooth and fresh as if
it had been raised but a single hour.

“Here,” he said, squatting on the ground and digging madly
but feebly into the earth with his hands, “here is the very place
they put him, d—n them! but his mother shall have him back;
I ain't so drunk that I can't dig him up;” and pausing now and
then to listen, he soon levelled the heap of earth above his
child.

“In God's name, what are you doing?” exclaimed an authoritative
voice, and a club was struck forcibly against the
board fence hard by. Howling an impious imprecation, the
frightened wretch rushed blindly and headlong across the
graves, leaped the fence like a tiger, and disappeared in the
hollow beyond. An hour afterwards he had gained the valley
which lies a mile or two northwest of the city, and along which
a creek, sometimes slow and sluggish, and sometimes deep and
turbulent, drags and hurries itself toward the brighter waters
of the Ohio.

The white-trunked sycamores leaned toward each other across
the stream, the broad faded leaves dropping slowly slantwise
to the ground, as the wind slipped damp and silent from bough
to bough. Here and there the surface of the water was darkened
by rifts of foliage that, lodged among brushwood, gave
shelter to the checky blacksnake and the white-bellied toad.
Huge logs that had drifted together in the spring freshet, lay

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

black and rotting in the current, with noxious weeds springing
rank from their decay.

Toward the deepest water the wretched creature seemed
irresistibly drawn, and holding with one hand to a sapling that
grew in the bank, he leaned far out and tried the depth with a
slender pole. He then retreated, and seemed struggling as with
a fierce temptation, but drew near again and with his foot
broke off shelving weights of earth, and watched their plashing
and sinking; a moment he lifted his eyes to heaven—there
was a heavier plunge—and he was gone from the bank. A wild
cry rose piercing through the darkness; the crimson top of a
clump of iron weeds that grew low in the bank was drawn suddenly
under the water, as if the hand reached for help, then the
cry and the plashing were still, and the waves closed together.
A week afterwards the swollen corpse of Jenny's father was
drawn from the stream.

All the boyish habits of Helph were at once thrown aside,
and much Aunt Wetherbe marveled when she saw him a day
or two after his return from the city, bring forth from the cellar
a little sled on which, in all previous winters, he had been
accustomed (out of the view of the highway, it is true), to ride
down hill.

“What on airth now?” she said, placing her hands on either
hip, and eyeing him in sorrowful amazement. A great deal of
pains had been lavished on the making of the sled, the runners
were shod with iron, and it was nicely painted; indeed, Helph
had considered it a specimen of the best art, in its way, and now,
as he dragged it forth to light, dusting it with his handkerchief,
and brushing the spider-webs from among its slender beams, he
found it hard to suppress the old admiration for his beautiful
handiwork. Nevertheless, when he found himself observed, he
gave it a rough throw, which lodged it, broken and ruined,
among some rubbish, and drawing his hat over his eyes to conceal
from them the wreck, he strode away without at all
noticing his aunt, who immediately went in search of her

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

good man, who, in her estimation at least, knew almost every
thing, to ask an explanation of the boy's unaccountable conduct.

But the strange freaks of the young man were not yet at an
end, and on returning to the house he took from a nail beneath
the looking-glass, where they had long hung, the admiration of
all visitors, a string of speckled birds' eggs and the long silvery
skin of a snake, and threw them carelessly into the fire, thereby
sending a sharp pang through the heart of Aunt Wetherbe, if
not through his own. He next took from the joist a bundle of
arrows and darts, the latter out in fanciful shapes, which he had
made at various times to amuse his leisure, and crushed them
together in a box of kindlings, saying, in answer to the remonstrance
of his relation, that was all they were good for.

From the pockets of coats and trowsers he was observed at
various times to make sundry ejectments, embracing all such
trinkets as one is apt to accumulate during boyish years, together
with bits of twine, brass-headed nails, and other treasures
that are prized by youths disposed to be industrious and provident.
But when he brought from an out-house a squirrel's
cage, where many a captive had been civilized into tricks never
dreamed of in his wild swingings from bough to bough, Aunt
Wetherbe took it from his hands, just as she would have done
when he was a wayward child, exclaiming with real displeasure,
“Lord-a-mercy, child! has the old boy himself got into you?”
But Helph soon proved that he was not possessed of the evil
one, by the manliness with which he talked of the coming election,
discussing shrewdly the merits of candidates and parties,
and of such other subjects as he seemed to think deserving of a
manly consideration. All the implements necessary to shaving
operations were shortly procured, and Helph was observed to
spend much of his time in their examination and careful preparation,
though no special necessity for their use was observable,
and hitherto the old razor of his uncle had only now and
then been brought into requisition by him.

When the first flush of conscious manhood had subsided, a
thoughtful and almost sorrowful feeling pervaded the dreams
of the young man; he was much alone, knit his brows, and

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

answered vaguely when questioned. At last he abruptly an
nounced his intention of beginning the world for himself. He
would sell his horse, and the various farming implements he
possessed, together with the pair of young oxen which he had
played with and petted, and taught to plow and draw the cart,
and with the means thus acquired he would procure a small
shop in the vicinity of the city, and there resume his black-smithing.

“Tut, tut,” said the aunt, “I'd rather you would steal away
from the splitting of oven-wood and the churning of a morning,
just as you used to do, to set quail traps and shoot at a
mark, than to be talking in this way. Your uncle and me
can't get along without you: no, no, my child, you must n't
think of going.”

Helph brushed his hand across his eyes, appealing to the
authority which had always been absolute; and removing his
spectacles, the good old man rubbed them carefully through
the corner of his handkerchief as he said, sadly but decidedly,
“Yes, my son, you have made a wise resolve: you are almost
a man now (here the youth's face colored), and it's time you
were beginning to work for yourself and be a man amongst
men;” and approaching an old-fashioned walnut desk in which
were kept all manner of yellow and musty receipts and letters,
he unlocked it slowly, and pouring from a stout linen bag a
quantity of silver, counted the dollars to the number of a hundred,
and placing them in the hand of the young man, he said,
“A little present to help you on in the world; make good use
of it, my boy; but above all things, continue in the honest,
straight path in which you have always kept, and my word for
it, prosperity will come to you, even though you have but a
small beginning. I have lived to be an old man,” he continued,
“and I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
begging bread.”

Boyishly, Helph began drawing figures rapidly on the table
with his finger, for he felt the tears coming, but it would not
do, and looking rather than speaking his thanks, he hurried
from the house, and for an hour chopped vigorously at the
wood-pile.

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

It was soon concluded to hurry the preparations for his departure,
so that he might get fairly settled before the coming
on of cold weather, and a list of goods and chattels to be sold
at public vendue, on a specified day, was made out, and bills
posted on the school-house, at the cross-roads, and in the bar-room
of the tavern, stating the time and place of sale. Ellen
Blake was sent for in haste to come right away and make up
half a dozen shirts, and the provident old lady briskly plied the
knitting-needles, that her nephew might lack for nothing. All
talked gayly of the new project, but the gayety was assumed,
and Ellen herself, with all her powers of making sombre things
take cheerful aspects, felt that in this instance she did not succeed.

Now that he was about to part with them, the gay young
horse that had eaten so often from his hand, and the two gentle
steers that had bowed their necks beneath the heavy yoke at
his bidding, seemed to the young master almost humanly endeared,
and he fed and caressed them morning and evening with
unusual solicitude, tossing them oat sheaves and emptying
measures of corn very liberally.

“Any calves or beef cattle to sell,” called a coarse, loud
voice to Helph, as he lingered near the stall of his oxen, the
evening preceding the day of sale.

“No,” answered the young man, seeing that it was a butcher
who asked the question.

“I saw an advertisement of oxen to be sold here to-morrow,”
said the man, striking his spurred heel against his horse, and
reining him in with a jerk.

“I prefer selling to a farmer,” said Helph, as he leaned
against the broad shoulders of one of the steers, and took in
his hand its horn of greenish white.

“My money is as good as any man's,” said the butcher, and
throwing himself from the saddle he approached the stall, and
after walking once or twice around the unconsciously doomed
animals, and pinching their hides with his fingers, he offered
for them a larger sum than Helph expected; he however
shut his eyes to the proposed advantage, saying he hoped

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

to sell them to some neighbor who would keep them and be
kind to them.

A half contemptuous laugh answered, in part, as the butcher
turned away, saying he was going further into the country, and
would call on his return—they might not be sold.

Thus far, Helph had not advised with Jenny relative to the
new movement he was about making, but when all arrangements
were made, and it was quite too late to retract, he resolved to
ask her advice; and I suspect in this conduct he was not acting
without a precedent.

From among a bunch of quills that had remained in the
old desk from time immemorial, he selected one, with great
care, and having rubbed his pocket-knife across the end of his
boot for an hour or more, next began a search for ink, of which
his uncle told him there was a good bottle full on the upper
shelf of the cupboard. But the said bottle was not to be found,
and after a good deal of rummaging and some questioning of
Aunt Wetherbe, it was finally ascertained that the ink alluded
to must have been bought ten or twelve years previously, and
that only some dry powder remained of it now in the bottom
of a broken inkstand: yet to this a little vinegar was added,
and having shaken it thoroughly, the young man concluded it
would answer. More than once during all this preparation, he had
been asked what he was going to do, for writing was not done
in the family except on eventful occasions; but the question
elicited no response more direct than “Nothing much,” and so,
at last, with a sheet of foolscap, ink, and a quill, he retired to his
own room—Aunt Wetherbe having first stuck a pin in the candle,
indicating the portion he was privileged to burn.

Whether more or less candle were consumed, I am not advised,
but that a letter was written, I have good authority for
believing. Murder will out, there is no doubt about that, and
the day following the writing, Aunt Wetherbe chanced to have
occasion to untie a bundle of herbs that, in a pillow-case, had
been suspended from the ceiling of Helph's room for a long
time, and what should she find but a letter addressed to Jenny
Mitchel, fantastically folded and sealed with four red wafers; it
had evidently been placed there to await a secret opportunity

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

of conveyance to the post-office. Long was the whispered conference
between the old lady and Ellen, that followed this discovery;
very indignant was the aunt, at first, for old people
are too apt to think of love and marriage in the young as highly
improper; but Ellen, whose regard for matrimony was certainly
more lenient, exerted her liveliest influence in behalf of the
young people, nor were her efforts unsuccessful, and an unobtrusive
silence on the subject was resolved upon.

During this little excitement in doors, there was much noise
and bustle without; Helph's young horse was gayly caparisoned,
and bearing proudly various riders up and down the
space, where, among plows, harrows, scythes, and other agricultural
implements, a number of farmers were gathered, discussing
politics, smoking, and shrewdly calculating how much they
could afford to bid for this or that article. Yoked together, and
chewing their cuds very contentedly, stood the plump young
oxen, but no one admired them with the design of purchasing.
The vendue was soon over, and all else had been sold, readily
and well. The sleek bay was gone, proudly arching his neck
to the hand of a new master, and the neighbors brought their
teams to carry home whatever they had purchased, and Helph
half sighed as one after another put into his hand the money
for which he had bargained away the familiar treasures which
had been a part of his existence.

As he lingered at the style, he saw approaching a large flock
of sheep, closely huddled together, and with red chalk marks
on their sides indicating their destiny; while behind came a
mingled group of oxen, cows and calves, all driven by the sanguinary
butcher with whom he had refused to treat for his
favorites.

“Well, neighbor,” he said, thrusting his hand in his pocket
and drawing thence a greasy leathern pouch, “I see you have
kept the cattle for me after all.”

At first Helph positively declined selling them, but he did
not want them; it was very uncertain when there would be an
opportunity of disposing of them as he wished, and when the
butcher added something to his first liberal offer, he replied,
“I suppose, sir, you will have to take them.” Riding into the

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

yard, he drove them roughly forth with whip and voice, from
the manger of hay and the deep bed of straw. They were free
from the yoke, and yet they came side by side, and with their
heads bowed close together, just as they had been accustomed
to work. Passing their young master, they turned towards him
their great mournful eyes, reproachfully, he thought, and crushing
the price of them in his hand, he walked hastily in the direction
of the house.

“The bad, old wretch,” exclaimed Ellen, looking after the
butcher, as she stood on the porch, wiping her eyes with the
sleeve of the shirt she was making; and just within the door sat
Aunt Wetherbe, her face half concealed within a towel, and
crying like a child.

A week more, and Helph was gone, Ellen still remaining
with the old people, till they should get a little accustomed to
their desolate home. The tears shed over his departure were
not yet dry, for he had left in the morning and it was now
dusky evening, when, as the little family assembled round the
tea-table, he entered, with a hurried and anxious manner that
seemed to preface some dismal tidings.

Poor youth! his heart was almost breaking. He had no concealments
now, and very frankly told the story of his love, and
what had been his purposes for the future. Mr. and Mrs. Randall
had suddenly given up their house, gone abroad, and taken
Jenny with them, under pretext of giving her a thorough education
in England. But the young lover felt instinctively that she
was separated from him for a widely different purpose. And
poor faithful Aunt Kitty, she had been dismissed without a shilling
above her scanty earnings, to work, old and disabled as she
was, or die like a beggar. After much inquiry, he had learned
that she had obtained an engagement at an asylum, as an attendant
on the sick.

“Dear old soul!” said Aunt Wetherbe, “you must go right
away in the morning and bring her here; she shan't be left to
suffer, and I know of it.”

“Never mind—all will come out bright,” said Ellen, as Helph
sat that night on the porch, alone and sorrowful.

But he would not be comforted: Jenny had not left a single

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

line to give him assurance and hope, and even if she tnought of
him now, she would forget him in the new life that was before
her. All this was plausible, but Ellen's efforts were not entirely
without effect; and when she offered to go with him to the city
and see Aunt Kitty, who perhaps might throw some light on
the sudden movement, he began to feel hopeful and cheerful
almost: for of all eyes, those of a lover are the quickest to see
light or darkness.

Some chance prevented the fulfilment of Ellen's promise, and
I was commissioned by her to perform the task she had proposed
for herself. “It will help to keep him up, like,” she said, “if
you go along.” A day or two intervened before I could conveniently
leave home, but at last we set out, on a clear frosty
morning of the late autumn. Behind the one seat of the little
wagon in which we rode, was placed an easy chair for Aunt
Kitty. A brisk drive of an hour brought us to the hospital;
and pleasing ourselves with thoughts of the happy surprise we
were bringing to the poor forlorn creature, we entered the
parlor, and on inquiry were told we had come too late—she
had died half an hour before our arrival, in consequence of
a fall received the previous evening in returning from the deadhouse,
whither she had assisted in conveying a body. “I have
ordered her to be decently dressed,” said the superintendent,
“from my own things; she was so good, I thought that little
enough to do for her;” and she led the way to the sick ward,
where Aunt Kitty awaited to be claimed and buried by her
friends. It was a room fifty or sixty feet long, and twenty
perhaps in width, lined on either side with a long row of narrow
dirty beds, some of them empty, but most of which were
filled with pale and miserable wretches—some near dying,
some groaning, some propped on pillows and seeming stolidly
to regard the fate of others and of themselves. The sun
streamed hot through the uncurtained windows, and the atmosphere
was pervaded with offensive smells.

As my eye glanced down the long tiers of beds where there
was so much suffering, it was arrested by the corpse of the
poor old woman—gone at last to that land where there are no
more masters, no more servants. I shuddered and stood still

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

as the two shrivelled and haglike women wrapped and pinned
the sheet about the stiffening limbs, with as much glee, imbecile
almost, but frightful, as they apparently were capable of feeling
or expressing. “What in Heaven's name are you laughing
at?” said Helph, approaching them. “Just to think of
sarving a dead nigger!” said one, with a revolting simper; but
looking in his face, she grew respectful with a sudden recollection,
and drew from her pocket a sealed letter, saying, “May
be you can tell who this is for—we found it in her bosom when
we went to dress her.” It was a letter from Jenny to himself:
poor Aunt Kitty had been faithful to the last.

Not till I was turning from that terriblest shelter of woe I
ever saw, did I notice a young and pale-cheeked girl, sitting
near the door, on a low and rude rocking-chair, and holding
close to her bosom an infant but a few days old: not with a
mother's pride, I fancied, for her eyes drooped before the glance
of mine, and a blush burned in her cheek, as though shame and
not honor covered her young maternity. I paused a moment,
praised the baby, and spoke some kindly words to her; but she
bowed her head lower and lower on her bosom, speaking not a
word; and seeing that I only gave her pain, I passed on, with a
spirit more saddened for the living than for the dead, who had
died in such wretchedness.

Jenny's letter proved a wonderful comfort to Helph, and
cheerfulness and elasticity gradually came back to him; but
when, at the expiration of a year, his parents returned without
her, and bringing a report of her marriage, all courage, all
ambition, deserted him, and many a summer and winter went
by, during which he lived in melancholy isolation.

I shall not attempt to write the history of Jenny Mitchel,
except thus much, which had some relation to our life at Clovernook;
and therefore pass abruptly into the future of my
good friend Randall. Nearly fifteen years were gone since his
sweetheart crossed the sea, and country belles had bloomed
and faded before his eyes, without winning from him special
regard: when, as he sat before a blazing hickory fire one evening,
waiting for Aunt Wetherbe, who still enjoyed a green old

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

age, to bring to the table the tea and short-cake, there was a
quick, lively tap on the door, and the next moment, in the full
maturity of womanhood, but blushing and laughing like the
girl of years ago, Jenny stood in the midst of the startled
group—Jenny Mitchel still! Helph had become a prosperous
man in the world, and had been envied for the good fortune
which his patient bravery so much deserved. The waves of
the sea of human life had reached out gradually from the city
until they surrounded his blacksmith's shop, and covered all
his lots as if with silver; and he had been building, all the previous
year, a house so beautiful, and with such fair accessories,
as to astonish all the neighborhood acquainted in any degree
with his habits or reputed temper. “What does the anchorite
mean to do with such a place? he never speaks to a woman
more than he would to a ghost,” they said; “so he won't get
married; and nobody is so particular about a house to sell,
and it can't be he's going to stay in it all alone.” But Helph
knew very well what he was about, and was content to keep
his own counsel. If he had mailed certain letters out at Clovernook,
our postmaster would have guessed at once his secret;
but though Mr. Helphenstein Randall was very well known in
town, there were so many objects there to interest the common
attention that it was never observed when, every once in a
while, he bought a small draft on England, nor that he more
frequently sent letters east for the Atlantic steamers, nor that
he received as frequently as there was foreign news in the
papers, missives, every month more neatly folded and with
finer superscriptions. He had been thought something of a
philosopher, by Ellen Blake and I, and others were convinced,
perhaps by justifying reasons, that he was as little impressible
by woman's charms as the cattle in his stalls. But there are
not so many philosophers in the world as some pretend, and
his heart was all aglow with pictures of one on whom he
looked in dreams and in the distant perfumed gardens of
his hope. Jenny, deserted, and struggling with all the adversities
that throng the way of a poor girl alone in so great a city,
had written at length from London all the story of her treatment
by her lover's parents, and having time for reflection

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

before he could answer her letter—provoking all his nature
to joy and scorn—he had decided that she should not come
back until she could do so with such graces and accomplishments
as should make her the wonder and him the envy of all
who had contrived or wished their separation. He had trusted
her, educated her, and at last had all the happiness of which
his generous heart was capable.

Ellen Blake of course presided at the wedding, and the
quilts quilted that night at Aunt Wetherbe's had been kept
unused for a present to Helph's wife on her bridal night.
When I am down in the city I always visit the Randalls, and
there is not in the Valley of the West another home so pleassant,
so harmonious, so much like what I trust to share in
heaven.

p489-456 ZEBULON SANDS

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

“A capital fellow,” everybody said when speaking of Zeb,
for no one ever called him Zebulon—not even his brothers and
sisters: if you had called him Zebulon, he would have laughed
in your face. Poor fellow! I can see him now, in fancy, just as
I used to see him about the old farm-house when I was going to
school—always busy, and always cheerful, doing some good thing
or other, and laughing and whistling as he did so. Let me describe
him as I remember him, when he was perhaps sixteen,
and I quite a little girl. He was not handsome, but no one
thought whether he were or not, so good-humored and genial was
the expression of his countenance. He was a little below the ordinary
height, and stout rather than graceful, yet he was always
perfectly self-possessed, and so never awkward. His hair hung
in half curls of soft brown along a low white forehead, and a pair
of hazel eyes twinkled with laughter beneath. His face was full,
with the fresh glow of health breaking through the tan, for he
was a farmer's boy, and used to exposure and hard work; but
notwithstanding this, his hands and feet were delicately moulded
and beautiful.

At an early age he was fond of all manly exercises, and while
still a child would brave the severest cold with the fortitude of a
soldier. Many a time I have seen him chopping wood in the
mid-winter, without coat or hat, and standing knee-deep in the
snow: his hair tossing in the north wind, and his cheeks ruddy
as the air and exercise could make them. He was never too
busy to see me as I passed, or to whistle me a gay “good morning”
if I were near enough to hear it, and had often a pleasant
word or two beside. And I never forgot to look for him: children
are more fond of attentions than is apt to be imagined, and I

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

perhaps had the weakness in even an unusual degree. Commonly he
was chopping at the woodpile, but not always; sometimes I
would see him driving the oxen toward the woods, seated on the
cart-side, his great dog, Watcher, sitting beside him: he would not
see me, and straightway the distance before me seemed to lengthen,
and the winter wind to have a keener edge. Sometimes he was
about the barn, feeding the horses and cattle; and I remember
seeing him once on a distant hill, dispensing bundles of oats to the
sheep: he saw me, however, far as he was away, and waved a
bundle of the grain oats in friendly recognition.

Everybody in the neighborhood knew Zeb, and had a kind
word to say when they met him, for men and women, boys and
girls, were alike fond of his good nature; there was no distrust in
his brain: he never walked with an irresolute step, or rapped
at the proudest door with a misgiving heart, or doubted of the
cordial reception that waited him, wherever he might go. But
his confidence in the world was greater than its goodness warranted:
he did not recognize the weakness that is in humanity,
nor the weakness that was in himself, till too late. When he was
a little boy, he said often, “I will never be sick, and never die—I
will go out in the woods and sing.” And this was his spirit till
he grew into manhood.

Zeb had an only sister—Ruth, or Ruthy, as he always called
her, and the two children lived in the old farm-house with their
father, a querulous gray-headed man, who had long forgotten he
was ever young. He did not perhaps mean to be a hard master,
nevertheless he was so sometimes. “Use doth breed a habit in
a man,” and Mr. Sands, I suppose, became accustomed by little
and little to the much, to the all, his son did for him; so that at
last his expectations in regard to him could scarcely be equalled.
Sometimes Zeb would come in at night, weary and dusty with
the day's hard work, and, for his father's comfort, and perhaps in
the hope of a little praise, tell over what he had done; how he
had felled and chopped to firewood the most stubborn tree in the
forest, or, it might be, had plowed more ground than he had expected,
and so had unyoked the oxen before the sunlight was quite
gone. But never was he rejoiced by one word of congratulation.
If he had felled a tree, “Why, there was another knotty thing

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

close by—could he not have got that down too?” If he had
plowed more than another would have done, “He could have
plowed on yet for an hour—there was light enough.” This was
discouraging, but Zeb kept his patience through all, and tended
the farm year after year—giving all the profits that accrued into
the old man's hand, and keeping nothing for himself.

Ruth was as good as most persons, but less thoughtful of her
brother's pleasure than her own. “Zeb, I want to go to town
to-morrow, or next week,” she was accustomed to say, and before
the appointed time Zeb would haul the little wagon to the
creek, and wash the old paint to look as fresh as new. The corn
was left ungathered or the mowing undone, and Ruth went to town
and bought a new dress, and bonnet too, if she chose; and Zeb
said, “How pretty you will look when you wear them! you will
be ashamed to go with me in my threadbare coat and old hat: I
am rather behind the fashion, ain't I, Ruthy?” He laughed gaily
all the while, and Ruth laughed too—never thinking how many
new hats she had had since Zeb had once indulged in such a
luxury.

