University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

Half an hour later, uncle Ro and myself were seated at
table, eating our dinners as quietly as if we were in an inn.
The footman who had set the table was an old family servant,
one who had performed the same sort of duty in that
very house for a quarter of a century. Of course he was
not an American, no man of American birth ever remaining
so long a time in an inferior station, or in any station
so low as that of a house-servant. If he has good qualities
enough to render it desirable to keep him, he is almost certain
to go up in the world; if not, one does not care particularly
about having him. But Europeans are less elastic
and less ambitious, and it is no uncommon thing to find one
of such an origin remaining a long time in the same service.
Such had been the fact with this man, who had followed
my own parents from Europe, when they returned from
their marriage tour, and had been in the house on the occasion
of my birth. From that time he had continued at the
Nest, never marrying, nor ever manifesting the smallest
wish for any change. He was an Englishman by birth;
and what is very unusual in a servant of that country, when
transferred to America, the “letting-up,” which is certain
to attend such a change from the depression of the original
condition to that in which he is so suddenly placed, had not
made him saucy. An American is seldom what is called
impudent, under any circumstances; he is careless, nay ignorant
of forms; pays little or no purely conventional respect;
does not understand half the social distinctions which
exist among the higher classes of even his own countrymen,
and fancies there are equalities in things about which, in
truth, there is great inequality between himself and others,

merely because he has been taught that all men are equal
in rights; but he is so unconscious of any pressure as
seldom to feel a disposition to revenge himself by impudence.

But, while John was not impudent either, he had a footman's
feeling towards those whom he fancied no better than
himself. He had set the table with his customary neatness
and method, and he served the soup with as much regularity
as he would have done had we sat there in our proper
characters, but then he withdrew. He probably remembered
that the landlord, or upper servant of an English hotel,
is apt to make his appearance with the soup, and to disappear
as that disappears. So it was with John; after removing
the soup, he put a dumb-waiter near my uncle,
touched a carving-knife or two, as much as to say “help
yourselves,” and quitted the room. As a matter of course,
our dinner was not a very elaborate one, it wanting two or
three hours to the regular time of dining, though my grandmother
had ordered, in my hearing, one or two delicacies
to be placed on the table, that had surprised Patt. Among
the extraordinary things for such guests was wine. The
singularity, however, was a little explained by the quality
commanded, which was Rhenish.

My uncle Ro was a little surprised at the disappearance
of John; for, seated in that room, he was so accustomed to
his face, that it appeared as if he were not half at home
without him.

“Let the fellow go,” he said, withdrawing his hand from
the bell-cord, which he had already touched to order him back
again; “we can talk more freely without him. Well, Hugh,
here you are, under your own roof, eating a charitable dinner,
and treated as hospitably as if you did not own all you
can see for a circle of five miles around you. It was a
lucky idea of the old lady's, by the way, to think of ordering
this Rudesheimer, in our character of Dutchmen! How
amazingly well she is looking, boy!”

“Indeed she is; and I am delighted to see it. I do not
know why my grandmother may not live these twenty
years; for even that would not make her near as old as
Sus, who, I have often heard her say, was a middle-aged
man when she was born.”

“True; she seems like an elder sister to me, rather than
as a mother, and is altogether a most delightful old woman.
But, if we had so charming an old woman to receive us, so
are there also some very charming young women — hey,
Hugh?”

“I am quite of your way of thinking, sir; and must say
I have not, in many a day, seen two as charming creatures
as I have met with here.”

“Two! — umph; a body would think one might suffice.
Pray, which may be the two, Master Padishah?”

“Patt and Mary Warren, of course. The other two are
well enough, but these two are excellent.”

My uncle Ro looked grum, but he said nothing for some
time. Eating is always an excuse for a broken conversation,
and he ate away as if resolute not to betray his disappointment.
But it is a hard matter for a gentleman to do
nothing but eat at table, and so was obliged to talk.

“Everything looks well here, after all, Hugh,” observed
my uncle. “These anti-renters may have done an infinite
deal of harm in the way of abusing principles, but they do
not seem to have yet destroyed any material things.”

“It is not their cue, sir. The crops are their own; and
as they hope to own the farms, it would be scarcely wise to
injure what, no doubt, they begin to look on as their own
property, too. As for the Nest House, grounds, farm, &c.,
I dare say they will be very willing to leave me them for a
while longer, provided they can get everything else away
from me.”

