 | CHAPTER I.
THE UNCLE. Tales of the good woman |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
THE UNCLE.
Young Calvin Sopus began life with every possible
advantage for rising in the world, for he was
born at the bottom of the wheel. He had no
fortune, and there was therefore every motive
to exert himself; he had no family, and was
therefore not afraid of disgracing it by following
any honest calling. I am not jesting, gentle reader,
when I call these advantages. When thou hast
seen as much of the world as I have, and witnessed
the natural tendency of wealth and honours to
sink, and of lowliness and poverty to rise, when
left to their natural, unrestricted operation, thou
wilt not hesitate to say with me, that to be placed
and honest occupation not beneath us, is to be
born under a lucky star. Our hero—or rather
our hero's uncle, had still another great natural
advantage, if any more were necessary. He was
blessed with a numerous race of brothers and sisters,
who in good time made it necessary for the
old ones to turn out of the hive to make way for
the young ones. At the age of ten or eleven, or
somewhere thereabout, he was placed with a
neighbouring farmer, where he worked late and
early—fed hard—slept hard—and had rather a
hard time of it, as the well to do in the world
say of those who are not so well fed, well clothed,
and well lodged as themselves. They are not
aware, poor souls! that labour which blesses
others, blesses the labourer too; and that his very
privations are hallowed as blessings, by the zest
which wholesome occupation gives, to his amusements,
his rest, and his food. Do these foolish
people who pamper themselves into a delusion
of happiness, by pitying the labouring classes,
believe themselves selected from the great mass
of mankind for exclusive enjoyments? Do they
presume to think that Providence while bestowing
upon them riches without labour or desert, hath
entailed on all the rest of mankind the necessity
of labour as a curse? That it hath condemned a
vast majority of the human race to misery in this
life, and a little meager minority to happiness
the one is obliged to labour, the other able to live
in idleness? This cannot be. All that ambition
wins, or avarice covets, can neither give or take
away happiness. These are but straws and feathers
for children to tire themselves with running
after. They are the bones that Providence throws
away, and which set the mighty mastiffs of the
earth snarling and fighting evermore.
When Tamerlane the Great, who was lame of
a leg, had conquered, taken prisoner, and overturned
the throne of Bajazet the Great, Emperor
of the Turks, who was blind of an eye, and the
latter was brought before him, he burst into a fit
of laughter. Bajazet reproached him with jesting
at his misfortunes. “No,” replied Tamerlane,
“I was laughing to think what little value Allah
must place upon power, wealth, and dominion,
when he has taken an empire from a man with one
eye to give to another with one leg.”
But what has Calvin Sopus to do with Khans,
Emperors, and Empires, quoth the critical reader.
Be quiet, dear sir, I beseech thee; pray let
me tell my story in my own way if you please.
You don't know but I mean to make Calvin an
Emperor before I have done with him. Stranger
things than that have happened in our time—at
least in fashionable novels.
Calvin remained with the farmer, working like
one of his horses, every day and all day long, except
linsey woolsey suit of blue and grey mixture. Few
and far between were the incidents that marked his
life during the period between his debut and the age
of sixteen years. One was the purchase of a beaver
hat, which consumed the savings of years; the other
his conversion to Methodism by a ghost which he
saw on his return from a camp-meeting. He was
passing a dark lane with a thick wood on either
side, through which the little beams of moonlight
darted here and there, when he saw something
standing close to the fence. It was as white as
a sheet, and there never was such a thing known
as a black ghost. Had it been black, it would
have been the Devil; but being white, it could be
nothing but a ghost. The old farmer's wife threw
up her eyes and took down her Hymn Book; the
old farmer asked him why he did not speak to it.
“Speak to it!” quoth Calvin, “I had'nt breath
to do any thing but run away.”
So Calvin set it down that it was a ghost, and
as ghosts never appear except for good reasons,
which they always take care to keep to themselves,
he took it for granted that something was going to
happen. The very next night there was a bright
aurora borealis, which set all the old women prophecying
war, pestilence, and famine. Just such
a thing appeared, exactly in the same place, just
before the Revolutionary War. In addition to
this, somebody saw a ball of fire, flashing before
thunder, and then the windows rattled just as if
there had been a great earthquake, just such a one
as happened before the old French war in Canada.
