University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

All this was so suddenly done as scarce to leave us time
to think. There was one instant, notwithstanding, while
two Injins were assisting Mary Warren to jump from the
wagon, when my incognito was in great danger. Perceiving
that the young lady was treated with no particular disrespect,
I so far overcame the feeling as to remain quiet,
though I silently changed my position sufficiently to get
near her elbow, where I could and did whisper a word or
two of encouragement. But Mary thought only of her father,
and had no fears for herself. She saw none but him,
trembled only for him, dreaded and hoped for him alone.

As for Mr. Warren himself, he betrayed no discomposure.
Had he been about to enter the desk, his manner could not
have been more calm. He gazed around him, to ascertain
if it were possible to recognise any of his captors, but suddenly
turned his head away, as if struck with the expediency
of not learning their names, even though it had been
possible. He might be put on the stand as a witness against
some misguided neighbour, did he know his person. All
this was so apparent in his benevolent countenance, that I
think it struck some among the Injins, and still believe it
may have had a little influence on their treatment of him.
A pot of tar and a bag of feathers had been brought into the
road when the gang poured out of the bushes, but whether
this were merely accidental, or it had originally been intended
to use them on Mr. Warren, I cannot say. The offensive
materials soon and silently disappeared, and with
them every sign of any intention to offer personal injury.

“What have I done that I am thus arrested in the public
highway, by men armed and disguised, contrary to law?”
demanded the divine, as soon as the general pause which

succeeded the first movement invited him to speak. “This
is a rash and illegal step, that may yet bring repentance.”

“No preachee now,” answered Streak o' Lightning;
“preachee for meetin', no good for road.”

Mr. Warren afterwards admitted to me that he was much
relieved by this reply, the substitution of the word “meeting”
for “church” giving him the grateful assurance that
this individual, at least, was not one of his own people.

“Admonition and remonstrance may always be useful
when crime is meditated. You are now committing a felony,
for which the State's prison is the punishment prescribed by
the laws of the land, and the duties of my holy office direct
me to warn you of the consequences. The earth itself is
but one of God's temples, and his ministers need never hesitate
to proclaim his laws on any part of it.”

It was evident that the calm severity of the divine, aided,
no doubt, by his known character, produced an impression
on the gang, for the two who had still hold of his arms released
them, and a little circle was now formed, in the centre
of which he stood.

“If you will enlarge this circle, my friends,” continued
Mr. Warren, “and give room, I will address you here, where
we stand, and let you know my reasons why I think your
conduct ought to be—”

“No, no—no preachee here,” suddenly interrupted Streak
o' Lightning; “go to village, go to meetin'-'us'—preachee
there.—Two preacher, den.—Bring wagon and put him in.
March, march; path open.”

Although this was but an “Injin” imitation of “Indian”
sententiousness, and somewhat of a caricature, everybody
understood well enough what was meant. Mr. Warren offered
no resistance, but suffered himself to be placed in Miller's
wagon, with my uncle at his side, without opposition.
Then it was, however, that he bethought himself of his
daughter, though his daughter had never ceased to think of
him. I had some little difficulty in keeping her from rushing
into the crowd, and clinging to his side. Mr. Warren
rose, and, giving her an encouraging smile, bade her be
calm, told her he had nothing to fear, and requested that
she would enter his own wagon again and return home,

promising to rejoin her as soon as his duties at the village
were discharged.

“Here is no one to drive the horse, my child, but our
young German acquaintance. The distance is very short,
and if he will thus oblige me, he can come down to the village
with the wagon, as soon as he has seen you safe at our
own door.”

Mary Warren was accustomed to defer to her father's
opinions, and she so far submitted, now, as to permit me to
assist her into the wagon, and to place myself at her side,
whip in hand, proud of and pleased with the precious charge
thus committed to my care. These arrangements made,
the Injins commenced their march, about half of them preceding,
and the remainder following the wagon that contained
their prisoner. Four, however, walked on each side
of the vehicle, thus preventing the possibility of escape. No
noise was made, and little was said; the orders being given
by signs and signals, rather than by words.

