University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

We have made our readers acquainted with
some variety in character and nations, in introducing
the most important personages of this legend
to their notice: but, in order to establish the
fidelity of our narrative, we will briefly attempt to
explain the “why and wherefore” of so motley a
dramatis personæ.

Europe was, at the period of our tale, in the
commencement of that mighty commotion which
afterwards shook her political institutions to their
centre. Louis the Sixteenth had been beheaded,
and a nation, once esteemed the most refined
amongst the civilized people of the world, was
changing her character, and substituting cruelty
for mercy, and subtlety and ferocity for magnanimity
and courage. Thousands of Frenchmen
were compelled to seek protection in distant lands.
Among the crowds who fled from France and her
islands, to the United States of America, was the
gentleman whom we have already mentioned as
Monsieur Le Quoi. He had been recommended
to the favour of Judge Temple, by the head of an
eminent mercantile house in New-York, with

whom Marmaduke was in habits of intimacy, and
accustomed to an exchange of good offices. At
his first interview with the Frenchman, our Judge
had discovered him to be a man of breeding, and
one who had seen much more prosperous days in
his own country. From certain hints that had
escaped him, Monsieur Le Quoi was suspected of
having been a West-India planter, great numbers
of whom had fled from St. Domingo and the
other islands, and were now living in the Union,
in a state of comparative poverty, and some in
absolute want. The latter was not, however, the
lot of Monsieur Le Quoi. He had but little, he
acknowledged, but that little was enough to furnish,
in the language of the country, an “assortment
for a store.”

The knowledge of Marmaduke was eminently
practical, and there was no part of a settler's life
with which he was not familiar. Under his direction,
Monsieur Le Quoi made some purchases,
consisting of a few cloths; some groceries, with a
good deal of tea and tobacco; a quantity of ironware,
among which was a large proportion of
Barlow's jack-knives, potash-kettles, and spiders;
a very formidable collection of crockery, of the
coarsest quality, and most uncouth forms; together
with every other common article that the
art of man has devised for his wants, not forgetting
the luxuries of looking-glasses and Jew's-harps.
With this collection of valuables, Monsieur
Le Quoi had stepped behind a counter, and,
with a wonderful pliability of temperament, had
dropped into his assumed character as gracefully
as he had ever moved in any other. The gentleness
and suavity of his manners rendered him
extremely popular; besides this, the women soon
discovered that he had a taste. His calicoes were
the finest, or, in other words, the most showy, of

any that were brought into the country; and it
were impossible to look at the prices, asked for
his goods, by “so pretty a spoken man.” Through
these conjoint means, the affairs of Monsieur Le
Quoi were again in a prosperous condition, and
he was looked up to by the settlers as the second
best man on the “Patent.”

This term, Patent, which we have already used,
and for which we may have further occasion,
meant the district of country that had been originally
granted to old Major Effingham, by the
“King's letters patent,” and which had now become,
by purchase under the act of confiscation,
the property of Marmaduke Temple. It was a
term in common use, throughout the new parts of
the state, and was usually annexed to the landlord's
name, as “Temple's, or Effingham's Patent.”

Major Hartmann was the descendant of a man,
who, in company with a number of his countrymen,
had migrated, with their families, from the
banks of the Rhine, to those of the Mohawk.
This transmigration had occurred as far back as
the reign of Queen Anne; and their descendants
were now living, in great peace and plenty, on
the fertile borders of that beautiful stream.

The Germans, or “High Dutchers,” as they were
called, to distinguish them from the original, or
Low Dutch colonists, were a very peculiar people.
They possessed all the gravity of the latter,
without any of their phlegm; and, like them, the
“High Dutchers” were industrious, honest, and
economical.

