University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

I was early in costume the following morning. I question
if my own mother could have known me, had she lived
long enough to see the whiskers sprout on my cheeks, and
to contemplate my countenance as a man. I went into
Dunning's library, drew the little hurdy-gurdy from its
hiding-place, slung it, and began to play St. Patrick's Day
in the Morning, with spirit, and, I trust I may add, with
execution. I was in the height of the air, when the door
opened, and Barney thrust his high-cheeked-bone face into
the room, his mouth as wide open as that of a frozen
porker.

“Where the divil did ye come from?” demanded the new
footman, with the muscles of that vast aperture of his working
from grin to grim, and grim to grin again. “Yee's
wilcome to the tchune; but how comes ye here?”

“I coomes vrom Halle, in Preussen. Vat isht your
vaterland?”

“Be yees a Jew?”

“Nein—I isht a goot Christian. Vilt you haf Yankee
Tootle?”

“Yankee T'under! Ye 'll wake up the masther, and
he 'll be displais'd, else ye might work upon t'at tchune till
the end of time. That I should hear it here, in my own
liberary, and ould Ireland t'ree thousand laigues away!”

A laugh from Dunning interrupted the dialogue, when
Barney vanished, no doubt anticipating some species of
American punishment for a presumed delinquency. Whether
the blundering, well-meaning, honest fellow really
ascertained who we were that breakfasted with his master,

I do not know; but we got the meal and left the house
without seeing his face again, Dunning having a young
yellow fellow to do the service of the table.

I need scarcely say that I felt a little awkward at finding
myself in the streets of New York in such a guise; but the
gravity and self-possession of my uncle were a constant
source of amusement to me. He actually sold a watch on
the wharf before the boat left it, though I imputed his success
to the circumstance that his price was what a brother
dealer, who happened to be trading in the same neighbour
hood, pronounced “onconscionably low.” We took a
comfortable state-room between us, under the pretence of
locking-up our property, and strolled about the boat, gaping
and looking curious, as became our class.

“Here are at least a dozen people that I know,” said my
uncle, as we were lounging around—loafing around, is the
modern Doric—about the time that the boat was paddling
past Fort Washington; “I have reconnoitred in all quarters,
and find quite a dozen. I have been conversing with
an old school-fellow, and one with whom I have ever lived
in tolerable intimacy, for the last ten minutes, and find my
broken English and disguise are perfect. I am confident
my dear mother herself would not recognise me.”

“We can then amuse ourselves with my grandmother
and the young ladies,” I answered, “when we reach the
Nest. For my part, it strikes me that we had better keep
our own secret to the last moment.”

“Hush! As I live, there is Seneca Newcome this moment!
He is coming this way, and we must be Germans
again.”

Sure enough, there was 'Squire Seneky, as the honest
farmers around the Nest call him; though many of them
must change their practices, or it will shortly become so
absurd to apply the term “honest” to them, that no one will
have the hardihood to use it. Newcome came slowly towards
the forecastle, on which we were standing; and my
uncle determined to get into conversation with him, as a
means of further proving the virtue of our disguises, as well
as possibly of opening the way to some communications that
might facilitate our visit to the Nest. With this view, the
pretended pedlar drew a watch from his pocket, and, offering

it meekly to the inspection of the quasi lawyer, he
said—

“Puy a vatch, shentlemans?”

“Hey! what? Oh! a watch,” returned Seneca, in that
high, condescending, vulgar key, with which the salt of the
earth usually affect to treat those they evidently think much
beneath them in intellect, station, or some other great essential,
at the very moment they are bursting with envy, and
denouncing as aristocrats all who are above them. “Hey!
a watch, is it? What countryman are you, friend?”

“A Charmans—ein Teutscher.”

“A German—ine Tycher is the place you come from, I
s'pose?”

“Nein—ein Teutscher isht a Charman.”

“Oh, yes! I understand. How long have you been in
Ameriky?”

“Twelf moont's.”

“Why, that 's most long enough to make you citizens.
Where do you live?”

“Nowhere; I lifs jest asht it happens—soometimes here,
ant soometimes dere.”

“Ay, ay! I understand—no legal domicile, but lead a
wandering life. Have you many of these watches for sale?”