Our wagon continued stationary until the party had got
at least a hundred yards from us, no one giving any heed
to our movements. I had waited thus long for the double
purpose of noting the manner of the proceedings among the
Injins, and to obtain room to turn at a spot in the road a
short distance in advance of us, and which was wider than
common. To this spot I now walked the horse, and was
in the act of turning the animal's head in the required direction,
when I saw Mary Warren's little gloved hand laid
hurriedly on the reins. She endeavoured to keep the head
of the horse in the road.

“No, no,” said the charming girl, speaking earnestly,
as if she would not be denied, “we will follow my father to
the village. I may not, must not, cannot quit him!”

The time and place were every way propitious, and I determined
to let Mary Warren know who I was. By doing
it I might give her confidence in me at a moment when she
was in distress, and encourage her with the hope that I
might also befriend her father. At any rate, I was determined
to pass for an itinerant Dutch music-grinder with her
no longer.

“Miss Mary, Miss Warren,” I commenced, cautiously,

and with quite as much hesitation and diffidence of feeling
as of manner, “I am not what I seem — that is, I am no
music-grinder.”

The start, the look, and the alarm of my companion,
were all eloquent and natural. Her hand was still on the
reins, and she now drew on them so hard as actually to stop
the horse. I thought she intended to jump out of the vehicle,
as a place no longer fit for her.

“Be not alarmed, Miss Warren,” I said, eagerly, and, I
trust, so earnestly as to inspire a little confidence. “You
will not think the worse of me at finding I am your countryman
instead of a foreigner, and a gentleman instead of a
music-grinder. I shall do all you ask, and will protect you
with my life.”

“This is so extraordinary! — so unusual! — The whole
country appears unsettled! Pray, sir, if you are not the
person whom you have represented yourself to be, who are
you?”

“One who admires your filial love and courage — who
honours you for them both. I am the brother of your friend,
Martha — I am Hugh Littlepage!”

The little hand now abandoned the reins, and the dear
girl turned half round on the cushion of the seat, gazing at
me in mute astonishment! I had been cursing in my heart
the lank locks of the miserable wig I was compelled to wear,
ever since I had met with Mary Warren, as unnecessarily
deforming and ugly, for one might have as well a becoming
as a horridly unbecoming disguise. Off went my cap, therefore,
and off went the wig after it, leaving my own shaggy
curls for the sole setting of my face.

Mary made a slight exclamation as she gazed at me, and
the deadly paleness of her countenance was succeeded by a
slight blush. A smile, too, parted her lips, and I fancied
she was less alarmed.

“Am I forgiven, Miss Warren?” I asked; “and will you
recognise me for the brother of your friend?”

“Does Martha — does Mrs. Littlepage know of this?”
the charming girl at length asked.

“Both; I have had the happiness of being embraced by
both my grandmother and my sister. You were taken out

of the room, yesterday, by the first, that I might be left
alone with the last, for that very purpose!”

“I see it all, now; yes, I thought it singular then, though
I felt there could be no impropriety in any of Mrs. Littlepages'
acts. Dearest Martha! how well she played her
part, and how admirably she has kept your secret!”

“It is very necessary. You see the condition of the
country, and will understand that it would be imprudent in
me to appear openly, even on my own estate. I have a
written covenant authorizing me to visit every farm near
us, to look after my own interests; yet, it may be questioned
if it would be safe to visit one among them all, now
that the spirits of misrule and covetousness are up and
doing.”

“Replace your disguise at once, Mr. Littlepage,” said
Mary, eagerly; “do—do not delay an instant.”

I did as desired, Mary watching the process with interested,
and, at the same time, amused eyes. I thought she
looked as sorry as I felt myself when that lank, villanous
wig was again performing its office.

“Am I as well arranged as when we first met, Miss Warren?
Do I appear again the music-grinder?”

