 | CHAPTER II.
MY CHILD-WIFE. My wife and I, or, Harry Henderson's history |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
MY CHILD-WIFE.
THE Bible says it is not good for man to be alone.
This is a truth that has been borne in on my
mind, with peculiar force, from the earliest of my
recollection. In fact when I was only seven years old I
had selected my wife, and asked the paternal consent.
You see, I was an unusually lonesome little fellow, because
I belonged to the number of those unlucky waifs who come
into this mortal life under circumstances when nobody wants
or expects them. My father was a poor country minister in
the mountains of New Hampshire with a salary of six hundred
dollars, with nine children. I was the tenth. I was
not expected; my immediate predecessor was five years of
age, and the gossips of the neighborhood had already presented
congratulations to my mother on having “done up
her work in the forenoon,” and being ready to sit down to
afternoon leisure.
Her well-worn baby clothes were all given away, the cradle
was peaceably consigned to the garret, and my mother was
now regarded as without excuse if she did not preside at the
weekly prayer-meeting, the monthly Maternal Association,
and the Missionary meeting, and perform besides regular
pastoral visitations among the good wives of her parish.
No one, of course, ever thought of voting her any little
extra salary on account of these public duties which absorbed
so much time and attention from her perplexing
domestic cares—rendered still more severe and onerous by
my father's limited salary. My father's six hundred dollars,
however, was considered by the farmers of the vicinity as
being a princely income, which accounted satisfactorily for
everything, and had he not been considered by them as
“about the smartest man in the State,” they could not have
soft-spoken, quiet little women who, like oil, permeate
every crack and joint of life with smoothness.
With a noiseless step, an almost shadowy movement, her
hand and eye were every where. Her house was a miracle
of neatness and order—her children of all ages and sizes
under her perfect control, and the accumulations of labor of
all descriptions which beset a great family where there are
no servants, all melted away under her hands as if by enchantment.
She had a divine magic too, that mother of mine; if it be
magic to commune daily with the supernatural. She had
a little room all her own, where on a stand always lay
open the great family Bible, and when work pressed hard
and children were untoward, when sickness threatened,
when the skeins of life were all crossways and tangled, she
went quietly to that room, and kneeling over that Bible,
took hold of a warm, healing, invisible hand, that made the
crooked straight, and the rough places plain.
“Poor Mrs. Henderson—another boy!” said the gossips on
the day that I was born. “What a shame! poor woman.
Well, I wish her joy!”
But she took me to a warm bosom and bade God bless
me! All that God sent to her was treasure. “Who
knows,” she said cheerily to my father, “this may be our
brightest.”
“God bless him,” said my father, kissing me and my
mother, and then he returned to an important treatise which
was to reconcile the decrees of God with the free agency of
man, and which the event of my entrance into this world
had interrupted for some hours. The sermon was a perfect
success I am told, and nobody that heard it ever had a moment's
further trouble on that subject.
As to me, my outfit for this world was of the scantest—a
few yellow flannel petticoats and a few slips run up from
some of my older sisters cast off white gowns, were deemed
sufficient.
The first child in a family is its poem—it is a sort of
nativity play, and we bend before the young stranger, with
gifts, “gold, frankincense and myrrh.” But the tenth child
in a poor family is prose, and gets simply what is due to
comfort. There are no superfluities, no fripperies, no idealities
about the tenth cradle.
As I grew up I found myself rather a solitary little fellow
in a great house, full of the bustle and noise and conflicting
claims of older brothers and sisters, who had got the floor in
the stage of life before me, and who were too busy with
their own wants, schemes and plans, to regard me.
I was all very well so long as I kept within the limits of
babyhood. They said I was the handsomest baby ever pertaining
to the family establishment, and as long as that
quality and condition lasted I was made a pet of. My sisters
curled my golden locks and made me wonderful little frocks,
and took me about to show me. But when I grew bigger,
and the golden locks were sheared off and replaced by
straight light hair, and I was inducted into jacket and
pantaloons, cut down by Miss Abia Ferkin from my next
brother's last year's suit, outgrown—then I was turned upon
the world to shift for myself. Babyhood was over, and manhood
not begun—I was to run the gauntlet of boyhood.
My brothers and sisters were affectionate enough in their
way, but had not the least sentiment, and as I said before
they had each one their own concerns to look after. My
eldest brother was in college, my next brother was fitting
for college in a neighboring academy, and used to walk ten
miles daily to his lessons and take his dinner with him. One
of my older sisters was married, the two next were handsome
lively girls, with a retinue of beaux, who of course took
up a deal of their time and thoughts. The sister next before
me was four years above me on the lists of life, and of course
looked down on me as a little boy unworthy of her society.
When her two or three chattering girl friends came to see
her and they had their dolls and their baby houses to manage,
I was always in the way. They laughed at my awkwardness,
face, with that feminine freedom by which the gentler sex
joy to put down the stronger one when they have it at advantage.