“For a time longer, at least; though that is the folly of
those who expect to get along by concessions; as if men
were ever satisfied with the yielding of a part, when they
ask that which is wrong in itself, without sooner or later
expecting to get the whole. As well might one expect the
pickpocket who had abstracted a dollar, to put back two-and-sixpence
change. But things really look well, around
the place.”

“So much the better for us. Though, to my judgment
and taste, Miss Mary Warren looks better than anything
else I have yet seen in America.”

Another “umph” expressed my uncle's dissatisfaction —

displeasure would be too strong a word — and he continued
eating.

“You have really some good Rhenish in your cellar,
Hugh,” resumed uncle Ro, after tossing off one of the knowing
green glasses full—though I never could understand
why any man should wish to drink his wine out of green,
when he might do it out of crystal. “It must have been a
purchase of mine, made when we were last in Germany,
and for the use of my mother.”

“As you please, sir; it neither adds nor subtracts from
the beauty of Martha and her friend.”

“Since you are disposed to make these boyish allusions,
be frank with me, and say, at once, how you like my
wards.”

“Meaning, of course, sir, my own sister exclusively. I
will be as sincere as possible, and say that, as to Miss Marston,
I have no opinion at all; and as to Miss Coldbrook,
she is what, in Europe, would be called a `fine' woman.”

“You can say nothing as to her mind, Hugh, for you
have had no opportunity for forming an opinion.”

“Not much of a one, I will own. Nevertheless, I should
have liked her better had she spared the allusion to the
`proper person' who is one day to forge a chain for my sister,
to begin with.”

“Poh, poh; that is the mere squeamishness of a boy. I
do not-think her in the least pert or forward, and your construction
would be tant soit peu vulgar.”

“Put your own construction on it, mon oncle; I do not
like it.”

“I do not wonder young men remain unmarried; they
are getting to be so ultra in their tastes and notions.”

A stranger might have retorted on an old bachelor, for
such a speech, by some allusion to his own example; but I
well knew that my uncle Ro had once been engaged, and
that he lost the object of his passion by death, and too much
respected his constancy and true sentiments ever to joke on
such subjects. I believe he felt the delicacy of my forbearance
rather more than common, for he immediately manifested
a disposition to relent, and to prove it by changing
the subject.

“We can never stay here to-night,” he said. “It would
be at once to proclaim our names—our name, I might say—
a name that was once so honoured and beloved in this town,
and which is now so hated!”

“No, no; not as bad as that. We have done nothing
to merit hatred.”

“Raison de plus for hating us so much the more heartily.
When men are wronged, who have done nothing to deserve
it, the evil-doer seeks to justify his wickedness to himself
by striving all he can to calumniate the injured party; and
the more difficulty he finds in doing that to his mind, the
more profound is his hatred. Rely on it, we are most sincerely
disliked here, on the spot where we were once both
much beloved. Such is human nature.”

At that moment John returned to the room, to see how
we were getting on, and to count his forks and spoons, for
I saw the fellow actually doing it. My uncle, somewhat
indiscreetly, I fancied, but by merely following the chain
of thought then uppermost in his mind, detained him in conversation.

“Dis broperty,” he said, inquiringly, “is de broperty of
one Yeneral Littlepage, I hears say?”

“Not of the General, who was Madam Littlepage's husband,
and who has long been dead, but of his grandson, Mr.
Hugh.”

“Und where might he be, dis Mr. Hugh? — might he be
at hand, or might he not?”

“No; he 's in Europe; that is to say, in Hengland.”
John thought England covered most of Europe, though he
had long gotten over his wish to return. “Mr. Hugh and
Mr. Roger be both habsent from the country, just now.”

“Dat ist unfortunate, for dey dells me dere might be
moch troobles here abouts, and Injin-acting.”

“There is, indeed; and a wicked thing it is, that there
should be anything of the sort.”

“Und what might be der reason of so moch troobles? —
and where ist der blame?”

“Well, that is pretty plain, I fancy,” returned John, who,
in consequence of being a favoured servant at head-quarters,
fancied himself a sort of cabinet minister, and had much

pleasure in letting his knowledge be seen. “The tenants
on this estate wants to be landlords; and as they can't be
so, so long as Mr. Hugh lives and won't let 'em, why they
just tries all sorts of schemes and plans to frighten people
out of their property. I never go down to the village but I
has a talk with some of them, and that in a way that might
do them some good, if anything can.”