“I see no difference,” returned the dear girl, laughing.
How musical and cheering to me were the sounds of her
voice in that little burst of sweet, feminine merriment. “Indeed,
indeed, I do not think even Martha could know you
now, for the person you the moment before seemed.”

“My disguise is, then, perfect. I was in hopes it left a
little that my friends might recognise, while it effectually
concealed me from my enemies.”

“It does — oh! it does. Now I know who you are, I
find no difficulty in tracing in your features the resemblance
to your portrait in the family gallery, at the Nest. The
eyes, too, cannot be altered without artificial brows, and
those you have not.”

This was consoling; but all that time Mr. Warren and
the party in front had been forgotten. Perhaps it was excusable
in two young persons thus situated, and who had
now known each other a week, to think more of what was
just then passing in the wagon, than to recollect the tribe

that was marching down the road, and the errand they were
on. I felt the necessity, however, of next consulting my
companion as to our future movements. Mary heard me in
evident anxiety, and her purpose seemed unsettled, for she
changed colour under each new impulse of her feelings.

“If it were not for one thing,” she answered, after a
thoughtful pause, “I should insist on following my father.”

“And what may be the reason of this change of purpose?”

“Would it be altogether safe for you, Mr. Littlepage, to
venture again among those misguided men?”

“Never think of me, Miss Warren. You see I have
been among them already undetected, and it is my intention
to join them again, even should I first have to take you
home. Decide for yourself.”

“I will, then, follow my father. My presence may be
the means of saving him from some indignity.”

I was rejoiced at this decision, on two accounts; of which
one might have been creditable enough to me, while the
other, I am sorry to say, was rather selfish. I delighted in
the dear girl's devotion to her parent, and I was glad to have
her company as long as possible that morning. Without
entering into a very close analysis of motives, however, I
drove down the road, keeping the horse on a very slow gait,
being in no particular hurry to quit my present fair companion.

Mary and I had now a free, and, in some sense, a confidential
dialogue. Her manner towards me had entirely
changed; for, while it maintained the modesty and retenue
of her sex and station, it displayed much of that frankness
which was the natural consequence of her great intimacy at
the Nest, and, as I have since ascertained, of her own ingenuous
nature. The circumstance, too, that she now felt
she was with one of her own class, who had opinions, habits,
tastes and thoughts like her own, removed a mountain of
restraint, and made her communications natural and easy.
I was near an hour, I do believe, in driving the two miles
that lay between the point where the Injins had been met
and the village, and in that hour Mary Warren and I became
better acquainted than would have been the case, under
ordinary circumstances, in a year.

In the first place, I explained the reasons and manner of
my early and unexpected return home, and the motives by
which I had been governed in thus coming in disguise on
my own property. Then I said a little of my future intentions,
and of my disposition to hold out to the last against
every attempt on my rights, whether they might come from
the open violence and unprincipled designs of those below,
or the equally unprincipled schemes of those above. A spurious
liberty and political cant were things that I despised,
as every intelligent and independent man must; and I did
not intend to be persuaded I was an aristocrat, merely because
I had the habits of a gentleman, at the very moment
when I had less political influence than the hired labourers
in my own service.

Mary Warren manifested a spirit and an intelligence that
surprised me. She expressed her own belief that the proscribed
classes of the country had only to be true to themselves
to be restored to their just rights, and that on the
very principle by which they were so fast losing them. The
opinions she thus expressed are worthy of being recorded.

“Everything that is done in that way,” said this gentle,
but admirable creature, “has hitherto been done on a principle
that is quite as false and vicious as that by which they are
now oppressed. We have had a great deal written and said,
lately, about uniting people of property, but it has been so
evidently with an intention to make money rule, and that
in its most vulgar and vicious manner, that persons of right
feelings would not unite in such an effort; but it does seem
to me, Mr. Littlepage, that if the gentlemen of New York
would form themselves into an association in defence of
their rights, and for nothing else, and let it be known that
they would not be robbed with impunity, they are numerous
enough and powerful enough to put down this anti-rent project
by the mere force of numbers. Thousands would join
them for the sake of principles, and the country might be
left to the enjoyment of the fruits of liberty, without getting
any of the fruits of its cant.”