I used often to retire from their society swelling
with impotent wrath, at their free comments. “I won't play
with you,” I would exclaim. “Nobody wants you,” would
be the rejoinder. “We've been wanting to be rid of you this
good while.”
But as I was a stout little fellow, my elders thought it advisable
to devolve on me any such tasks and errands as
interfered with their comfort. I was sent to the store when
the wind howled and the frost bit, and my brothers and sisters
preferred a warm corner. “He's only a boy, he can go,
or he can do or he can wait,” was always the award of my
sisters.
My individual pursuits, and my own little stock of interests,
were of course of no account. I was required to be in
a perfectly free, disengaged state of mind, and ready to drop
every thing at a moment's warning from any of my half
dozen seniors. “Here Hal, run down cellar and get me a
dozen apples,” my brother would say, just as I had half built
a block house. Harry, run up stairs and get the book I left
on the bed—Harry, run out to the barn and get the rake I
left there—Here, Harry, carry this up garret—Harry, run out
to the took shop and get that”—were sounds constantly occurring—breaking
up my private cherished little enterprises
of building cob-houses, making mill dams and bridges, or
loading carriages, or driving horses. Where is the mature
Christian who could bear with patience the interruptions and
crosses in his daily schemes, that beset a boy?
Then there were for me dire mortifications and bitter disappointments.
If any company came and the family board
was filled and the cake and preserves brought out, and gay
conversation made my heart bound with special longings to
be in at the fun, I heard them say, “No need to set a plate
for Harry—he can just as well wait till after.” I can recollect
many a serious deprivation of mature life, that did not
Then when my sister's admirer, Sam Richards, was expected,
and the best parlor fire lighted, and the hearth swept, how
I longed to sit up and hear his funny stories, how I hid in
dark corners, and lay off in shadowy places, hoping to escape
notice and so avoid the activity of the domestic police. But
no, “Mamma, mustn't Harry go to bed?” was the busy outcry
of my sisters, desirous to have the deck cleared for
action, and superfluous members finally disposed of.
Take it for all in all—I felt myself, though not wanting in
the supply of any physical necessity, to be somehow, as I
said, a very lonesome little fellow in the world. In all that
busy, lively, gay, bustling household I had no mate.
“I think we must send Harry to school,” said my mother,
gently, to my father, when I had vented this complaint in
her maternal bosom. “Poor little fellow, he is an odd one!
—there isn't exactly any one in the house for him to mate
with!”
So to school I was sent, with a clean checked apron,
drawn up tight in my neck, and a dinner basket, and a
brown towel on which I was to be instructed in the wholesome
practice of sewing. I went, trembling and blushing,
with many an apprehension of the big boys who had promised
to thrash me when I came; but the very first day I was
made blessed in the vision of my little child-wife, Susie
Morril.
Such a pretty, neat little figure as she was! I saw her first
standing in the school-room door. Her cheeks and neck
were like wax; her eyes clear blue; and when she smiled,
two little dimples flitted in and out on her cheeks, like those
in a sunny brook. She was dressed in a pink gingham
frock, with a clean white apron fitted trimly about her little
round neck. She was her mother's only child, and always
daintily dressed.
“Oh, Susie dear,” said my mother, who had me by the
hand, “I've brought a little boy here to school, and will be
a mate for you.”
How affably and graciously she received me—the little
Eve—all smiles and obligingness and encouragement for the
lumpish, awkward Adam. How she made me sit down on a
seat by her, and put her little white arm cosily over my
neck, as she laid the spelling-book on her knee, saying—“I
read in Baker. Where do you read?”
Friend, it was Webster's Spelling-book that was their
text-book, and many of you will remember where “Baker”
is in that literary career. The column of words thus headed
was a mile-stone on the path of infant progress. But my
mother had been a diligent instructress at home, and I an
apt scholar, and my breast swelled as I told little Susie
that I had gone beyond Baker. I saw “respect mingling
with surprise” in her great violet eyes; my soul was enlarged
—my little frame dilated, as turning over to the picture of
the “old man who found a rude boy on one of his trees
stealing apples,” I answered her that I had read there!
“Why-ee!” said the little maiden; “only think, girls—he
reads in readings!”
I was set up and glorified in my own esteem; two or three
girls looked at me with evident consideration.
“Don't you want to sit on our side?” said Susie, engagingly.