“Und what dost you say? — und vid whom dost you talk,
as might do dem moch goot?”

“Why, you see, I talks more with one 'Squire Newcome,
as they calls him, though he 's no more of a real 'squire
than you be — only a sort of an attorney, like, such as they
has in this country. You come from the old countries, I
believe?”

“Ja, ja—dat ist, yes—we comes from Charmany; so you
can say what you bleases.”

“They has queer 'squires in this part of the world, if
truth must be said. But that 's neither here nor there, though
I give this Mr. Seneca Newcome as good as he sends. What
is it you wants, I says to him? — you can't all be landlords
— somebody must be tenants; and if you didn't want to be
tenants, how come you to be so? Land is plenty in this
country, and cheap too; and why didn't you buy your land
at first, instead of coming to rent of Mr. Hugh; and now
when you have rented, to be quarrelling about the very
thing you did of your own accord?”

“Dere you didst dell 'em a goot t'ing; and what might
der 'Squire say to dat?”

“Oh! he was quite dumb-founded, at first; then he said
that in old times, when people first rented these lands, they
didn't know as much as they do now, or they never would
have done it.”

“Und you could answer dat; or vast it your durn to be
dum-founded?”

“I pitched it into him, as they says; I did. Says I,
how's this, says I — you are for ever boasting how much
you Americans know — and how the people knows everything
that ought to be done, about politics and religion—and
you proclaim far and near that your yeomen are the salt of
the earth—and yet you don't know how to bargain for your
leases! A pretty sort of wisdom is this, says I! I had him

there; for the people round about here is only too sharp at
a trade.”

“Did he own dat you vast right, and dat he vast wrong,
dis Herr 'Squire Newcome?”

“Not he; he will never own anything that makes against
his own doctrine, unless he does it ignorantly. But I haven't
told you half of it. I told him, says I, how is it you talk
of one of the Littlepage family cheating you, when, as you
knows yourselves, you had rather have the word of one of
that family than have each other's bonds, says I. You
know, sir, it must be a poor landlord that a tenant can't and
won't take his word: and this they all know to be true;
for a gentleman as has a fine estate is raised above temptation,
like, and has a pride in him to do what is honourable
and fair; and, in my opinion, it is good to have a few such
people in a country, if it be only to keep the wicked one
from getting it altogether in his own keeping.”

“Und did you say dat moch to der 'Squire?”

“No; that I just says to you two, seeing that we are
here, talking together in a friendly way; but a man needn't
be ashamed to say it anywhere, for it 's a religious truth.
But I says to him, Newcome, says I, you, who has been
living so long on the property of the Littlepages, ought to
be ashamed to wish to strip them of it; but you 're not satisfied
with keeping gentlemen down quite as much out of
sight as you can, by holding all the offices yourselves, and
taking all the money of the public you can lay your hands
on for your own use, but you wants to trample them under
your feet, I says, and so take your revenge for being what
you be, says I.”

“Vell, my friend,” said my uncle, “you vast a bolt man
to dell all dis to der beoples of dis coontry, where I have
heard, a man may say just what he hast a mind to say, so
dat he dost not sbeak too moch trut!”

“That 's it—that 's it; you have been a quick scholar, I
find. I told this Mr. Newcome, says I, you 're bold enough
in railing at kings and nobles, for you very well know, says
I, that they are three thousand miles away from you, and
can do you no harm; but you would no more dare get up
before your masters, the people, here, and say what you
really think about 'em, and what I have heard you say of

them in private, than you would dare put your head before
a cannon, as the gunner touched it off. Oh! I gave him a
lesson, you may be sure!”

Although there was a good deal of the English footman in
John's logic and feeling, there was also a good deal of truth
in what he said. The part where he accused Newcome of
holding one set of opinions in private, concerning his masters,
and another in public, is true to the life. There is not,
at this moment, within the wide reach of the American borders,
one demagogue to be found who might not, with justice,
be accused of precisely the same deception. There is
not one demagogue in the whole country, who, if he lived
in a monarchy, would not be the humblest advocate of men
in power, ready to kneel at the feet of those who stood in
the sovereign's presence. There is not, at this instant, a
man in power among us a senator or a legislator, who is
now the seeming advocate of what he wishes to call the
rights of the tenants, and who is for overlooking principles
and destroying law and right, in order to pacify the anti-renters
by extraordinary concessions, that would not be
among the foremost, under a monarchial system, to recommend
and support the freest application of the sword and the
bayonet to suppress what would then be viewed, ay, and be
termed, “the rapacious longings of the disaffected to enjoy
the property of others without paying for it.” All this is
certain; for it depends on a law of morals that is infallible.
Any one who wishes to obtain a clear index to the true characters
of the public men he is required to support, or oppose,
has now the opportunity; for each stands before a
mirror that reflects him in his just proportions, and in which
the dullest eye has only to cast a glance, in order to view
him from head to foot.

