 | CHAPTER I. The wept of Wish-ton-Wish |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
“I may disjoin my hand, but not my faith.”
Shakspeare.
THE incidents of this tale must be sought in a
remote period of the annals of America. A colony
of self-devoted and pious refugees from religious
persecution had landed on the rock of Plymouth,
less than half a century before the time at which
the narrative commences; and they, and their descendants,
had already transformed many a broad
waste of wilderness into smiling fields and cheerful
villages. The labors of the emigrants had been
chiefly limited to the country on the coast, which,
by its proximity to the waters that rolled between
them and Europe, afforded the semblance of a connexion
with the land of their forefathers and the
distant abodes of civilization. But enterprise, and
a desire to search for still more fertile domains, together
with the temptation offered by the vast and
unknown regions that lay along their western and
northern borders, had induced many bold adventurers
to penetrate more deeply into the forests. The
precise spot, to which we desire to transport the
imagination of the reader, was one of these establishments
of what may, not inaptly, be called the
forlorn-hope, in the march of civilization through
the country.
So little was then known of the great outlines
of the American continent, that, when the Lords
associates, obtained a grant of the territory which
now composes the state of Connecticut, the King of
England affixed his name to a patent, which constituted
them proprietors of a country that should
extend from the shores of the Atlantic to those
of the South Sea. Notwithstanding the apparent
hopelessness of ever subduing, or of even occupying
a territory like this, emigrants from the mother
colony of Massachusetts were found ready to commence
the Herculean labor, within fifteen years
from the day when they had first put foot upon the
well-known rock itself. The fort of Say-Brooke,
the towns of Windsor, Hartford, and New-Haven,
soon sprang into existence, and, from that period to
this, the little community, which then had birth,
has been steadily, calmly, and prosperously advancing
in its career, a model of order and reason, and
the hive from which swarms of industrious, hardy
and enlightened yeomen have since spread themselves
over a surface so vast, as to create an impression
that they still aspire to the possession of
the immense regions included in their original grant.
Among the religionists, whom disgust of persecution
had early driven into the voluntary exile of
the colonies, was more than an usual proportion of
men of character and education. The reckless and
the gay, younger sons, soldiers unemployed, and
students from the inns of court, early sought advancement
and adventure in the more southern
provinces, where slaves offered impunity from labor,
and where war, with a bolder and more stirring
policy, oftener gave rise to scenes of excitement,
and, of course, to the exercise of the faculties best
suited to their habits and dispositions. The more
grave, and the religiously-disposed, found refuge in
the colonies of New-England. Thither a multitude
of private gentlemen transferred their fortunes and
and a moral elevation to the country, which it has
nobly sustained to the present hour.
The nature of the civil wars in England had enlisted
many men of deep and sincere piety in the
profession of arms. Some of them had retired to
the colonies before the troubles of the mother country
reached their crisis, and others continued to
arrive, throughout the whole period of their existence,
until the restoration; when crowds of those
who had been disaffected to the house of Stuart
sought the security of these distant possessions.
A stern, fanatical soldier, of the name of Heathcote,
had been among the first of his class, to throw
aside the sword for the implements of industry
peculiar to the advancement of a newly-established
country. How far the influence of a young wife
may have affected his decision it is not germane to
our present object to consider, though the records,
from which the matter we are about to relate is
gleaned, give reason to suspect that he thought his
domestic harmony would not be less secure in the
wilds of the new world, than among the companions
with whom his earlier associations would naturally
have brought him in communion.
Like himself, his consort was born of one of those
families, which, taking their rise in the franklins of
the times of the Edwards and Henrys, had become
possessors of hereditary landed estates, that, by their
gradually-increasing value, had elevated them to
the station of small country gentlemen. In most
other nations of Europe, they would have been rated
in the class of the petite noblesse. But the domestic
happiness of Capt. Heathcote was doomed to receive
a fatal blow, from a quarter where circumstances
had given him but little reason to apprehend danger.
The very day he landed in the long-wished-for
boy, a gift that she bestowed at the melancholy
price of her own existence. Twenty years the senior
of the woman who had followed his fortunes to these
distant regions, the retired warrior had always considered
it to be perfectly and absolutely within the
order of things, that he himself was to be the first
to pay the debt of nature. While the visions which
Captain Heathcote entertained of a future world
were sufficiently vivid and distinct, there is reason
to think they were seen through a tolerably long
vista of quiet and comfortable enjoyment in this.