“I'll ask Miss Bessie to let you, 'cause she said the big
boys always plague the little ones.” And so, as she was a
smooth-tongued little favorite, she not only introduced me
to the teacher, but got me comfortably niched beside her
dainty self on the hard, backless seat, where I sat swinging
my heels, and looking for all the world like a rough little
short-tailed robin, just pushed out of the nest, and surveying
the world with round, anxious eyes. The big boys
quizzed me, made hideous faces at me from behind their
spelling-books, and great hulking Tom Halliday threw a spit
ball that lodged on the wall just over my head, by way of
showing his contempt for me; but I looked at Susie, and
took courage. I thought I never saw anything so pretty as
she was. I was never tired with following the mazes of her
golden curls. I thought how dainty and nice and white her
wonderful little red shoes; her tiny hands were so skillful
and so busy! She turned the hem of my brown towel, and
basted it for me so nicely, and then she took out some
delicate ruffing that was her school work, and I admired
her bright, fine needle and fine thread, and the waxen little
finger crowned with a little brass thimble, as she sewed
away with an industrious steadiness. To me the brass was
gold, and her hands were pearl, and she was a little fairy
princess!—yet every few moments she turned her great blue
eyes on me, and smiled and nodded her little head knowingly,
as much as to bid me be of good cheer, and I felt a thrill
go right to my heart, that beat delightedly under the checked
apron.
“Please, ma'am,” said Susan, glibly, “mayn't Henry go
out to play with the girls? The big boys are so rough.”
And Miss Bessie smiled, and said I might; and I was a
blessed little boy from that moment. In the first recess Susie
instructed me in playing “Tag,” and “Oats, peas, beans, and
barley, O,” and in “Threading the needle,” and “Opening
the gates as high as high as the sky, to let King George and
his court pass by”—in all which she was a proficient, and
where I needed a great deal of teaching and encouraging.
But when it came to more athletic feats, I could distinguish
myself. I dared jump off from a higher fence than she
could, and covered myself with glory by climbing to the top
of a five-railed gate, and jumping boldly down; and moreover,
when a cow appeared on the green before the school-house
door, I marched up to her with a stick and ordered her
off, with a manly stride and a determined voice, and chased
her with the utmost vigor quite out of sight. These proceedings
seemed to inspire Susie with a certain respect and
confidence. I could read in “readings,” jump off from high
fences, and wasn't afraid of cows! These were manly accomplishments!
The school-house was a long distance from my father's,
and I used to bring my dinner. Susie brought hers also,
made ourselves a house under a great button-ball tree, at
whose foot the grass was short and green. Our house was
neither more nor less than a square, marked out on the
green turf by stones taken from the wall. I glorified myself
in my own eyes and in Susie's, by being able to lift stones
twice as heavy as she could, and a big flat one, which nearly
broke my back, was deposited in the centre of the square, as
our table. We used a clean pocket-handkerchief for a table-cloth;
and Susie was wont to set out our meals with great
order, making plates and dishes out of the button-ball-leaves.
Under her direction also, I fitted up our house with
a pantry, and a small room where we used to play wash
dishes, and set away what was left of our meals. The pantry
was a stone cupboard, where we kept chestnuts and
apples, and what remained of our cookies and gingerbread.
Susie was fond of ornamentation, and stuck bouquets of
golden rod and aster around in our best room, and there we
received company, and had select society come to see us.
Susie brought her doll to dwell in this establishment, and I
made her a bedroom and a little bed of milkweed-silk to lie
on. We put her to bed and tucked her up when we went
into school—not without apprehension that those savages,
the big boys, might visit our Eden with devastation. But
the girls' recess came first, and we could venture to leave her
there taking a nap till our play-time came; and when the
girls went in Susie rolled her nursling in a napkin and took
her safely into school, and laid her away in a corner of her
desk, while the dreadful big boys were having their yelling
war-whoop and carnival outside.
“How nice it is to have Harry gone all day to school,” I
heard one of my sisters saying to the other. “He used to
be so in the way, meddling and getting into everything”—
“And listening to everything one says,” said the other,
“Children have such horridly quick ears. Harry always
listens to what we talk about.”
“I think he is happier now, poor little fellow,” said my
the truth of the matter.
On Saturday afternoons, I used to beg of my mother to
let me go and see Susie; and my sisters, nothing loth, used
to brush my hair and put on me a stiff, clean, checked apron,
and send me trotting off, the happiest of young lovers.
How bright and fair life seemed to me those Saturday
afternoons. When the sun, through the picket-fences, made
golden-green lines on the turf—and the trees waved and
whispered, and I gathered handfuls of golden-rod and asters
to ornament our house, under the button-wood tree!
Then we used to play in the barn together. We hunted
for hens' eggs, and I dived under the barn to dark places
where she dared not go; and climbed up to high places over
the hay-mow, where she trembled to behold me—bringing
stores of eggs, which she received in her clean white apron.
This daintiness of outfit excited my constant admiration.
I wore stiff, heavy jackets and checked aprons, and was constantly,
so my sisters said, wearing holes through my knees
and elbows for them to patch; but little Susie always appeared
to me fresh and fine and untumbled; she never
dirtied her hands or soiled her dress. Like a true little
woman, she seemed to have nerves through all her clothes
that kept them in order. This nicety of person inspired me
with a secret, wondering reverence. How could she always
be so clean, so trim, and every way so pretty, I wondered?