“Yees—I haf asht many as twenty. Dey are as sheep
as dirt, and go like pig clocks.”

`And what may be your price for this?”

“Dat you can haf for only eight tollars. Effery poty
wilt say it is golt, dat doesn't know petter.”

“Oh! it isn't gold then — I swan!” — what this oath
meant I never exactly knew, though I suppose it to be a
puritan mode of saying “I swear!” the attempts to cheat
the devil in this way being very common among their pious
descendants, though even “Smith Thompson” himself can
do no man any good in such a case of conscience—“I
swan! you come plaguy near taking even me in! Will
you come down from that price any?”

“If you wilt gif me some atfice, perhaps I may. You
look like a goot shentlemans, and one dat woultn't sheat a
poor Charmans; ant effery poty wants so much to sheat de
poor Charmans, dat I will take six, if you will drow in some
atfice.”

“Advice? You have come to the right man for I
Walk a little this way, where we shall be alone. What is
the natur' of the matter—action on the case, or a tort?”

“Nein, nein! it isht not law dat I wants, put atfice.”

“Well, but advice leads to law, ninety-nine times in a
hundred.”

“Ya, ya!” answered the pedlar, laughing; “dat may be
so; put it isht not what I vants—I vants to know vere a
Charman can trafel wit' his goots in de coontry, and not in
de pig towns.”

“I understand you—six dollars, hey! That sounds high
for such a looking watch”—he had just before mistaken it
for gold—“but I 'm always the poor man's friend, and despise
aristocracy”—what Seneca hated with the strongest
hate, he ever fancied he despised the most, and by aristocracy
he merely understood gentlemen and ladies, in the
true signification of the words—“why, I 'm always ready
to help along the honest citizen. If you could make up
your mind, now, to part with this one watch for nawthin',
I think I could tell you a part of the country where you
might sell the other nineteen in a week.”

“Goot!” exclaimed my uncle, cheerfully. “Take him—
he ist your broberty, and wilcome. Only show me de town
where I canst sell de nineteen udders.”

Had my uncle Ro been a true son of peddling, he would
have charged a dollar extra on each of the nineteen, and
made eleven dollars by his present liberality.

“It is no town at all—only a township,” returned the
literal Seneca. “Did you expect it would be a city?”

“Vat cares I? I woult radder sell my vatches to goot,
honest, country men, dan asht to de best burghers in de
land.”

“You 're my man! The right spirit is in you. I hope
you 're no patroon — no aristocrat?”

“I don't know vat isht badroon, or vat isht arishtocrat.”

“No! You are a happy man in your ignorance. A
patroon is a nobleman who owns another man's land; and
an aristocrat is a body that thinks himself better than his
neighbours, friend.”

“Well, den, I isht no badroon, for I don't own no land

at all, not even mine own; and I ishn't petter asht no poty
at all.”

“Yes, you be; you 've only to think so, and you 'll be
the greatest gentleman of 'em all.”

“Well, den, I will dry and dink so, and be petter asht de
greatest shentlemans of dem all. But dat won't do, nudder,
as dat vilt make me petter dan you; for you are one of de
greatest of dem all, shentlemans.”

“Oh! as for me, let me alone. I scorn being on their
level. I go for `Down with the rent!' and so 'll you, too,
afore you 've been a week in our part of the country.”

“Vat isht de rent dat you vants to git down?”

“It 's a thing that 's opposed to the spirit of the institutions,
as you can see by my feelin's at this very moment.
But no matter! I 'll keep the watch, if you say so, and
show you the way into that part of the country, as your
pay.”

“Agreet, shentlemans. Vat I vants is atfice, and vat you
vants is a vatch.”

Here uncle Ro laughed so much like himself, when he
ought clearly to have laughed in broken English, that I was
very much afraid he might give the alarm to our companion;
but he did not. From that time, the best relations existed
between us and Seneca, who, in the course of the day,
recognised us by sundry smiles and winks, though I could
plainly see he did not like the anti-aristocratic principle
sufficiently to wish to seem too intimate with us. Before we
reached the islands, however, he gave us directions where
to meet him in the morning, and we parted, when the boat
stopped alongside of the pier at Albany that afternoon, the
best friends in the world.