The grass was whitening in the hazy days of October; the orchards
were bright with ripe fruit, and the corn was rustling and
dry; it was the autumn that made Zeb twenty years old. His lip
was darkening a little from its boyish glow, and now and then
soberer moods came to him than he had known before. Across a
dry ridge of stubble land, overgrown with briers, he had been
plowing all the windy day; the oxen bent their heads low to the
ground as the dust blew in their faces, and Zeb took off his tornbrimmed
straw hat now and then, and shook out his curls. heavy
with sweat, and fell behind the team, as though thinking of other
things than his plowing. One side of the field was bordered by a
lane leading from the main road to an obscure neighborhood. It
was quite dusky where the lane struck into the woods, when a
lady came riding thence on a gay black horse, and seeing Zeb at
his plowing, tightened her rein, and, waiting for him to approach,
gave the salutation of the evening in a sweet, good-humored tone.
She was not dressed in the costume which ladies now-a-days think
indispensable for riding, but wore instead a straw hat with red
ribbons and a dress of sky-blue muslin—not trailing low, but so

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

short that her feet peeped now and then from beneath it. She sat
her horse gracefully, and her cheeks were deeply flushed, perhaps
from the proximity of the young farmer, perhaps merely from exercise;
and her black hair hung in curls down her shoulders, and
her black eyes sparkled with healthful happiness. So, altogether,
she made as pretty a finishing to the rural picture as one could
imagine. Certainly Zeb thought so, as leaning against the fence
be caressed the glossy neck of the horse, champing the bit and
pawing the dust impatiently; and as he stood there it might
have been noticed that he removed his hat, and so rolled the brim
in his hand as to conceal how badly it was torn. It was observable
too that he talked in a subdued tone and with downeast
eyes—very unlike his usual manner. After a brief delay, and a
little restrained conversation, the young woman rode forward,
putting her horse at once into a canter.

For five minutes or more Zeb lingered where she left him—not
looking after her, nor seeming to see anything, as he idly cut
letters in the fence-rail with his knife. Directly, however, he
took up his hat from the ground, upon which it had fallen, replaced
his knife in his pocket, drew a sigh, and began to unyoke
his team. But before he had quite freed the weary oxen he
looked up: the blue dress and red ribbons were yet visible in the
distance: he hesitated, and after a moment resumed his plowing,
whistling a merry tune, but so plaintively and with such variations
as made it sad almost as a dirge.

The pretty girl just riding out of sight is Molly Blake, a young
person who lives a mile or so beyond the woods that stand against
the field in which the youth is at work. Zeb and Molly once
stood together at spelling school, and Zeb spelled for her all the
hard words, in whispers; and on a time, while picking berries,
they chanced to meet, and it so happened that Zeb went home
with an empty basket, while Molly's was heaped full. The cause
of their seeing each other to-day is, that Molly is going to make
an apple-cutting in a night or two, and has given the earliest invitation
to Zeb. As he carved letters in the fence he was debating
whether he would go or not; and as he unyoked the oxen, he
was saying to himself, “I will go home and rest, I am tired;
and I can't go to the apple-cutting, at any rate, in my old clothes

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

and hat.” Still he hesitated, and as he did so, saw the blue
dress and red ribbons in the distance; then came the thought
that he might plow an hour or two more, and so gain time to go
to town with some oats or potatoes, and bring home such articles
as the frolic seemed to demand. And at this thought he resumed
his work.

It not unfrequently happens that a young man is not regarded
by his sisters as he is regarded by other women; such was the
case with Zeb; and on this special occasion Ruth never once
thought whether her brother had been invited to the party or
not, so engaged was she with her own plans and pleasures. It
chanced this evening, as such things will chance sometimes, that
supper was prepared an hour earlier than usual; and, until it was
too late for her to see, Ruth stood at the window, watching for
her brother to come home.

Meantime the fire burned out and the tea grew cold; and then
came impatience, and then petulance, so that Ruth said at last,
“Come, father, we will eat without him, and let him come when
he gets ready.”

But Zeb came pretty soon, wearied, but with a brain full of
pleasant thoughts, which shone out upon his manly countenance.
“Well, Ruthy, I am sorry I have kept you waiting,” he said, as
he drew water for his oxen at the well.

“I am sorry too,” she answered in a calm, decided tone, that
indicated a frigid state of feeling.

“Come, Ruthy, do n't be vexed,” said Zeb, laughing after the
old fashion, “but get my supper, while I turn the oxen into the
meadow—(you do n't know how tired and hungry I am)—and I
will tell you what detained me.”

“You need n't trouble yourself to do that,” she answered,
tossing her head, “it 's of no importance to me.”

Zeb pulled his old hat over his eyes, and walked soberly
away with his oxen, quite forgetting that he was either tired or
hungry. If Ruth felt any misgivings, pride kept them down;
and, to justify herself, she said, half aloud, “Well, I do n't care!
he had no business to stay away till midnight.” Nevertheless,
she arranged the supper as nicely as might be; but Zeb did
not come—his appetite had quite deserted him. Across the

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

meadow, near where the oxen were feeding, he lay on the
grass, the moonlight, flecked by the apple-boughs, falling over
and around him.

A day or two of unhappy reserve went by, Zeb remaining
little about the house, and saying little when he was there, but
plowing early and late, grieved rather than vexed. When he
spoke to Ruth, it was with words and in a manner studiously
kind, and with her duller sense she did not see that he was
changed, but a crisis had been reached at length in the young
farmer's life and nature.

The evening of so many happy anticipations was near at
hand. The morning was bright, and Zeb rose early, and was
busy with preparations for a little project he had in his mind,
when Ruth came out, and assisting him to lift a bag of potatoes
into the wagon, inquired whether he were going to town that
day: she would like to go, she said, if he could make room for
her. “I am invited to Molly Blake's to-morrow night,” she
continued, “and that is the reason I wish to go to town this
morning.” She did not ask Zeb if he also were invited: she
never thought of the possibility.

It was after noon before they reached the city, and leaving
his sister at the house of a cousin, in the suburbs, with a promise
of meeting her at an appointed hour, he drove away in search
of a market for his oats and potatoes. The grocers with whom
he was in the habit of dealing were all supplied; the few offers
he received were greatly below his expectations, and hours
were spent in driving from street to street, before he was able
to dispose of his produce at any reasonable price. He had
found no time to dine—no time to feed his horses—and the
heads of the tired animals drooped sadly, as he turned them
toward the place where he was to meet Ruth.

The show at the window of a hatter attracted him; he had
never had a fur hat, and checking his team close against the side-walk,
he looked at the tempting display, and had mentally
selected one which he thought would please him—at the same
time putting his hand in his pocket to ascertain whether he
could afford one so fine—when his attention was arrested by
the sudden appearance of his sister. “Why, Zeb!” she said

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

pettishly, “are you charmed with a hatter's window? I waited
and waited till I was tired to death, and then set out in search
of you.” Zeb laughed, and answered, that if she looked at his
old hat she would see why he was charmed, and assured her of
his regret that she was alarmed about him.

It was not fear for his safety that induced her to look for
him, but need of money. The youth averted his face from the
window, and a disappointed expression passed across it, as he
answered, “How much do you want, Ruthy?”

“Oh, I do n't know,” she said carelessly, “all you 've got.”

He turned away, as if to take up the reins—perhaps even his
dull sister, could she have seen it, would have been able to
read something of what was at the moment written on his countenance—
and reaching backward all the money he had, and
climbing into the wagon, began to rub the mud from his trowsers
with a wisp of straw. Away went Ruth—her thoughts
full of new ribbons and shining shoes, and more than all, of the
gold ring that was to sparkle on her finger the next evening.

While these little purchases were being made, the horses
stamped their feet, and switched their tails restlessly; and Zeb,
feeling that he had no very present purpose, nor any sympathy
to lessen his half-surly and half-tearful mood, turned his back
to the hatter's window, and, seated in the front corner of the
wagon, brushed the flies from the tired animals with his old hat.
The sun was near setting when Ruth returned, her hands full
of little packages and parcels, and her face beaming with joy.
So they went home together, and when Ruth rode to town in
the little wagon again, Zeb was not sitting beside her.

The next day was a busy one, but before night the new white
apron was made, the pink ribbon knotted up, and the ring glittering
where Ruth had long desired to see it. “Well, Zeb,”
she said, as she turned down the lane to go to Molly Blake's,
“I want you to make me a flower-pot to-night—sawed in
notches at the top, you know—it 's time to take up my myrtle.”
All day he had been thinking she would say something about
his going with her—disclose some regret, perhaps, when he
should tell her he could not go; but now the poor satisfaction of
giving any expression to his disappointment was denied him, and

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

making pictures in the air, of gayeties in which he could have no
part, he set to work about the flower-pot. He thought hard,
and wrought as hard as he thought, and the little box was soon
completed—notched round at the top, just as had been desired.
It was not yet dark when the work was done, and Zeb held it
up admiringly when he had filled it with fresh earth, and arranged
the long myrtle vines to drop gracefully through the
notches. He placed it in the window of Ruth's room, and, the
task accomplished, there came a feeling of restlessness that he
could not banish, try as he would. The full moon was reddening
among the clouds, and the yellow leaves raining down with
every wind, as, folding his arms, he walked up and down among
the flowers that he had planted in May.

“Ah, Zeb, is that you?” said a good-natured voice, in a familiar
tone; and a young man, driving in a rattling cart, drew up
before the gate, and followed the salutation with an oath and an
inquiry as to Zeb's being at home, when there was “such
almighty attraction abroad.”

Zeb came indolently forward, remarking that his friend was
insensible to that great attraction as well as himself.

“Oh, Jehu!” answered the young man, laughing boisterously,
“I hope you do n't think I was invited. Gracious me! you
do n't expect a wood-chopper like me could get into such a
place as Molly Blake's house?” And he laughed again, saying,
“Zeb, my dear boy, how very verdant you are!”

The man in the cart was, as he said, a wood-chopper—a most
genial and amiable fellow, notwithstanding some buffetings of
adverse fortune—for he had been cast loose on the world at an
early age, and had faced scorn and hunger, laughing all the
time. “Come, come, Zeb,” he said, seeing the moping mood
of the young farmer—“climb into my coach, and allow me to
give you an airing by the light of the moon. In with you! I
can fight down the bluest devils that ever got hold of a chap.”

We are apt to imbibe the spirit of whomever we associate
with, and Zeb affected a liveliness at first which he presently

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

felt, and joined in the wild chorus which the chopper every now
and then pealed out:

They drove rapidly, and talked mirthfully, and soon reached
their destination, the ball-room of the Clovernook tavern, in
which that night a political speech was to be made. It was
late and raining when the meeting broke up, and a portion of
the assemblage adjourned to the bar-room, to wait for the rain
to slack, and to talk off their excitement and prejudice.

“Well, boys,” said our Jehu, who was moved to the highest
pitch of his best humor by the politician's speech, which chanced
to “meet his ideas exactly,” “I feel as if a little drop of something
would do me good; and besides I want you to jine me in
drinking the health of the apple-cutters. Here!” he continued,
exhibiting a bottle to the circle about him, “who of you will
take off the head of this `Lady Anne?”'

But one bottle did not suffice, nor two, nor three; the spirits of
the company rose higher and higher; strong and stronger drinks
were called for—the wood-chopper protesting that he could stand
a treat as well as another, and especially urging the liquor upon
his friend Zeb, topping off each proffer with, “Darn the expense,
old feller; drink, and forget your sorrows, and Molly into the
bargain.” Zeb declined at first, replying that he did n't care
anything about Molly: but it would not do; he was asked if he
feared to vex the proudy, and had so soon surrendered his
manhood to her caprice. At last he yielded to the current so
strongly set against him, and, swearing a great oath, drank off
more brandy than might safely be taken by the most habitual
tippler. But it is not necessary that I linger on that dreadful
night. Alas, for poor Zeb! it was a night that for him had
never any ending.

The sun was struggling up, and the mists were rising out of
the ground like hot steam, when the wood-chopper again drew up

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

his cart before the old farm-house; and arousing his companion
from the straw in which he lay in a fevered and maddened sleep,
assisted him to the ground, balancing him on his feet as one
might a little child, and steadying him as he tried to walk—for
he staggered feebly one way and the other, telling the chopper
he did n't care a damn who saw him, that he was just as good
as any man, and that Molly Blake was the prettiest girl in the
world, and he would fight anybody who said she was not.

“Come, Zeb,” said his companion, “have more pluck; do n't
talk so like a fool;” and passing his arm around him, he continued,
“be like me—be a man!” And with such encouragement,
he brought his friend as near the house as he dared, and
left him to make his entrance alone.

“Zebulon Sands,” said his father, meeting him at the door,
and giving the severest expression to a naturally severe countenance,
“are you not ashamed to show your face to me? I
wish you had died before I saw this day. I do n't want to see
nor speak to you,” he continued, “till you can behave yourself
better.” Ruth stood by, speaking not a word, but looking her
contempt and indignation, while Zeb staggered against the wall,
and with downcast eyes picked the straws out of his hair and
from off his coat. He heard her laugh derisively, saw her turn
away, and when he called her, she did not come—perhaps she
did not hear him. In a moment all the imbecility of drunkenness
was gone—he knew what he had done, and felt a self-condemnation
bitterer than a thousand curses.

The rain came on again after an hour or two, and continued
throughout the day, and Zeb, creeping into the barn, listened to
its falling on the roof, half wishing that some dread accident
would come upon him, whereby a reconciliation with his father
and sister might be brought about. But hour after hour went by,
and the dull and dreary beating of the rain was all he heard;
no gleam of sunshine broke the gloom that was about him; no
voice but the still, reproving one of conscience, met his listening;
so the day faded, and the night fell. At last, worn down physically,
and exhausted mentally, he slept, waking not till the break
of day. The rain had ceased, and the wind was whistling chillily
from the north. He remembered what his father had said to

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

him, and the contemptuous laugh of his sister rang in his ears.
If they had looked kindly on him, his heart would have been
melted; he would have asked their forgiveness, and perhaps
would never again have yielded to temptation, made even
stronger by his transient weakness. But they had met him with
no kindly admonitions, and he had too much pride to seek an
opportunity of humbling himself; so giving one sorrowful look to
the old farmhouse, he pulled the torn hat over his eyes, thrust
his hands in his pockets, and in a few minutes the hills of home
were lost to him forever.

Zeb whistled as he went, not for want of thought, but to drown
it, and he walked fast, in a vain effort to get away from himself.
The sun was scarcely risen when he found himself in the suburbs
of the city, friendless and penniless. I need not describe his
efforts to find employment: of course he understood nothing but
the work to which he had been used, and his rustic manners and
anxious credulity made him liable to constant impositions.

“Well, Ruthy, I wonder if Zeb has found a better place?”
said Mr. Sands one evening about a fortnight after the young man
had gone to seek his fortune.

“I do n't know,” she answered, laying the embers together, for
it was cold enough for fire now; “I do n't know—I do wonder
where he is—but he will take care of himself, I 'll warrant that.”

“I hope he will,” said Mr. Sands; “but I do n't know. He
was always a good boy—I wish I had not been quite so hard
with him.”

The silence that followed was broken by a rap on the door.
“Come in,” said Mr. Sands, and the cousin mentioned as living in
the city suburb entered. Zeb was at his house, and very sick.
The physicians had pronounced his disease small-pox of the most
virulent nature.

With the suspense, some softness had gathered about the hearts
of father and sister; but when this intelligence came, more than
the old hardness returned.

“If he had staid at home and minded his business,” said the

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

father, “he would have been well; as it is, he must get along
the best he can. It would be an awful thing to bring him into
the neighborhood.”

“Dear me, I can 't go to see him,” said Ruth, rolling up her
sleeve, to examine the scar of vaccination. “It was too bad in
Zeb to act so. I hope when he gets well he 'll behave himself.”

“He is very good, all at once,” said the father. “Is he broke
out in the face?”

So the cousin rode back again, little profited by his journey.

Two or three days went by without any further tidings of
Zeb, and then a neighbor chanced to hear in town that he was
very bad; still it was not definitely known that his case was
desperate.

“Very bad!” said Mr. Sands, when he heard this news—
“every body is very bad who has the small-pox: like enough
he 'll be marked for life.” But though he was uneasy, he
neither sent a messenger nor went himself to visit his unhappy
son. For three days nothing further was heard. Ruth said she
thought he must be better, else they would hear; and the father
said he guessed so too, or they would certainly get some news
from him.

The day was one of those deliciously genial ones which sometimes
gladden the autumn; and the father and daughter, well
and strong, could not realize that Zeb was dying. In the afternoon
Ruth went to pass an hour or two and drink tea with a
friend. There were many new things to be seen, and many
interesting matters to be talked about; so her thoughts were
quite drawn away from her brother; or, if now and then they
returned to him, it was less fearfully than they had done before.
It was nightfall when she set out for home, and though the distance
was not long, star after star came out, as, slowly walking,
she recounted all that she had seen and heard that afternoon;
how such an one had made her a new dress, and whether
it were probable that such another were to be married, as reported;
and so, musing, she reached the hill that overlooked
the homestead. All was dark: involuntarily she quickened her
step, and in a moment recognized her father walking backward
and forward in the road before her. His form seemed more

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

than usually bent, and his hands were crossed behind him according
to his habit in times of trouble—and his gray hair was
uncovered, and blown about in the wind. He was waiting for
her she knew, and why he was waiting she felt. “Oh, father,”
she said, seeing he did not speak, “have you heard from Zeb?”

“I wish I had gone to see him, Ruth,” he answered, covering
his face with his hands.

“Is he dead?” she asked in a low tone—for the awful fear
kept her heart still.

“I do n't know,” he answered trembling, “but I 'm afraid
we shall never see him alive. He has not spoken, since last
night at midnight—then he said he should not get well, and
that he should like to see me and you, Ruthy; yet he told
them not to send for us, saying we could do no good, and that
our lives must not be endangered for him.”

“Oh, poor Zeb!” sobbed out the girl, “let us go and see
him. Can 't we go to-night?”

“Dear child, he does not know anybody to-day,” answered
the father, “and has not spoken since sunrise. Poor Zeb! it
is all our fault.”

So, talking and weeping together, they entered the old house.
How lonesome it was! the wind had never been so mournful
before. Ruth remembered when she and Zeb had listened to
it in the autumns that were gone, but it was not dirge-like,
as now. The drifting of the yellow leaves in the moonlight
seemed to have a sorrowful significance; and, years after, Ruth
could not see them fall without recalling something of the feeling
that came upon her that night.

It is a long time since they sat together, father and daughter,
listening to the winds and to the reproaches of their own hearts,
as they remembered their harsh words and hard behavior. It
is a long time since Ruth took from the notched flower-pot
Zeb had made for her the greenest and freshest vines of the
myrtle, and set them over his grave. And once or twice in
every year the wood-chopper may be seen mending the mound,
and pulling the weeds from among the flowers. He has never
been known to “stand a treat” since the night he tempted his
friend to ruin.

p489-469 LEARNING CONTENT.

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

“What on earth am I to do now? I 'd just like to know—
here you are crying out `Mother, mother, mother!' a half a
dozen at a time—may be if I could make myself into two or
three women I might get along.”

So exclaimed Mrs. Polly Williams, throwing down a garment,
on which she had been resolutely and silently stitching,
and her air and manner indicating complete mental and physical
exhaustion. The children, who had caused this violent outbreak
and the more ominous relapse, stood back in affright for
a moment, and then recommenced the gambols and frolicsome
quarreling in which they had been previously engaged.

“I say, Billy, you and Jim pretend to be my horses, and
turn down the red chair and pretend it 's a stage, and get me
on the top and pretend I 'm the driver!” shouted John Williams,
a bright-eyed little fellow, not yet out of petticoats, and his
round rosy cheeks seemed shining with pleasure as he seized
the tongs for a whip.

“Eh, why! that 's a great whip—we won't be horses if you
are going to strike with that,” sung out both boys at once;
upon which the child began making so rapid and terrible a
stampede on the floor as to mollify their prejudices at once.

“Oh, yes, Johny may drive us with the tongs,” they said,
“just as much as he wants to; we can pretend it 's a whip with
two stocks and no lash—a new-fashioned whip that cost fourteen
hundred million dollars;” and turning down the red chair, they
put themselves in the traces, a feat that was accomplished in a
summary way, and by merely taking hold of the chair posts—
after which they trotted off in rather coltish style, looking

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

askance at Johny, who stood sniveling on one side of the room
quite regardless of his team.

In vain they capered and made divers snorts and pitches at
him as they passed; all for some time proved ineffectual; but
ere long his hands slipped from over his eyes, and a slantwise
glance now and then betokened an increasing interest. The
pretended horses, at this juncture, began kicking up their heels
and dashing forward furiously, at the same time crying out at
the top of their voices, “Oh, Johny's team is running away—
they will break the stage all to pieces, and Johny can 't check
them—he is a little coward—Johny is!”

“No, I ain't,” said the young Jehu, indignantly; and uplifting
his two-stocked whip before the brothers, he brought them to a
sudden stand-still, on which he began pulling their hair right
viciously.

“Bubby must n't pull the mane of his colts so hard,” remonstrated
the boys, “or they will get mad and bite.” Then they
opened their mouths to the widest extent and closed them again
with a snap that was in fact rather fearful to see, while Johny,
with laughter on his lips, and the tears in his eyes, climbed upon
the prostrate chair and indicated his wishes by sundry kicks
and thrusts of the tongs.

A few rounds over the carpet, and one or two hair breadth
escapes in crossing the sunken hearth, which the talkative horses
pretended was a new stone-bridge over the Ohio, without protecting
railings, and consequently very dangerous, especially
with skittish colts, had a tendency to bring the little driver into
a phrenzy of good humor, and he began with almost unintelligible
earnestness to announce his progress. “Now we are
just going by the school-house,” said he, “and all the scholars
are trying to look at us: Ab Long will get whipt for shaking
his fist at me, and Rachel Day is running after me to get a
ride: run fast, horses, and get away from her! now we are
away a hundred miles past her, and I expect she is crying like
a good fellow. Whoa! horses, here's the green tavern”—and
he brought up before a dining-table covered with a green shining
oil-cloth, and dismounting, threw the reins, consisting of a string
of white rags, which passed for fair leather, on the ground, in

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

true professional style; and seizing a small tin bucket, in which
the boys carried their dinner to school, he vigorously beat the
air with one arm while he held the bucket beneath the door-knob,
under pretence of pumping water, after which he held the
empty bucket before the faces of the boys, whose noisy inhalations
of air passed for copiously refreshing draughts.

“The looking-glass is the sign—don't you see, Bill? don't
you see it, Jim?” said John, pointing to a small square glass,
in a cherry frame, which was hung with some attempt at style
between the ceiling and the table, having for a back-ground some
two yards of bluish-colored paper, embellished with figures of
chickens and roosters of a bright pink color, decidedly well to
do, an almost defiant aspect, and tails outspread like the huge
fans with which fat old ladies in the country revive themselves
on Sunday afternoons, and also with little black demure
hens having yellow streaks, close at the neck, and widening out
into gores between the wings. This was, in fact, the genteel
part of the house, for closely neighboring the glass was the
skeleton of a clock, standing out from another strip of highly-colored
paper, with nothing but its square white face to screen
from view its curious mechanism of pegs, wires, and wheels,
while the pendulum ticked off the time below, and from hour
to hour the two great iron weights dangled lower and lower,
with a creaky, scraping sound, resembling the thunder of a
caty-did—if such a thing might be—till at length they almost
touched the floor, when the eldest daughter, Maria, whose
honorary privilege it was, climbed upon a little workstand, and
with slow and regular turning of the key, wound the aforesaid
weights quite out of view behind the great white face. But to
return to my young traveler: “Gee up, Bill; gee up, Jim!”
said Johny, taking up the fair leather reins, and snapping the
tongs together by way of cracking his whip; “now I 'm going
by the store; now I 'm going by the flour-mill; now I 'm going
away through the woods; now you must pretend all the chairs
are trees, and that you run against them and break the stage
and kill yourselves!”