This is a capital idea, and might easily be carried out.
It requires nothing but a little self-denial, with the conviction
of the necessity of doing something, if the downward
tendency is to be ever checked short of civil war, and a

revolution that is to let in despotism in its more direct form;
despotism, in the indirect, is fast appearing among us, as
it is.

“I have heard of a proposition for the Legislature to appoint
special commissioners, who are to settle all the difficulties
between the landlords and tenants,” I remarked, “a
scheme in the result of which some people profess to have
a faith. I regard it as only one of the many projects that
have been devised to evade the laws and institutions of the
country, as they now exist.”

Mary Warren seemed thoughtful for a moment; then her
eye and face brightened, as if she were struck with some
thought suddenly; after which the colour deepened on her
check, and she turned to me as if half doubting, and yet
half desirous of giving utterance to the idea that was uppermost.

“You wish to say something, Miss Warren?”

“I dare say it will be very silly—and I hope you won't
think it pedantic in a girl, but really it does look so to me—
what difference would there be between such a commission
and the Star-Chamber judges of the Stuarts, Mr. Littlepage?”

“Not much in general principles, certainly, as both would
be the instruments of tyrants; but a very important one in
a great essential. The Star-Chamber courts were legal,
whereas this commission would be flagrantly illegal; the
adoption of a special tribunal to effect certain purposes that
could exist only in the very teeth of the constitution, both
in its spirit and its letter. Yet this project comes from men
who prate about the `spirit of the institutions,' which they
clearly understand to be their own spirit, let that be what it
may.”

“Providence, I trust, will not smile on such desperate
efforts to do wrong!” said Mary Warren, solemnly.

“One hardly dare look into the inscrutable ways of a
Power that has its motives so high beyond our reach. Providence
permits much evil to be done, and is very apt to be,
as Frederic of Prussia expressed it, on the side of strong
battalions, so far as human vision can penetrate. Of one
thing, however, I feel certain, and that is that they who are
now the most eager to overturn everything to effect present

purposes, will be made to repent of it bitterly, either in their
own persons, or in those of their descendants.”

“That is what is meant, my father says, by visiting `the
sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and
fourth generations.' But there is the party, with their prisoners,
just entering the village. Who is your companion,
Mr. Littlepage?—One hired to act as an assistant?”

“It is my uncle, himself. You have often heard, I should
think, of Mr. Roger Littlepage?”

Mary gave a little exclamation at hearing this, and she
almost laughed. After a short pause she blushed brightly,
and turned to me as she said—

“And my father and I have supposed you, the one a
pedlar, and the other a street-musician!”

“But bedlars and moosic-grinders of goot etications, as
might be panishet for deir bolitics.”

Now, indeed, she laughed out, for the long and frank dialogue
we had held together made this change to broken
English seem as if a third person had joined us. I profited
by the occasion to exhort the dear girl to be calm, and not
to feel any apprehension on the subject of her father. I
pointed out how little probable it was that violence would be
offered to a minister of the gospel, and showed her, by the
number of persons that had collected in the village, that it
was impossible he should not have many warm and devoted
friends present. I also gave her permission to, nay, requested
she would, tell Mr. Warren the fact of my uncle's
and my own presence, and the reasons of our disguises,
trusting altogether to the very obvious interest the dear girl
took in our safety, that she would add, of her own accord,
the necessary warning on the subject of secresy. Just as
this conversation ended we drove into the hamlet, and I
helped my fair companion to alight.