“Albany! dear, good old Albany!” exclaimed my uncle
Ro, as we stopped on the draw of the bridge to look at the
busy scene in the basin, where literally hundreds of canal-boats
were either lying to discharge or to load, or were
coming and going, to say nothing of other craft; “dear,
good old Albany! you are a town to which I ever return
with pleasure, for you at least never disappoint me. A
first-rate country-place you are; and, though I miss your
quaint old Dutch church, and your rustic-looking old English

church from the centre of your principal street, almost
every change you make is respectable. I know nothing
that tells so much against you as changing the name of
Market street by the paltry imitation of Broadway; but,
considering that a horde of Yankees have come down upon
you since the commencement of the present century, you
are lucky that the street was not called the Appian Way.
But, excellent old Albany! whom even the corruptions of
politics cannot change in the core, lying against thy hillside,
and surrounded with thy picturesque scenery, there is
an air of respectability about thee that I admire, and a quiet
prosperity that I love. Yet, how changed since my boy-hood!
Thy simple stoups have all vanished; thy gables
are disappearing; marble and granite are rising in thy
streets, too, but they take honest shapes, and are free from
the ambition of mounting on stilts; thy basin has changed
the whole character of thy once semi-sylvan, semi-commercial
river; but it gives to thy young manhood an appearance
of abundance and thrift that promise well for thy age!”

The reader may depend on it that I laughed heartily at
this rhapsody; for I could hardly enter into my uncle's
feelings. Albany is certainly a very good sort of a place, and
relatively a more respectable-looking town than the “commercial
emporium,” which, after all, externally, is a mere
huge expansion of a very marked mediocrity, with the pretension
of a capital in its estimate of itself. But Albany
lays no claim to be anything more than a provincial town,
and in that class it is highly placed. By the way, there is
nothing in which “our people,” to speak idiomatically, more
deceive themselves, than in their estimate of what composes
a capital. It would be ridiculous to suppose that the representatives
of such a government as this could impart to any
place the tone, opinions, habits and manners of a capital;
for, if they did, they would impart it on the novel principle
of communicating that which they do not possess in their
own persons. Congress itself, though tolerably free from
most shackles, including those of the constitution, is not up
to that. In my opinion, a man accustomed to the world
might be placed blindfolded in the most finished quarter of
New York, and the place has new quarters in which the
incongruities I have already mentioned do not exist, and,

my life on it, he could pronounce, as soon as the bandage
was removed, that he was not in a town where the tone of
a capital exists. The last thing to make a capital is trade.
Indeed, the man who hears the words “business” and “the
merchants” ringing in his ears, may safely conclude, de
facto, that he is not in a capital. Now, a New-York village
is often much less rustic than the villages of the most advanced
country of Europe; but a New-York town is many
degrees below any capital of a large State in the old world.

Will New York ever be a capital? Yes—out of all question,
yes. But the day will not come until after the sudden
changes of condition which immediately and so naturally
succeeded the revolution, have ceased to influence ordinary
society, and those above again impart to those below more
than they receive. This restoration to the natural state of
things must take place, as soon as society gets settled; and
there will be nothing to prevent a town living under our
own institutions—spirit, tendencies and all—from obtaining
the highest tone that ever yet prevailed in a capital. The
folly is in anticipating the natural course of events. Nothing
will more hasten these events, however, than a literature
that is controlled, not by the lower, but by the higher
opinion of the country; which literature is yet, in a great
degree, to be created.

I had dispensed with the monkey, after trying to get
along with the creature for an hour or two, and went around
only with my music. I would rather manage an army of
anti-renters than one monkey. With the hurdy-gurdy slung
around my neck, therefore, I followed my uncle, who actually
sold another watch before we reached a tavern. Of
course we did not presume to go to Congress Hall, or the
Eagle, for we knew we should not be admitted. This was
the toughest part of our adventures. I am of opinion my
uncle made a mistake; for he ventured to a second-class
house, under the impression that one of the sort usually
frequented by men of our supposed stamp might prove too
coarse for us, altogether. I think we should have been
better satisfied with the coarse fare of a coarse tavern, than
with the shabby-genteel of the house we blundered into.
In the former, everything would have reminded us, in a way
we expected to be reminded, that we were out of the common