“Oh, no, Johny, that's no way at all,” said Jim, looking back
in a dissatisfied way; “you don't know how to travel—I 've

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

studied geography—let me tell you where to go, something
like.”

John remained sullenly silent a moment, and then urging his
team forward, said, “If you know such great things, tell them.”

“Now, Bill, do just as I do,” said Jim, in an earnestly admonishing
way, on which the two boys gave a jump, as sudden,
and over as much distance, as they could, cumbered as they
were with stage-coach and passengers. “Now,” said Jim, “we
are at Cincinnati”—here followed another spring; “now we
are at New York!”—then came a quick succession of springs
and announcements, which took in the world in a few minutes,
and brought them back in front of the green tavern, when the
loud stamping of the mother's foot caused a momentary silence.

“Do you mean to tear the house down?” she exclaimed, in
a very loud and angry tone; “I do think I 've got the worst
boys of anybody in this world; I don't know what to do with
you; it 's no use to try to make you mind; I might as well
speak to the wind—bad, good for nothing boys that you are!
What would you think to see your father and me act as you
do?” The idea was so ludicrous that the boys laughed outright,
in spite of the solemnity of the occasion, and Johny, the
least and most timid, ran under the table, that he might the
more freely indulge his mirthful inclinations.

“Oh, Johny is a rabbit now, that we have burrowed,” said
the boys, dropping on their hands and knees, and barking at
him as much after the manner of dogs, as frequent practice had
enabled them to do.

At this juncture Mrs. Williams arose, and, taking down a
switch that depended menacingly from the ceiling, she brought
it to bear, much as a dexterous thresher would a flail, on so
many bundles of oats. John presently came out, with his
plump little fists in his eyes and a great blue spot on his forehead,
crying as if his heart would break. The older boys
made sundry dives and plunges, in which one of the clock
weights was pulled down and the table set askew, but all efforts
to escape were circumvented, and they soon gave up and joined
in the crying.

“Now,” said Mrs. Williams, with a good deal of exultation

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

in her angry tone, “you have got something to make a noise
for!”

But as their loud clamor subsided into reproachful moans,
the violence of the mother's wrath subsided too, and she began
pouring out lamentations as though she were doomed to all the
suffering in the world. Johny she took up in her arms and
rocked, with many essays, not altogether ineffectual, to kiss his
forehead well—under which treatment the little fellow, forgetting
his team and his bruises, sobbed into sleep. The older boys
picked their nails and turned their faces to their chair-backs,
while a sermon on this wise was inflicted by the matron: “Ain't
you ashamed, James and William, great boys, big enough to
be men, to act as you do, and give your poor mother so much
trouble! Here she sits, making and mending and cooking for
you all day, and you don't care—no, not a bit, you don't care
for your poor mother!” “You don't take the right means to
make us care,” they might have replied, but they said nothing,
and she went on: “Poor old mother! one of these days she 'll
get sick and die, and have to be buried in the ground, and then
what will become of you, and poor father too—at work all day
to get shoes, and bread, and everything—you will be sorry
then you did n't mind mother, and be good little boys.” Quite
overcome with the desolate picture which poor father and his
little orphans made in her imagination, she drew the corner of
her apron before her eyes, and indulged in melancholy reflections
much longer than, under the circumstances, she should
have done, for it was nearly night, and Mrs. Polly Williams
was a farmer's wife, and the evening should have been a busy
time—the tea-kettle should have been filled, the milk skimmed,
the room set in order, and many other things done, the while
her checked apron was being moistened with tears, that she said
nobody cared for.

Meantime, Jonathan Williams, whose shadow, as he plowed,
stretched half way across the field behind him, looked anxiously
towards the house, for he was tired and not sorry to see the sun
descending so near the western tree-tops. “What can be the
matter with Polly?” he thought, as he came over the ridge
and saw the house looking still and desolate, while all the

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

neighboring homes were enveloped with wreaths of smoke,
pleasantly indicative of approaching supper. “It is time, too,
the boys were coming for the cows; I wonder if our folks are
all dead, or what on earth they are about!” After another
moment's hesitation, he concluded to plow one more round,
before leaving off work for the day. The field in which he
was engaged joined that of his neighbor, Thomas Giles, who
ohanced also to be plowing; and it further happened that the
two teams drew up to the dividing fence together.

“Well, Mr. Williams,” said Mr. Giles, “how does plowing
go—ground in pretty good order?”

“So so,” answered Williams, too much disturbed in mind to
appreciate correctly his neighbor's question, perhaps.

“A nice colt that bay of yours: how many hands high is
he?” asked Giles, leaning over the fence and patting his arched
neck caressingly.

“Nice-looking enough,” answered Williams; “but his sight,
you see,” —

“Humph!—pity—but he has the eye of a kind critter;”
and Giles combed the long mane of the proud-looking animal,
with his fingers, as though he thought him a pretty good colt
after all. “Trade him,” he added, after a moment, “if a fellow
would give you boot enough?”

“No, sir! I have no idea of selling or trading him,” and
Mr. Williams looked toward his house, which was now out of
view, saying, “I must be getting along home.”

“Time for me, too,” said Giles; “I see by the smoke that
supper is ready, and I only meant to stop long enough to send
a message from my wife to yours, which is nothing more nor
less than an invitation from my wife to your wife to come to
our house to-morrow afternoon. `Early,' my wife told me to
say, and that she would be disappointed if your wife did n't
come.”

“I 'll tell her,” said Williams; and loosening the traces, he
sent his horses homeward alone, and set out himself in search
of the cows; while Giles plodded along, wondering whether
his neighbor had a touch of the rheumatism, (the weather had
been damp) or what made him so down-hearted. As he drew

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

near home, his wife came forth, with her milk-pail, and a deep
sun-bonnet pulled down over her face. Little Daniel Giles
stood beneath a cherry-tree, varying his idleness by throwing
stones at the chickens which were going to roost in the boughs;
the mother paused, gave him a silent shake, boxed his ears,
right and left, and passed on, without so much as glancing at
Tommy.

“Why, Emeline, what sends you out to milk to-night?” said
the husband, kindly, as tucking up her skirts she placed herself
beside a little kicking heifer, with brindled hide, and horns
bent close together, switching her tail in the woman's face
by way of salutation.

“What sends me? why, it's time somebody was milking, I'm
sure.” Scarcely had she finished the sentence, when away went
the pail, with a deep indention in one side, and the little cow
was seen running and tossing her head in an opposite direction.

“Don't try to milk the ugly brute, Emeline,” said Mr. Giles,
consolingly; “it's as much as I can do.”

But Mrs. Giles, after shaking the milk from her apron, took
up the pail in silence, and resolutely resumed her milking.
Directly, however, she was left beside her overturned pail,
alone, and the tears, in spite of her winking and pulling down
the bonnet, dropped one after another down her cheeks.

“If you had minded me, that would not have happened,”
was the first exclamation of the husband; but when he saw her
tears, his tone changed to one of kind commiseration, and reaching
for the pail, to which she firmly held, he said, “Do n't, Emeline;
do n't be so stubborn; go in and prepare the supper while
I milk; come, Emelime, come—I expect Polly Williams will
come to see you to-morrow.”

“I do n't care for Polly Williams; I'm sorry she is coming,”
sobbed Mrs. Giles; but her heart was softened a little, evidently,
for she loosened her hold on the pail, which Mr. Giles
took, as he continued, “To be sure, Emeline, Polly Williams
is n't you, but I guess she is a good clever woman, for you
know she comes into our house if any of us is ailing, just as
though it was her own; she seems to know just where and how
to take hold.”

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

“She ought to have some good about her, the dear knows,”
persisted Mrs. Giles, the fires of whose anger were not yet all
burned down; “but I suppose if she is coming there is no help
for it.”

“Why, you told me this very noon-time,” answered the husband,
“just as I was dipping a tin of water from the pine
bucket—with your own lips you told me to try and get word
to Polly to come over here a visiting to-morrow afternoon.”

“Well, what if I did?”

“Nothing: only I supposed you wanted her to come.”

“Oh, you suppose great things, sometimes.”

“Well, well, never mind,” said Mr. Giles; “I do n't want
to quarrel, and I do want my supper.”

“You are always finding fault with me,” said Mrs. Giles,
petulantly, “when I try to do everything;” and then came out
one cause, at least, of the vexation—supper had been waiting
half an hour.

When the supper had been eaten by the husband, in silence,
(Mrs. Giles did n't want any, she had a headache,) and removed
suddenly, and the children were all asleep, happy in dreams of
new hen's nests, perhaps, Mr. Giles drew his chair up to that
of his wife, where she sat in a streak of moonlight, leaning her
head on her hand.

“Emeline,” he said, pressing between both his toil-hardened
hands one of hers, “don't you remember one night, when we
were walking down the lane, and you blushed that I called you
Mrs. Giles—for your name was not Mrs. Giles then—we saw
riding home from market Mr. and Mrs. Griffith, looking as
though none the happier for being together, and I said to you,
`Emeline, is that the way we shall do, by-and-by?' and you
said, `If I ever look so cross, Tommy, I shall not expect you to
love me.' Then,” he added, half sorrowfully, half reproachfully,
“I did n't think you ever would.”

Poor Mrs. Giles—over all her worn and faded and chilling
experiences, came a wave from that fountain that is always
fresh—she did n't look cross any more.

The next morning she went about preparations for Mrs.
Williams, cheerfully, though she said it was troublesome to

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

have visitors; but she should never be any more ready than
she was then, she supposed. And so, with sweating and toiling
and some scolding, she prepared custards and cakes, and such
other delicacies as farmhouses afford, arranging the dinner
meantime, that all might be in readiness at an early hour.

The children, who were frolicsome and noisy and not too obedient,
were called together from tree-tops and mud-puddles, and
from under the barn—their faces and hands reduced to a natural
color by soap and water applications, their heads, which Mrs.
Giles said looked like so many brush-heaps, combed and curled,
and their torn and soiled garments exchanged for neat and clean
ones—and they were told they must see how pretty they could
act, for that Mrs. Williams was going to bring her three nice
little boys, who would be frightened to death if they behaved
as they were accustomed to. A dozen whippings would not
have been so effectual, and, tying on bonnets and hats, they
walked down the lane and settled themselves in the shade of
a tree to greet the coming of their visitors. They did not have
long to wait, for the shadows were only slanting a little from
noon when Mrs. Williams, with three accompaniments, whom
she called at home the torments of her life, and abroad her
troublesome comforts, was seen coming over the hill, in a dress,
of a stiff woollen stuff, which she had worn from time immemorial,
and holding before her face the faded green parasol which
she had carried just about as long.

“I'll declare,” said Mrs. Giles, slipping out of one dress and
into another, “she might as well have come before dinner, and
be done with it; what on earth can I find to say all this long
afternoon?” The new cap was hardly tied when the creaking
of the gate announced the near approach of her neighbor, and
as Mrs. Giles opened the door her face broke into the happiest
smile. “Really, Polly,” she said, violently shaking hands, “it
does a body good to see you once more.”

“I am sure,” answered Mrs. Williams, “I ain't much to see,
and if I look happy it 's because I 've come to your house, where
everything is so nice;” and the two ladies, mutually pleased,
and, laughing as though they never did anything else, walked
into the house together.

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

When, the previous evening, Mr. Williams brought home
the cows, with some misgivings he approached the house, for
he yet saw no indication of life thereabouts. “Why, Polly,
what in the world has happened?” he said, placing his hands on
either side of the door, and looking anxiously within; but
Polly neither looked up nor made any reply. “Heard any
bad news, any way?” he said, after a pause. Mrs. Williams
shook her head; and after a moment of bewildered silence, and
seeing his boys lopping over the backs of their chairs, with
swollen eyes and red noses, he renewed his efforts to ascertain
what manner of calamity could have overtaken his household.
“Sick, any of you?” he said, in a tone between petulance and
tenderness.

Mrs. Williams partly removed the apron from her eyes, and
looked askance at her husband, revealing a face reddened with
tears, but she only shook her head, this time more mournfully
than before.

“Then what is the matter? seems to me you act strangely,
for nothing.”

After lingering in vain anxiety a little while longer, he proceeded
to kindle a fire, and fill the tea-kettle; and Mrs. Williams,
laying her baby in the cradle, presently went about
preparations for supper. No farther explanation was asked or
given, and a night's sleep operated to restore things to their
usual tenor.

“I had a little talk with Mr. Giles, last evening,” said Mr.
Williams, at breakfast.

“Did you?” said Mrs. Williams; “well, what did he have
to say?”

“Oh, not much—he liked our bay colt pretty well, and he
said his wife said she wanted you to come over there this afternoon—
airly, he said she said.”

“I have quite as much as I can get along with, at home,”
said Mrs. Williams; and she looked as though she endured a
great many hardships that nobody cared anything about.

“Well, do as you like, Polly,” said Mr. Williams, as he

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

went out to his day's labor; “but he said, Emeline said
she wanted you to come, and bring the children, he said, she
said.”

“I am sure I do n't care much about visiting anywhere, and
least of all about visiting Mrs. Giles.”

“Why, what have you against Mrs. Giles? she is a nice
woman, I am sure—beautiful day, I guess it will turn out.”

“Oh, I have nothing particular against her—I don't lay up
hard thoughts against anybody,” said the wife; “but it seems
to me it would be hard work to talk to Mrs. Giles to-day.”

Notwithstanding all Mrs. Williams said, and half believed,
she went more briskly about her work than usual, though, when
the children asked if she was going, she replied, vaguely, that
she would “see about it.”

“Toot-to-to-to-o-o!” went the dinner-horn, at half-past eleven,
and Mr. Williams hastened home, for he well knew that visiting
was to be done. “And so you have concluded to go, have you,
Polly?” he said, as he sat down to dinner.

“I suppose I may as well go, and be done with it,” she
replied, “if I have it to do; and the children are all crazy to go;
the day is pleasant, and there is nothing more than there always
is to prevent; and so I must put on the old black dress that
everbody is tired of seeing, and trot along in the sun—I 'll be
glad when it 's over.”

An hour thereafter the happy meeting took place.

“I was so afraid you would not come,” said Mrs. Giles,
untying the bonnet-strings of her friend, “for I had the queerest
dream last night, and it has seemed to me that something bad
was going to happen.”

“I do hate to be plagued with ugly dreams,” said Mrs. Williams;
“but what was it about?”

“Why,” said Mrs. Giles, “I dreamed that you were sick,
and it did not seem precisely as if you were sick, either, but
you were blind, and I thought your face was white as a cloth,
and I tried to get where you were, for I saw you walking about
in your own yard, but I kept falling as I tried to walk, and
could n't get along, and when at last I was nearly there, I found
that I had no shoes on; still I thought I must go on, and just

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

as I opened the gate a great dog sprung at me and took me
right in the wrist, and I fairly jumped out of my skin and
waked right up—wide awake as I am now. A good little bit
it seemed to me as if it was the truth, for I could see just how
you looked, and the thought of the cross beast made me almost
trimble; all I could do I could n't get to sleep again, and as
soon as the first roosters crowed for daylight I got up, and it
appeared like I could have no peace till I saw you.”

“Some people think,” said Mrs. Williams, “that the state
of the mind, or the supper we eat, or something or other, influences
our dreams, but I don't think any such thing.”

“No, nor I,” answered Mrs. Giles, though she thought of
retiring supperless, and of some unpleasant words and feelings
previously; she did not speak of them, however. “I am sure
I have had dreams that were-omens-like,” resumed Mrs. Giles,
sadly; “along before my poor little Emeline died, I dreamed
one night that a strange woman, dressed in white, came to the
door and asked me to see the baby, and though I did n't know
who she was, it seemed to me that I must do as she bid, and I
put little Emeline in her arms and she carried her away—
walking right through the air, I thought. It was only a little
while till she took sick and died.”

At this recital the eyes of both the ladies filled with tears,
and their hearts flowed right together. The children stood in
silent wonder and fear, that seemed to say, “Why do you cry,
mother?” Mrs. Giles gave them some cakes and told them to
go out to some shady place and play, for that they were seeing
their best days. They did not believe that, though they obeyed,
and presently their merry shouts and laughter indicated that
their days were very good ones, whether their best or not.

How easily we are acted upon by outward influences! the
lively carol of a bird, a merry peal of laughter, or a smiling
face, gives tone and color to our feelings, and unconsciously we
begin to look at the cheerful side of things; and so, as the two
ladies heard the pleasant sport of their children, their thoughts
flowed into pleasant channels; and as they rocked by the vinecurtained
window, they chattered like two magpies—now of
the garden, now of the children and the school, now of what

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

they had got, and now of what they proposed to get, all of
which subjects were spiced occasionally with a little harmless
gossip.

“How well that dress does wear,” said Mrs. Giles, rubbing
the sleeve of her friend's gown between her fingers; “and it
looks just as good as new, yet—I wish I could get such a
thing.”

“I always thought it was a good black,” replied Mrs. Williams,
“and it does seem as if there was no wear out to it, and
it 's the handiest kind of a dress, for, being worsted, I can wear
it in winter, and yet it is so stiff and cool that I can wear it in
summer just as well as if it were lawn.”

“I 'll dare say,” said Mrs. Giles; “where did you get the
piece? I must have one just like it the first time I go to town.”

To have heard the conversation of the women, their little
confidences, and sly inuendoes, about Mr. Smith and Mrs. Hill,
and the way they managed things, you would have supposed
them two of the best friends in the world, and withal very
amiable. And so in fact they were, as friends and amiability
go; neither, as she had anticipated, felt at any loss for something
to say, and the hours glided swiftly by.

“La, bless me!” exclaimed Mrs. Giles, suddenly throwing
down her work; “just look at that shadder—why, the afternoon
don't seem to me to have been a minute long”—

“Did you ever! who would have thought it?” said Mrs.
Williams; but there they were, the long sunset shadows stretching
across the yard, and it was time for Mrs. Giles to make her
biscuits. “I guess, Polly,” she said, “you will have to move
your chair into the kitchen, for I don't like to leave you long
enough to get supper, and it 's getting so late that I must spring
about.” So they adjourned together, and Mrs. Giles, tying on
a checked apron and rolling back her sleeves, kneaded the
flour vigorously, and the tea-kettle was presently steaming like
an engine, and an extra large “drawing of tea” was steeping on
the hearth.

“Now, Emeline,” said Mrs. Williams, lifting the tea-table
into the middle of the floor, “you need n't say one word, for I
am going to set the table for you.”

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

“No, Polly, you are not going to do any such a thing; it's
a pretty story if you must go to work when you come to visit;
now just sit down and make yourself comfortable.”

“I shall do no such a thing,” said Polly, “that is, I won't sit
in my laziness when you are at work; it will make me a good
deal more comfortable to help; I'd be ashamed,” she continued,
laughing, “to tell you what you should n't do, if you were at
my house.”

“Well, have your own way, and live the longer,” replied
Emeline, playfully tossing the table-cloth toward her friend,
who proceeded to arrange the tea-things with as much ease and
grace as if she were at home.

The new dishes were admired; the quality of the sugar examined,
both ladies agreeing that it was the whitest brown
sugar they had ever seen, and so cheap; the knives and forks
were thought by Mrs. Williams perfect loves—so small and
highly finished; and Mrs. Giles thought them so too, though she
said she did n't know as they were anything more than common.

“I will have a set just like them before I am a month older,”
said Mrs. Polly Williams.

“And I will have a dress just like yours,” replied Mrs. Giles,
“and I must borrow the pattern too—it fits so beautifully.”
So, it was agreed that they should go to town together—Mrs.
Giles for the dress, and Mrs. Williams for the knives and forks.
Only the previous evening Mrs. Giles had said she hoped to
have some new knives and forks before Mrs. Williams came
again, though she supposed the old ones would have to do.

What a pleasant time they had, drinking tea together! the
cake had not one heavy streak, or if it had, neither of them
saw it; and the custard was baked just enough, the biscuits
were as light and white as new fallen snow, and the butter and
the honey, all the supper, in fact, was unexceptionable; of
course Mrs. Williams praised everything, and of course Mrs.
Giles was pleased; and as for the children, they were perfectly
happy, till the time of parting. “Now you must come right
soon, and bring all the children,” said Mrs. Williams, when
they separated at the end of the lane.

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

“Oh, yes, I shall come soon, but don't wait for me; whenever
you can, take your work and run over.”

And after much lingering, and invitations iterated and reiterated,
and promises made over and over, each to the other,
that she would be more sociable, they parted. And certainly
there was no affectation of interest they did not feel; the crust
of selfishness that gathered over their hearts, in isolation, was
rubbed off by contact, and the hard feeling, engendered by too
frequent contemplation of the darkest side of things, was changed
into kindness under the influence of genial looks and words—
so much in this journey of life do little things discourage, or
help us on.

When Mrs. Polly Williams opened the gate at home, she
saw her husband sitting by the open door, waiting and looking
for her; the milking was done, and the kettle boiling, and it
seemed no trouble at all to prepare supper for him; and the
less, perhaps, that he said, “Do n't give yourself trouble, Polly;
just set out anything that's convenient, and never mind changing
your dress and cooking for me.”

“It will only require a minute,” replied the wife, unslipping
the hooks, for the old black dress had acquired a new value,
and, turning it wrong side out, she hung it away more carefully
than she had done for a year.

“Well, how did you like your visit?” asked the husband,
drawing his chair inside the door, as the dishes began to rattle
down on to the table.

“Oh, it was the best visit I ever had; Emeline had everything
so nice, and was so glad to see me.” Then she related
many little particulars, only interesting to them—sipping tea,
the while, not that she wanted any, but merely for company's
sake; and saying, in conclusion, that if her children were only
like Emeline's, she would be so glad!

Meantime, Mrs. Giles returned, and began washing her dishes,
and singing as she did so, while Mr. Giles sat by, looking pleased
and happy. “Just step into the pantry, my dear,” said Mrs.
Giles, (she had not said “my dear,” previously, for a long time)
“and get me a nice piece of brown paper to wrap these knives

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

and forks in,” and she looked at them admiringly, as she rubbed
them through the tea-towel.

“And did you find the afternoon as tedious as you expected?”
inquired the husband, bringing the paper; but the wife was so
busy in praising the children of Mrs. Williams, that she did not
seem to hear him, though perhaps she did, and meant it a reply
when she said, “La, me! everybody has their little faults, and
little troubles, too, I expect—we are none of us perfect. Just
put the knives and forks on the upper shelf.”

p489-485 TWO VISITS.

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

Two very excellent families were the Knights and Lytles,
neighbors of ours years ago. But they were most unlike each
other in disposition and character. Mrs. Knight was imbedded
in old-fashioned notions, out of which she could not be lifted by
any sort of modern invention, however skillfully contrived;
she was so meek that she considered herself unworthy of the
earnings of her own hands; she was also gloomy and dispondent;
but her friend Mrs. Lytle was altogether different.
Mrs. Knight had consolation for all the ills of life, in the comforting
reflection that it would soon be over, though she sometimes
said she would be happy in it if she had anything to
make her so. As to whether Mrs. Knight would have been
very cheerful under any circumstances, seems to me a little
doubtful, for no one but herself could see anything very adverse
in her fortune. She was really a kind woman at heart, but she
had no sight except for the dark side of things, and this, linked
with extreme modesty, amounting frequently to a painful diffidence,
made her singularly, and, as far as others could perceive,
needlessly wretched. She was the wife of what is termed a
well-to-do farmer, a man whose energy and upright dealing
had won for him the respect of all his acquaintances. When a
young man he had earned with his own hands the land on
which he lived, clearing off the timber, burning the brush,
rolling the logs together, and going through the various privations
and hardships, of which we know so little, except from
the reminiscences of pioneers. When a portion of the land
had been cleared, and fences made, a young orchard planted,

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

and ground broken for the first crops, in the interval between
sowing and harvesting he set about building a house; and
when the wheat was stacked and the cornstocks rustling in the
autumn wind, the smoke from as snug a cabin as was to be
found in all the neighborhood, blew across the hills, pleasantly
reminding him of the young and pretty girl whom he had
scarcely learned to call his wife; and so he wrought with more
hope and energy than before. Of course, prosperity mated
herself with him, and the fields grew broader and wider, and
the shadows of the orchard trees covered all the ground, while
flocks of cattle and sheep dotted the pastures. But with these
years I have little to do, only as the light reflected from them
shows that Mrs. Knight had at least a provident husband.