The entrance of my grandmother put a stop to John's
discourse. He was sent out of the room on a message, and
then I learned the object of this visit. My sister had been
let into the secret of our true characters, and was dying to
embrace me. My dear grandmother, rightly enough, had
decided it would be to the last degree unkind to keep her in
ignorance of our presence; and, the fact known, nature had
longings which must be appeased. I had myself been

tempted twenty times, that morning, to snatch Patt to my
heart and kiss her, as I used to do just after my beard began
to grow, and she was so much of a child as to complain.
The principal thing to be arranged, then, was to obtain an
interview for me without awakening suspicion in the observers.
My grandmother's plan was arranged, however,
and she now communicated it to us.

There was a neat little dressing-room annexed to Martha's
bed-room; in that the meeting was to take place.

“She and Mary Warren are now there, waiting for your
appearance, Hugh—”

“Mary Warren!—Does she, then, know who I am?”

“Not in the least; she has no other idea than that you
are a young German, of good connections and well educated,
who has been driven from his own country by political troubles,
and who is reduced to turn his musical taste and acquisitions
to account, in the way you seem to do, until he
can find some better employment. All this she had told us
before we met you, and you are not to be vain, Hugh, if I
add, that your supposed misfortunes, and great skill with
the flute, and good behaviour, have made a friend of one of
the best and most true-hearted girls I ever had the good fortune
to know. I say good behaviour, for little, just now,
can be ascribed to good looks.”

“I hope I am not in the least revolting in appearance, in
this disguise. For my sister's sake—”

The hearty laugh of my dear old grandmother brought
me up, and I said no more; colouring, I believe, a little, at
my own folly. Even uncle Ro joined in the mirth, though
I could see he wished Mary Warren even safely translated
along with her father, and that the latter was Archbishop of
Canterbury. I must acknowledge that I felt a good deal
ashamed of the weakness I had betrayed.

“You are very well, Hugh, darling,” continued my grandmother;
“though I must think you would be more interesting
in your own hair, which is curling, than in that lank
wig. Still, one can see enough of your face to recognise
it, if one has the clue; and I told Martha, at the first, that
I was struck with a certain expression of the eyes and smile
that reminded me of her brother. But, there they are, Mary

and Martha, in the drawing-room, waiting for your appearance.
The first is so fond of music, and, indeed, is so practised
in it, as to have been delighted with your flute; and
she has talked so much of your skill as to justify us in seeming
to wish for a further exhibition of your skill. Henrietta
and Ann, having less taste that way, have gone together
to select bouquets, in the green-house, and there is now an
excellent opportunity to gratify your sister. I am to draw
Mary out of the room, after a little while, when you and
Martha may say a word to each other in your proper characters.
As for you, Roger, you are to open your box
again, and I will answer for it that will serve to amuse your
other wards, should they return too soon from their visit to
the gardener.”

Everything being thus explained, and our dinner ended,
all parties proceeded to the execution of the plan, each in
his or her designated mode. When my grandmother and I
reached the dressing-room, however, Martha was not there,
though Mary Warren was, her bright but serene eyes full
of happiness and expectation. Martha had retired to the
inner room for a moment, whither my grandmother, suspecting
the truth, followed her. As I afterwards ascertained,
my sister, fearful of not being able to suppress her
tears on my entrance, had withdrawn, in order to struggle
for self-command without betraying our secret. I was told
to commence an air, without waiting for the absent young
lady, as the strain could easily be heard through the open
door.

I might have played ten minutes before my sister and
grandmother came out again. Both had been in tears,
though the intense manner in which Mary Warren was occupied
with the harmony of my flute, probably prevented
her from observing it. To me, however, it was plain enough;
and glad was I to find that my sister had succeeded in commanding
her feelings. In a minute or two my grandmother
profited by a pause to rise and carry away with her Mary
Warren, though the last left the room with a reluctance that
was very manifest. The pretence was a promise to meet
the divine in the library, on some business connected with
the Sunday-schools.