Mary Warren now hastened to seek her father, while I
was left to take care of the horse. This I did by fastening
him to the rails of a fence, that was lined for a long distance
by horses and wagons drawn up by the way-side.
Surprisingly few persons in the country, at this day, are
seen on horseback. Notwithstanding the vast difference in
the amount of the population, ten horsemen were to be met
with forty years ago, by all accounts, on the highways of

the State, for one to-day. The well-known vehicle, called
a dearborn, with its four light wheels and mere shell of a
box, is in such general use as to have superseded almost
every other species of conveyance. Coaches and chariots
are no longer met with, except in the towns; and even the
coachee, the English sociable, which was once so common,
has very generally given way to a sort of carriage-wagon,
that seems a very general favourite. My grandmother, who
did use the stately-looking and elegant chariot in town, had
nothing but this carriage-wagon in the country; and I question
if one-half of the population of the State would know
what to call the former vehicle, if they should see it.

As a matter of course, the collection of people assembled
at Little Nest on this occasion had been brought together in
dearborns, of which there must have been between two and
three hundred lining the fences and crowding the horse-sheds
of the two inns. The American countryman, in the
true sense of the word, is still quite rustic in many of his
notions; though, on the whole, less marked in this particular
than his European counterpart. As the rule, he has
yet to learn that the little liberties which are tolerated in a
thinly-peopled district, and which are of no great moment
when put in practice under such circumstances, become oppressive
and offensive when reverted to in places of much
resort. The habits of popular control, too, come to aid in
making them fancy that what everybody does in their part
of the country can have no great harm in it. It was in
conformity with this tendency of the institutions, perhaps,
that very many of the vehicles I have named were thrust
into improper places, stopping up the footways, impeding
the entrances to doors, here and there letting down bars
without permission, and garnishing orchards and pastures
with one-horse wagons. Nothing was meant by all these
liberties beyond a desire to dispose of the horses and vehicles
in the manner easiest to their owners. Nevertheless,
there was some connection between the institutions and
these little liberties which some statesmen might fancy existed
in the spirit of the former. This, however, was a
capital mistake, inasmuch as the spirit of the institutions
is to be found in the laws, which prohibit and punish all
sorts of trespasses, and which are enacted expressly to curb

the tendencies of human nature! No, no, as my uncle Ro
says, nothing can be less alike, sometimes, than the spirit
of institutions and their tendencies.

I was surprised to find nearly as many females as men
had collected at the Little Nest on this occasion. As for
the Injins, after escorting Mr. Warren as far as the village,
as if significantly to admonish him of their presence, they
had quietly released him, permitting him to go where he
pleased. Mary had no difficulty in finding him, and I saw
her at his side, apparently in conversation with Opportunity
and her brother, Seneca, as soon as I moved down the road,
after securing the horse. The Injins themselves kept a little
aloof, having my uncle in their very centre; not as a prisoner,
for it was clear no one suspected his character, but
as a pedlar. The watches were out again, and near half
of the whole gang seemed busy in trading, though I thought
that some among them were anxious and distrustful.

It was a singular spectacle to see men who were raising
the cry of “aristocracy” against those who happened to be
richer than themselves, while they did not possess a single
privilege or power that, substantially, was not equally shared
by every other man in the country, thus openly arrayed in
defiance of law, and thus violently trampling the law under
their feet. What made the spectacle more painful was the
certainly that was obtained by their very actions on the
ground that no small portion of these Injins were mere
boys, led on by artful and knavish men, and who considered
the whole thing as a joke. When the laws fall so
much into disrepute as to be the subjects of jokes of this
sort, it is time to inquire into their mode of administration.
Does any one believe that fifty landlords could have thus
flown into the face of a recent enactment, and committed
felony openly, and under circumstances that had rendered
their intentions no secret, for a time long enough to enable
the authorities to collect a force sufficient to repress them?
My own opinion is, that had Mr. Stephen Rensselaer, and
Mr. William Rensselaer, and Mr. Harry Livingston, and
Mr. John Hunter, and Mr. Daniel Livingston, and Mr. Hugh
Littlepage, and fifty more that I could name, been caught
armed and disguised, in order to defend the rights of property
that are solemnly guarantied in these institutions, of