At the time of which I write, they were in the maturity of
life—old people I thought them, for I was not so old as I am
now, and as we grow older we do not look on years as we do
in childhood and youth. How long are the days then, and the
years! it seems as if they would never end; but they pass
more and more fleetly, dropping one after another into the
strangely mingled sea that is behind us, and before we are
aware the shadows are lengthening from the sunset.

There was a sprinkle of gray among the yet thick locks of
Mr. Knight, and the smooth brown hair of the wife and mother
was now under a plain cap, though you might see a few betraying
lines of silver. Their home was no longer in the cabin
in which their first wedded years were passed, for there came
more to dwell in it than there was room for, and, with larger
means, an ampler and more convenient habitation had been
provided. They occupied a plain substantial brick house when
I knew them, having about them all the conveniences of comfort,
if not of elegance, and as I said “daughters and sons of beauty”
to gladden with the freshness of youth the worn experiences
and common realities of life.

“As the husband is, the wife is,” Tennyson says, and though
generally this may be true, it is not always so, and Mrs.
Knight was an exception to the rule. Had she evinced in the
management of her house and children the spirit and tact of
her husband in the management of his affairs, home would not

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

have been the uninviting place it was. The little arts which
beautify and adorn and make comfortable the humblest cabin,
she knew nothing about. True, she had been in early life
accustomed to privations, for rigid economy was then necessary,
and nothing beyond actual wants was thought of. But with
more liberal means there came to her no desires transcending
any strict necessity.

The fashion of the times had changed, and the requirements
of people “in society” were greatly enlarged, but Mrs. Knight
remained far behind everybody else, partly that she thought
herself unworthy to fare better than her grandmother, and
partly that life seemed to her too sorrowful a thing to bedeck
with any ornaments, for, as I said before, she had a wonderfully
quick apprehension for what was evil; and perhaps, too, she
was over frugal.

It is a great while—I scarcely dare suggest how long—since
I first visited her, but all that then occurred is as fresh in my
memory as if it were an incident of yesterday. The chimney
tops were in view of my own home, and as Mr. Knight often
passed our house on his way to market, I knew him very well,
and he had often invited me to visit his wife, which I had never
felt at liberty, from her retiring manners, to do. At length,
however, I resolved, at least to show myself friendly, for perhaps,
thought I, the fault has not been all on her side. So, one
pleasant a ternoon in October, I arrayed myself in a gingham
dress, which had been washed and ironed, and with the stoutest
pair of shoes and the oldest bonnet I had—selecting my
costume with a view to the prejudices of the woman I was to
visit—speedily after dinner, which was at one o'clock, set out,
carrying a bundle of sewing which would have served me
at home for a week. I soon reached the farm, and, as I was
passing through the fennel that fringed the roadside, came to
an opening in the fence, where, seated on rails that slanted to
the ground, were two little black-eyed girls, whom I recognized
as the youngest children of Mr. and Mrs. Knight.

“What are you doing here, my little friends?” I said, pausing
a moment; but neither answered a word, and the youngest—
ten years old, perhaps—seized a rough club which lay beside

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

her, and ran violently in the direction of a drove of cattle,
mostly fine milch cows, peaceably feeding in the pasture which
bordered the roadside.

The older sister, after picking the briars from her toes with a
brass pin, turned her blushing face half toward me, as I
repeated the question, and added, “I am just going to your
house,” and she told me, biting the hem of her sleeve, that
they were “tending the gap,” for that papa and mamma were
both gathering apples in the orchard beyond the meadow, and
the fence was down for them to drive home. As I spoke, I
saw the team approaching, and, leaning on the fence, waited its
coming near us, resolved to tell Mr. Knight of my good
intentions, and await a more opportune season for my visit.
But the good man would not hear a word of my returning
home, and forcing a dozen apples of different kinds into my
hands, he said, “A pretty piece of work, to-be-sure, that we
should be disappointed of seeing you. Rachel happens to be
in the orchard, but there is no need of it—Jane Anne!” he
cried to the little girls, “leave off your chasing them are critters,
and run and tell your mammy that company is at the house—
clicket, you good-for-nothings!” This last piece of advice I
thought quite gratuitous, for they set off at such a rate that
one might have said,


“The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.”
Thus encouraged, I went forward, and was soon at the house.

Mr. Knight informed me as he opened the gate, that he
should be at the cider-press till supper time, but that Rachel
and the girls would entertain me; and he added an expression
of regret that he was not himself more at leisure. As I
entered the yard, I saw that there were no walks cut through
the sod, and that the grass was trampled away as it chanced,
and beneath the tree (there was but one near the house) trodden
quite bare; and torn pieces of calico, bits of boards, and broken
china, spoke of a demolished play-house. There were no

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

flowers, nor snrubs to be seen, except a spindling “Jacob's
Ladder” which grew in a broken teapot, beneath the parlor
window.

I rapt smartly at the front door, but received no answer.
Indeed, after listening a moment, I was satisfied I should not
be able to make myself heard, for from a chamber window
came a sound like small thunder. The young ladies were
spinning wool, and running races, as it seemed by the whurr,
buzz and tumult, that came to my ears; so, after a little
reflection, I concluded to sit down on the steps and wait the
coming of Mrs. Knight, but the husband, seeing this, called to
me to go right in and make myself at home, and feeling that
my delay would annoy him, I did so. But as he leaned back
over the three bundles of rye through which the gleam of the
red apples shone, I could see that he was not smiling. The
door opened immediately into the parlor, and seating myself
there, I had some leisure for a survey of the style in which our
neighbors were living. The walls were bare, but white-washed;
the floor was covered with a home-made carpet, striped alternately
with green and red and yellow; six black windsor chairs
stood in a straight line against the wall; a bed with a white
muslin tester was in one corner; and an old-fashioned bureau,
on which lay a Bible and hymn-book, and a breakfast table,
covered with a green and red oil-cloth, completed the furniture,
except that the windows were shaded with highly-colored wallpaper.
On one side of the chimney was a cupboard with glazed
doors, originally designed for china, but filled with a variety of
coverlids, varying in color from the faintest blue to the deepest
red that could be dyed with pokeberries and pumpkin rinds.
All was stiff and angular, and a smell of paint pervaded the
atmosphere.

Many times I fancied I heard the creak of the gate; and at
last, weary of waiting, I went to the window, assured that I
detected steps and voices. Nor was I mistaken, for beneath the
window, wringing a fleece of wool from the dye, and spreading
it out on the grass, was Mrs. Knight. I was about tapping
on the window, to inform her of my presence, when she spoke
so harshly to the children, who were getting their play-house to

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

rights, that I resumed my seat, resolved to await her leisure;
and when her work was completed, with hands the color of an
indigo bag, I perceived that she bent her steps in the direction
of the kitchen.

The time I deemed sufficient for any little preparation she
might wish to make went by, and I began to find my position
rather awkward, especially as I could hear her, apparently
engaged in household duties, as though altogether unadvised of
my being in the house. The children now began to climb up
at the window, and looked in at me, laughing and hiding their
heads alternately.

“Is your mother at home?” I asked, thinking still she was
ignorant of my being there. It was some time before I could
get an intelligible response, and then I was told that she was
making bread in the kitchen.

I was half inclined to return home, but remembering Mr.
Knight's efforts toward sociability, I determined to press still
further, and, retreating from my position, I stepped to the door
of the kitchen, and made a sort of half apologetic observation in
answer to the unsmiling face which presented itself; and on
helping myself to a chair, as I was bidden, I followed my uneasy
salutation with some deprecatory remarks, in a subdued tone,
on the circumstances of our meeting, and of the pleasures of
agreeable neighborhood.

The day was warm, the sun streamed against uncurtained
windows, the wood blazed in the deep fire-place, and the numberless
flies blackened the air; but the woman wrought on unmoved.

I drew my chair to the open door, and, unfolding my work,
began to stitch, with great energy, talking the while of such
things as I supposed would interest her. She said little, however,
and that, as it were, by compulsion.

“Are the young ladies well?” I said, after a long silence,
during which I had been examining the array of pots and
skillets she was bringing about the hearth.

“The gals, if you mean them, are well enough,” she answered.

“I have not seen them for a long while,” I remarked.

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

“No, I guess you havn't,” she replied; “they are no gadabouts.”

I felt rebuked, but added that I was not often abroad myself,
and so should not be likely to meet them.

“They are spinning, probably?” I continued, after a moment.

She did not reply directly, but wiping her face with her
apron, exclaimed, `Marcysakes on us! I wish I was in Joppa—
it's so hot here!”

“Yes, it is very warm,” I said, “but you have cooler
rooms?”

“I have no time to sit in them,” she said, adding presently,
“I don't know as it is any difference about me—I am not fit
for anything but to work, as I know of.”

I attempted a smile, and suggested that she was fit for anything
proper for a woman, I supposed. She took her chin in
her hand and remained silent, looking as though she might be
musing of the dead.

At this point the youngest child, whose timidity was fast
vanishing, and who felt, no doubt, some desire to amuse me,
sprang upon the table, and seizing a newspaper, from among a
number that were strung over a cord attached to the wall near
the ceiling, began showing me a picture of the president, with
which it was embellished.

“Is that the way you sarve your father's papers!” exclaimed
Mrs. Knight; “I'll president you, if you don't put that up.”

Mr. Knight was a man of some intelligence, took a political
newspaper, which he read, and was pretty well versed in affairs
generally, but to the rest of the family, the paper might as well
have been written in Greek, for all they knew about it. It
was not thought possible, indeed, that they could read or understand
anything contained in it, and as soon as it was read
by the man of the house, it was hung above the reach of the
children, who learned to regard it as something especially
designed for old men in spectacles to look at on Sundays. I
felt in part to blame for the misdemeanor of the child, if misdemeanor
it were, as it was on my account she had violated
what seemed to be the law here. Therefore I was not sorry
when, taking a skimmer in her hand, Mrs. Knight went into the

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

cellar to attend to some necessary duty, as I supposed, for she
made no explanation or apology. There was thus presented
a fine opportunity for the little girls to display the juvenile
spirit which paternal authority generally kept subdued within
them. They were perhaps a little ambitious too, for the
exhibition of some of their various accomplishments before a
visitor. So, concealing themselves from observation, though
not from hearing, they began.

“It rains, but it don't wet; it's night, but it's not dark;
and if I was at your house I'd go home,” said the youngest
evidently designing that I should make the application.

“Oh, Jane Anne, ain't you ashamed!” exclaimed the eldest,
and then, by way of diverting my thoughts, perhaps, she
repeated a puzzling enigma, which she defied anybody and
everybody to guess: “Four stiff-standers, four down-hangers,
two crook-abouts, two look-abouts, and a whisk-about.”

“Eh! who couldn't guess that?—it's nothing but a cow,”
replied Jane Anne; “I can tell one that's harder: now listen;”
and though probably the sister had heard the riddle a hundred
times before, she was as attentive as if it were the most startling
novelty:

“Well, then, I am wise, for it's frost,” replied Sally; but I
doubt whether she could have come to this conclusion so
readily from any meaning of the words. “Now I'll tell one
you can't guess:

“Tongs, tongs!” shouted Jane Anne, and continued:

“Who don't know that!” said Sally, disdainfully refusing
to guess.

I need not repeat more of the original and ingenious rhymes,
with which they tested each other's wit, further than to state

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

that they were just breaking up what they termed their riddle
party, in the ceremonial of—

“Out goes she, I think!” exclaimed the mother, suddenly
appearing, with a great basin of milk in her hands, which,
having disposed of, she took the children, one at a time, by the
ear, and leading them directly before me, in order to make
them the more ashamed, imprisoned one in the pantry, and the
other in the smoke-house, where for the present I leave them.

“Dear me, I don't know what will become of us all,” said
the outraged mother, speaking rather to herself than to me, as
the excitement of the arrest subsided a little.

“Children will be children,” said I, by way of consolation,
and supposing she alluded to them.

She was seated on a low door step, near me but not facing
me, and, with her head dropt on her bosom, continued talking
to the air, something after this wise: “Massy on us! I don't
know what to do, nor what will become of us—all will go to
rack and ruin! Chasing the cows and one thing and another—
strange the child had no more consideration—her new frock—
she has torn a great three-cornered place in the skirt, and I
don't see how we are to make any money—apples don't bring
anything—nothing ever does that we have to sell—butter is
down to a quarter, and we eat half we make—if it wasn't, I
can't begin to count my troubles.”

“I suppose,” I interrupted, “we could all recollect some
troubles if we were to try; but if we look round, we may
commonly see people worse off;” and, to divert her thoughts, I
spoke of the widow Day, a poor woman with two little boys,
one of whom was lying sick.

“Yes,” she answered, “there are people even worse off than
we—but we'll all be done with life pretty soon: it won't be long.”

“It seems only a little time to those who stay here longest,”
I said; “but while we are here, it is best to avail ourselves of
every harmless means of enjoyment in our power, and you
have as much to make you happy as most persons.”

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

“I can work hard and fare hard, and yet no thanks,” she
replied, looking mournfully on the ground, her thin face full of
untimely wrinkles.

There was no need, that I could see, of her working hard or
faring hard. She seemed to like privation, to feel that sacrifice
was not only a duty, but a privilege.

While I was deliberating what I would say next, a man who
was carrying earthen pumps about the country, presented himself,
and asked whether her husband would not like to procure
one; saying, as he glanced at the well, “I see you use the
hard old-fashioned sweep?”

“Yes, and I expect to use it a good while longer,” she
replied: “we don't want any pump, and if we did, we are not
able to get it.”

“You own this farm, I suppose?” the man said, glancing
over the broad, well-cultivated fields.

“Yes, but money don't grow on bushes,” rejoined Mrs.
Knight, “and we have our taxes to pay, and the children will
all be wanting shoes, the first thing, you know—the frosts
come so airly of late years.”

“I sold one at the white house, yonder, and they are
delighted with it. You have no idea of the ease and comfort
and beauty of the thing; and, so far from adulterating the
water, I think it rather has purifying qualities.”

“The folks in the white house are rich,” said the unhappy
woman, “and able to get a gold pump if they wanted it; but
I told you we had no money to spend for pumps, and I shouldn't
want it if we had, for we once had one that fairly made the
water blue.”

The man assured her his patent stone-ware pump was quite
unexceptionable, and saying he would call when her husband
was in, asked the privilege of lighting a cigar, which he had
been twirling in his fingers during the conversation. As he
stooped over the row of skillets, spiders, Dutch ovens, and
the like, in which bread was rising, before fire, hot enough to
roast an ox, he remarked that he was an agent for one of the
most celebrated cooking-stoves in use.

“Well,” said Mrs. Knight, seeing that he paused for a

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

reply, “keep them, for all me; I don't like your stoves nor
the smell of your tobaccar.”

Though the pump had been far better than represented, she
would have had nothing to do with it. The old way, she said,
was good enough for her—she should not want anything long.
She seemed to think whatever lessened labor was a grievous
wrong; and whatever tended to pleasure, was something with
which she or her family by no possibility could have anything
to do.

Modern fashions were also prohibited; the cut of her gown
and the shape of her bonnet had been common ten or fifteen
years before—it required that length of time for the sinfulness
to get out of their cut, I suppose.

There are people, and Mrs. Knight was of them, who stand
aloof and seem to feel themselves fated to stand aloof from the
general interests and enjoyments of life.

If her husband prevailed on her to go and hear a Fourth of
July oration, she dressed her children like miniature men and
women, in long narrow skirt and fur hats, kept them sitting
stiff and upright close beside her during the blessed intermission,
when other children bought beer and gingercakes, and returned
home before the dinner was served under the long green
arbor; and while other girls marched in procession, with white
dresses, and roses in their hair, to partake of the roast pigs and
green peas, her daughters, in dark calico frocks and winter bonnets,
marched to their usual fried pork and sprouted potatoes.

If they were permitted to go to a quilting, they were
instructed to come home in time to milk, and thus were deprived
of all the real enjoyment of the occasion. It was not
for them to remain to the “play-party,” when the quilt was
swung up to the ceiling, and the young men came in, with candy
and cinnamon in their pockets. Many a time had the young
women gone to bed with aching hearts to hear in dreams the
music of—

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

They might both have been dreaming and spinning in the old
chamber to this day, as indeed one of them is, but for a little
stratagem, in which I had some share. But I am getting before
my story. The prisons of the little girls were opened at last,
and they came forth—each


“With an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears;”
but their spirits were elastic, and the excitement of running
down and catching a couple of chickens for supper, soon produced
the wildest gayety.

“Now go long with you and wring off their heads,” said the
mother, “while I grind my butcher-knife.”

And with streaming hair, flushed faces, and dresses torn, they
bore off their captives to execution as jocundly as they would
have fed them. The fun was presently over, however; one of
the party, in racing, had bruised her naked foot on a stone, and
sitting on the ground she took it in her lap and bathed the injured
place with her tears. “If mother would let me wear shoes,”
she said, “I would not have done it,” and half in anger, half in
sorrow she cried aloud.

“Not another word out of your head,” exclaimed the mother;
“ain't you warm enough without your feet bundled up?”

“Yes; but Mary Whitfield wears shoes and stockings too,
all the time.”

“You can't be Mary Whitfield,” replied the mother; “so
twist up your hair and go out and help your sister hoe the currant
bushes.”

“Dingnation on it all!” cried the child, as the mother adjourned
to the vicinity of the pig-pen to pick the feathers from
her chickens, “I wish I had hurt myself so bad that I could not
work.”

“Come on, Sal,” said Jane, bringing two hoes from the smoke
house, “come on and cut your toe off;” and wiping her face,
bloody with her late murderous work, on her sleeves, she gave
a series of jumps beside the long hoe handles, calling it riding
on horseback, and disappeared in the garden. Sally prepared
to follow, hobbling on her heel to keep the bruised portion of

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her foot off the ground; but the tears were yet on her face; and
I called to her to wait a moment. It was not much, but I did
what I could; and when her foot had been bathed and bandaged,
her face washed, and her head combed, the grateful smile
that lit up her countenance made her almost beautiful. I could
not help feeling what a pity and shame it was that all refinement
must be drilled out of her nature, and all its graces
blunted and dimmed, by the drudgery of unwomanly tasks.
She was a much prettier and more springly girl than Mary
Whitfield; but so far from having her natural attractions heightened
by education and any familiarity with refined society, as
hers were, she was growing into womanhood, not merely in rusticity,
but so encrusted with actual vulgarity, that she would
not be able to break out of it by any efforts of maturer years.
Sally Knight sounded as well as Mary Whitfield, for ought I could
see, and with the same advantages the former would have been
vastly superior to the latter; but in her mother's opinion she
was proscribed. True, she was a farmer's daughter, and would
probably be a farmer's wife; but for that reason must she be
debarred all the little accomplishments which chiefly distinguish
civilized from savage life? I thought not. In this democratic
country, where the humblest girl may, under possible circumstances,
aspire to the highest positions, it is a wickedness for parents,
or any one in authority, to fasten a brand of ignominy
on a child, as it were, crippling her energies and circumscribing
her movements for life. If the complexion must be scorched
and roughened, the joints stiffened and enlarged by overtasks,
the mind vulgarized by epithets required or continually used in
coarse employments, let it be at the demand of inevitable misfortune,
not at that of a misguided will.

Mrs. Knight had been mortified when she found her daughters
indulging in the jargon I have reported, and so imprisoned them,
as I have described; but if she had accustomed herself to
spend some portion of the day devoted to scolding the children,
in their cultivation, few punishments of any kind would
have been required. If they had known anything sensible,
they would probably not have been repeating the nonsense
which seemed to please them so. But they had no books

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

suited to their years, and consequently they thought books
only designed for wise old men and preachers; as for the
newspaper, they supposed it was all one long president's
message, or something of that sort, for none of its lighter
articles did they ever hear, and it was no wonder they grew
tired and fell asleep when required to sit still through the
reading of a congressional speech; and of course they never
touched the paper except to hang it against the ceiling. When
I told Mrs. Knight that I had some prettily illustrated stories
at home which might please her little girls, she said she had
something else for them to do; and when I asked if they were
to go to the new academy, she replied that they had as much
education now as ever their mother had, and besides, they had
not the money to spare, and their troubles were not to be lessened
in any way that she knew of; but if they were, academies
were not built for the like of her girls. She kept so busy
during all the afternoon, that I felt sadly intrusive, but she told
me I could never have been less troublesome than then, if I
had waited twenty years, and with this comforting assurance I
remained to tea.

The sunshine was streaming across the porch where I was
sitting, and Mrs. Knight was preading her table, when the
children came galloping breathlessly in, informing her that Mr.
Sisco was coming. Suddenly the wheels ceased their rumbling
and a rap sounded on the front door.

“Mammy, mammy, shall I go?” asked the girls.

“No; if he want's to see folks, let him come where folks
are; go up-stairs and tell your sisters to get on with their
spinning;” and presently the wheels began to rumble, and
the young man came back to the kitchen.

He was evidently returning from a military muster, for a
dashing cockade ornamented his hat, strips of red tape covered
the outer seams of his trowsers, and a blue sash formed his
girdle, and hung in long floats over the scabbard of his sword.
He seemed from his flushed countenance and the bloody spurs
attached to his boots, to have been “pricking hard.” In his

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

hand he held a small switch, of which some harmless bough
had recently been deprived, and with this he inflicted a series
of sharp quick blows on his lower limbs, which, from their
shrinking and trembling, I could not help believing were quite
undeserving of such treatment. He perhaps intended it as a
penance for the sin he was committing in calling on the young
ladies in a busy week-day afternoon, for doubtless the visit was
designed for them, though he did not mention their names.

Mrs. Knight continued her preparations for supper, neither
making me acquainted with the stranger, nor saying anything
to him herself. His ostensible object was to procure a glass
of water, but from his wistful and embarrassed look I inferred
another motive, and so essayed my powers of detaining and
entertaining him, till Jemima and Hetty should come down.
“A very warm day, sir, for the season,” I said.

“Yes 'am, 'tis very warm.”

“It is time for us to expect the long autumn rains,” I continued,
“but I see no clouds.”

“No, mem.”

I was at a loss what to say, but his regalia suggested:
“Training day, it has been with you, I see.”

“Yes, mem.”

“There is some falling off of interest in these exercises of
late years?”

He made no immediate reply, but soon looked more directly
toward me, and said, “What did you observe?”

“Musters are not so attractive as they used to be.”

“No, mem.”

“I have been inclined to think the most undisciplined soldiers
fight as well as you who are skilled in arms,” I said; but the
compliment disconcerted him, and he abruptly said “Good
evening, mem,” and turned toward the door.

“What is your hurry?” asked Mr. Knight, just returned
home from the cider-press. “Sit down, sit down, and let me
take your hat.” So saying, he carried it off, cockade and all,
into the front room, where, when the windows were thrown
open, we were invited to sit.

“Mother,” he said, when, having performed his ablutions, he

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

withdrew to the middle of the dooryard to comb his hair, “why
in the world did n't you open the big room before?”

She made no reply; and the good man, having sent Jane
Anne above stairs to tell her sisters to come below, joined us
in the parlor.