Fritz, or Frederick Hartmann, was an epitome
of all the vices and virtues, foibles and excellences,
of his race. He was passionate, though silent,
obstinate, and a good deal suspicious of
strangers; of immoveable courage, inflexible honesty,
and undeviating in his friendships. Indeed,

there was no change about him, unless it were
from grave to gay. He was serious by months,
and jolly by weeks. He had, early in their acquaintance,
formed an attachment for Marmaduke
Temple, who was the only man, that could not
talk High Dutch, that ever gained his entire confidence.
Four times in each year, at periods
equi-distant, he left his low stone dwelling, on the
banks of the Mohawk, and travelled the thirty
miles, through the hills, to the door of the mansion-house
in Templeton. Here he generally staid a
week, and was reputed to spend much of that time
in riotous living, countenanced by Mr. Richard
Jones. But every one loved him, even to Remarkable
Pettibone, to whom he occasioned some additional
trouble; he was so frank, so sincere, and, at
times, so mirthful. He was now in his regular
Christmas visit, and had not been in the village
an hour, when Richard summoned him to fill a
seat in the sleigh, to meet the landlord and his
daughter.

Before explaining the character and situation
of Mr. Grant, it will be necessary to recur to
times far back in the brief history of the settlement.

There seems to be a tendency in human nature
to endeavour to provide for the wants of this
world, before our attention is turned to the business
of the other. Religion was a quality but little
cultivated, amid the stumps of Temple's Patent,
for the first few years of its settlement; but
as most of its inhabitants were from the moral
states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, when
the wants of nature were satisfied, they began seriously
to turn their attention to the introduction
of those customs and observances, which had been
the principal care of their forefathers. There was
certainly a great variety of opinions, on the subject

of grace and free-will amongst the tenantry
of Marmaduke; and, when we take into consideration
the variety of the religious instruction which
they received, it can easily be seen, that it could
not well be otherwise.

Soon after the village had been formally laid
out, into the streets and blocks that resembled a
city, a meeting of its inhabitants had been convened,
to take into consideration the propriety of
establishing an Academy! This measure originated
with Richard, who, in truth, was much disposed
to have the institution designated a University,
or at least a College. Meeting after
meeting was held, for this purpose, year after year.
The resolutions of these assemblages appeared in
the most conspicuous columns of a little, blue-looking
newspaper, that was already issued weekly
from the garret of a dwelling-house in the village,
and which the traveller might as often see,
stuck into the fissure of a stake, that had been
erected, at the point where the footpath from the
log cabin of some settler entered the highway, as
a post-office for an individual. Sometimes the
stake supported a small box, and a whole neighbourhood
received a weekly supply, for their literary
wants, at this point, where the man who
“rides post,” regularly deposited a bundle of the
precious commodity. To these flourishing resolutions,
which briefly recounted the general utility
of education, the political and geographical rights
of the village of Templeton, to a participation in
the favours of the regents of the university, and the
salubrity of the air, and wholesomeness of the water,
together with the cheapness of food, and the
superior state of morals in the neighbourhood,
were uniformly annexed, in large Roman capitals,
the names of Marmaduke Temple, as chairman,
and Richard Jones, as secretary.

Happily for the success of this undertaking, the
regents were not accustomed to resist these appeals
to their generosity, whenever there was the
prospect of a donation to second the request.
Eventually, Judge Temple concluded to bestow
the necessary land, and to erect the required edifice
chiefly at his own expense. The skill of Mr.,
or, as he was now called, from the circumstance of
his having received the commission of a justice of
the peace, Squire Doolittle, was again put in requisition,
and the science of Mr. Jones was once
more restored to.

We shall not recount the different devices of
these architects on the occasion; nor would it be
decorous so to do, seeing that there was a convocation
of the society of the ancient and honourable
fraternity “of the free and accepted masons,”
at the head of whom was Richard, in the capacity
of master, doubtless to approve or reject, such of
the plans as, in their wisdom, they deemed to be
for the best. The knotty point was, however,
soon decided; and, on the appointed day, the
brotherhood marched, in great state, displaying
sundry banners and mysterious symbols, each
man with a little mimic apron before him, from a
most cunningly contrived appartment in the garret
of the “Bold Dragoon,” an inn, kept by one
Captain Hollister, to the site of the intended edifice.
Here Richard laid the corner-stone, with
great state, amidst an assemblage of more than
half the men, and all the women, within ten miles
of Templeton.