Though the calamity cast an additional aspect of
seriousness over a character that was already more
than chastened by the subtleties of sectarian doctrines,
he was not of a nature to be unmanned by
any vicissitude of human fortune. He lived on,
useful and unbending in his habits, a pillar of strength
in the way of wisdom and courage to the immediate
neighborhood among whom he resided, but reluctant
from temper, and from a disposition which had
been shadowed by withered happiness, to enact that
part in the public affairs of the little state, to which
his comparative wealth and previous habits might
well have entitled him to aspire. He gave his son
such an education as his own resources and those of
the infant colony of Massachusetts afforded, and, by
a sort of delusive piety, into whose merits we have
no desire to look, he thought he had also furnished
a commendable evidence of his own desperate resignation
to the will of Providence, in causing him
to be publicly christened by the name of Content.
His own baptismal appellation was Mark; as indeed
had been that of most of his ancestors, for two or
three centuries. When the world was a little uppermost
in his thoughts, as sometimes happens with
the most humbled spirits, he had even been heard
to speak of a Sir Mark of his family, who had ridden
kings of his native land.
There is some ground for believing, that the great
parent of evil early looked with a malignant eye
on the example of peacefulness, and of unbending
morality, that the colonists of New-England were
setting to the rest of Christendom. At any rate,
come from what quarter they might, schisms and
doctrinal contentions arose among the emigrants
themselves; and men, who together had deserted
the fire-sides of their forefathers in quest of religious
peace, were ere long seen separating their
fortunes, in order that each might enjoy, unmolested,
those peculiar shades of faith, which all had the
presumption, no less than the folly, to believe were
necessary to propitiate the omnipotent and merciful
father of the universe. If our task were one of
theology, a wholesome moral on the vanity, no less
than on the absurdity of the race, might be here
introduced to some advantage.
When Mark Heathcote announced to the community,
in which he had now sojourned more than
twenty years, that he intended for a second time
to establish his altars in the wilderness, in the hope
that he and his household might worship God as to
them seemed most right, the intelligence was received
with a feeling allied to awe. Doctrine and zeal
were momentarily forgotten, in the respect and attachment
which had been unconsciously created
by the united influence of the stern severity of his
air, and of the undeniable virtues of his practice.
The elders of the settlement communed with him
freely and in charity; but the voice of conciliation
and alliance came too late. He listened to the reasonings
of the ministers, who were assembled from
all the adjoining parishes, in sullen respect; and he
joined in the petitions for light and instruction, that
were offered up on the occasion, with the deep reverence
of the Almighty; but he did both in a temper
into which too much positiveness of spiritual pride
had entered, to open his heart to that sympathy
and charity, which, as they are the characteristics
of our mild and forbearing doctrines, should be the
study of those who profess to follow their precepts.
All that was seemly, and all that was usual, were
done; but the purpose of the stubborn sectarian
remained unchanged. His final decision is worthy
of being recorded.
“My youth was wasted in ungodliness and ignorance,”
he said, “but in my manhood have I known
the Lord. Near two-score years have I toiled for
the truth, and all that weary time have I past in
trimming my lamps, lest, like the foolish virgins, I
should be caught unprepared; and now, when my
loins are girded and my race is nearly run, shall I
become a backslider and falsifier of the word? Much
have I endured, as you know, in quitting the earthly
mansion of my fathers, and in encountering the dangers
of sea and land for the faith; and, rather than
let go its hold, will I once more cheerfully devote
to the howling wilderness, ease, offspring, and, should
it be the will of Providence, life itself!”
The day of parting was one of unfeigned and
general sorrow. Notwithstanding the austerity of
the old man's character, and the nearly unbending
severity of his brow, the milk of human kindness
had often been seen distilling from his stern nature
in acts that did not admit of misinterpretation.
There was scarcely a young beginner in the laborious
and ill-requited husbandry of the township he
inhabited, a district at no time considered either
profitable or fertile, who could not recall some secret
and kind aid which had flowed from a hand that,
to the world, seemed clenched in cautious and reserved
frugality; nor did any of the faithful of his
without receiving from him evidence of an interest
in their worldly happiness, that was far more substantial
than words.
On the morning when the vehicles, groaning with
the household goods of Mark Healthcote, were seen
quitting his door, and taking the road which led to
the sea-side, not a human being, of sufficient age,
within many miles of his residence, was absent from
the interesting spectacle. The leave-taking, as
usual on all serious occasions, was preceded by a
hymn and prayer, and then the sternly-minded
adventurer embraced his neighbors, with a mien,
in which a subdued exterior struggled fearfully
and strangely with emotions that, more than once,
threatened to break through even the formidable
barriers of his acquired manner. The inhabitants
of every building on the road were in the open air,
to receive and to return the parting benediction.