which it would seem to be the notion of some that it is the
“spirit” to dispossess them, we should all of us have been
the inmates of States' prisons, without legislators troubling
themselves to pass laws for our liberation! This is another
of the extraordinary features of American aristocracy, which
almost deprives the noble of the every-day use and benefit
of the law. It would be worth our while to lose a moment
in inquiring into the process by which such strange results
are brought about, but it is fortunately rendered unnecessary
by the circumstance that the principle will be amply
developed in the course of the narrative.

A stranger could hardly have felt the real character of
this meeting by noting the air and manner of those who had
come to attend it. The “armed and disguised” kept themselves
in a body, it is true, and maintained, in a slight degree,
the appearance of distinctness from “the people,” but
many of the latter stopped to speak to these men, and were
apparently on good terms with them. Not a few of the
gentler sex, even, appeared to have acquaintances in the
gang; and it would have struck a political philosopher from
the other hemisphere with some surprise, to have seen the
“people” thus tolerating fellows who were openly trampling
on a law that the “people” themselves had just enacted!
A political philosopher from among ourselves, however,
might have explained the seeming contradiction by referring
it to the “spirit of the institutions.” If one were to ask
Hugh Littlepage to solve the difficulty, he would have been
very apt to answer that the “people” of Ravensnest wanted
to compel him to sell lands which he did not wish to sell,
and that not a few of them were anxious to add to the compulsory
bargains conditions as to price that would rob him
of about one-half of his estate; and that what the Albany
philosophers called the “spirit of the institutions,” was, in
fact, a “spirit of the devil,” which the institutions were expressly
designed to hold in subjection!

There was a good deal of out-door management going on,
as might be seen by the private discussions that were held
between pairs, under what is called the “horse-shedding”
process. This “horse-shedding” process, I understand, is
well known among us, and extends not only to politics, but
to the administration of justice. Your regular “horse-shedder”

is employed to frequent taverns where jurors stay,
and drops hints before them touching the merits of causes
known to be on the calendars; possibly contrives to get into
a room with six or eight beds, in which there may accidentally
be a juror, or even two, in a bed, when he drops
into a natural conversation on the merits of some matter at
issue, praises one of the parties, while he drops dark hints
to the prejudice of the other, and makes his own representations
of the facts in a way to scatter the seed where he is
morally certain it will take root and grow. All this time
he is not conversing with a juror, not he; he is only assuming
the office of the judge by anticipation, and dissecting
evidence before it has been given, in the ear of a particular
friend. It is true there is a law against doing anything
of the sort; it is true there is law to punish the editor
of a newspaper who shall publish anything to prejudice the
interests of litigants; it is true the “horse-shedding process”
is flagrantly wicked, and intended to destroy most of the
benefits of the jury-system; but, notwithstanding all this,
the “spirit of the institutions” carries everything before it,
and men regard all these laws and provisions, as well as the
eternal principles of right, precisely as if they had no existence
at all, or as if a freeman were above the law. He
makes the law, and why should he not break it? Here is
another effect of the “spirit of the institutions.”

At length the bell rang, and the crowd began to move towards
the “meetin'-us.” This building was not that which
had been originally constructed, and at the raising of which,
I have heard it said, my dear old grandmother, then a lovely
and spirited girl of nineteen, had been conspicuous for her
coolness and judgment, but a far more pretending successor.
The old building had been constructed on the true model of the
highest dissenting spirit—a spirit that induced its advocates
to quarrel with good taste as well as religious dogmas, in
order to make the chasm as wide as possible—which in this,
some concessions had been made to the temper of the times.
I very well remember the old “meetin'-us” at the “Little
Nest,” for it was pulled down to give place to its more pretending
successor after I had attained my sixteenth year.
A description of both may let the reader into the secret of
our rural church architecture.