“You can keep the young man for another air, Martha,”
observed my grandmother, “and I will send Jane to you,
as I pass her room.”

Jane was my sister's own maid, and her room was close
at hand, and I dare say dear grandmother gave her the order,
in Mary Warren's presence, as soon as she quitted the room,
else might Mary Warren well be surprised at the singularity
of the whole procedure; but Jane did not make her appearance,
nevertheless. As for myself, I continued to play as
long as I thought any ear was near enough to hear me;
then I laid aside my flute. In the next instant Patt was in
my arms, where she lay some time weeping, but looking
inexpressibly happy.

“Oh! Hugh, what a disguise was this to visit your own
house in!” she said, as soon as composed enough to speak.

“Would it have done to come here otherwise? You
know the state of the country, and the precious fruits our
boasted tree of liberty is bringing forth. The owner of the
land can only visit his property at the risk of his life!”

Martha pressed me in her arms in a way to show how
conscious she was of the danger I incurred in even thus visiting
her; after which we seated ourselves, side by side,
on a little divan, and began to speak of those things that
were most natural to a brother and sister who so much loved
each other, and who had not met for five years. My grandmother
had managed so well as to prevent all interruption
for an hour, if we saw fit to remain together, while to others
it should seem as if Pat had dismissed me in a few minutes.

“Not one of the other girls suspect, in the least, who you
are,” said Martha, smiling, when we had got through with
the questions and answers so natural to our situation. “I
am surprised that Henrietta has not, for she prides herself
on her penetration. She is as much in the dark as the
others, however.”

“And Miss Mary Warren—the young lady who has just
left the room—has she not some small notion that I am not
a common Dutch music-grinder?”

Patt laughed, and that so merrily as to cause the tones
of her sweet voice to fill me with delight, as I remembered
what she had been in childhood and girlhood five years before,

and she shook her bright tresses off her cheeks ere she
would answer.

“No, Hugh,” she replied, “she fancies you an uncommon
Dutch music-grinder; an artiste that not only grinds, but
who dresses up his harmonies in such a way as to be palatable
to the most refined taste. How came Mary to think
you and my uncle two reduced German gentlemen?”

“And does the dear girl believe—that is, does Miss Mary
Warren do us so much honour, as to imagine that?”

“Indeed she does, for she told us as much as soon as she
got home; and Henrietta and Ann have made themselves
very merry with their speculations on the subject of Miss
Warren's great incognito. They call you Herzog von
Geige.”

“Thank them for that.” I am afraid I answered a little
too pointedly, for I saw that Patt seemed surprised. “But
your American towns are just such half-way things as to
spoil young women; making them neither refined and polished
as they might be in real capitals, while they are not
left the simplicity and nature of the country.”

“Well, Master Hugh, this is being very cross about a
very little, and not particularly complimentary to your own
sister. And why not your American towns, as well as
ours? — are you no longer one of us?”

“Certainly; one of yours, always, my dearest Patt,
though not one of every chattering girl who may set up for
a belle, with her Dukes of Fiddle! But, enough of this;
—you like the Warrens?”

“Very much so; father and daughter. The first is just
what a clergyman should be; of a cultivation and intelligence
to fit him to be any man's companion, and a simplicity
like that of a child. You remember his predecessor—
so dissatisfied, so selfish, so lazy, so censorious, so unjust
to every person and thing around him, and yet so exacting;
and, at the same time, so—”

“What? Thus far you have drawn his character well;
I should like to hear the remainder.”

“I have said more than I ought already; for one has an
idea that, by bringing a clergyman into disrepute, it brings
religion and the church into discredit, too. A priest must

be a very bad man to have injurious things said of him, in
this country, Hugh.”

“That is, perhaps, true. But you like Mr. Warren better
than him who has left you?”

“A thousand times, and in all things. In addition to
having a most pious and sincere pastor, we have an agreeable
and well-bred neighbour, from whose mouth, in the five
years that he has dwelt here, I have not heard a syllable at
the expense of a single fellow-creature. You know how it
is apt to be with the other clergy and ours, in the country—
for ever at swords' points; and if not actually quarrelling,
keeping up a hollow peace.”

“That is only too true—or used to be true, before I went
abroad.”