More than once, they, who guided his teams, were
commanded to halt, and all near, possessing human
aspirations and human responsibility, were collected
to offer petitions in favor of him who departed and
of those who remained. The requests for mortal
privileges were somewhat light and hasty, but the
askings in behalf of intellectual and spiritual light
were long, fervent, and oft-repeated. In this characteristic
manner did one of the first of the emigrants
to the new world make his second removal into
scenes of renewed bodily suffering, privation and
danger.
Neither person nor property was transferred from
place to place, in this country, at the middle of the
seventeenth century, with the dispatch and with
the facilities of the present time. The roads were
necessarily few and short, and communication by
water was irregular, tardy, and far from commodious.
A wide barrier of forest lying between that
Heathcote emigrated, and the spot, near the Connecticut
river, to which it was his intention to proceed,
he was induced to adopt the latter mode of
conveyance. But a long delay intervened between
the time when he commenced his short journey to
the coast, and the hour when he was finally enabled
to embark. During this detention he and his household
sojourned among the godly-minded of the
narrow peninsula, where there already existed the
germ of a flourishing town, and where the spires
of a noble and picturesque city now elevate themselves
above so many thousand roofs.
The son did not leave the colony of his birth and
the haunts of his youth, with the same unwavering
obedience to the call of duty, as the father. There
was a fair, a youthful, and a gentle being in the
recently-established town of Boston, of an age,
station, opinions, fortunes, and, what was of still
greater importance, of sympathies suited to his own.
Her form had long mingled with those holy images,
which his stern instruction taught him to keep most
familiarly before the mirror of his thoughts. It is
not surprising, then, that the youth hailed the delay
as propitious to his wishes, or that he turned it to
the account, which the promptings of a pure affection
so naturally suggested. He was united to the
gentle Ruth Harding only the week before the
father sailed on his second pilgrimage.
It is not our intention to dwell on the incidents of
the voyage. Though the genius of an extraordinary
man had discovered the world which was
now beginning to fill with civilized men, navigation
at that day was not brilliant in accomplishments.
A passage among the shoals of Nantucket must
have been one of actual danger, no less than of
terror; and the ascent of the Connecticut itself was
an exploit worthy of being mentioned. In due time
where they tarried for a season, in order to
obtain rest and spiritual comfort. But the peculiarity
of doctrine, on which Mark Heathcote laid so
much stress, was one that rendered it advisable for
him to retire still further from the haunts of men.
Accompanied by a few followers, he proceeded on
an exploring expedition, and the end of the summer
found him once more established on an estate that
he had acquired by the usual simple forms practised
in the colonies, and at the trifling cost for which
extensive districts were then set apart as the property
of individuals.
The love of the things of this life, while it certainly
existed, was far from being predominant in
the affections of the Puritan. He was frugal from
habit and principle, more than from an undue
longing after worldly wealth. He contented himself,
therefore, with acquiring an estate that should be
valuable, rather from its quality and beauty, than
from its extent. Many such places offered themselves,
between the settlements of Weathersfield
and Hartford, and that imaginary line which separated
the possessions of the colony he had quitted,
from those of the one he joined. He made his location,
as it is termed in the language of the country,
near the northern boundary of the latter. This
spot, by the aid of an expenditure that might have
been considered lavish for the country and the age,
of some lingering of taste, which even the self-denying
and subdued habits of his later life had
not entirely extinguished, and of great natural
beauty in the distribution of land, water and wood,
the emigrant contrived to convert into an abode,
that was not more desirable for its retirement from
the temptations of the world, than for its rural
loveliness.