In the course of the succeeding week, there was
another meeting of the people, not omitting
swarms of the gentler sex, when the abilities of
Hiram, at the “square rule,” were put to the test

of experiment. The frame fitted well; and the
skeleton of the fabric was reared without a single
accident, if we except a few falls from horses,
while the labourers were returning home in the
dusk of the evening. From this time, the work
advanced with great rapidity, and in the course of
the season, the labour was completed; the edifice
standing, in all its beauty and proportions, the
boast of the village, the study of the young aspirants
for architectural fame, and the admiration of
every settler on the Patent.

It was a long, narrow house, of wood, painted
white, and more than half windows; and when
the observer stood at the western side of the building,
the edifice offered but a small obstacle to a
full view of the rising sun. It was, in truth, but
a very comfortless, open place, through which the
daylight shone with prodigious facility. On its
front were divers ornaments, in wood, designed
by Richard, and executed by Hiram; but a window
in the centre of the second story, immediately
over the door, or grand entrance, and the “steeple,”
were the pride of the building. The former
was, we believe, of the composite order, for it included
in its composition a multitude of ornaments,
and a great variety in figure. It consisted
of an arched compartment in the centre, with a
square, and smaller division on either side, the
whole encased in heavy frames, deeply and laboriously
moulded in pine wood, and lighted with a
vast number of blurred and green-looking glass,
of those dimensions which are commonly called
“eight by ten.” Blinds, that were intended to
be painted green, kept the window in a state of
preservation, and probably might have contributed
to the effect of the whole, had not the failure in
the public funds, which seems always to be incidental
to any undertaking of this kind, left them

in the sombre coat of lead colour with which they
had been originally clothed. The “steeple” was
a little cupola, reared on the very centre of the
roof, on four tall pillars of pine, that were fluted
with a gouge, and loaded with mouldings. On
the tops of the columns was reared a dome, or cupola,
resembling in shape an inverted tea-cup
without its bottom, from the centre of which projected
a spire, or shaft of wood, transfixed with two
iron rods, that bore on their ends the letters N. S.
E. and W., in the same metal. The whole was
surmounted by an imitation of one of the finny
tribe, carved in wood, by the hands of Richard,
and painted, what he called, a “scale-colour.”
This animal Mr. Jones affirmed to be an admirable
resemblance of a great favourite of the epicures
in that country, which bore the title of
“lake-fish;” and doubtless the assertion was true;
for, although intended to answer the purposes of
a weathercock, the fish was observed invariably
to look, with a longing eye, in the direction of the
beautiful sheet of water that lay imbedded in the
mountains of Templeton.

For a short time after the charter of the regents
was received, the trustees of this institution employed
a graduate of one of the eastern colleges,
to instruct such youth as aspired to knowledge,
within the walls of the edifice which we have described.
The upper part of the building was in
one apartment, and was intended for gala-days
and exhibitions; and the lower contained two,
that were intended for the great divisions of education,
viz. the Latin and the English scholars. The
former were never very numerous; though the
sounds of “nominative, pennaa; genitive, penny,”
were soon heard to issue from the windows of the
room, to the great delight and manifest edification
of the passengers.

Only one labourer in this temple of Minerva,
however, was known to get so far as to attempt a
translation of Virgil. He, indeed, appeared at
the annual exhibition, to the prodigious exultation
of all his relatives, a farmer's family in the vicinity,
and repeated the whole of the first eclogue
from memory, observing the intonations of the
dialogue with much judgment and effect. The
sounds, as they proceeded from his mouth, of

were the last that had been heard in that building,
as probably they were the first that had ever been
heard, in the same language, there or any where
else. For by this time the trustees had discovered,
that they had anticipated the age, and the
instructor, or principal, was superseded by a master,
who went on to teach the more humble lesson
of “the more haste the worse speed,” in good,
plain English.

From this time, until the date of our incidents,
the Academy was a common country school; and
the great room of the building was sometimes used
as a court-room, on extraordinary trials; sometimes
for conferences of the religious and the morally
disposed in the evening; at others for a ball
in the afternoon, given under the auspices of Richard;
and on Sundays, invariably, as a place of
public worship.

When an itinerant priest, of the persuasion of
the Methodists, Baptists, Universalists, or of the
more numerous sect of the Presbyterians, was accidentally
in the neighbourhood, he was ordinarily
invited to officiate, and was commonly rewarded
for his services by a collection in a hat, before
the congregation separated. When no such regular
minister offered, a kind of colloquial prayer

or two was made, by some of the more gifted
members, and a sermon was usually read, from
Sterne, by Mr Richard Jones.