track; and we might have been amused with the
change, though it is one singularly hard to be endured. I remember
to have heard a young man, accustomed from childhood
to the better habits of the country, but who went to sea a
lad, before the mast, declare that the coarseness of his shipmates,
and there is no vulgarity about a true sailor, even
when coarsest, gave him more trouble to overcome, than all
the gales, physical sufferings, labour, exposures and dangers,
put together. I must confess, I have found it so, too,
in my little experience. While acting as a strolling musician,
I could get along with anything better than the coarse
habits which I encountered at the table. Your silver-forkisms,
and your purely conventional customs, as a matter of
course, no man of the world attaches any serious importance
to; but there are conventionalities that belong to the
fundamental principles of civilized society, which become
second nature, and with which it gets to be hard, indeed, to
dispense. I shall say as little as possible of the disagreeables
of my new trade, therefore, but stick to the essentials.

The morning of the day which succeeded that of our
arrival at Albany, my uncle Ro and I took our seats in the
train, intending to go to Saratoga, viâ Troy. I wonder the
Trojan who first thought of playing this travestie on Homer,
did not think of calling the place Troyville, or Troyborough!
That would have been semi-American, at least,
whereas the present appellation is so purely classical! It
is impossible to walk through the streets of this neat and
flourishing town, which already counts its twenty thousand
souls, and not have the images of Achilles, and Hector, and
Priam, and Hecuba, pressing on the imagination a little
uncomfortably. Had the place been called Try, the name
would have been a sensible one; for it is trying all it can
to get the better of Albany; and, much as I love the latter
venerable old town, I hope Troy may succeed in its trying
to prevent the Hudson from being bridged. By the way, I
will here remark, for the benefit of those who have never
seen any country but their own, that there is a view on the
road between Schenectady and this Grecian place, just
where the heights give the first full appearance of the valley
of the Hudson, including glimpses of Waterford, Lansingburg
and Albany, with a full view of both Troys, which

gives one a better idea of the affluence of European scenery,
than almost any other spot I can recall in America. To my
hurdy gurdy:

I made my first essay as a musician in public beneath the
windows of the principal inn of Troy. I cannot say much
in favour of the instrument, though I trust the playing itself
was somewhat respectable. This I know full well, that I
soon brought a dozen fair faces to the windows of the inn,
and that each was decorated with a smile. Then it was
that I regretted the monkey. Such an opening could not
but awaken the dormant ambition of even a “patriot” of
the purest water, and I will own I was gratified.

Among the curious who thus appeared, were two whom
I at once supposed to be father and daughter. The former
was a clergyman, and, as I fancied by something in his air,
of “the Church,” begging pardon of those who take offence
at this exclusive title, and to whom I will just give a hint in
passing. Any one at all acquainted with mankind, will at
once understand that no man who is certain of possessing
any particular advantage, ever manifests much sensibility
because another lays claim to it also. In the constant
struggles of the jealous, for instance, on the subject of that
universal source of jealous feeling, social position, the man
or woman who is conscious of claims never troubles himself
or herself about them. For them the obvious fact is
sufficient. If it be answered to this that the pretension of
“the Church” is exclusive, I shall admit it is, and “conclusive,”
too. It is not exclusive, however, in the sense
urged, since no one denies that there are many branches to
“the Church,” although those branches do not embrace
everything. I would advise those who take offence at “our”
styling “ourselves” “the Church,” to style themselves “the
Church,” just as they call all their parsons bishops, and see
who will care about it. That is a touchstone which will
soon separate the true metal from the alloy.

My parson, I could easily see, was a Church clergyman
—not a meeting-house clergyman. How I ascertained that
fact at a glance, I shall not reveal; but I also saw in his
countenance some of that curiosity which marks simplicity
of character: it was not a vulgar feeling, but one which
induced him to beckon me to approach a little nearer. I did

so, when he invited me in. It was a little awkward, at
first, I must acknowledge, to be beckoned about in this
manner; but there was something in the air and countenance
of the daughter that induced me not to hesitate about
complying. I cannot say that her beauty was so very striking,
though she was decidedly pretty; but the expression
of her face, eyes, smile, and all put together, was so singularly
sweet and feminine, that I felt impelled by a sympathy
I shall not attempt to explain, to enter the house, and ascend
to the door of a parlour that I saw at once was public,
though it then contained no one but my proper hosts.