After this memorable act of conscientious self-devotion,
of negative prosperity. Rumors from the old world
reached the ears of the tenants of this secluded
settlement, months after the events to which they
referred were elsewhere forgotten, and tumults and
wars in the sister colonies came to their knowledge
only at distant and tardy intervals. In the mean
time, the limits of the colonial establishments were
gradually extending themselves, and valleys were
beginning to be cleared nearer and nearer to their
own. Old age had now begun to make some visible
impression on the iron frame of the Captain, and
the fresh color of youth and health, with which his
son had entered the forest, was giving way to the
brown covering produced by exposure and toil. We
say of toil, for, independently of the habits and
opinions of the country, which strongly reprobated
idleness, even in those most gifted by fortune, the
daily difficulties of their situation, the chase, and
the long and intricate passages that the veteran
himself was compelled to adventure in the surrounding
forest, partook largely of the nature of
the term we have used. Ruth continued blooming
and youthful, though maternal anxiety was soon
added to her other causes of care. Still, for a long
season, nought occurred to excite extraordinary
regrets for the step they had taken, or to create
particular uneasiness in behalf of the future. The
borderers, for such by their frontier position they
had in truth become, heard the strange and awful
tidings of the dethronement of one king, of the
interregnum, as a reign of more than usual vigor
and prosperity is called, and of the restoration of
the son of him who is strangely enough termed a
martyr. To all these eventful and unwonted chances
in the fortunes of kings, Mark Heathcote listened
with deep and reverential submission to the will of
him, in whose eyes crowns and sceptres are merely
his contemporaries, who had sought shelter in the
western continent, his political opinions, if not absolutely
republican, had a leaning to liberty that
was strongly in opposition to the doctrine of the
divine rights of the monarch, while he had been
too far removed from the stirring passions which
had gradually excited those nearer to the throne,
to lose their respect for its sanctity, and to sully
its brightness with blood. When the transient and
straggling visiters that, at long intervals, visited his
settlement, spoke of the Protector, who for so many
years ruled England with an iron hand, the eyes of
the old man would gleam with sudden and singular
interest; and once, when commenting after evening
prayer on the vanity and the vicissitudes of this life,
he acknowledged that the extraordinary individual,
who was, in substance if not in name, seated on the
throne of the Plantagenets, had been the boon
companion and ungodly associate of many of his
youthful hours. Then would follow a long, whole-some,
extemporaneous homily on the idleness of
setting the affections on the things of life, and a
half-suppressed, but still intelligible commendation
of the wiser course which had led him to raise his
own tabernacle in the wilderness, instead of weakening
the chances of eternal glory by striving too
much for the possession of the treacherous vanities
of the world.
But even the gentle and ordinarily little observant
Ruth might trace the kindling of the eye, the knitting
of the brow, and the flushings of his pale and furrowed
cheek, as the murderous conflicts of the civil
wars became the themes of the ancient soldier's discourse.
There were moments when religious submission,
and we had almost said religious precepts,
were partially forgotten, as he explained to his attentive
son and listening grandchild, the nature of
At such times, his still nervous hand would even
wield the blade, in order to instruct the latter in its
uses, and many a long winter evening was passed in
thus indirectly teaching an art, that was so much at
variance with the mandates of his divine master.
The chastened soldier, however, never forgot to close
his instruction with a petition extraordinary, in the
customary prayer, that no descendant of his should
ever take life from a being unprepared to die, except
in justifiable defence of his faith, his person, or his
lawful rights. It must be admitted, that a liberal
construction of the reserved privileges would leave
sufficient matter, to exercise the subtlety of one
subject to any extraordinary propensity to arms.
Few opportunities were however offered, in their
remote situation and with their peaceful habits, for
the practice of a theory that had been taught in so
many lessons. Indian alarms, as they were termed,
were not unfrequent, but, as yet, they had never
produced more than terror in the bosoms of the gentle
Ruth and her young offspring. It is true, they had
heard of travellers massacred, and of families separated
by captivity, but, either by a happy fortune,
or by more than ordinary prudence in the settlers
who were established along that immediate frontier,
the knife and the tomahawk had as yet been sparingly
used in the colony of Connecticut. A threatening
and dangerous struggle with the Dutch, in the
adjoining province of New-Netherlands, had been
averted by the foresight and moderation of the rulers
of the new plantations; and though a warlike and
powerful native chief kept the neighboring colonies
of Massachusetts and Rhode-Island in a state of
constant watchfulness, from the cause just mentioned
the apprehension of danger was greatly weakened
in the breasts of those so remote as the individuals
who composed the family of our emigrant.
In this quiet manner did years glide by, the surrounding
wilderness slowly retreating from the habitations
of the Heathcotes, until they found themselves
in the possession of as many of the comforts
of life, as their utter seclusion from the rest of the
world could give them reason to expect.
With this preliminary explanation, we shall refer
the reader to the succeeding narrative for a more
minute, and we hope for a more interesting account
of the incidents of a legend that may prove too
homely for the tastes of those, whose imaginations
seek the excitement of scenes more stirring, or of a
condition of life less natural.
| CHAPTER I. The wept of Wish-ton-Wish | |