“How is the potato crop with you?” he inquired, tipping his
chair against the bed, the starry counterpane of which was
surmounted by the young man's hat.

“Our late potaters are spilt with the rot, and our airly ones
were pretty much eat up with bugs—little yaller and black
fellers. Mammy took a bresh one morning and breshed them
out of the garden patch; it appeared like the whole kentry
would be overrun with them, there was so many, she said,
when they buzzed up.”

“The moles have been at work in mine pretty badly,” said
the farmer; “I wish I knew how to get rid of them.”

“If some dogs were as good to ketch moles as they be to
ketch sheep, you might get shut of them.”

“Why—any disturbance among the folds hereabouts?”

“Ourn was disturbed night-afore last a little, I should think;
we only lost fifteen!” And Mr. Sisco took a large bandanna
from one pocket and placed it in another.

“Is it possible!” exclaimed Mr. Knight; “and you knew
nothing of it?”

“I,” replied the military youth, “slep as sound as a roach,
but mammy said she was awake along in the night, and she
heard Towser bark as cross as he could be, and thought the
fence rattled too, she said; but she was dozy-like, and went to
sleep again, and in the mornin she alowed how if she had got
up she might have seen the dogs, for like enough they had one
of the old ewes down then.”

“Humph!” said Mr. Knight, and really I don't know what
better he could have said; and rising, he brought in a pitcher
of sweet cider, and a small basket of very fine apples.

Meantime the wheels stood still; and from the frequent
and lively snappings of the reel, it appeared that the yarn was
being wound from the spindles. Then came a creaking and
squeaking of the floor, as the bare fect pattered briskly across

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

it; then openings and closings of drawers and doors; and the
young ladies were evidently preparing to descend. In this
opinion I was confirmed when Sally hobbled past the steps
with her bib full of fresh-gathered mullen leaves. Cheeks were
to be made red—there was no doubt about it. Half an hour
later, when the sun burned faintly through the tree tops, Mrs.
Knight took from the nail where it hung, a long tin horn, and
blew as though she meant to be heard half through the
country.

“Now run right along for the cows,” she said; and “forth
limped, with slow and crippled pace,” poor Sally, preceded by
the more nimble and light-hearted Jane. They did n't leave the
warm preeinets of the supper, however, without casting “many
a longing, lingering look behind.”

“Go 'long,” called the mother; “who do you think wants
you?”

Thus depreciated and warned, they skulked by the fenceside
as though they were scarcely privileged to walk directly
and upright, even to drive home the cows. Poor children—
their mother was quite too meek. Unless she taught them to
show in action that they respected themselves, how could she
hope for others to respect them!

Shaming the sunset, were the fiery spots, with jagged edges,
that burned in the cheeks of the young women, as they curtsied,
and shook hands across the plate of chicken; for they had
hurried past the parlor without making any salutation.

The arrangement of their hair was without any regard to
modern fashion; their dresses were neither new nor clean; they
were without stockings, and their shoes were of thick calfskin.

Though naturally intelligent enough, and pretty enough, under
their accumulated disadvantages, the woods certainly seemed to
be the fittest place for them, and when they had said “How do
you do, Mr. Francisco?” and he had replied, “Hearty as a buck—
how do you do yourselves?” there seemed to be nothing further
to say—especially in the terribly restraining presence of
the mother. When she had served the tea, and while the largebladed
knives were going from hand to mouth, and indiscriminately
from dish to dish, she removed her chair half a yard from

[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]

the table and partook only of a crust of bread, looking the while
on the dozen pins that were stuck in the upper part of her sleeve.

“What part of the chicken will you have, mother?” said the
husband, raising a piece on his fork, and looking toward her.

She shook her head, still looking at the pins.

“Don't eat the crust,” he said, passing a fresh slice of bread,
“it must hurt your teeth.”

“It's no difference,” she answered.

He next offered her a piece of apple-pie, baked on a red
earthen dish about as large as the full moon; but this she refused,
as also the dough-nuts. “Why, mother, ain't you going to
eat any supper?” he said, really distressed.

“I don't know as it would do any good, any way,” replied the
wife mournfully; and with lips pursed up, she continued to work
at the crust with her two or three front teeth. “Now, girls, go
right along and milk,” she said, as soon as we had risen from the
table.

And, mounting on his steed, the young man went his way, while
the girls, from the milk yard, waved their adieus to him; and
this was all the humanizing intercourse on which they ventured
during the gallant's visit.

I smiled as Hetty began to milk on the left-hand side of her
cow, but my attention was speedily arrested by the stepping on
to the porch of Mrs. Lytle. She looked tidy, brisk and smiling,
and was bearing on her arm a large basket of apples which she
had just gathered; for she was the tenant of Mr. Knight and
lived in the old cabin, with her two daughters, Kitty and Ady.
I could not help contrasting her dress, cheerful demeanor, and the
living interest she seemed to feel in the world, with the meek
despondency of Mrs. Knight, and when she insisted that I should
visit her the day after the next, I readily assented.

The reader must not suppose the Knights representatives of
country people generally—at least, they are not fair specimens
of such as I have known; but I am sorry to say there are some
such unhappy exceptions to the general character of the rural
population in all the farming states in which I have any
acquaintance. The young man I have introduced, is a species
of bumpkin found no where but in the country; nevertheless, it

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

finds a counterpart in cities, in a more sophisticated and a great
deal more despicable order of being. Naturally simple-minded,
and with only the blood of a hundred generations of yeomen in
his veins, his thoughts seldom traveled beyond the market town
and the woods where the sun seemed to set, except when he
went to the election, and voted for the ticket which had been
supported by his father.

The lines which divide rusticity from the affluent life in country
places, or the experience of the middle classes in towns, are
very sharply defined; but there are a thousand little redeeming
graces belonging to all humanity alike, though uneducated persons
are hard to be persuaded that every thing pertaining to
gentle pleasures and courtesy, does not necessarily attach only to
the “rich and well-born.” Flowers are God's beautiful and free
gift, and they expand as purely white or as deeply scarlet under
the window of the poor man's cottage as in the gardens of kings.

On the day appointed I prepared for my visit to Mrs. Lytle,
with no very accurately defined expectations of pleasure or pain.
Memories of my late discomfiture kept down any of that pleasing
excitement so common at the prospect of a country visit,
which I might otherwise have felt awaking at the prospect of
enlarging my acquaintance in this part of our neighborhood. In
this work-day world new sensations are exceedingly precious,
and this more especially as the fast-coming shadows of years
give all the groundwork of life a sombre tinge. The circle that
rises from our first plunge in the sea of life is bright and bounding;
but as it widens, the sparkle becomes dull and the motion
heavy and sluggish, till at last it breaks on the shore of eternity.
We learn too soon the sorrowful wisdom that—


“The past is nothing, and at last
The future can but be the past;”
and so the dew fades off from the flowers, and the dust and the
mildew take its place. One after another of our dear ones go
from us, either into new spheres of love and labor, or into that
darkness “where the eye cannot follow them,” and with our feet
stumbling among graves, the golden summer sunshine seems

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

only to bleach white our hair, and not to be heaven's loving baptism
for the just and the unjust. And pain knits itself with
pain, and complaint joins itself to complaint, till a thankless, if
not reproachful, undertone runs through the world. Mourning
for the lost or the unattainable, our hearts are insensible of the
blessings we have; listening to the low earth for some comfort
yet, we turn a deaf ear to the music from above. The cloud rises
and we forget the eternal splendor of the stars. We have need
of all thy mercy, Oh our Father, for daily and hourly forgetfulness
of thy goodness, for the world is full of beauty, and life,
though never so much vexed with adverse fortune; and this
being is a great thing—great, not only in its final results, and
as it grows to its perfect glory, or dwarfs in the fires of ultimate
wrath, but in its present capacities and powers—only
below Omnipotence. Shall we look abroad on the fashioning
of the Creator—we, the perfectest work of his hands, and
unsay the benediction, “It is very good.” They are wrong
who estimate this wonderful and beautiful existence either as a
mere chance and vapor that the winds may scatter and the
grave undo, or as a hard trial and temptation that it were good
to have past; even taking the saddest view of its narrowness
and darkness and burdens—even, if you will, limiting its
duration to the borders of the tomb, “this sensible, warm
being,” is a good thing. If we do not find it so, the fault is in
ourselves, for in our own perverse hearts is our greatest enemy.
We will not recognize the angels that sit at our hearthstones
while their wings are folding themselves about our bosoms,
but when they are lessening in the azure overhead we exclaim,
How beautiful! and reach forth our longing arms in vain.

We tread on the flowers at our feet; and sigh for the
gardens of paradise. We put from us the heart that is
throbbing with love, and go through the world tracking for
receding steps. Life is good, and I am glad to live, despite
the pain and the temptation and the sorrow; these must be
about it, and there is need that we oppose to them all that
within us which is loftiest and best. The basis of every great
fabric rests in the dark; so, even though the light of love he
gone out, and the star of hope shorn of its first warm splendors,

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we have not only the greatest need but the greatest encouragement
to work. There are plants hardy enough for the brown
baked earth by the cabin door, and birds to sing on the low
eaves as well as in the beautiful groves that environ palaces.

But all this is a digression.

I selected my toilet with more scrupulous care than on the
occasion of my visit to Mrs. Knight. I knew even my new
bonnet and best silk gown would not be deemed unpardonable
offences against propriety in the estimation of Mrs. Lytle, who
always, despite her disadvantages, looked tidy and smart.

Her daughters, too, Kitty and Ady, whom I had often
remarked at the village church, were in appearance no whit
behind the squire's or the deacon's daughters, except in years;
they were but just coming out, having lately made their debut
at an apple-cutting, where their pretty pink gingham dresses,
white aprons, and quietly agreeable manners, had been themes
of common admiration. True, some people, among whom was
Mrs. Knight, thought “such flirts of girls” were better kept in
tow frocks, and in the kitchen, or at the spinning-wheel; but
the general verdict, and especially that of the young men, was
in their favor. The house in which the Knights now lived, was
substantially built of brick, but with intelligent regard neither
for convenience nor taste; no trees grew about it, and standing
right up in the sun, with its surrounding pigstyes, henroosts,
stables, &c., in full view, it looked comfortless, though sufficiently
thrifty.

The windows of the chamber facing the sun were open as I
passed, and within the young women were pacing to and fro
rapidly, for their wheels sung invariably to the tune of “sixteen
cuts” per day. Hung over the window sills, in the sunshine,
were several small divisions of “rolls,” blue and gray, and in
the side yard, her cap border flying, and smoke blowing in her
face, appeared the mother, raking chips beneath a soap-kettle.
“All work and no play,” was still the order of her life.

In the hollow beyond this scene of rude bustle and hard
strife, I opened a gate, and, following a narrow and deeply worn
path, beside a clear deep brook, I soon found myself in view
of the tenant house—a cabin of two rooms, originally, but

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with a recently added kitchen, of rough boards. It stood in a
little nook, at the head of the hollow traversed by the stream,
which had its source beneath the grassy mound, joined to the
hill on one side, and extending a little way over the stone wall
and door of slabs, on the other. A rude, irregular fence ran
round the base of the ascent, enclosing a small plot of ground,
with the cabin, and milk-house—the last still and cool, beneath
the mound of turf, and the first covered with vines and hedged
about with trees. How cosy and even pretty it looked, with
the boughs full of red apples close against the wall, and clusters
of black grapes depending from the eaves! The great flaunting
flowers of the trumpet-vine were gone, and the leaves on the
rose-withes beneath the window looked rusty and dull, for the
time of bright blossoms was long past, but the plenteous fruits
atoned for the lost flowers, and the waxen snow-berries, and
the scarlet buds of the jasmine, shining through the fading
leaves, helped to make the aspect of everything beautiful, even
in a forbidding season.

The fence about the yard was rude enough, but currant
bushes grew thick along its side, and over the golden ridge
they made, in crimson curves and tangles glistened the smooth
vines of the raspberry. There was no gate, and, standing on
the stile, by which there was admittance to the yard, I paused
a moment, in admiration of the pleasant sight before me.
The grass was level and pretty, save where it was broken up
for flower-beds—of pinks and hollihocks and poppies—and over
a stump that defined all present arts of removal, trailed the “old
man's beard,” so that what would else have been a deformity
added to the beauty of the scene.

The door of the parlor—as I judged it to be from the pots
of flowers in the windows, and the white curtains—was standing
open, and I could see the bright plaided carpet on the floor and
the snowy coverlid of the bed—for everybody who has been
in western country houses, knows that the parlor is also the
spare bedroom, in such places. It looked snug and homelike,
and I could not help comparing it with the naked and rude
style of things so lately under my observation. Turning in the
direction of my thoughts I saw the little girls, Sally and Jane,

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in a field, midway between the house, digging potatoes. Seeing
me, they struck up a ditty, which was doubtless meant for my
benefit, and the day being still, and the wind blowing toward
me, I caught the whole distinctly: “Solomon Grundy, born on
Monday, christened on Tuesday, married on Wednesday, sick
on Thursday, worse on Friday, died on Saturday, buried on
Sunday—and that was the end of Solomon Grundy!”

My attention thus diverted, I did not hear the light steps of
the young women who had come forth to meet me, till their
voices spoke cordial welcomes, which seemed to come from
their merry hearts, while the smiles that glowed in their faces
made the atmosphere genial as spring.

The outward index had not been too favorable a voucher,
and that cabin parlor with its flowers and books, scrupulous
cleanliness, and tasteful arrangement, contrasted well with the
showy vulgarity of many more pretending houses, where the
furnishing speaks wealth, and nothing but wealth. The walls
and ceiling were white-washed, green boughs filled the deep
wide fire-place, the open cupboard, with its shining britannia and
pink-specked china, and the table with its basket of apples,
pears, and grapes—how nice it all was, and how suggestive of
comfort! But after all, the chief charm of the place was its
living occupants. The mother was not yet home, having the
previous night gone to market with her landlord—for it must
be remembered that Mrs. Lytle was poor, and did not even
own the cabin which was indebted for all its attractiveness to
her pains. Butter and eggs, and fruits and berries, beside
various things manufactured in the house, the provident woman
carried weekly to town, for which business Mr. Knight kindly
gave her room in his market-wagon; and while she generally
returned with her basket as full as she carried it away, he
returned with his empty. But notwithstanding these expenditures
Mrs. Lytle owed nothing, and though her purse was not
so heavy as her neighbor's, neither was her heart. Her children
had been kept at school for the most part, and she had even
managed to send them two quarters to the new academy, and
to dress them in a style, if less expensive, as neat and pretty
as anybody in the neighborhood. I can see them now as I saw

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them on the day of my visit—Ady in a blue gingham dress
and white apron, with bare neck and arms, and Kitty in a pink
dress and black apron, till she tied over it a checked one to
assist about the preparation of supper.

“And that is the reason I am so late home to-day,” Mrs. Lytle
said, beginning at the close of her story. “You see I got out
of the wagon just the other side of the school-house, and walked
across to Hathaway's, to see how little Henry was, for I heard
in market that the doctor had given him up. Poor child, he
seemed so sensible, and told me to tell his mother not to cry!”
and wiping her tears, she added, “Mrs. Knight was there, and
you know her way: so they all felt worse than they would have
done. As soon as she looked at Henry, she said he would not
live till morning, and then calling his brother, she told him that
Henry would never work or play with him again; and having
told them two or three times, that all their tears would not
make the child well, she went home to tend her soap-kettle,
leaving directions in reference to being sent for in case she was
needed.”

It was certainly characteristic that at such a time she should
bring forward her hard, dark realities, and needlessly torture
breaking hearts by allusions to the awful necessities of death.
I spoke of my visit at her house, and related some particulars
which tended to restore the cheerful tone of the conversation;
in fact we laughed outright, in view of the restraint and painful
embarrassment which the young women felt in consequence of
the visit of Mr. Francisco in open daylight.

“I hope, mother,” Kitty said, laughing and blushing, “you
will not be so cross when I have a beau, for poor Hetty will
never have a chance to get married I am sure.”

“I hope she will be cross,” said the sister, “if you have such
a clodhopper as he.”

“Come, come, girls,” answered the mother, “Mr. Francisco
is a good worthy young man, and though not given to match-making,
I feel inclined to help them forward—can't we facilitate
their happiness in some way?”

The appeal was to me, and I entered at once into the conspiracy.
Mr. Francisco was to plow a field for Mrs. Lytle the

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coming week, and it was arranged that I should be the bearer of an
invitation to the girls whose opportunities were so restricted,
to assist in cutting apples at the cottage on a specified afternoon.
The extent of this service cannot be estimated by those who
have never seen or felt the cold straits of division thrown between
themselves and some dear object, by the strict discipline
of parents or guardians, forgetting that they were ever lovers
themselves. But perhaps now and then a modern Hero and
Leander will appreciate it, and even if not, my conscience does
not condemn me, for I verily believe they might never have told
their love but through my harmless stratagem.

But I am lingering too long. With small talk of one kind
and another, and a little harmless gossip, as I have confessed,
the time passed rapidly, and through the vine-shaded window
we saw the heavy mist of red gold hanging over the withering
woods, and black forks of the walnuts darkening or the bloodred
top of the oaks shining through.

The girls were very happy, and chattering like birds, as they
prepared the supper, and great credit it did to their housewifery
when prepared. The broiled chicken bore slight resemblance to
Mrs. Knight's stewed roosters, and the clear, fresh jelly as little
to the candied and crumby fragments which the good woman
called preserves. The bread could not have been whiter, nor the
butter more golden; the cake was just done to a charm, and the
table linen was as white as snow. How well and how pleasantly
I remember it all, though so long ago! the pretty pink
china sparkling in the light of the candles—the two brass candlesticks
scoured, so that they looked like freshly wrought gold,
and our pleasant conversation as we sipped the delicious tea, and
my promise to visit them often.

According to the kindly custom of country people, Ady and
Kitty went “a piece of the way home with me,” telling me some
little secret hopes and fears they had not ventured upon in the
day. It is wonderful what an influence twilight and night exert
upon us; we draw closer to those we like, and sometimes, almost
unawares, give our hearts to their keeping; while from
those we hate or fear, we are a thousand times more repelled
than in the noon. Passion, of whatever nature, strengthens in

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the dark. Many a sweet confession and sweeter kiss that have
knit destinies together, owe their expression to the friendly stars.
And many a blow has been struck that would not have been
given, if the sunlight had shown the murderer clearly where to
do his work.

As we stood beneath the deeply crimson cone of a stunted
ash that grew by the roadside, making our adieus, the stage-coach,
its plethoric sides swinging one way and the other, rumbled past,
hurrying to their various destinations a motley crowd of dustcovered
passengers, and among them I noticed a slight and fair
faced youth, looking back from the window. “The schoolmaster,”
I said, addressing myself to Kitty, who blushed to find
herself detected in returning his earnest gaze, and hastily tied
on the white hood she had previously held in her hand. “I rather
think,” I continued, laughing, “he is all your fancy painted him;
and from the attention with which he regarded us, perhaps we
have, some of us, found favor in his eyes; but I will be generous,
having, as I shall, the advantage of first acquaintance, and
you shall know him as soon as may be.” So, jesting, we parted,
as the first star, large and white, came out above the tree tops.

The doors of the farm-houses stood open, the tables were
spread, and I could see the shirt sleeves busy, as hands were
moving from dish to dish, and the patient mother trying to still
the fretful baby, while she poured the tea. About the barnyards
stood the cows chewing their food, and waiting to be
milked.

On my arrival home, I found that my anticipation had been
correct—the young schoolmaster had preceded me, and sat at
the parlor window deep in the mysteries and merits of—

His manner and salutation were civil enough, and very
graceful withal, and I was struck at once with his beauty,
which was such as imagination gives the poet; but there was
an indefinable something in his manner which made me feel
myself an interruption to his pleasure, even before he resumed

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his book, which, however, he presently did, after a little commonplace
talk about the beauty of the sunset. This, to confess
the truth, was vexatious, for most young ladies are pleased
with but that demeanor which seems to say they are the only
women in the world. The relations in which we stood involved
no obligation on the part of either of us farther than that of
common courtesy; and though, as I said, the young man
silently resumed his book, I felt it my privilege as it was my
pleasure to remain in the parlor, as his own apartment awaited
his occupation when he pleased. Moreover, he interested me,
and perhaps I was not without hope, that when the twilight
deepened a little more, he would begin some conversation. I
wish that with any word painting I could bring his picture
before you, but my poor skill is insufficient, and I cannot hope
to give the faintest idea of that dreamy and spiritual expression
which chiefly made him what he was, the most beautiful person
I had ever seen.

He was a little above the medium height, straight as an
arrow, and of faultless proportions. His hair was of a perfect
and glossy black, and hanging in wavy half curls down his
neck and temples, gave to his face a look almost girlish. His
eyes were very large and dark, but soft and melancholy, and
along the delicate whiteness of his cheek the color ran blushing
whenever he spoke. His hands too evinced his gentle origin.
Closer and closer to the page he bent his head, as ebbed away
the crimson tide in which, an hour ago, the sun had drifted out
of view, and not till star after star came sharpening its edges
of jagged gold in the blue, did he close the volume.

He did not speak, however, when this was done, but locking
his hands together like a child, watched the ashy and sombre
clouds which in the south were mingling into one, for a few
minutes, and then, absorbed, as it seemed, with his own
thoughts, walked slowly in the direction of the wood, that held
in its rough arms the waning splendor that rained off with
every sough of wind.

Every moment the atmosphere grew more sluggish and
oppressive, and the broad dim leaves of the sycamore, that
shadowed the well, drifted slowly slantwise to the ground.

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The summer had shaken from her hot lap the fierce thunderbolts,
and there was no broken rumble nor quick sharp rattle
to lend terrible grandeur to the autumn's dismal and pitiless
storms, for one of which the night was preparing.

The time was very still, and as I sat on the low mossy doorstep,
I could hear the voices of neighbors half a mile away, as
they hurried the milking, and the rattle of the dry boards
where the apple-sheds were being covered. Distinctly down
the clayey hill, a mile to the south, I heard the clatter of fastfalling
hoof-strokes, then it was lost in the damp hollow and up
the long dusty slope, but I pleased myself with guessing at
what points the horseman had arrived at such and such times,
till almost at the expected moment he appeared on the neighboring
hill, darkening through the lessening light. Holding
the ragged rim of his chip-hat with one hand, he reined in his
fiery sorrel at the gate of our house, and beckoned me to
approach. Before I reached him, or even recognized him, for
he was the young man I had met at Mrs. Knight's, I divined
from the straight rod balancing on the arched neck of his impatient
horse, the melancholy nature of his errand: little Henry
Hathaway was dead. Scarce any preparation was requisite,
and, wrapt in my shawl and hood, I was soon on the way.

Mr. Hathaway's house was nearly a mile south of ours,
and half that distance off the main road, to the west, so that to
reach it most conveniently I struck across the fields. From
the duty before me I shrank somewhat, not from any unwillingness
to lend my aid, but I was young, unused to death, and
half afraid; and when I reached the woods through which my
way led, the rustling leaves beneath my feet seemed to give
out the mournfulest sound I had ever heard. A few steps
aside from my path, sitting on a mossy log, beneath an arbor
of wild grapes, I beheld some vision of mortality, and suddenly
stopping, gazed with intensity of fear. That any sane person
should be in such place at such time, was not very probable,
for at that period our neighborhood was free from those troubled
wanderers who people the dreariest solitudes with the whitebrowed
children of the imagination, and soften the dull and
dead realities with atmospheres of song. I think, however, it

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was by no process of reasoning that I likened the dimly-outlined
shape before me with that son of the morning, of whom
heaven disburthened itself so long ago. A shower of wet
leaves rained down on me, for the fine drops were already
drizzling and pattering on the interlocked branches overhead,
as I stood, more from inability to fly, than from courage, before
the object which my fancy alone made terrible—


“Stand there, vision of a lady—
Stand there silent, stand there steady,”
spoke a voice, so musical that fear vanished, though it was not
till another moment that I recognized the schoolmaster. When
I did so, flushing in the wake of fear came anger, and I replied,
“If you intend to enact fantastic tricks of this sort, I pray you
will choose an auditor next time who can fitly repay you—for
myself, I must remain your debtor.” Having spoken thus, I
swept along the rustling leaves, with an air that might have
done credit to an injured princess, as I fancied. Thoughtless
and ungentle as my manner was, it was productive of a maturity
of acquaintance, which greater civility would probably
not have induced; for immediately the young man joined me,
and so sweetly apologized that I could not but forgive him.
Of course he did not at first recognize me more than I him,
and so for a time remained silent under my scrutiny.