“Walk in, young man,” said the father, in a benevolent
tone of voice. “I am curious to see that instrument; and
my daughter here, who has a taste for music, wishes it as
much as I do myself. What do you call it?”

“Hurty-gurty,” I answered.

“From what part of the world do you come, my young
friend?” continued the clergyman, raising his meek eyes to
mine still more curiously.

“Vrom Charmany; vrom Preussen, vere did reign so
late de good Koenig Wilhelm.”

“What does he say, Molly?”

So the pretty creature bore the name of Mary! I liked
the Molly, too; it was a good sign, as none but the truly
respectable dare use such familiar appellations in these
ambitious times. Molly sounded as if these people had the
aplomb of position and conscious breeding. Had they been
vulgar, it would have been Mollissa.

“It is not difficult to translate, father,” answered one of
the sweetest voices that had ever poured its melody on my
ear, and which was rendered still more musical by the slight
laugh that mingled with it. “He says he is from Germany
— from Prussia, where the good King William lately
reigned.”

I liked the “father,” too—that sounded refreshing, after
passing a night among a tribe of foul-nosed adventurers in
humanity, every one of whom had done his or her share
towards caricaturing the once pretty appellatives of “Pa”
and “Ma.” A young lady may still say “Papa,” or
even “Mamma,” though it were far better that she said

“Father” and “Mother;” but as for “Pa” and “Ma,” they
are now done with in respectable life. They will not even
do for the nursery.

“And this instrument is a hurdy-gurdy?” continued the
clergyman. “What have we here—the name spelt on it?”

“Dat isht de maker's name—Hochstiel fecit.”

“Fecit!” repeated the clergyman; “is that German?”

“Nein—dat isht Latin; facio, feci, factum, facere—
feci, feciste, FECIT. It means make, I suppose you know.

The parson looked at me, and at my dress and figure,
with open surprise, and smiled as his eye glanced at his
daughter. If asked why I made this silly display of lower-form
learning, I can only say that I chafed at being fancied
a mere every-day street musician, that had left his monkey
at home, by the charming girl who stood gracefully bending
over her father's elbow, as the latter examined the inscription
that was stamped on a small piece of ivory which had
been let into the instrument. I could see that Mary shrunk
back a little under the sensitive feeling, so natural to her
sex, that she was manifesting too much freedom of manner
for the presence of a youth who was nearer to her own class
than she could have supposed it possible for a player on the
hurdy-gurdy to be. A blush succeeded; but the glance of
the soft blue eye that instantly followed, seemed to set all at
rest, and she leaned over her father's elbow again.

“You understand Latin, then?” demanded the parent,
examining me over his spectacles from head to foot.

“A leetle, sir—just a ferry leetle. In my coontry, efery
mans isht obliget to be a soldier some time, and them t'at
knows Latin can be made sergeants and corporals.”

“That is Prussia, is it?”

“Ya—Preussen, vere so late did reign de goot Koenig
Wilhelm.”

“And is Latin much understood among you? I have
heard that, in Hungary, most well-informed persons even
speak the tongue.”

“In Charmany it isht not so. We all l'arnts somet'ing,
but not all dost l'arn efery t'ing.”

I could see a smile struggling around the sweet lips of
that dear girl, after I had thus delivered myself, as I fancied,

with a most accurate inaccuracy; but she succeeded in
repressing it, though those provoking eyes of hers continued
to laugh, much of the time our interview lasted.

“Oh! I very well know that in Prussia the schools are
quite good, and that your government pays great attention
to the wants of all classes,” rejoined the clergyman; “but
I confess some surprise that you should understand anything
of Latin. Now, even in this country, where we boast so
much—”

“Ye-e-s,” I could not refrain from drawling out, “dey
does poast a great teal in dis coontry!”

Mary actually laughed; whether it was at my words, or
at the somewhat comical manner I had assumed—a manner
in which simplicity was tant soit peu blended with irony—
I shall not pretend to say. As for the father, his simplicity
was of proof; and, after civilly waiting until my interruption
was done, he resumed what he had been on the point
of saying.