If the reader has ever lived—has ever had the happiness
I would say, for if my memory don't deceive
me, I was once happy there—if he has ever had
the happiness of living in the country—he must
have learned from his own experience, that the
goddess Rumour was born and brought up in a
country village. The people of crowded cities
are nothing to the idle gossips of a village, for
keeping up a rumour. Neither will he, I think,
have failed to observe that there is much more of
superstitious credulity in the retired shades of life
than in the crowd; not because the people are
more ignorant, but that there is something in the
quiet of the country—the loneliness of the pathways—the
whisperings of the woods, the murmuring
of the waters, the very hum of the insects,
added to the repose, the gravity—the almost sadness
which nature sometimes wears—for even her
smiles are melancholy—there is something in all
this, which disposes the mind to cower under the
imagination—to conjure up visions of possibilities
it nover cherished before—to start at shadows—
quail at a sound—to believe and tremble. I myself
have felt all this a thousand times—although
I confess, old as I am, my reveries were of another
class when I was young. I never entered a
the woods, without directly conjuring up the bright
vision of some reigning fair one, the distant unapproachable
object of my dreams and reveries, in
whose presence I had never dared to do any thing
but look just like a fool. But alone by myself in
a wood, not Demosthenes was more eloquent,
when haranguing the brawling waves with his
mouth full of pebbles. I wish I could remember,
that I might repeat some of my declarations, for
the benefit of the dumb dandies of the day, whose
silence, as I am credibly informed, is much complained
of by the young ladies.
Be this as it may, Calvin waxed very serious after
the sight of the ghost—the mysterious light in the
north—the ball of fire—the clap of thunder, and
the rattling of the windows. The spectre of
death now began to hover before him, in his solitary
walks to and from the fields—his mind was
gradually imbued with gloomy, superstitious ideas
—he became thin, pale, and sad—and his labours
often stood still while he was pondering on his approaching
fate—for it was not long ere he convinced
himself he was ill and going to die. He
continued to attend the meetings which were from
time to time held in the neighbourhood, and was
at length “struck down,” as the phrase is—that is,
he sunk under his weakness of body and fearful
depression of mind, and lay for a while howling
on the floor, in a state half physically, half morally
horrors inexpressible; day nor night, nor labour
nor repose, nor prayer nor repentance, nor purposed
amendment, afforded the poor youth relief or respite.
He imagined himself wrestling with Satan, who
was shaking him over the bottomless pit—and—
but my object is not his history, but that of his
nephew. The good farmer sent for a doctor, a
shrewd, observing, experienced old humourist, as
many country doctors are, who felt his pulse, asked
some questions, consulted the head of his loaded
whip, and called Calvin a great blockhead.
“The fellow has got the pulse of a horse, the
nerves of a lion, and the heart of a weasel. He
is as well as I am, and will live at least a hundred
years after you and I are gone.” So saying he
gave Calvin a smart cut with his whip across the
shins, told him to get to work as hard as he could,
and mounting his horse trotted away to his next
patient. Calvin was so delighted to hear that he
was not like to die soon, notwithstanding the
ghost, the light in the north, and the other omens,
that he took the doctor's advice, fell to work
harder than ever, and was soon strong enough to
bid defiance to his old enemy the ghost. He is
not the only example of this sort which has fallen
under my notice. He continued, however, to frequent
Methodist meetings, till he came to town
and grew rich, when he bought a pew in a genteeler
church, there being a gentility in religion
take up too much of the reader's attention with
Calvin, and thereby make him the hero of my
story, although in so doing I might plead the example
of Homer, whose real hero is certainly
Hector; or of Milton, who has, unwittingly without
doubt, concentrated his genius upon a personage
who shall be nameless.
About the time that Calvin attained the age of
eighteen, the good farmer with whom he lived,
smitten by the far off and cheap beauties of the
west, sold his house and every thing belonging
thereto, and packed himself away to Ohio, where
he bought half a township, and in process of time
became a patroon. Calvin had a great deal of
industry and very little enterprize. He did not
like to go so far from home; so he determined to
go to the city and seek his fortune. He arrived
there with the product of all his hard earnings
and savings, which was just enough to purchase
a horse and cart, with which he commenced Jehu.
Of his progress from a cartman to a grocer, from
a grocer to a shipping merchant, and thence to a
bold trader to China and the Northwest Coast, we
shall enter into no details. It is sufficient to say,
that by the time he grew too old to enjoy riches,
he was as rich as a broker. Nothing indeed is
more easy than to grow rich. It is only to trust
nobody—to befriend no one—to get every thing,
and save all we get—to stint ourselves and every
body belonging to us—to be the friend of no man,
on interest, cent upon cent—to be mean, miserable,
and despised, for some twenty or thirty
years, and riches will come as sure as disease and
disappointment.
Calvin was now almost sixty years old, and a
bachelor. He had been so busy making money,
that he could not spare time to look out for a wife.