The “old Neest meetin'-us,” like its successor, was of a
hemlock frame, covered with pine clap-boards, and painted
white. Of late years, the paint had been of a most fleeting
quality, the oil seeming to evaporate, instead of striking in
and setting, leaving the colouring matter in a somewhat decomposed
condition, to rub off by friction and wash away
in the rains. The house was a stiff, formal parallelogram,
resembling a man with high shoulders, appearing to be
“stuck up.” It had two rows of formal, short and ungraceful
windows, that being a point in orthodoxy at the period
of its erection. It had a tower, uncouth, and in some respects
too large and others too small, if one can reconcile
the contradiction; but there are anomalies of this sort in art,
as well as in nature. On top of this tower stood a long-legged
belfry, which had got a very dangerous, though a
very common, propensity in ecclesiastical matters; in other
words, it had begun to “cant.” It was this diversion from
the perpendicular which had suggested the necessity of
erecting a new edifice, and the building in which the “lecture”
on feudal tenures and aristocracy was now to be delivered.

The new meeting-house at Little Nest was a much more
pretending edifice than its predecessor. It was also of wood,
but a bold diverging from “first principles” had been ventured
on, not only in physical, but in the moral church.
The last was “new-school;” as, indeed, was the first.
What “new-school” means, in a spiritual sense, I do not
exactly know, but I suppose it to be some improvement on
some other improvement of the more ancient and venerable
dogmas of the sect to which it belongs. These improvements
on improvements are rather common among us, and
are favourably viewed by a great number under the name
of progress; though he who stands at a little distance can,
half the time, discover that the parties in progress very often
come out at the precise spot from which they started.

For my part, I find so much wisdom in the bible—so profound
a knowledge of human nature, and of its tendencies—
counsel so comprehensive and so safe, and this solely in reference
to the things of this life, that I do not believe everything
is progress in the right direction because it sets us in
motion on paths that are not two thousand years old! I

believe that we have quite as much that ought to be kept,
as of that which ought to be thrown away; and while I
admit the vast number of abuses that have grown up in the
old world, under the “spirit of their institutions,” as our
philosophers would say, I can see a goodly number that
are also growing up here, certainly not under the same
“spirit,” unless we refer them both, as a truly wise man
would, to our common and miserable nature.

The main departure from first principles, in the sense of
material things, was in the fact that the new meeting-house
had only one row of windows, and that the windows of that
row had the pointed arch. The time has been when this
circumstance would have created a schism in the theological
world; and I hope that my youth and inexperience
will be pardoned, if I respectfully suggest that a pointed
arch, or any other arch in wood, ought to create another in
the world of taste.

But in we went, men, women and children; uncle Ro,
Mr. Warren, Mary, Seneca, Opportunity, and all, the Injins
excepted. For some reason connected with their policy,
those savages remained outside, until the whole audience
had assembled in grave silence. The orator was in, or on
a sort of stage, which was made, under the new-light system
in architecture, to supersede the old, inconvenient, and
ugly pulpit, supported on each side by two divines, of what
denomination I shall not take on myself to say. It will be
sufficient if I add Mr. Warren was not one of them. He
and Mary had taken their seats quite near the door, and
under the gallery. I saw that the rector was uneasy the
moment the lecturer and his two supporters entered the pulpit,
and appeared on the stage; and at length he arose, and
followed by Mary, he suddenly left the building. In an
instant I was at their side, for it struck me indisposition
was the cause of so strange a movement. Fortunately, at
this moment, the whole audience rose in a body, and one
of the ministers commenced an extempore prayer.

At that instant, the Injins had drawn themselves up
around the building, close to its sides, and under the open
windows, in a position that enabled them to hear all that
passed. As I afterwards learned, this arrangement was
made with an understanding with those within, one of the

ministers having positively refused to address the throne of
Grace so long as any of the tribe were present. Well has
it been said, that man often strains at a gnat, and swallows
a camel!