“I was about to add,” continued the clergyman, “that
even in this country, where we boast so much”—the little
minx of a daughter passed her hand over her eyes, and
fairly coloured with the effort she made not to laugh again
—“of the common schools, and of their influence on the
public mind, it is not usual to find persons of your condition
who understand the dead languages.”

“Ye-e-s,” I replied; “it isht my condition dat misleats
you, sir. Mine fat'er wast a shentlemans, and he gifet me
as goot an etication as de Koenig did gif to de Kron Prinz.”

Here, my desire to appear well in the eyes of Mary
caused me to run into another silly indiscretion. How I
was to explain the circumstance of the son of a Prussian
gentleman, whose father had given him an education as
good as that which the King of his country had given to
its Crown Prince, being in the streets of Troy, playing on
a hurdy-gurdy, was a difficulty I did not reflect on for a
moment. The idea of being thought by that sweet girl a
mere uneducated boor, was intolerable to me; and I threw
it off by this desperate falsehood—false in its accessories,
but true in its main facts—as one would resent an insult.
Fortune favoured me, however, far more than I had any
right to expect.

There is a singular disposition in the American character
to believe every well-mannered European at least a count.
I do not mean that those who have seen the world are not
like other persons in this respect; but a very great proportion
of the country never has seen any other world than a
world of “business.” The credulity on this subject surpasseth
belief; and, were I to relate facts of this nature that
might be established in a court of justice, the very parties
connected with them would be ready to swear that they are
caricatures. Now, well-mannered I trust I am, and, though
plainly dressed and thoroughly disguised, neither my air
nor attire was absolutely mean. As my clothes were new,
I was neat in my appearance; and there were possibly
some incongruities about the last, that might have struck
eyes more penetrating than those of my companions. I
could see that both father and daughter felt a lively interest
in me, the instant I gave them reason to believe I was one
of better fortunes. So many crude notions exist among us
on the subject of convulsions and revolutions in Europe, that
I dare say, had I told any improbable tale of the political
condition of Prussia, it would have gone down; for nothing
so much resembles the ignorance that prevails in America,
generally, concerning the true state of things in Europe, as
the ignorance that prevails in Europe, generally, concerning
the true state of things in America. As for Mary, her soft
eyes seemed to me to be imbued with thrice their customary
gentleness and compassion, as she recoiled a step in native
modesty, and gazed at me, when I had made my revelation.

“If such is the case, my young friend,” returned the clergyman,
with benevolent interest, “you ought, and might
easily be placed in a better position than this you are now
in. Have you any knowledge of Greek?”

“Certainly—Greek is moch study in Charmany.”

`In for a penny, in for a pound,' I thought.

“And the modern languages—do you understand any of
them?”

“I speaks de five great tongues of Europe, more ast less
well; and I read dem all, easily.”

“The five tongues!” said the clergyman, counting on his
fingers; “what can they be, Mary?”

“French, and German, and Spanish, and Italian, I suppose,
sir.”

“These make but four. What can be the fifth, my
dear?”

“De yoong laty forgets de Englisch. De Englisch is
das funf.”

“Oh! yes, the English!” exclaimed the pretty creature,
pressing her lips together to prevent laughing in my face.

“True—I had forgotten the English, not being accustomed
to think of it as a mere European tongue. I suppose,
young man, you naturally speak the English less
fluently than any other of your five languages?”

“Ya!'

Again the smile struggled to the lips of Mary.

“I feel a deep interest in you as a stranger, and am sorry
we have only met to part so soon. Which way shall you
be likely to direct your steps, my Prussian young friend?”

“I go to a place which is callet Ravensnest—goot place
to sell vatch, dey tells me.”

“Ravensnest!” exclaimed the father.

“Ravensnest!” repeated the daughter, and that in tones
which put the hurdy-gurdy to shame.

“Why, Ravensnest is the place where I live, and the
parish of which I am the clergyman—the Protestant Episcopal
clergyman, I mean.”