The consequence of this desultory kind of
priesthood was, as we have already intimated, a
great diversity in opinion, on the more abstruse
points of our faith. Each sect had its adherents,
though neither was regularly organized and disciplined.
Of the religious education of Marmaduke,
we have already written, nor was the doubtful
character of his faith completely removed by
his marriage. The mother of Elizabeth was an
Episcopalian, as, indeed, was the mother of the
Judge himself; and the good taste of Marmaduke
revolted at the familiar colloquies which the leaders
of the conferences held with the Deity, in
their nightly meetings. In form, he was certainly
an Episcopalian, though not a sectary of that denomination.
On the other hand, Richard was as
rigid in the observance of the canons of his
church, as he was inflexible in his opinions. Indeed,
he had once or twice essayed to introduce
the Episcopal form of service, on the Sundays
that their pulpit was vacant; but Richard was a
good deal addicted to carrying all things to an excess,
and then there was something so papal in his
air, that the greater part of his hearers deserted
him on the second Sabbath—on the third, his only
auditor was Ben Pump!

Before the war of the revolution, the English
church was supported, in their colonies, with much
interest, by some of its adherents in the mother
country, and a few of the congregations were very
amply endowed. But, for a season, after the independence
of the states was established, this sect
of Christians languished, for the want of the highest
order of its priesthood. Pious and suitable
divines were at length selected, and sent to the

mother country, to receive that authority, which,
it is understood, can only be transmitted directly
from one to the other, and thus obtain, in order
to preserve, that unity in their churches,
which properly belonged to a people of the same
nation. But unexpected difficulties presented
themselves, in the oaths with which the policy of
England had fettered their establishment; and much
time was spent, before a conscientious sense of duty
would permit the prelates of Britain to delegate
the authority which was so earnestly sought.
Time, patience, and zeal, however, removed every
impediment; and the venerable men, who had been
set apart by the American churches, at length returned
to their expecting diocesses, endowed with
the most elevated functions of their earthly church.
Priests and deacons were ordained; and missionaries
provided, to keep alive the expiring flame of
devotion in such members as were deprived of
the ordinary ministrations, by dwelling in new
and unorganized districts.

Of this number was Mr. Grant. He had been
sen into the county of which Templeton was the
capital, and had been kindly invited by Marmaduke,
and officiously pressed by Richard, to take
up his abode in the village itself. A small and
humble dwelling was prepared for his family, and
the divine had made his appearance in the place,
but a few days previously to the time of his introduction
to the reader. As his forms were entirely
new to most of the inhabitants, and a clergyman
of another denomination had previously occupied
the field, by engaging the academy, the
first Sunday after his arrival was suffered to pass
in silence; but now that his rival had passed on,
like a meteor, filling the air with the light of his
wisdom, Richard was empowered to give notice,
that “Public worship, after the forms of the

Protestant Episcopal Church, would be held, on
the night before Christmas, in the long-room of
the academy in Templeton, by the Rev. Mr.
Grant.”

This annunciation excited great commotion
among the sectaries to whom it was made. Some
wondered as to the nature of the exhibition; others
sneered; but a far greater part, recollecting the
essays of Richard in that way, and mindful of
the liberality, or rather laxity, of Marmaduke's
notions on the subject of sectarianism, thought it
most prudent to be silent.

The expected evening was, however, the wonder
of the hour; nor was the curiosity at all diminished,
when Richard and Benjamin, on the
morning of the eventful day, were seen to issue
from the woods in the neighbourhood of the village,
each bearing on his shoulders a large bunch
of evergreens. This worthy pair was observed
to enter the academy, and carefully to fasten the
door, after which their proceedings remained a
profound secret to the rest of the village; Mr.
Jones, before he commenced this mysterious business,
having informed the schoolmaster, to the
great delight of the white-headed flock he governed,
that there could be no school that day. Marmaduke
was apprised of all these preparations, by
letter, and it was especially arranged, that he and
Elizabeth should arrive in season, to participate
in the solemnities of the evening.

After this digression, we shall return to our narrative.