Though no longer afraid of shadows, having found one apparition
so harmless, I was not sorry to have the lonesome way
enlivened by the cheerful influence of my new friend's company.
I think, however, neither of us felt any real pleasure in the
other's society, and I may say, neither then nor ever after.
Upon this encounter, we had each felt bound to manifest cordial
feeling, but kept all the while a belligerent reserve force to fall
back on at any moment.

There was about Mr. Spencer—for that was his name—a
distant and measured formality, which I mistook for pride and
self-sufficiency; the sentences came from his thin lips with cold
regularity, as though chiseled in marble; I felt then and
always the disagreeable sensation of an utter impossibility of
saying or doing anything which could in the least interest him.

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

He was young, as I said, and perhaps he seemed more youthful
than he was. Had we both been some years older, I might
have recognized, under the blind and statue-like beauty that
could “view the ripened rose, nor seek to wear it,” the signs
of a passion that had burned itself to ashes.

In interchanges of words, and not of thoughts, we climbed
the fences, walked the logs over the runs, crossed the stubble
land, and struck into the lane where the yellow dust was dimpling
more and more with the steady and increasing rain. As
we drew near the house we became silent, for all about it
seemed an atmosphere of death. Our footsteps, on the moist
earth, did not break the hush; even the watch-dog seemed consciously
still, and, having turned his red eyes on us as we
passed, pressed his huge freckled nose close to the ground
again, whining low and piteously. A few sticks were burning
on the hearth—for the rain had chilled the air—the flames
flickering up, wan and bluish for a moment, and then dropping
down into a quivering and uncertain blaze; there was no crackling
and sparkling, no cheerfulness in it; and seated before it
was the mother, rocking to and fro, her tears falling silently
among the brown curls of the mateless little boy who rested
his head on her knees.

Two women, in very plain caps, and with sleeves turned
back from their wrists, were busying themselves about the
house, and in the intervals of work officiously comforting the
mourner. I could only take her hand in mine; I had no words
to illumine the steep black sides of the grave; in all the world
there was nothing that could fill her empty arms; why should
I essay it? One of the women directed us in a whisper to the
adjoining room. Little Henry was already dressed for the
coffin, and, kneeling beside the hard bed on which he lay, was
Kitty Lytle, combing and curling his hair, that he might appear
to his mother as life-like as possible. Her own rippling
lengths of golden yellow fell forward, half veiling her face,
which, in its expression of earnest tenderness, made her perfectly
beautiful. The young man stepped hurriedly toward the
dead, but his eyes rested on the girl.

On the mantle stood half a dozen empty phials, with small

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packages, cups, and teaspoons, and in one corner of the room
the death-bed—the impression of his face still fresh in the
pillow. A napkin was pinned over the small looking-glass,
and the table was draped in white.

I wondered to see Kitty do her sad work so calmly, for she
was younger than I, who trembled even to touch the shroud,
but in thought and feeling, as I afterward learned, she had far
outgrown her years, and never lingered from the most painful
duty. While Ady timidly remained with her mother, she had
come through the night and the storm, and in her gentle ministries
of love seemed first to have entered into her proper
sphere.

The sash rattled in the window as the winds went and
came, and across the panes trailed darkly the leafless vines of
the wild rose, but little Henry slept very quietly all the while.

Silent for the most part, and conversing in low tones, when
speaking at all, we sat—young watchers with the dead. Hetty
Knight, who had also preceded me, kept in the dimmest corner,
too bashful to speak in the presence of a stranger, and Mr.
Spencer persisted in remaining, though I had twice informed
him that it was not at all needful, inasmuch as Mr. Francisco
was expected to sit with us. So, stormy and mournful, the
night wore on.

“Miss Hathaway,” spoke a coarse voice—a rough discord to
the time—“he says the coffin will be here by sunrise,” and,
dripping and streaming from the rain, Mr. Francisco entered
the apartment consecrated to silence by that awful shadow that
must ever make heavy the heart, with the shuffling step and
unquiet manner with which he would have gone into his father's
barn. Having thrown himself in a seat, in a graceless fashion
which left his legs drifting off to one side, as though hinged
at the knees very loosely, he asked, in a jocular tone, if we
were all skeert. There was an exchange of smiles and glances
between Kitty and the schoolmaster, as Hetty replied, that for
one, she was never scared before she was hurt. Destitute of
those common instincts of refinement, which are better and
more correct than all teachings, these two young persons fraternized
that night in a way that was visibly annoying to the

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stranger. Mr. Francisco probably feared that a subdued manner
would be attributed to cowardice, and, therefore, in mistaken
pride of manhood, was unusually brusque. After some
pretending conversation between himself and Hetty—for they
evidently talked of what they were not thinking—they gradually
relapsed into silence. Leaning her head on the table Kitty had
fallen asleep, and, under pretence of chilliness, the schoolmaster
withdrew to the adjoining room, having first carefully wrapt
my shawl about the pretty plump shoulders of the sleeping
girl: I don't know why he should never have thought that I
might need it, but he did not.

I as heartily wished myself out of the way of the young
lovers as they could wish me, and more especially when, taking
an ear of corn from his pocket, the young man began shelling
off the grains and throwing them, two or three at a time, in the
face of Hetty, whose laughing reproofs were so gentle they did
not correct the offence, and probably were not designed to
do so. I could not make myself into thin air, but I did the
best for them which the circumstances permitted. Taking up
a torn newspaper, the only readable thing I could find, I turned
my face away, and read and re-read a pathetic article of that
sort which seems to have been invented for the first pages of
the country journals. I was not so absorbed, however, as not
to hear the facetious youth address his lady love with, “Did
you ever see a cob that was half red?”

“No,” was the reply; and thereupon, of course, he drew his
chair near Hetty's, as if to exhibit the phenomenon, but to her
surprise he said, “'T other half is red, too!”

“Oh, if you ain't the greatest torment!” said Hetty; and
the jostling of the chairs told of their closer proximity.

“'T is half red, any how,” said the beau; “red as your cheek,
and I could make that redder an what it is!”

Whether the boasted ability was vindicated by experiment,
I do not know; a rustling of capes and collars, and a sort of
playful warfare, were my only means of inference. Presently
the whispers became inaudible, and having read in the paper how
a queen's sumptuous breakfast was removed untasted on the
morning after her divorce, how the plumes failed to hide the

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pallor of her discrowned brow, sadder perhaps for the lost lovelight
than the vanishing glory—with other interesting particulars
of the mournful story — I nestled beside Kitty and
feigned the sleep which had so softly wooed her, from pain and
all the world of love that fancy may have painted, to the
golden sphere of dreams; and though this pretence of sleep
did not much refresh me, it was all the same to the lovers, and
but for my accommodating artifice they might never have made
our clergyman the promises they did a year thereafter.

Toward morning, listening to the winds as they cried about
the lonesome homestead, and the vines, creaking against the
window pane, where the rain pattered and plashed, I passed
over the borders of consciousness, and woke, not till the lamp
was struggling with the day, that was breaking whitely through
the crimson—the clouds lifting and drifting away, and the rain
done.

In the dimmest corner the two most wakeful watchers still
kept their places, and by the mingling light the schoolmaster
was reading to Kitty, in a softly, eloquent tone, that most
beautiful creation, beginning—


“All thoughts, all feelings, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All but ministers of love,
And feed his sacred flame.”
Was the voice with which he told another's love interpreting
his own? or why ran the blushes so often along his cheek, and
why beneath his dark eyes burned those of the listener?

From the cherry tree came the cock, not flapping his wings
and crowing proudly, but with the water dripping from his tail,
drenched into one drooping feather; in the milk-yard were dry
and dusty spots, where the cattle had slept; the doves came
down in flocks, pecking, now themselves and now their scanty
breakfasts; and warm and yellow across the hills came the sunshine,
to comfort the desolate earth for her lost leaves and
flowers. But no one bent over the white bed of little Henry,
saying, “Wake, it is day;” and silently the mother laid her
hand on his forehead, in placid repose under its golden crown
of curls; silently her quivering lips pressed his—and that was all.

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

But I am lingering too long. Often while the soft hazy
autumn was stretching away to the dreary and chill winter, the
schoolmaster's walk was along the sheltering hollow where,
from the westward, as twilight fell, brightened the lights of
Mrs. Lytle's cabin. Often, too, when the cheery blaze reddened
across the drifted snow without, he smiled among the happy
group at the hearth-stone. And Kitty—“already had his wild
eyes unlocked her heart's springs.” But, though drawn toward
her, I could never believe his heart was much touched; rather to
escape from some haunting phantom than to embrace a new hope,
it seemed to me he sought her. Alas for her, she could not see,
for her own blind love, that it was no rapturous glow that burned
in his cheek; she could not hear, for her own trembling tones, that
there was no fervor in his. If such things even were, I saw them
not. We can scarcely imagine a young and timid girl, giving from
its close folding, the treasure of her affection into the hands of
indifference—but I seek not to uncover from the dust the heart
that was once bright with the insanity of a dream. And for
the living, whether guilty or guiltless, I judge him not. Between
ourselves, the acquaintance never ripened into any sort of confidence.
Sometimes, in the midst of our most earnest conversations,
he would break off abruptly and seek solitude in his chamber
or with the stars; at other times he would answer so vaguely
that I knew he received no meaning from my words. He often
amused his leisure with making sketches in pencil—sometimes
of scenery about the neighborhood, sometimes of the faces of his
pupils; and more than one drawing of Mrs. Lytle's cottage
graced his portfolio; but there was one picture which he seemed
to prize more than all others, returning to it again and again,
and working at it with the most patient and elaborate care. When
I rallied him about it, he said I should see it when completed,
but that time never came; and when I guessed, one day, it was
the portrait of Kitty, he blushed, but in the end shook his head
sadly, and left me alone. The favorite picture was never left on
the table with the others.

When that rough hunter of the young hardy flowers, March,

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

filled the budding woods with his wild laughter, I went from
home with an invalid relation, in the hope that restoration, in
some other clime, would “hang its medicine upon her lips.”
Previously to leaving I visited Mrs. Lytle's cabin. How busy
and cheerful they all were—the girls pruning the lilacs and roses,
and planning the new flower-bed, and the mother arranging a bed
of oat-straw for the tall, awkwardly walking calf, white, and with
a pinkish nose and red specks along its sides, which the dovecolored
heifer, “Beauty,” had just brought home.

We talked gayly at first, partly to conceal our sadness; and
I remember telling Kitty it made no difference about her flowers—
she could not be there to see them bloom; little thinking
how sadly my prophecy would be fulfilled. She and I were become
fast friends, and when I had said good-bye, to the mother
and sister, she tied on her bonnet, as her custom was, to walk
part of the way home with me. We chose an indirect path
through the woods, to protract the sweet sorrow of parting, and
had nearly reached the spot where the last sad word must be
said, when, sitting where the shadows of the naked boughs and
the sunshine flecked the greenly sprouting grass, we saw the
schoolmaster. He was leaning against the trunk of a tree, and
on his knee rested his portfolio. “Let us steal a march on him,”
I said, “and get a glimpse of the cherished picture;” and repressing
our laughter, and on tip-toe, we drew near, and peeping over
his shoulder the secret was revealed. Pained and startled, I retreated
as lightly as I had approached, while, pale and trembling,
Kitty remained transfixed. The schoolmaster was fast asleep,
and the pleasant surprise we meant for him terminated in our
own discomfiture. Without the least intention of doing so, we
had broken over a charmed circle sacred to private sorrow—
the drawing was of a mountain side, with pines and hemlocks
stretching bearded boughs above a grave, beside which the artist
himself was kneeling, and beneath which was written—

By what strange impulse prompted, or by what authority

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

warranted, I know not, but Kitty remained till her dizzied vision
had deciphered all.

I pushed back the curls that had fallen over her face, kissed
her forehead, white and damp now, and left her without speaking
a word; love's goldenest dream was breaking and fading
in her heart; though she smiled, it was a smile that brought
tears to my eyes. So we parted.

The fields were checked with furrows, and the corn planted;
the winds chased the waves over the grain fields; the sheep were
plunged in the full-flowing streams of the early summer, and,
shorn thin of their fleeces, bleated along the hills; nature went
on with her work, and was bringing home the autumn to the
music of threshing flails and the dancing of bright leaves along
the woodland, when from my searching for the lost waters of
health, I came back to the shelter of the homestead.

For my summer absence, I regarded every thing with fresh
interest; the shutters of the schoolhouse were closed, and the
rusty padlock hung at the door; just beyond was the graveyard,
and in the corner beneath the willow where the elders had long
grown thick offering vainly their snowy blossoms and shining
berries to the schoolboys, a little space was cleared away, and
the dark pit was waiting for the victim. Two men leaned over
the stone wall, looking weary and impatient toward the north;
they were evidently expecting a funeral, while their spades, sticking
upright in the fresh-heaped earth, waited to do their work.

I would have asked who was dead, but just then between me
and the grave swept a gay train of twenty or thirty equestrians,
with low, clumsy old horses, and tall, gaunt colts already bearing
marks of collars and traces, with stubborn ponies and slimlimbed
pacers—all prancing and trotting and galloping together.

A confused glimpse of the blue and crimson and green velvet
of the side-saddles met my eyes, with smiling faces beneath the
broad-rimmed flats, flapping up and down, and with veils
streaming back, and white dresses gathered up and falling over
the left arm, showing liberally the pretty petticoats of dimities,
and scollops and ruffles. And further, I had some notion of a
dozen or more trimly dressed youths, with bronzed faces newly

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shaved, and shining with their late ablutions—all this I faintly
apprehended, before the cavalcade disappeared, in a cloud of
dust.

Darkening out of it in the distance came a slow-moving train.
The two impatient men would not be required to wait much
longer. The road was narrow, and on a hill beneath an old oak,
we waited for the procession to pass. It drew nearer and nearer,
and as the foremost wagon stopped in the hollow, I saw plainly
the long slender coffin, from which had slipped partly aside the
folding-sheet. Next came the clergyman's carriage, and beside
the venerable man, his good wife, her loving eyes shrouded from
view; and the carriage held, also, two more comfortless mourners
than they; and as they passed, I trembled to recognize beneath
their black veils Ady Lytle and her mother—Kitty was
gone before.

They were not many who followed her; she was but a young
girl, and the daughter of a poor widow; a few of the near neighbors
were all. The mother, pale and patient, held her baby
close, as the wagon jolted and rattled by, and the young girl
riding on horseback, looked thoughtfully on the sturdy brother
at her side. Behind the rest walked a dozen little boys, now
and then pausing to make curious prints in the dust with their
bare feet, by way of diverting their thoughts. So from the hill
we saw cross each other, the bridal train of Hetty Knight and
the funeral of Kitty Lytle.

p489-522 UNCLE WILLIAM'S.

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No matter how ingeniously probabilities may be woven,
how cunning are plots, or effective situations, the fictitious
narrative has rarely the attractive interest of a simple statement
of facts; and every one seems to have that quick instinct which
detects the most elaborate imitations of truth, so that all the
skill of the novelist fails to win a single tribute not due merely
to his art. I cannot tell what I might be tempted to essay if
I possessed more imagination or fancy, but with a brain so
unfruitful of invention, and a heart bound as with spells to the
past, I should find myself, even if attempting a flight in the
realms of fancy, but recalling some half forgotten experience,
and making Puck or Titania discourse after the manner of our
landlord at the Clovernook Hotel, or the young women whose
histories I began to mark when we were girls together in the
district school.

It is, perhaps, seven or eight years ago—ah me, how soon
we grow old enough to look back to seven, and eight, and ten
years, as to yesterday!—since I went to spend the winter with
my cousins, Delia and Jane Peters. They lived in the neighborhood
of Elm Ridge. It is an obscure and was to me a
lonesome place, though they said they had society enough all
around them; and indeed the village meeting-house and tavernsign
were within view, and the window lights of Abner Widdleton,
the nearest neighbor, shone across the door-yard.

The happiest occasions, if they bring change with them, are
sad; and I remember that I could not sleep well the night
previous to my setting out, though I had been for weeks talking

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

of the pleasure I should have in visiting uncle William's family.
The last collar was ruffled, the last strings and hooks and eyes
adjusted, my trunk packed, and my bonnet, with the green veil
pinned fast, laid on the bed, and but a night lay between me
and my little journey. Then it was, when all was ready, that
a sorrowful, half-regretful feeling came over me. I stood at
the window and looked on the way the stage-coach would come
in the morning; watched the cows as they crouched with petty
rifts of snow along their backs, and their faces from the wind;
and the chickens, as they flew into the cherry-tree, cackling
their discomfort as they settled themselves on the smoothly
worn boughs; for it was a blustery night, and these commonplaces
seemed to have in them a solemn import, all because I
was to be a dozen miles away for a few weeks!

A dozen times I said to little Dillie, with whom I slept,
“Are you awake?” before I could sleep. But I was wearied
out at last, and but imperfectly heard the speckled cock telling
his mates of midnight when a blessed wave of oblivion came
between me and Elm Ridge, and I woke not till a hand rested
lightly on my shoulder, and a familiar voice said, “I guess it 's
time.” I needed no second call, but was dressed and waiting
in a few minutes. It did not require much time for breakfast,
I think. There seemed nothing for us to say as we watched
the coming of the coach, while my baggage was carried toward
the gate that I might occasion no detention. A few repetitions
of what had been already said, a few exchanges of smiles that
faded into sighs, and the well-known rumble of the approaching
vehicle arrested our make-believe conversation.

My little baggage was hoisted to the top. I was afraid I
should never see it again. A portly gentleman, having a
round red face and pale blue eyes, reached out one hand—it
was freckled and fat, I remember—to assist me in; “All
ready?” cried the driver, and we were off. I looked back presently,
and saw them all standing just as I had left them, except
little Dillie, who had climbed on the fence, and was gazing
after us very earnestly. The coach jolted and rolled from
side to side, for the road was rough and frozen; and the plethoric
individual, who wore a tightly buttoned brown overcoat,

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leaned his double chin on his round hands, which were crossed
over the gold head of a crooked but highly polished walking-stick,
and conversed with the gentleman opposite, in an easy
and complacent way that indicated a state of satisfaction with
the world and with himself. His companion was exceedingly
diminutive, having the delicate hands and feet of a child; a
mouth in which a shilling might scarcely be slipped; a little
long head, bald about the crown, and with thin brown hair
hanging far over his coat-collar, which was glazed with such
contact to the depth of half an inch, as it seemed. I soon
learned their respective homes and avocations: the fat man
proved to be a pork merchant, homeward bound from a profitable
sale; and his little fellow traveller a tailor and small
merchant of one of the western states. “There,” said he,
smiling, and pointing to a huge wagon of several tons burden,
drawn by six stout horses, wearing bells on their collars,
“there goes a little buggy that 's got a budget or two of mine
aboard.”

The fat man smiled, and every one else smiled, as they saw
the six horses straining with all their ability, slowly to drag
along the ponderous load; for the great wagon-body was heaped
and overheaped with bags, bales, and baskets, crocks, cradles,
and calicoes, in fact with all sorts of family and household utensils,
from a plow to a teapot, and with wearing apparel from
buckram and ducks to cambrics and laces.

“Two or three times a year I buy up such a little bunch as
that,” he said; and he smiled again, and so did every body else.

“That bay cretur on the off side,” he resumed, letting down
the window and looking back, “is fallen lame, I believe my
heart. Polly will be as mad as a hornet about it; it 's her riding
nag, d' ye see—that ere bay.” And as long as we could hear
the bells he continued to gaze back, tying a silk handkerchief
over his head as he did so, to protect it from the cold. Whether
the aforesaid Polly was his wife, and, if she was, whether she
was mad as a hornet, are matters of which to this day I am profoundly
ignorant; but I have hoped that if Polly were wife to
the little merchant, she was pacified with a new dress, and that
the poor beast soon got the better of the lameness.

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The fat man pointed out all the places in which the hogs he
had just sold had rested of nights, and each time he concluded
with, “Well, they 'll never root any more.” It would be hard
to tell why, but all the coach passengers looked with interest at
the various fields, and woods, and pens, where the drover's
hogs had rested on their fatal journey toward the city. “Just
on this knoll, or that rise,” he would say, “a fat fellow gave
out, and we let him have a ride the rest of the way, or treated
him to a hot bath.” He occupied more than his share of room,
to the very evident annoyance of the woman who was on the
seat with him; for she had much less than half for herself and
her child, a deformed and forlorn-looking little boy of perhaps
six years of age. He was scantily, even meanly dressed, his
bare feet hanging quite below his cotton frock, and his stiff
fur hat so large as to fall over his eyes, which were remarkably
black and large. I could not but notice that the mother, as I
supposed her to be, wrapped her shawl more carefully about
herself than the child, who kept all the time moaning and fretting,
sometimes crying out bitterly. She made no effort to
soothe him, except that she now and then turned his face from
one direction to another. Once or twice she held it close against
her—I thought not fondly, but crushingly—and more than
once or twice she dashed his head against the fat man's side,
partly by way of jostling him, as I thought, and partly to
punish the child for crying. He rubbed his eyes till his little
hands were wet with tears; but never did she warm them in
her bosom or dry them with kisses. Indeed, she seemed no
more concerned than as if she had held on her lap a bundle of
sticks. A sudden cry of evident pain drew all eyes to her.
In one of the dabs at the fat man she had scratched the boy's
face with a pin sticking in his sleeve.

“Poor little beauty!” whispered a pale, lady-like looking
woman to the person beside her, a black-whiskered, well-fed
sort of man: “poor little beauty! I wish I had it.”

“Really, Nelly,” he answered, in a half kind, half mocking
way, “you are benevolent;” and in a lower voice he added,
“considering the circumstances.”

I occupied the middle seat, with the merchant, and she who

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

had spoken so kindly sat directly behind me, but I turned involuntarily
when I heard her voice, and saw, as I have said,
that she looked pale and delicate, and that she dropped her veil
and blushed at the gentle reproval of her companion.

With this couple sat a rosy-cheeked, middle-aged woman,
who had hitherto kept her lips compressed, but, as it appeared
to me, with difficulty. She now leaned across the lap of the
gentleman, and asked the invalid traveller if she had any children
of her own, and if she was married or single; saying she
wondered she should feel such sympathy for that “ornary child,”
for that nobody but a mother could have the feelings of a mother.
“Now I,” she added, “have left a little one at home—
six months old it was the fourteenth of last month—and I 'm
just fairly crazy, though I have n't been gone a day, as you
may say, for it was three o'clock yesterday when I started;
the baby was asleep then; I expect maybe he cried when he
waked up and missed me, but it seemed necessary for me to
go away. I had to go, in fact, as you may say. Nobody
drove me to be sure, but then we wanted a good many things
about the house that, as you may say, nobody could get but
myself, and I thought I might as well go now as ever. I knew
the baby would be taken good care of by Liddy—that 's my
oldest girl; but it seemed like I could n't get my own consent,
and I went without it at last, as you may say. Do you live in
town?” she inquired; and, without pausing for a reply, continued,
“A body sees a heap of pretty things that a body would
like to have, do n't they, if they only had plenty of money?
This is a tea-pot,” she said, holding up a carefully wrapped
parcel; “it 's a new fashion, they told me; but I think it 's a
new-fashioned old fashion; for I remember, when I was a girl,
we used to have one just a'most like it.” And she kindly tore
off a bit of the envelope, telling the lady she could see the
color, and that she had a set of things in a basket on the top of
the coach, the same color, and the make of the same man, she
supposed. Dear sakes! I hope none of them will get broken,
and won't I be glad to see my baby!” Having settled herself
in her place, she leaned forward again to say, “Just hear that

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

fat man! he talks about his affairs as if he thought every body
as much interested in them as himself.”