This, then, was the Rev. Mr. Warren, the divine who
had been called to our church the very summer I left home,
and who had been there ever since! My sister Martha had
written me much concerning these people, and I felt as if I
had known them for years. Mr. Warren was a man of
good connexions, and some education, but of no fortune
whatever, who had gone into the Church—it was the church
of his ancestors, one of whom had actually been an English
bishop, a century or two ago—from choice, and contrary to
the wishes of his friends. As a preacher, his success had
never been great; but for the discharge of his duties no
man stood higher, and no man was more respected. The
living of St. Andrew's, Ravensnest, would have been poor
enough, had it depended on the contributions of the parishioners.
These last gave about one hundred and fifty dollars
a-year, for their share of the support of a priest. I gave

another hundred, as regularly as clock-work, and had been
made to do so throughout a long minority; and my grandmother
and sister made up another fifty between them.
But there was a glebe of fifty acres of capital land, a woodlot,
and a fund of two thousand dollars at interest; the
whole proceeding from endowments made by my grandfather,
during his lifetime. Altogether, the living may have
been worth a clear five hundred dollars a-year, in addition
to a comfortable house, hay, wood, vegetables, pasture, and
some advantages in the way of small crops. Few country
clergymen were better off than the rector of St. Andrew's,
Ravensnest, and all as a consequence of the feudal and
aristocratic habits of the Littlepages, though I say it, perhaps,
who might better not, in times like these.

My letters had told me that the Rev. Mr. Warren was a
widower; that Mary was his only child; that he was a
truly pious, not a sham-pious, and a really zealous clergyman;
a man of purest truth, whose word was gospel—of
great simplicity and integrity of mind and character; that
he never spoke evil of others, and that a complaint of this
world and its hardships seldom crossed his lips. He loved
his fellow-creatures, both naturally and on principle;
mourned over the state of the diocese, and greatly preferred
piety even to high-churchism. High-churchman he
was, nevertheless; though it was not a high-churchmanship
that outweighed the loftier considerations of his christian
duties, and left him equally without opinions of his own in
matters of morals, and without a proper respect, in practice,
for those that he had solemnly vowed to maintain.

His daughter was described as a sweet-tempered, arch,
modest, sensible, and well-bred girl, that had received a far
better education than her father's means would have permitted
him to bestow, through the liberality and affection
of a widowed sister of her mother's, who was affluent, and
had caused her to attend the same school as that to which
she had sent her own daughters. In a word, she was a
most charming neighbour; and her presence at Ravensnest
had rendered Martha's annual visits to the “old house”
(built in 1785) not only less irksome, but actually pleasant.
Such had been my sister's account of the Warrens and
their qualities, throughout a correspondence of five years.

I have even fancied that she loved this Mary Warren better
than she loved any of her uncle's wards, herself of course
excepted.

The foregoing flashed through my mind, the instant the
clergyman announced himself; but the coincidence of our
being on the way to the same part of the country, seemed
to strike him as forcibly as it did myself. What Mary
thought of the matter, I had no means of ascertaining.

“This is singular enough,” resumed Mr. Warren. “What
has directed your steps towards Ravensnest?”

“Dey tell mine ooncle 'tis goot place to sell moch vatch.”

“You have an uncle, then? Ah! I see him there in the
street, showing a watch at this moment to a gentleman. Is
your uncle a linguist, too, and has he been as well educated
as you seem to be yourself?”

“Certain—he moch more of a shentleman dan ast de
shentleman to whom he now sell vatch.”

“These must be the very persons,” put in Mary, a little
eagerly, “of whom Mr. Newcome spoke, as the”—the dear
girl did not like to say pedlars, after what I had told them
of my origin; so she added—“dealers in watches and
trinkets, who intended to visit our part of the country.”

“You are right, my dear, and the whole matter is now
clear. Mr. Newcome said he expected them to join us at
Troy, when we should proceed in the train together as far
as Saratoga. But here comes Opportunity herself, and her
brother cannot be far off.”

At that moment, sure enough, my old acquaintance, Opportunity
Newcome, came into the room, a public parlour,
with an air of great self-satisfaction, and a nonchalance of
manner that was not a little more peculiar to herself than it
is to most of her caste. I trembled for my disguise, since,
to be quite frank on a very delicate subject, Opportunity had
made so very dead a set at me—“setting a cap” is but a
pitiful phrase to express the assault I had to withstand—as
scarcely to leave a hope that her feminine instinct, increased
and stimulated with the wish to be mistress of the Nest
house, could possibly overlook the thousand and one personal
peculiarities that must still remain about one, whose
personal peculiarities she had made her particular study.