Now it was too late, and his first great disappointment,
after getting his money, was not knowing
what to do with it. There are no people more
anxious for some one to give their money to after
death, than those who give nothing away while
living. He cast about among his relatives, of
whom he had not hitherto taken the least notice,
although there were divers good people in the
Bowery and Pump-street, who boasted of being
related to the rich China merchant, Calvin Sopus,
Esquire, and much good did it do them. At length,
he discovered among the sugar boxes, molasses
hogsheads, and flies of a little corner grocery,
“up town,” a nephew, the son of his eldest sister,
who had married an honest man of the name of
Sheffield, whose mother's name had been Stafford.
Agreeably to the fashion of the times, the eldest
son was called Stafford Sheffield, and a very pretty
name it was, and a very pretty lad was he. Nothing
could equal his happiness, when the old man
took him home, and announced that if he behaved
himself like a man, he would make a man of him.
Rich old men, who have risen from a low state,
yet are always desirous that their sons and heirs
should be gentlemen. I never knew a rich cobbler
or tailor, who was anxious that his son should
follow his trade. There were two good reasons
why Calvin should be a humourist. He was rich
and a bachelor. Now only give an old man plenty
of elbow room, and plenty of money, and ten to
one, he will branch out into rare eccentricities, the
greater in all probability, from their having been
circumscribed in early life by poverty. There
never was such a galley slave as poor Stafford
Sheffield, from the moment he was transplanted
from the shades of Pump-street to the sunshine of
Hudson Square. He envied the cook in the
kitchen, and the chimney sweepers in the street,
for they were all free compared with him. There
was not a moment of his life when he could do as
he liked, and for some years he sustained a species
of tyranny, which hath no name and no parallel in
this world.
The old man had satisfied himself that the best,
nay, the only effectual way of teaching young people
self-denial, which in his opinion, and there he
was right, was the safeguard of all the virtues, was
never to permit them to do as they liked. Accordingly
his practice was to ask the young man, if
he would like to do this, or have that, or go thither;
and if he replied “Yes,” to deny him without ceremony.
In this way, as he one day boasted to a
neighbour, who was complaining of the conduct
in the bud, and taught him the virtue of self-denial.
It happened that our hero overheard this disclosure,
and from that time he never wanted for any
thing. “Boy,” would Calvin say “should you like
to go to the play to night” “N-n-o,” would he
answer, drawling and yawning, as if overcome with
listelessness. “Why then, you shall go, you rascal,”
cries Calvin. “What a clever youth is my nephew,”
would he add when he was gone, “he
cares nothing for frolic or amusement. Ah! this
comes of my system of teaching self-denial.” And
he grew to love him so well, for having done so
much honour to his system of self-denial, that
Stafford had never afterwards any occasion to
practice self-denial while the old man lived.
From the period in which Stafford attained the
promise of manhood, attentions such as he had
never received before, flowed in upon his uncle.
The old man was continually invited out to dinners
and parties, and there was hardly a day in
which he did not receive some little present. In
particular, a widow lady, who had nine pretty little
accomplished daughters, who understood the art
of spending according to the most fashionable
canons of the day, almost stuffed him to death
with jellies and blanc-mange. The dæmon of
vanity actually awakened in the heart of the old
man, and he sometimes thought to himself, the
widow certainly had an eye upon him. He was
mistaken, it was on his nephew. Whether it was
honoured uncle, or the beauty of Miss Angelina's
foot, that won him, I know not—but certain it is,
that before our hero was twenty, he was irrevocably
engaged to the young lady.
Luckily for young heirs, old men cannot live
for ever. One day the enamoured widow sent Calvin
a present of a pine-apple, of which he ate as he
was wont to do of every thing that cost him nothing.
The weather was very hot—and—why should I
dwell on the heart-rending scene—in two short
days Stafford was the disconsolate heir of—nobody
could tell how much. But the widow, who had
caused her son, who was an attorney and moreover
a commissioner for taking affidavits, to make particular
examination, privately assured Miss Angelina,
that it was not far from half a million.
Whereupon the young lady put on her hat, and
shawl, and feathers, and flounces, and flags, and
streamers, sticks, whalebones, combs, pearls,
chains, squares, rounds, three corners, busks, bodices,
scarfs, borders, fans, fardingales, puffs, cuffs,
ruffs, muffs, puzzles, fuzzles, frizzles, frizlets, bandlets,
fillets, crosslets, bracelets armlets, amulets
pendulets, with divers other nameless embellishments,
and went and ran up a bill of two hundred
dollars at the milliners. “We shall have the wedding
before the mourning is over. What's the use
of standing on ceremony with the memory of an
old hunks like Sopus,” quoth the widow. But the
widow reckoned without her host.
| CHAPTER I.
THE UNCLE. Tales of the good woman | |