“And it is so now, elsewhere, I 'll answer for it, though
it be so no longer here. Mr. Warren and Mr. Peck seem
to live on perfectly amicable terms, though as little alike at
bottom as fire and water.”

“By the way, how do the clergy of the different sects, up
and down the country, behave on the subject of anti-rent?”

“I can answer only from what I hear, with the exception
of Mr. Warren's course. He has preached two or three
plain and severe sermons on the duty of honesty in our
worldly transactions, one of which was from the tenth commandment.
Of course he said nothing of the particular
trouble, but everybody must have made the necessary application
of the home-truths he uttered. I question if another
voice has been raised, far and near, on the subject,
although I have heard Mr. Warren say the movement
threatens more to demoralize New York than anything that
has happened in his time.”

“And the man down at the village?”

“Oh, he goes, of course, with the majority. When was
one of that set ever known to oppose his parish, in anything?”

“And Mary is as sound and as high-principled as her
father?”

“Quite so; though there has been a good deal said about
the necessity of Mr. Warren's removing, and giving up St.
Andrew's, since he preached against covetousness. All the

anti-renters say, I hear, that they know he meant them, and
that they won't put up with it.”

“I dare say; each one fancying he was almost called out
by name: that is the way, when conscience works.”

“I should be very, very sorry to part with Mary; and
almost as much so to part with her father. There is one
thing, however, that Mr. Warren himself thinks we had better
have done, Hugh; and that is to take down the canopy
from over our pew. You can have no notion of the noise
that foolish canopy is making up and down the country.”

“I shall not take it down. It is my property, and there
it shall remain. As for the canopy, it was a wrong distinction
to place in a church, I am willing to allow; but it never
gave offence until it has been thought that a cry against it
would help to rob me of my lands at half price, or at no
price at all, as it may happen.”

“All that may be true; but if improper for a church, why
keep it?”

“Because I do not choose to be bullied out of what is my
own, even though I care nothing about it. There might
have been a time when the canopy was unsuited to the
house of God, and that was when those who saw it might
fancy it canopied the head of a fellow-creature who had
higher claims than themselves to divine favour; but, in
times like these, when men estimate merit by beginning at
the other end of the social scale, there is little danger of
any one's falling into the mistake. The canopy shall stand,
little as I care about it: now, I would actually prefer it
should come down, as I can fully see the impropriety of
making any distinctions in the temple; but it shall stand
until concessions cease to be dangerous. It is a right of
property, and as such I will maintain it. If others dislike
it, let them put canopies over their pews, too. The best
test, in such a matter, is to see who could bear it. A pretty
figure Seneca Newcome would cut, for instance, seated in
a canopied pew! Even his own set would laugh at him;
which, I fancy, is more than they yet do at me.”

Martha was disappointed; but she changed the subject.
We next talked of our own little private affairs, as they
were connected with smaller matters.

“For whom is that beautiful chain intended, Hugh?”

asked Patt, laughingly. “I can now believe the pedlar
when he says it is reserved for your future wife. But who
is that wife to be? Will her name be Henrietta or Ann?”

“Why not ask, also, if it will be Mary? — why exclude
one of your companions, while you include the other two?”

Patt started—seemed surprised; her cheeks flushed, and
then I saw that pleasure was the feeling predominant.

“Am I too late to secure that jewel, as a pendant to my
chain?” I asked, half in jest, half seriously.

“Too soon, at least, to attract it by the richness and
beauty of the bauble. A more natural and disinterested
girl than Mary Warren does not exist in the country.”

“Be frank with me, Martha, and say at once; has she a
favoured suitor?”

“Why, this seems really serious!” exclaimed my sister,
laughing. “But, to put you out of your pain, I will answer,
I know of but one. One she has certainly, or female sagacity
is at fault.”

“But is he one that is favoured? You can never know
how much depends on your answer.”

“Of that you can judge for yourself. It is 'Squire Seneky
Newcome, as he is called hereabouts — the brother of
the charming Opportunity, who still reserves herself for
you.”

“And they are as rank anti-renters as any male and female
in the country.”

“They are rank Newcomites; and that means that each
is for himself. Would you believe it, but Opportunity really
gives herself airs with Mary Warren!”

“And how does Mary Warren take such an assumption?”