I could not help but smile at her innocent simplicity. How
quick we are to detect the faults of others—how slow to “see
ourselves as others see us.”

“Do you see that old tree with the fork split off and hanging
down?” It was the fat man who asked this question—of
nobody in particular—but every body tried to see, and most
of us did see. “One of my fellows hung himself there last
week. He was well the day before. At supper—we slept at
a tavern not half a mile away—I noticed that he did n't eat,
and seemed down-hearted like; but I did n't say nothing to
him; I wish now I had; and in the morning he could n't be
found, high nor low. Finally, we gave up the search, and got
our drovers started-along later than common. I stopped a bit
after the rest, settling with the landlord, who said to me, in a
joking way like, that he guessed he 'd have to charge me for
his wife's clothes-line; that she said she was as certain as she
was alive that it hung on a particular peg the last night, and
she thought the missing drover knew something about it; he
looked wild out of his eyes, she said. Just that way he spoke
about it; and I laughs at him, mounts my horse, and rides
away. I had just come in sight of the drove when one of my
fellers—that 's the one whose legs you see,” and he pointed to a
pair of muddy boots hanging against the window from the outside
of the coach,—“came toward me running on the full jump,
and told me they had discovered Jake hung on a tree, and
swinging in the wind, stiff as a poker.”

“Good gracious me!” exclaimed the woman with the sick
child, and giving the fat man as much room as possible, “how
did he look, and what did you do with him?”

“Look! he looked like a dead man; and as for doing with
him, we cut him down, and put him under ground by the side
of an old black log.”

“I wish I could see the one that discovered him,” the woman
said, trying to pull down the window; “is he any kin to the
man that hung himself, and had he taken the clothes-line?”

“He had taken the clothes-line, but the landlady on its being

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returned to her, said it would bring bad luck to the house, and
so threw it in the fire.”

The poor child was not thrust against him any more; but it
kept crying and moaning, and rubbing its eyes and the scratch
on its face, which smarted as the tears rolled over it.

“What ails your child?” asked the fat man, who seemed
not to have noticed its crying till he turned to answer the
nurse's question.

“Nothing, only he 's ugly and cross,” she answered.

“I guess any of us would feel bad,” said the rosy-cheeked
woman with the new tea-pot, “if our bare feet hung dangling
about like his 'n, to say nothing of that scratch on his face.
Wont you be good enough, sir, to take that pin out of your
sleeve?”

“Certainly, ma'am; I was not aware”—he did n't finish the
sentence to her, for she had leaned across the coach, and was
saying to the pale lady that she never could see what a man
wanted to have pins sticking about him for.

“Naughty pin, was n't it!” said the fat man to the baby,
taking from his sleeve the offending instrument and throwing it
from the window; and he continued, putting the child's feet in
one of his mittens, “Tell him murrur she must wrap him in
her shawl.”

“You need n't look at me,” she replied; “I am not his
mother by a great sight; she 's in a mad-house; they just took
her this morning. It was a dreadful sight—she a raving, and
the children screaming and carrying on at a dreadful rate.
They say she is past all cure, and I s'pose she is. She liked to
have pulled all the hair out of my head when she saw I was
going to take the baby. I am only a distant relation, but it 's
not always near of kin that are the best to orphans. Sit up!”
she exclaimed, giving the child a rough jerk; “do n't lean against
the gentleman as heavy as a bag of mush.” The fat man had
become a lion in her estimation since she learned that one of
his drovers had hanged himself.

“He does n't disturb me in the least,” said he; and taking
off the child's hat, he smoothed its hair with his great hand.

“I guess he is a right nice man,” said the rosy-cheeked

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

woman, leaning toward her of the pale cheek, who was untying a
fur cape from her neck. “Put it round the little boy, my good
woman,” she said, reaching it toward her.

“Really, Nelly,” said the gentleman beside her, and he
looked at her with evident displeasure.

But the woman returned the cape, saying, “He 's got to take
the world as he can get it; there is no use of wrapping him in
a fine fur cape for an hour.”

“That fellow up there,” said the fat man, “could give
more particulars than I can about the wretched suicide I was
telling of.”

“Wretched what?” inquired the woman.

“The fellow that was so fond of swinging;” and as he spoke
he lifted the child from her knees, unbuttoned his brown coat,
and folded him warmly beneath it, resting his chin on the boy's
hair, informing him that at home he had a little boy just about
his size, and asking him if he would like to go home with him
and be his little boy.

The coach now rattled along at a lively rate, and, soothed by
the warmth and the kindliness of the drover's tone, the poor little
fellow was soon fast asleep.

I noticed that the lady in the corner looked weary; and that
once when she laid her head on the shoulder of the man beside
her, he moved uneasily, as if the weight burdened him, and
that she lifted herself up again, though she seemed scarcely
able to do so.

“That 's my house,” said the rosy-cheeked woman, “right
fernent William Peters's; and I guess I am as glad to get
home as they will be to see me—the dear knows I did n't want
to go. I would have paid anybody, and been very much
obliged to them besides, if they could have done my errands
for me.”

At the gate of her house an obedient-looking man stood in
waiting for her; and as the crockery was handed down, the good-natured
owner gathered her sundry little parcels together;
shook hands with the pale lady, saying she hoped she would
soon get the better of the ill turn she seemed to have; uncovered
the baby's face, and kissed it, dropping a tear on its

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clasped hands, as she did so, and saying “Just to think if it
was mine!” I suppose by way of apology for what the world
considers a weakness; and, smiling a sort of benediction on us
all, she descended the side of the coach. I followed, for my
destination was also reached.

“You going to stop here? Well now, if that do n't beat
all! I suppose you are Mr. Peters's niece that I 've heard so
much tell of. And as I am alive, if there aint Delia, just going
away! Poor girl, I guess she leaves her heart behind her.”
This suspicion she imparted in a whisper; and having said I
must come in and see her, she flew rather than walked toward
the house, for Jane was coming to meet her with the baby. I
could only shake hands an instant with my cousin Delia, who
seemed to anticipate little happiness from her journey, as I
judged from tear-blind eyes and quivering lips. I thought she
whispered to her father something about remaining at home,
now that I was come.

“Oh, no, Dillie, I do n't think it 's worth while,” he said;
“she will stay here all winter, and you will be back in a month,
at furthest.”

The companion of the pale lady assisted Delia into the coach
with much gallantry; the driver's whip-lash made a circuit in
the air; the jaded horses sprang forward as though fresh for
the race; and the poor little child, with its bare feet and red
hands, was lost to me forever. May the good Shepherd have
tempered the winds to its needs, and strengthened it against
temptations, in all its career in this hard and so often uncharitable
world

“How glad I am you have come,” said uncle William,
when we were in the house; “but it seems kind a lonesome
for all.”

Jane was ten years older than Delia—not so pretty nor stylish,
but very good, motherly, and considerate. They had no
mother, and lived with their father in the old house where they
were brought up. Delia was about sixteen at the time of my

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visit; handsome, captivating, and considered quite the belle of
the village and neighborhood.

We were a small and quiet family at uncle William's. He
himself did little but tend the parlor fire, read the newspaper,
and consult the almanac and his watch, which things made up
his world. He knew all the phases of the moon, and what the
weather would be likely to be for a month in advance; he knew
what his favorite editor said, and believed it; in fact, there was
no other paper; its contents seemed designed more especially
for him than for anybody else; and to this day I can not rid
myself of the impression that uncle William's newspaper was
altogether the most excellent thing of its kind in the world.
When the sun came up, he took from beneath the parlor looking-glass,
where it hung of nights, the great silver chronometer
that had been his father's and his grandfather's, turned the key
a few times, held it to his ear, consulted the almanac, and compared
the sunrise with his time, as if to see that the sun were
punctual to its appointment. He then mended the fire, and
took up the “Republican,” and when it was read through once
he began again, more studiously to examine, and thoughtfully to
digest its most noticeable contents. It always had something
good in it, he said, and it would do him no harm to read some
of the pieces a dozen times. When the sunlight slanted through
the south window, he carefully folded the paper, and again consulted
his watch. At sunset another comparison was made of
time authorities, and the almanac again resorted to, and then
began the evening reading.

Uncle William never indulged in what is termed frivolous
conversation; the only thing in the way of fun I ever heard him
say was that the editor of his paper was a man that had a head.
But he was less morose, and far more genial, than another of
my relations, uncle Christopher, with whom he held no intercourse
whatever, but of whom I shall have something to relate
in these reminiscences of Clovernook history.

Jane had little more to say than her father. She never read,
and had never been from home; and so, of course, she was not
very wise; and as she never talked of things that did not concern
her, there was not much for her to discuss. In all ways

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she was strictly proper; so much so that ordinary mortals found
it more difficult to love her than they would have done had she
possessed more of the common human infirmities. Our conversation
was mostly of the weather, with which, however, she
was always contented; so that if the storm beat never so tempestuously,
I scarcely dared yawn, or say even that “I wish
it would clear off.”

I should have been happier if the house had been left in some
disorder on Delia's departure, so that we might have employed
ourselves by setting it to rights; but everything was in its
place; so we of necessity sat down by the fire, and the little we
did say was in whispers, that we might not disturb uncle William,
who forever sat by, reading in a monotonous mutter,
neither aloud nor in silence. Sometimes he would invite me
to read, for the benefit of himself, who had read it twenty times
previously, Jane, who did n't care a straw for reading, and the
sixteen cats that dozed about the hearth, some “piece” which
he thought of remarkable interest or beauty.

“Will Delia be gone long?” I inquired after my arrival; for
I had previously learned that she was gone two or three hundred
miles from Elm Ridge, to a small city which I had never known
uncle William's folks to visit, and I was curious to know the
why and wherefore. Jane stitched a little faster, I thought;
the twilight was deepening so much that I could not have seen
to stitch at all; but she only answered that her sister's stay
was uncertain.

“I did n't know you had friends there,” I said, for I did not
like to ask more directly.

“Did n't you?” answered Jane, stitching as before.

I was not discouraged, and remembering what the rosy-cheeked
woman had said about Delia's having left her heart behind
her, I continued, “She has grown very pretty since I saw
her; she must be very much admired.”

“Our preacher's wife gave her a book,” she said, “at Christmas,
and our singing master—old Mr. White—offered to teach
her for nothing.” And these were all the evidences of the
admiration she received which Propriety Jane thought fit to
disclose for me.

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

“Who lives opposite?” I asked; for the house looked so
cheerful, with its lights moving about, the chimneys sending
up their blue smoke, and the bustling in and out of doors, that
I could not help wishing myself there, since not a candle was
lighted in our house, and there was no supper in preparation,
nor any cheerful talk to enliven the time.

“Mr. Widdleton's folks,” replied Jane, and rising from her
chair, she stood close against the window, that she might see to
stitch a little longer.

“What sort of people are they?”

“Oh, very nice people.”

“It must have been Mrs. Widdleton with whom I came up
in the coach: a rosy-cheeked, good-natured woman, who seems
fond of talking.”

“Yes, it was she.”

“Well,” said I, “she bought a new teapot, with a variety of
other things, as she was good enough to inform us all.”

Jane made no reply whatever, nor by smile or gesture indicated
that Mrs. Widdleton had been communicative in any
unusual degree.

The snow was falling dismally, the fire was low, and the
coming on of night seemed gloomy enough. Uncle William
was splitting pine boards into kindling, and though all day I
had wished he would afford us by his absence a little opportunity
for conversation, I now heartily wished he would return,
and tell us when the moon would change.

As I listened to the winds, and wondered what kept my uncle
and cousin alive, there was a low and what seemed to me a
very timid rap at the door. Jane opened it; and though her
tone evinced neither surprise nor pleasure, it was not uncivil,
as she received the visitor. He seemed—for he was a young
man—not to feel at liberty to sit down, though Jane invited
him so to do; but, having made some commonplace observations
relative to the weather, he inquired whether Miss Delia
were at home.

“No,” answered Jane; and she gave no intimation as to
where her sister was gone, or when she would return, or
whether she would ever do so.

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“I will then bid you good evening,” he said, “and do myself
the pleasure of calling again.”

When he was gone, Jane left the room, having made no
reply to the young gentleman's intimation.

On his entrance, I had stirred the coals to make a little light,
but it was so faint that I saw him but imperfectly, though with
enough distinctness to warrant me in believing him a very
handsome man, of not more than twenty-two or three years of
age. Besides, his voice was so soft and musical as, together
with his fair looks, to leave a most agreeable impression. Who
he was or whence he came I could not know, but somehow I
was interested in him, and pressing my face to the window,
looked eagerly through the snow to see in what direction he
went. At the gate he paused, thrust his hands into his pockets,
and seemed to muse for a moment, looking one way and then
another, as if in doubt what to do; but presently he lighted a
cigar with a match, and, turning in the direction of a tavern,
was quickly lost from my observation.

“Who was that young person?” I asked, when Jane returned
to the parlor.

“Edward Courtney.”

“Does he live in the village?”

“No.”

“I noticed that he went in that direction.”

Jane lighted the candle and took up her work.

“Very handsome, is n't he?” I said.

“Yes.”

“What is his occupation?”

“His father, with whom he lives, is a farmer, but lately come
to our neighborhood.”

“Well, I wish he had passed the evening with us, and not
been so exclusively devoted to Miss Delia.”

Jane said nothing, and I inquired when he would be likely to
come again.

“I do n't know.”

“Really, Jane,” I said, “you are provoking; for once in
your life tell me something I wish to find out. What is it, that
his name is Edward Courtney, and that his father is a farmer;

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he may be a scapegrace for all that. Pray, what do you know
about him, and why do you not like him? for I am sure you do
not.”

“Why, yes, I like him well enough,” she answered; “but I
know nothing about him to tell; he is rather a wild young
man, I think.”

“What wild thing has he done?”

“Oh, I do n't know: I do n't know as he is wild.'

And holding out one foot, she asked me how I liked her
shoes, saying they were made out of dog-skin; she thought they
were as pretty as morocco, and her father said he thought they
would last all winter.

“S'cat!” exclaimed uncle William, at this moment making
his way through a dozen of the feline tribe; and having mended
the fire, he said he believed the moon quartered that night, and
proceeded to examine the almanac.

To me the evening seemed setting in very lonesomely, and it
was a most agreeable surprise when one of Mrs. Widdleton's
children came in to ask cousin Jane and myself to pass it with
her. To my disappointment, however, Jane did not feel like
going; she was afraid of getting the toothache, and believed
she could not go very well.

“You go, any how,” said the boy who had asked us; “Mother
says if you ain't acquainted, come and get acquainted.”

I hesitated, for it seemed awkward to go alone into a stranger's
house, but the urgency of the lad and my own inclination
prevailed; and I was already aware that the social customs of
Elm Ridge were not trammeled by oppressive conventional
restrictions.

On my arrival, I saw, to my surprise, the whiskered gentleman
whom I have mentioned as the companion of the pale lady
in the coach.

“Really, madam,” he said, “I do hope, if it will not be a
serious inconvenience, that I can prevail upon you—not so
much on my own account as for my wife's sake. She is pious,
and does n't like being at the hotel, where Sunday is pretty
nearly as good as any other day.”

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“And are you not pious?” asked Mrs. Widdleton, looking
at him in innocent astonishment.

He smiled and shook his head, but made no other answer.

“Well, I do n't know what to say. I liked the little
woman”—

“Yes, I like her too,” interrupted the man, with a peculiar
smile, intended perhaps as an expression of humor.

“Did you ever!” exclaimed Mrs. Widdleton, and she went
on to say that she feared their plain way of living would not
suit a fine lady, who had been used to servants, and like
enough never had to wet her hands. She would see what
Abner thought.

“By all means.”

And the gentleman seated himself, and caressed one leg,
while she withdrew, for a consultation, to the kitchen, where a
hammering seemed to indicate the going forward of some active
business.

“Just have it your own way, mother,” I heard him say. “If
you are a mind to do more and have more, why you can; but
seems to me you have enough to do; though I do n't care. Do
just as you please; but I hate to have you make a slave of
yourself, mother.”

“Well, Abner,” she answered, “one or two more in the
family do n't seem to make much difference; and if they are
not suited, why they can find another place, may be.”

When the gentleman had taken leave, which he did very
politely, Mrs. Widdleton informed me that his name was Hevelyn;
that he was a southern man, lately married, and had come
north for the sake of his wife's health. This she had learned
during her late interview with him. She also informed me she
was going to board them awhile; that she wanted to get a few
things for Liddy, more than she could spare the money to buy—
not that Abner would be unwilling to give it to her, but then
he had so many uses for his money.

Mrs. Widdleton was one of those bustling, active women,
who never seem in their right sphere except with hands full and
overflowing. Everybody was active about her—Mr. Widdleton
mending her washing-tub, Liddy making a new gown, one

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of the children rocking the cradle, and all at something. As
for what she did during the evening in the way of mending and
making, I can not recount it, but the cradle was heaped, and so
were all the chairs about her, with the work she did. We had
cakes, and apples, and cider, and nuts, besides a constant flow
of talking, in which Mr. Widdleton, having finished his tub,
participated. I felt, I remember, a wish that everybody might
be just as contented as they, and have just as bright a fire.

But Mrs. Widdleton—ah me, I do n't like to write that
“but”—was a little given to talking of things that did not concern
her, as well as of things that did; and when the children
were gone to bed, and while Abner had ground the coffee for
breakfast—“he is so handy about the house,” said Mrs. Widdleton—
we drew close to the embers, and the good woman
glided naturally from her own tea-set to the tea-sets of her
neighbors, and thence the transition to her neighbors themselves
was almost imperceptible. A number of interesting
little family affairs came to my knowledge that night; but
I will not attempt a report of all her disclosures—only of some
intimations that more immediately interested me. Uncle William
and Jane had put their heads together, she said, and sent
off Delia, the dear knows where, to prevent her keeping the
company of Edward Courtney; and for her part she thought,
though she did n't want to say anything one way or the other,
and it was very seldom she did speak at all, that Delia or any
other girl might go further and fare worse, for Edward Courtney
was just as nice a young man, apparently, as ever she set
eyes on, and she would just as soon a daughter of hers married
him as to marry some persons that some persons thought a
good deal better, or to live at home till she was forty years
old, and nurse the cats. Jane, she confessed, was just as good
a girl as ever was, and uncle William was just as good a man
as ever was, but they would think it very hard to be made to
marry somebody they did n't like; and, for her part, she
thought it was just as bad to be kept from marrying whom you
did like. “It 's one thing to marry,” said Mrs. Widdleton,
“and another thing to love the man you marry; and, for my

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part, I would have Abner or I would have nobody. I was
always averse to match-making, but I have a great mind as ever
I had in my life”—she suddenly paused, and added, “No, I
do n't know as I will, either; but I hate to see folks as cool as
a cucumber about such things, and think nobody has any feeling
more than themselves. Poor Delia! Yes, I have the
greatest mind—no—I do n't know as I will—I might reflect on
myself if it did n't all come out right.” And she vigorously
trotted her baby, long after he was asleep; and I have always
thought that then and there she settled the knotty point, for she
said at last, with a smile, that if she should tell Edward where
Delia was, it would n't be telling him to go there and marry
her; but even if she should give him a piece of her mind to that
effect, she did n't know as they could take her up and hang her.
Before I returned to uncle William's that night, she concluded
she would call on Mrs. Courtney in a day or two; she wanted
to borrow a dress pattern of her; perhaps she would see Edward,
and perhaps not; and she did n't know as she would say
anything about Delia if she did see him; it was the pattern she
wanted. But notwithstanding this conclusion, I felt assured
that she would give Edward the “piece of her mind” with
which she had first proposed to endow him.

The following day I related to Jane the incidents of the evening:
how Mr. Widdleton had mended a tub, and his wife had
darned and mended; in fact, whatever had been done or said
that could interest her, not omitting the conversation about
Edward and Delia—for I was determined to find out something
in reference to the affair, as I persuaded myself I had a perfect
right to do, considering our relationship; and Delia's pale face
haunted me; her supplicating appeal for permission to remain
at home I felt assured was not on my account; I saw pots
of her flowers standing about, dying from neglect, and I could
not help thinking her thoughts had been otherwhere. So, as
I said, I told Jane that Mrs. Widdleton thought Delia and
Edward would make a fine match, and that she was sorry it
was likely not to take place; for I did not choose to repeat
her precise words. My very proper cousin colored slightly,

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and said, that if Mrs. Widdleton had not so many excellent
qualities, she would be a busybody. This was the only reproach
of any one I ever heard from her. I confess to greater
imperfection; the affairs of other people interest me, and I
am apt sometimes to say what I think of their conduct and
character.

I used to take my seat at the window, and there being
neither conversation nor reading within, I naturally looked out
for amusement, and found it in the movements of our neighbors;
for humanity is more to us than everything else, as those
who have passed a winter in an isolated country place can very
easily believe. The evening after this visit, I saw a light in the
front chamber of Mr. Widdleton's house, where I had never
seen a light before, and supposed the Hevelyns were there.
The following morning I saw Mrs. Widdleton set out, bright
and early, in the direction of Mr. Courtney's house. She
walked against the north wind with a straightforward and energetic
step, and I wondered whether there were any purpose in
her movements that did not concern the pattern. It was nearly
noon when she returned, accompanied by young Mr. Courtney.
They paused at the gate, and seemed in earnest conversation
for a long time. Liddy came to the door and looked earnestly
toward her mother several times; the baby was fretting, I
knew; but as often as they seemed about to separate they drew
nearer again, till it seemed their conversation would never have
an end. Seated on the outside of the evening coach that day I
noticed a young man who, I thought, resembled Courtney, and
I was the more convinced of its being him from the graceful
way in which he recognized Mrs. Widdleton, as he passed. A
red scarf about his neck concealed, in part, his face, so that I
could not be positive it was he. “But if it is,” thought I,
“he may have a thousand objects in view besides Delia. I
have no right to think anything about it.” Still I did think
about it.

Often in the courses of the days I saw Mrs. Hevelyn, wrapt
in a shawl which seemed of a very rich and costly pattern,
standing or sitting by the chamber window. Sometimes I

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observed her wipe her eyes, and always her movements indicated
sadness and dejection. Occasionally when the sun shone in the
middle of the day, she walked about the yard, examined the
dead flowers, and looked up and down the lonesome road, returning
again to the house with a languid and heavy step.
When the evening coach came rattling over the near hill, I saw
her either raise the sash or step out into the yard, and watch it
eagerly, as though in expectation of some one; and when it
passed she would sometimes return with her handkerchief to
her eyes, and sometimes, sinking at once on the frozen ground,
sit, as though powerless to go in, for an hour or more. One
sunshiny day I went out into the yard to see if the flags were
sprouting or the daffodils coming through the grass, for I had
seen a blue-bird twittering in the lilac and picking its feathers
that morning. “How d' you do?” called a voice that seemed
not altogether unfamiliar, and looking up, I saw Mrs. Widdleton
leaning over her yard-fence, with the evident intention of
having a little chat.

“What is the news,” she asked, “at your house?”

“Oh nothing; what is the news with you?”

“How does uncle William (for she called Mr. Peters uncle
William when she spoke to me of him) seem to take it?”

“Take what?” said I.

“Why, about Edward and Delia.”

“And what about them?”

“Why, they say he 's gone off to B—.” Here she lowered
her voice, and, saying that walls had ears sometimes,
crossed from her yard-fence to ours. “He 's gone off to
B—,” she continued, “and they say it 's to get married.”