Her golden curls always seemed fresh from the brush, and
even when she climbed and ran, and went with me into the
barn-yard, or through the swamp and into all sorts of compromising
places, she somehow picked her way out bright
and unsoiled.
But though I admired her ceaselessly for this, she was no
less in admiration of my daring strength and prowess. I felt
myself a perfect Paladin in her defense. I remember that
the chip-yard which we used to cross, on our way to the
barn, was tyrannized over by a most loud-mouthed and
arrogant old turkey-cock, that used to strut and swell and
gobble and chitter greatly to her terror. She told me of
how he had jumped upon her and flapped his wings, and
thrown her down, to her great distress and horror. The
first time he tried the game on me, I marched up to him, and
by a dexterous pass, seized his red neck in my hand, and confining
his wings down with my arm, walked him ingloriously
out of the yard.
How triumphant Susie was, and how I swelled and exulted
to her, telling her what I would do to protect her under
every supposable variety of circumstances! Susie had confessed
to me of being dreadfully afraid of “bears,” and I
took this occasion to tell her what I would do if a bear should
actually attack her. I assured her that I would get father's
gun and shoot him without mercy—and she listened and believed.
I also dilated on what I would do if robbers should
get into the house; I would, I informed her, immediately get
up and pour shovelfuls of hot coal down their backs—and
wouldn't they have to run? What comfort and security this
view of matters gave us both! What bears and robbers
were, we had no very precise idea, but it was a comfort to
think how strong and adequate to meet them in any event I
was.
Sometimes, of a Saturday afternoon, Susie was permitted
to come and play with me. I always went after her, and
solicited the favor humbly at the hands of her mother, who,
after many washings and dressings and cautions as to her
clothes, delivered her up to me, with the condition that she
was to start for home when the sun was half an hour high.
Susie was very conscientious in watching, but for my part I
never agreed with her. I was always sure that the sun was
an hour high, when she set her little face dutifully homeward.
My sisters used to pet her greatly during these visits.
They delighted to twine her curls over their fingers, and try
the effects of different articles of costume on her fair complexion.
They would ask her, laughing, would she be my
little wife, to which she always answered with a grave
affirmative.
Yes, she was to be my wife; it was all settled between us.
But when? I didn't see why we must wait till we grew up.
She was lonesome when I was gone, and I was lonesome
when she was gone. Why not marry her now, and take her
home to live with me? I asked her and she said she was
willing, but mamma never would spare her. I said I would
get my mamma to ask her, and I knew she couldn't refuse,
because my papa was the minister.
I turned the matter over and over in my mind, and thought
sometime when I could find my mother alone, I would introduce
the subject. So one evening, as I sat on my little stool
at my mother's knees, I thought I would open the subject,
and began:
“Mamma, why do people object to early marriages?”
“Early marriages?” said my mother, stopping her knitting,
looking at me, while a smile flashed over her thin
cheeks: “what's the child thinking of?”
“I mean, why can't Susie and I be married now? I want
her here. I'm lonesome without her. Nobody wants to play
with me in this house, and if she were here we should be together
all the time.”
My father woke up from his meditation on his next Sunday's
sermon, and looked at my mother, smiling. A gentle
laugh rippled her bosom.
“Why, dear,” she said, “don't you know your father is a
poor man, and has hard work to support his children now?
He couldn't afford to keep another little girl.”
I thought the matter over, sorrowfully. Here was the
pecuniary difficulty, that puts off so many desiring lovers,
meeting me on the very threshold of life.
“Mother,” I said, after a period of mournful consideration,
“I wouldn't eat but just half as much as I do now, and I'd
try not to wear out my clothes, and make 'em last longer.”
My mother had very bright eyes, and there was a mingled
flash of tears and laughter in them, as when the sun winks
through rain drops. She lifted me gently into her lap and
drew my head down on her bosom.
“Some day, when my little son grows to be a man, I hope
lands are from the fathers; but a good wife is of the Lord,'
the Bible says.”
“That's true, dear,” said my father, looking at her tenderly;
“nobody knows that better than I do.”
My mother rocked gently back and forward with me in the
evening shadows, and talked with me and soothed me, and
told me stories how one day I should grow to be a good man
—a minister, like my father, she hoped—and have a dear little
house of my own.
“And will Susie be in it?”
“Let's hope so,” said my mother. “Who knows?”
“But, mother, arn't you sure? I want you to say it will be
certainly.”
“My little one, only our dear Father could tell us that,
said my mother. “But now you must try and learn fast,
and become a good strong man, so that you can take care of
a little wife.”
| CHAPTER II.
MY CHILD-WIFE. My wife and I, or, Harry Henderson's history | |