“As a young person should—quietly and without manifesting
any feeling. But there is something quite intolerable
in one like Opportunity Newcome's assuming a superiority
over any true lady! Mary is as well educated and as well
connected as any of us, and is quite as much accustomed to
good company; while Opportunity—” here Patt laughed,
and then added, hurriedly, “but you know Opportunity as
well as I do.”

“Oh! yes; she is la vertue, or the virtue, and je suis
venue, pour.”

The latter allusion Patt understood well enough, having
laughed over the story a dozen times; and she laughed again
when I explained the affair of “the solitude.”

Then came a fit of sisterly feeling. Patt insisted on taking
off my wig, and seeing my face in its natural dress. I
consented to gratify her, when the girl really behaved like a
simpleton. First she pushed about my curls until they were
arranged to suit the silly creature, when she ran back several
steps, clapped her hands in delight, then rushed into my
arms and kissed my forehead and eyes, and called me “her
brother” — her “only brother” — her “dear, dear Hugh,”
and by a number of other such epithets, until she worked
herself, and me too, into such an excess of feeling that we
sat down, side by side, and each had a hearty fit of crying.
Perhaps some such burst as this was necessary to relieve
our minds, and we submitted to it wisely.

My sister wept the longest, as a matter of course; but,
as soon as she had dried her eyes, she replaced the wig, and
completely restored my disguise, trembling the whole time
lest some one might enter and detect me.

“You have been very imprudent, Hugh, in coming here
at all,” she said, while thus busy. “You can form no notion
of the miserable state of the country, or how far the
anti-rent poison has extended, or the malignant nature of
its feeling. The annoyances they have attempted with dear
grandmother are odious; you they would scarcely leave
alive.”

“The country and the people must have strangely altered,
then, in five years. Our New York population has hitherto
had very little of the assassin-like character. Tar and feathers
are the blackguards', and have been the petty tyrants'
weapons, from time immemorial, in this country; but not
the knife.”

“And can anything sooner or more effectually alter a
people than longings for the property of others? Is not the
`love of money the root of all evil?' — and what right have
we to suppose our Ravensnest population is better than another,
when that sordid feeling is thoroughly aroused? You
know you have written me yourself, that all the American
can or does live for is money.”

“I have written you, dear, that the country, in its present

condition, leaves no other incentive to exertion, and
therein it is cursed. Military fame, military rank, even,
are unattainable, under our system: the arts, letters and
science, bring little or no reward; and there being no polilitical
rank that a man of refinement would care for, men
must live for money, or live altogether for another state of
being. But I have told you, at the same time, Martha, that,
notwithstanding all this, I believe the American a less mercenary
being, in the ordinary sense of the word, than the
European; that two men might be bought, for instance, in
any European country, for one here. This last I suppose
to be the result of the facility of making a living, and the
habits it produces.”

“Never mind causes; Mr. Warren says there is a desperate
intention to rob existing among these people, and that
they are dangerous. As yet they do a little respect women,
but how long they will do that one cannot know.”

“It may all be so. It must be so, respecting what I have
heard and read; yet this vale looks as smiling and as sweet,
at this very moment, as if an evil passion never sullied it!
But, depend on my prudence, which tells me that we ought
now to part. I shall see you again and again before I quit
the estate, and you will, of course, join us somewhere — at
the Springs, perhaps — as soon as we find it necessary or
expedient to decamp.”

Martha promised this, of course, and I kissed her, previously
to separating. No one crossed my way as I descended
to the piazza, which was easily done, since I was
literally at home. I lounged about on the lawn a few minutes,
and then, showing myself in front of the library windows,
I was summoned to the room, as I had expected.

Uncle Ro had disposed of every article of the fine jewelry
that he had brought home as presents for his wards. The
pay was a matter to be arranged with Mrs. Littlepage,
which meant no pay at all; and, as the donor afterwards
told me, he liked this mode of distributing the various ornaments
better than presenting them himself, as he was now
certain each girl had consulted her own fancy.

As the hour of the regular dinner was approaching, we
took our leave soon after, not without receiving kind and
pressing invitations to visit the Nest again ere we left the

township. Of course we promised all that was required,
intending most faithfully to comply. On quitting the house
we returned towards the farm, though not without pausing
on the lawn to gaze around us on a scene so dear to both,
from recollection, association, and interest. But I forget,
this is aristocratical; the landlord has no right to sentiments
of this nature, which are feelings that the sublimated
liberty of the law is beginning to hold in reserve solely for
the benefit of the tenant!