“Is it possible!”

“Yes; and old Mr. Courtney is going back to the city to
live, and they say Edward and Delia are going right into the
old house; and from the way things seem to begin and go on,
I think they will do well.”

I said I thought so too, though what things she had seen
beginning and going on I was not in the least advised, however
shrewdly I might guess.

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If they should be married, and come and live in the old place,
and do right well, as she hoped and believed they would, she
thought Miss Jane and “uncle William” would be ashamed of
themselves.

As often as I met the ever busy and good natured Mrs. Widdleton,
she had much to say about poor Mrs. Hevelyn. Her
husband went away, she said, the very day he brought her there
and right among strangers so, it seemed as if the poor thing
would cry her eyes out. “Often of evenings,” said Mrs. Widdleton,
“I go up into her room to have a cheerful chat. You
know a body must talk or they won't say anything—and I find
her lying on the bed, her face all smothered in the pillow, and
her heart ready to break.” She informed me further, that Mr.
Hevelyn had written only once, and then barely a few lines,
since he went away.

Two or three days went by, when, at nightfall, I observed an
unusual stir about Mr. Widdleton's house; lights moved busily
from cellar to chamber; a strange woman, in a high white cap,
appeared from time to time; and presently the two little
girls came over to pass the evening, saying their mother
had given them leave to stay all night if they wished to.
The next morning the chamber-windows were closed, and
Mrs. Widdleton herself came in soon after breakfast to take
her children home, and informed them that somebody had
brought Mrs. Hevelyn “the sweetest little baby!” Tidings
were despatched to the absent husband, and day after day
the young mother exerted herself beyond her ability to make
her little darling look pretty, that the heart of the expected
father might be rejoiced the more; and day after day the
coach went by, and the sun went down, and he did not
come. At length, one day, in answer to Mrs. Widdleton's
urgent entreaties, and with a hope of giving the poor lady some
comfort, I went in to sit for an hour with her, taking my sewing.
I found her a sweet and lovable creature, indeed—not possessed

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of very strong mind or marked characteristics, but gentle, confiding,
and amiable. She had put back her curls in motherly
fashion, and her cheek was thin and pale; but she was beautiful,
and her large eyes had in them a pathos and power which
drew one toward her, as if by a spell. She seemed pleased
with my praise of the child; said she had named him John, for
his father; and added, “He wants to see the darling so much!
and nothing but the most pressing necessity keeps him away—
poor John!” It was a new illustration of the difficulty of dispossessing
a faithful heart of its confidence: she would be the
last to learn how little that father merited her affection.

“Do you think my little beauty is going to have red hair?”
she said, pressing her lips against his head. Her own was a
deep auburn. She looked at me, as if she wanted me to say
no; but I could not, conscientiously, and so replied evasively,
“Why, do n't you like that color?”

“I do n't care,” she said; “it would be pretty to me, no
matter what color it was; but John thinks red hair so ugly.”

“Perhaps it will be the color of yours, and that will please
him.”

“He used to call mine pretty,” she said; and, taking it down,
laid it on the baby's head, and compared it, with the greatest
apparent interest. While thus engaged, the coach drew up at
the gate. “Oh, it is he!—it is he!” she cried; and, placing
the baby in my arms, wound back her long hair, and flew to
meet him, as though the heavens were opening before her.

“Why, Nell,” I heard him say, as he assisted her up stairs,
“you have grown old and ugly since I left.”

The tone was playful, but she replied, “Oh, John!” in a
reproachful accent that indicated a deeply felt meaning.

“And where did you learn this style of arranging your hair?
Is it by good mother Widdleton's suggestion? Really, it is not
becoming—it is positively shocking; and red hair requires the
most careful dressing to make it endurable.”

She tried to laugh as she entered the room, and said to me,
“Do n't you think John is finding fault with me already! but,
never mind, I'll find fault with him one of these days.”

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“I dare say, my dear, you will have cause,” he answered,
half seriously, half laughingly; and, putting her arms about his
neck, she kissed him as fondly as though he had said she was
looking young and beautiful. “Oh, the baby!” she suddenly
exclaimed. “Why, John, you have n't seen him!”

“Do n't, my dear, make yourself ridiculous,” he whispered,
“but introduce the lady, and then go and arrange your hair:
there is time enough to see the baby.”

I rose to go, as I would have done sooner but for my little
charge; but the Hevelyns insisted so much on my remaining,
that I was forced to sit down. The mother kept smiling, but
tears seemed ready to fall; and I placed the child in the father's
arms, and said, “See, how like you he is!”

“Good gracious!” he exclaimed, turning away his eyes, “you
do n't mean to say I look like this thing!”

“No, not quite,” I said, laughing; “not so well.”

“And you call this boy mine, do you?” he said to his wife;
“red hair, and blue eyes, and ugly in every way. Why, his
hand is as big as a wood-chopper's.” And he held up his own,
which was delicate and beautiful.

“Now, John, dear, he does look like you, and Mrs. Widdleton,
too, says he does.” And to prove the resemblance she brought a
picture of her husband, saying I might trace the resemblance
more readily from that.

“Ah, Nelly,” he said, putting it aside, “that never looked
like me.” And to me he added, “You see it was painted when
I found that I had to marry Nell; and no wonder I looked woebegone!”

I took up a book of engravings, and, laying down the child he
turned over the leaves for me.

“I am so faint!” said the wife, putting her hand to her forehead.
“What shall I do, John?”

“Oh, I do n't know,” he answered, without looking toward
her; “get some water, or lie down, or something.”

I gave her some water, and, seating her in the arm-chair, returned
to the book, that I might not appear to notice her emotion.
She turned her back toward us with a pretence of rocking the

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cradle, but, in reality, to conceal inevitable tears. Mr. Hevelyn
saw it, his conscience smote him, and, stooping over her, he
kissed her forehead, and smoothed her hair, saying, with real or
affected fondness, “You know, dear, I was only jesting.” And
she was pacified, and smiled again. The next morning the
strange gentleman took the coach; he could not stay longer, the
wife said; and other lonesome days came and went.

One wild March morning, when the snow blew blindingly
against the windows, little Peter Widdleton came running in with
great haste. Mrs. Hevelyn's baby was very sick, and she wanted
me to come. I found, on arriving at her room, that it had not
seemed well for several days, and that the previous night it had
grown seriously worse, and that then the most alarming symptoms
were visible. She had written every day to her husband,
she told me, and as he neither came nor wrote, she was terrified
on his account, though it was possible her letters might have
been miscarried. Dear, credulous soul! The morning coach
went by, and the evening coach went by, and he came not; and
all the while the child grew worse. Mrs. Widdleton's skill was
baffled; and as the mother rocked the little sufferer on her
bosom, and said, “What shall I do! oh, what shall I do!” I
forgot all the words of comfort I had ever known.

Poor baby! its little hands clinging tightly to the mother's, it
lay all day; but at nightfall it sunk into slumber, and, though
its mother kissed it a thousand times, it did not wake any more.
It was piteous to see her grief when we put it down in the snow,
and left it with the March winds making its lullaby.

After the burial, Mrs. Hevelyn lost the little energy that had
kept her up before, and sat without speaking all the day. She
seemed to have lost every interest in life.

We were sitting around the fire one night, eight or ten days
after the baby died, when Mrs. Widdleton came bustling in to
tell us that Mrs. Hevelyn was gone; that her husband had
written her to join him without a moment's delay; that he had
not sent her one cent of money, nor in any way made provision
for her to go. “But for all that,” said our neighbor, “she was
nearly crazy to go, and the letter really made her a deal better

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

She gave my Liddy most of her clothes, partly by way of paying,
I suppose—for you see she had no money—all but her weddingdress;
that, she said, she should need before long;” and the kind
woman, taking up one of the cats, hugged it close by way of
keeping down her emotion. Ah well,” she added, presently,
“she has n't much to care to live for, I am afraid.”

When our excellent neighbor had completed the narrative respecting
her late guest, and bestowed fit tributes on the respective
characters of the wife and the husband, she sat a moment in
profound silence, and then, as if she had said Be gone! to all
gloomy recollections, her face resumed its wonted glow, and her
eyes sparkled with secrets until now suppressed, and at the
thoughts of surprise and consternation she was likely to introduce into my uncle's family—surprise and consternation in no degree
associated with real evil, or the good woman would have been
the last being in the world to feel a satisfaction in their creation
or anticipation. Suddenly interrupting the third persual of the
leading article in the week's “Republican,” she said, “Did you
know, Old Mr. and Mrs. Courtney move to town to-day.”

“Do tell,” said uncle William, looking very much pleased, “I
wonder what they are going to do with their house?”

“Well, I hardly know,” replied Mrs. Widdleton, looking slyly
at me; “some say one thing and some say another; but I have
my own thoughts. I do n't think Edward Courtney went to
B— for nothing; and I do n't think he will come back without
a certain little woman, whose name begins with Delia, for a
wife.”

Cousin Jane dropped half the stitches off one needle, and uncle
William opened the paper so suddenly that he tore it, which he
said he would not have done for a fip; and he forgot what quarter
the moon was in, and, on being questioned, said he did n't
know as he cared.

Mrs. Widdleton was right; for the next evening I went with
her to call on the bride, my friend carrying with her a custardpie
and a loaf of plum-cake. We found the happy pair taking

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tea at a little table, with their faces glowing with sympathetic
devotion; and when last I saw them they were as happy as
then—lovers yet, though they had been married a dozen years.

A year after my visit I heard, by chance, that Mrs. Hevelyn
was dead, and the fragment of her life and love that I have
written, is all I know.

p489-547 UNCLE CHRISTOPHER'S.

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The night was intensely cold, but not dismal, for all the hills
and meadows, all the steep roofs of the farm-houses, and the
black roofs of the barns, were white as snow could make them.
The haystacks looked like high, smooth heaps of snow, and the
fences, in their zigzag course across the fields, seemed made of
snow too, and half the trees had their limbs encrusted with the
pure white.

Through the middle of the road, and between banks out of
which it seemed to have been cut, ran a path, hard and blue
and icy, and so narrow that only two horses could move in it
abreast; and almost all the while I could hear the merry music
of bells, or the clear and joyous voices of sleigh riders, exultant
in the frosty and sparkling air.

With his head pushed under the curtain of the window next
the road, so that his face touched the glass, stood my father,
watching with as much interest, the things without, as I the
pictures in the fire. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets;
both his vest and coat hung loosely open; and so for a half
hour he had stood, dividing my musings with joyous exclamations
as the gay riders went by, singly, or in companies. Now
it was a sled running over with children that he told me of;
now an old man and woman wrapt in a coverlid and driving
one poor horse; and now a bright sleigh with fine horses, jingling
bells, and a troop of merry young folks. Then again he called
out, “There goes a spider-legged thing that I would n't ride in,”
and this remark I knew referred to one of those contrivances
which are gotten up on the spur of a moment, and generally
after the snow begins to fall, consisting of two limber saplings

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on which a seat is fixed, and which serve for runners, fills,
and all.

It was not often we had such a deep snow as this, and it
carried the thoughts of my father away back to his boyhood,
for he had lived among the mountains then, and been used to
the hardy winters which keep their empire nearly half the year.
Turning from the window, he remarked, at length, “This is a
nice time to go to Uncle Christopher's, or some where.”

“Yes,” I said, “it would be a nice time;” but I did not think
so, all the while, for the snow and I were never good friends. I
knew, however, that my father would like above all things to
visit Uncle Christopher, and that, better still, though he did not
like to own it, he would enjoy the sleighing.

“I want to see Uncle Christopher directly,” he continued,
“about getting some spring wheat to sow.”

“It is very cold,” I said, “is n't it?” I really could n't help
the question.

“Just comfortably so,” he answered, moving back from the
fire.

Two or three times I tried to say, “Suppose we go,” but the
words were difficult, and not till he had said, “Nobody ever
wants to go with me to Uncle Christopher's, nor anywhere,” did
I respond, heartily, “Oh, yes, father, I want to go.”

In a minute afterwards, I heard him giving directions about
the sleigh and horses.

“I am afraid, sir, you 'll find it pretty cold,” replied Billy, as
he rose to obey.

“I do n't care about going myself,” continued my father,
apologetically, “but my daughter has taken a fancy to a ride,
and so I must oblige her.”

A few minutes, and a pair of handsome, well-kept horses
were champing the bit, and pawing the snow at the door, while
shawls, mittens, &c., were warmed at the fire. It was hard to
see the bright coals smothered under the ashes, and the chairs
set away; but I forced a smile to my lips, and as my father
said “Ready?” I answered “Ready,” and the door closed on
the genial atmosphere—the horses stepped forward and backward,
flung their heads up and down, curved their necks to the

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tightening rein, and we were off. The fates be praised, it is not
to do again. All the shawls and muffs in Christendom could
not avail against such a night—so still, clear, and intensely
cold. The very stars seemed sharpened against the ice, and
the white moonbeams slanted earthward, and pierced our faces
like thorns—I think they had substance that night, and were
stiff; and the thickest veil, doubled twice or thrice, was less
than gossamer, and yet the wind did not blow, even so much
as to stir one flake of snow from the bent boughs.

At first we talked with some attempts at mirth, but sobered
presently and said little, as we glided almost noiselessly along
the hard and smooth road. We had gone, perhaps, five miles
to the northward, when we turned from the paved and level
way into a narrow lane, or neighborhood road, as it was called,
seeming to me hilly and winding and wild, for I had never been
there before. The track was not so well worn, but my father
pronounced it better than that we had left, and among the
stumps and logs, and between hills and over hills, now through
thick woods, and now through openings, we went crushing along.
We passed a few cabins and old-fashioned houses, but not
many, and the distances between them grew greater and greater,
and there were many fields and many dark patches of woods
between the lights. Every successive habitation I hoped would
terminate our journey—our pleasure, I should have said—yet
still we went on, and on.

“Is it much farther?” I asked, at length.

“Oh, no—only four or five miles,” replied my father; and
he added, “Why, are you getting cold?”

“Not much,” I said, putting my hand to my face to ascertain
that it was not frozen.

At last we turned into a lane, narrower, darker, and more
lonesome still—edged with woods on either side, and leading
up and up and up farther than I could see. No path had been
previously broken, and the horses sunk knee deep at every step,
their harness tightening as they strained forward, and their
steamy breath drifting back, and freezing stiff my veil. At the
summit the way was interrupted by a cross fence, and a gate
was to be opened—a heavy thing, painted red, and fastened

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with a chain. It had been well secured, for after half an hour's
attempts to open it, we found ourselves defied.

“I guess we 'll have to leave the horses and walk to the
house,” said my father; “it 's only a little step.”

I felt terrible misgivings; the gate opened into an orchard;
I could see no house, and the deep snow lay all unbroken; but
there was no help; I must go forward as best I could, or remain
and freeze. It was difficult to choose, but I decided to go on.
In some places the snow was blown aside, and we walked a
few steps on ground almost bare, but in the end high drifts met
us, through which we could scarcely press our way. In a little
while we began to descend, and soon, abruptly, in a nook sheltered
by trees, and higher hills, I saw a curious combination of
houses—brick, wood, and stone—and a great gray barn, looking
desolate enough in the moonlight, though about it stood half a
dozen of inferior size. But another and a more cheerful indication
of humanity attracted me. On the brink of the hill
stood two persons with a small hand-sled between them, which
they seemed to have just drawn up; in the imperfect light,
they appeared to be mere youths, the youngest not more than
ten or twelve years of age. Their laughter rang on the cold
air, and our approach, instead of checking, seemed to increase
their mirth.

“Laugh, Mark, laugh,” said the taller of the two, as we
drew near, “so they will see our path—they 're going right
through the deep snow.”

But in stead, the little fellow stepped manfully forward, and
directed us into the track broken by their sleds.

At the foot of the hill we came upon the medley of buildings,
so incongruous that they might have been blown together by
chance. Light appeared in the windows of that portion which
was built of stone, but we heard no sound, and the snow about
the door had not been disturbed since its fall. “And this,”
said I, “is where Uncle Christopher Wright lives?”

A black dog, with yellow spots under his eyes, stood suddenly
before us, and growled so forbiddingly that we drew
back.

“He will not bite,” said the little boy; for the merry

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makers had landed on their sled at the foot of the hill, and
followed us to the door; and in a moment the larger youth
dashed past us, seized the dog by the fore paws, and dragged
him violently aside, snarling and whimpering all the time.
“Haven't you got no more sense,” he exclaimed, “than to
bark so at a gentleman and ladies?”

In answer to our quick rap, the door opened at once, and the
circle about the great blazing log fire was broken by a general
rising. The group consisted of eight persons—one man and
seven women; the women so closely resembling each other,
that one could not tell them apart; not even the mother from the
daughters—for she appeared as young as the oldest of them—
except by her cap and spectacles. All the seven were very
slender, very straight, and very tall; all had dark complexions,
black eyes, low foreheads, straight noses, and projecting teeth;
and all were dressed precisely alike, in gowns of brown flannel,
and coarse leather boots, with blue woollen stockings, and small
capes, of red and yellow calico. The six daughters were all
marriageable; at least the youngest of them was. They had
staid, almost severe, expressions of countenances, and scarcely
spoke during the evening. By one corner of the great fire-place
they huddled together, each busy with knitting, and all
occupied with long blue stockings, advanced in nearly similar
degrees toward completion. Now and then they said “Yes,
ma'm,” or “No ma'm,” when I spoke to them, but never or
very rarely any thing more. As I said, Mrs. Wright differed
from her daughters in appearance, only in that she wore a cap
and spectacles; but she was neither silent nor ill at ease as
they were; on the contrary, she industriously filled up all the
little spaces unoccupied by her good man in the conversation;
she set off his excellencies, as a frame does a picture; and
before we were even seated, she expressed her delight that we
had come when “Christopher” was at home, as, owing to his
gift, he was much abroad.

Uncle Christopher was a tall muscular man of sixty or thereabouts,
dressed in what might be termed stylish homespun

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coat, trowsers and waistcoat, of snuff-colored cloth. His cravat
was of red-and-white-checked gingham, but it was quite hidden
under his long grizzly beard, which he wore in full, this peculiarity
being a part of his religion. His hair was of the same
color, combed straight from his forehead, and turned over
in one even curl on the back of the neck. Heavy gray eye-brows
met over a hooked nose, and deep in his head twinkled
two little blue eyes, which seemed to say, “I am delighted
with myself, and, of course, you are with me.” Between his
knees he held a stout hickory stick, on which, occasionally,
when he had settled something beyond the shadow of doubt,
he rested his chin for a moment, and enjoyed the triumph. He
rose on our entrance, for he had been seated beside a small
table, where he monopolized a good portion of the light, and
all the warmth, and having shaken hands with my father and
welcomed him in a long and pompous speech, during which the
good wife bowed her head, and listened as to an oracle, he
greeted me in the same way, saying, “This, I suppose, is
the virgin who abideth still in the house with you. She is
not given, I hope, to gadding overmuch, nor to vain and foolish
decorations of her person with ear-rings and finger-rings,
and crisping-pins: for such are unprofitable, yea, abominable.
My daughter, consider it well, and look upon it, and receive
instruction.” I was about replying, I don't know what, when
he checked me by saying, “Much speech in a woman is as
the crackling of thorns under a pot. Open rebuke,” he continued,
“is better than secret love.” Then pointing with his
cane in the direction of the six girls, he said, “Rise, maidens,
and salute your kinswoman;” and as they stood up, pointing
to each with his stick, he called their names, beginning with
Abagail, eldest of the daughters of Rachael Wright and Christopher
Wright, and ending with Lucinda, youngest born of
Rachael Wright and Christopher Wright. Each, as she was
referred to, made a quick ungraceful curtsy, and resumed her
seat and her knitting.

A half hour afterward, seeing that we remained silent, the
father said, by way of a gracious permission of conversation, I
suppose, “A little talk of flax and wool, and of household

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diligence, would not ill become the daughters of our house.” Upon
hearing this, Lucinda, who, her mother remarked, had the
“liveliest turn” of any of the girls, asked me if I liked to
knit; to which I answered, “Yes,” and added, “Is it a favorite
occupation with you?” she replied, “Yes ma'm,” and after
a long silence, inquired how many cows we milked, and at the
end of another pause, whether we had colored our flannel brown
or blue; if we had gathered many hickory nuts; if our apples
were keeping well, etc.

The room in which we sat was large, with a low ceiling,
and bare floor, and so open about the windows and doors, that
the slightest movement of the air without would keep the
candle flame in motion, and chill those who were not sitting
nearest the fire, which blazed and crackled and roared in the
chimney. Uncle Christopher, as my father had always called
him (though he was uncle so many degrees removed that I
never exactly knew the relationship), laid aside the old volume
from which he had been reading, removed the two pairs of
spectacles he had previously worn, and hung them, by leather
strings connecting their bows, on a nail in the stone jamb by
which he sat, and talked, and talked; and talked, and I soon
discovered by his conversation, aided by the occasional explanatory
whispers of his wife, that he was one of those infatuated
men who fancy themselves “called” to be teachers of religion,
though he had neither talents, education, nor anything else to
warrant such a notion, except a faculty for joining pompous and
half scriptural phrases, from January to December.

That inward purity must be manifested by a public washing of
the feet, that it was a sin to shave the beard, and an abomination
for a man to be hired to preach, were his doctrines, I believe,
and much time and some money he spent in their vindication.
From neighborhood to neighborhood he traveled, now entering
a blacksmith's shop and delivering a homily, now debating with
the boys in the cornfield, and now obtruding into some church,
where peaceable worshippers were assembled, with intimations
that they had “broken teeth, and feet out of joint,” that
they were “like cold and snow in the time of harvest, yea, worse,
even as pot-sheds covered with silver dross.” And such

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exhortations he often concluded by quoting the passage: “Though
thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat, with a
postle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.”

More than half an hour elapsed before the youths whose
sliding down the hill had been interrupted by us, entered the
house. Their hands and faces were red and stiffened with the
cold, yet they kept shyly away from the fire, and no one
noticed or made room for them. Both interested me at once,
and partly, perhaps, that they seemed to interest nobody else.
The taller was not so young as I at first imagined; he was ungraceful,
shambling, awkward, and possessed one of those clean,
pinky complexions which look so youthful; his hair was yellow,
his eyes small and blue, with an unquiet expression, and his
hands and feet inordinately large; and when he spoke, it was
to the boy who sat on a low stool beside him, in a whisper,
which he evidently meant to be inaudible to others, but which
was, nevertheless, quite distinct to me. He seemed to exercise
a kind of brotherly care over the boy, but he did not speak,
nor move, nor look up, nor look down, nor turn aside, nor sit
still, without an air of the most wretched embarrassment. I
should not have written “sit still,” for he changed his position
continually, and each time his face grew crimson, and, to cover
his confusion, as it were, he drew from his pocket a large silk
handkerchief, rubbed his lips, and replaced it, at the same time
moving and screwing and twisting the toe of his boot in every
direction.

I felt glad of his attention to the boy, for he seemed silent
and thoughtful beyond his years; perhaps he was lonesome, I
thought; certainly he was not happy, for he leaned his chin on
his hand, which was cracked and bleeding, and now and then
when his companion ceased to speak, the tears gathered to his
eyes; but he seemed willing to be pleased, and brushed the
tears off his face and smiled, when the young man laid his
great hand on his head, and, shaking it roughly, said, “Mark,
Mark, Marky!”

“I can't help thinking about the money,” said the boy, at
last, “and how many new things it would have bought: just
think of it, Andrew!”

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“How Towser did bark at them people, did n't he, Mark?”
said Andrew, not heeding what had been said to him.

“All new things!” murmured the boy, sorrowfully, glancing
at his patched trowsers and ragged shoes.

“In three days it will be New-Year's; and then, Mark, won't
we have fun!” and Andrew rubbed his huge hands together, in
glee, at the prospect.

“It won't be no fun as I know of,” replied the boy.