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UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 (1)
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University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875[X]
University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection (1)
Date
expand1997 (1)
1Author:  Sedgwick Catharine Maria 1789-1867Add
 Title:  The Boy of Mount Rhigi  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: There is a certain portion of the Tahconnick range of mountains, in the western part of Massachusetts, called Rhigi, said to have been thus named by Swiss emigrants who settled there, and who probably came from the neighborhood of Mount Rhigi, in Switzerland, one of the beautiful resorts of that most beautiful land.[1] [1]There are other similar traces of Swiss settlement in this neighborhood. Bash Bish, the lovely fall now becoming known and celebrated, is a corruption of a very common Swiss name of their minor falls. The love of the father-land is expressed by the names the emigrant gives to the land of his adoption. The Pilgrim bestowed on the New England settlements the names of his old England home — Norfolk, Suffolk, Boston, Northampton, Stockbridge, &c., and the New Englander repeats them in his new home in the far west. “Firstly, I enclose the two dollars you gave me for travelling expenses. I met Mr. Lyman on board the steamboat, and he gave me five dollars, which he said he owed me for my aid in the drawings he made for the New York architect. Fine! After the wet time of parting was over, I was in luck. Mr. Porter would not take any thing for bringing me to the boat, — thirty good miles, — because I helped him pick up apples one day after Jesse Porter broke his arm. I was pretty hungry; but hearing they charged half a dollar for supper, I bought some crackers and cheese before I went on board. So I came to the city for fifty cents. Such bustle and confusion as there was on the wharf where we landed! I made my way through it as well as I could, and inquired the way to Chambers Street, not far, No. —, where Mrs. Dawson lives. I saw the windows were all closed, and so I sat my box of clothes down, and sat on it. I began to feel both lonesome and hungry; nothing seemed like morning — the fresh, beautiful morning of the country. The sun shining on chimneys and brick walls, instead of hill-tops and sparkling waters; not a solitary bird singing; not even a cock crowing. After a while, milkmen began to appear. There was a different one for almost every house, and each made a horrid outcry; and, after a while, a woman came out of a cellar, and took a measure of milk. Though they live in great houses, this seems poverty to me. By and by, there came a lively little driver with baskets full of bread. I remembered Dr. Franklin's account of his buying a loaf of bread and eating it as he walked through the streets of Philadelphia, when first he went there; and, though I do not expect to eat bread in kings' houses, as he afterwards did, I thought there would be no harm in following his example; so I bought a sixpenny loaf of bread, and, with a draught of milk from a milkman, I made a good breakfast. You see, mother, I am determined to make my money last, if possible, till I can earn more, and not call on you or trouble our kind friend Mrs. Dawson. As soon as her blinds were opened, I rung. The man who opened the door smiled when I asked for Mrs. Dawson, and said she would rise in about two hours. How long those two hours were! But when they were over, and I was summoned to her, she was as kind as ever. She told me she had procured for me an excellent place in a retail shop in Broadway, where, if I did as well as my employer expected from her account of me, I should receive enough, even the first year, to pay my board. Before going there, she advised me to secure a boarding-place; she had made inquiries for this, and gave me references, and off I set. I went from one to another. At one there was a multitude of clerks, and a coarse, slatternly housekeeper; at another there was a set of low traders. I went in while they were at dinner, and a very slight observation 13 of their vulgar manners and conversation convinced me they were not associates that I should relish or you would approve. The next was full, and the last was too filthy for any thing. As I came off the steps quite discouraged, there was a little fat lady walking before me in a gray silk gown, and a white shawl, looking as neat as a new pin. Two dirty shavers of boys had filled a squirt-gun in the gutter, and had taken aim at the lady's nice gown. I sprang upon them just in time, wrenched the squirt-gun from their hands, and sent it off out of sight. They began kicking and bawling; and she, turning round, learned the mischief they had intended. She was very thankful to me, very good natured, and talkative. She told me the gown was new, just come home, and she had put it on for a wedding-visit, — a visit to her niece's husband's first cousin; it was her best gown, too; she had heard of the boys playing such tricks; boys would be boys, &c., &c. O, mother dear! her tongue goes by machinery. (Not father's!) She had such a friendly way, and did not seem a very great lady, and asked me so many questions, — my name, where I came from, &c., — that I thought I would tell her what I was in search of. This silenced her for a moment; then she said, “Come home with me, and we'll see what can be done. I'll talk to Plenty, — Plenty is my sister, — and perhaps — but I won't raise expectations yet. We live in Mercer Street, retired and central too.” “It seems to me, dear mother, that I have lived a year in the last fortnight. On the very Monday that I sent you an account of the upshot at Holson's, Mr. Nevis obtained the promise of an excellent situation for me with Messrs. James Bent & Co., where his son, my friend, already is. Mr. Bent is respected as a man of strict integrity, and every part of his establishment is well conducted; and I am to have a salary of $150. Only imagine how rich I shall be! `It never rains, but it pours!' Coming out of Mr. Bent's, who should I meet but Mr. Lyman! He has more work on hand than he can do, — making plans and drawings for the first architect in the city, — and he wanted me to help him. Never was any thing more opportune. The place I am to have at Mr. Bent's will not be vacant till next month, and now I can be earning something; and, to tell the truth, mother, I do need a little fitting up for summer.” “Your present, my dear son, was very acceptable, as a proof of your abiding and ever-thoughtful love; but do not send me any thing more at present. Keep your earnings for your summer's outfit. We want for nothing. Thanks to a kind Providence, my health is good, and Annie's. There is never lack of work for willing hands; and our wants, except for your afflicted father, are small. His cough is severe, and he declines daily, so that the doctor says he should not be surprised if he dropped away at any minute. His appetite continues remarkably. I might find it difficult to satisfy it, but our kind neighbors send in daily of their best. We have plenty of fresh. To-day, dear old Mrs. Allen sent a quarter of a roaster, and your father ate nearly the whole of it. You know he was always remarkably fond of pig. Our neighbors never let him be out of custards, pies, and preserves. You know, Harry, I never liked to call on my neighbors for watchers in sickness, and think that, in most cases, it's much better doing without them; but father feels different. He likes company, he says, when he is awake, and I am no talker. He is able yet to engage his own watchers. He borrows the sheriff's old horse, and jogs round after them. I don't oppose, though I sometimes fear he will die on the road; but it serves to divert him. “My dear cousin, — I am proud to call you so, — Harry Davis, your visit to me has done me, as I humbly hope, great good. I had lived here ten years, within a stone's throw of this jail, and never seen the inside of it. I call myself a Christian. I am a professor. I pray daily in my family for those who are in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity, and yet I have never, till you came here, lifted one of my fingers to loosen these bonds. I pray that missionaries, preaching the good news of salvation, may be sent to the whole human family. I subscribe to charitable societies, — and so I should, as God has prospered me, — and yet I have not done the duty nearest to me. If I had, or if my Christian neighbors had, the scenes of filth, idleness, and iniquity in that jail would never have existed to witness against us. I have taken measures to have that rascally jailer removed. They talk of a disinfecting fluid. There should be a moral disinfection in the character of the man who has the care of the tenants of a jail — morally diseased creatures. It is now three months since I have been with Mr. Bent; and, excepting my poor father's death, life has been all smooth sailing with me. You have been getting on so nicely! Clapham Hale giving such complete satisfaction to Mr. Norton, and you and Annie — as appears by your last letter — surprised with his improved appearance and manly bearing. Does he not seem like one of us?
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