University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

Quevedo

Thomson.

Here terminated the letters of Martha, and I repaired
to my fellow traveller, impatiently requesting him to redeem
his promise that he would bring his adventures

from the point where his wife had left them, to the present
time. I pressed him to be expeditious, for we were
drawing near the termination of our journey together,
and the mouth of Red river was already in view from
the Mississippi.

He resumed his details. `You see, sir,' said he,
`that in the eye of my wife I am a personage of no
small importance. I have nothing further to relate that
the most gross egotism could magnify to the shape of adventure.
In these days, a peaceable and well-bred man
may journey from Mexico to Boston without much
trouble, or any adventures, so that he has a good carriage
and horses and plenty of money; and as we have
these, and make every previous arrangement that experience
has admonished, or opulence can furnish, this
journey is only a long and tranquil migration from one
region to another. For the rest, we have been married
something more than three years, and we have a fine
boy, a happy union of Spanish and Yankee, with a very
fair complexion, and eyes and hair as black as a sloe,
and to my mind the exact image of my dear Martha.
The grand-parents dote on him, and will claim every
right to spoil him in their own way. The mother and
all the hangers-on say regularly, “Dear boy, the exact
image of his papa.” My wife spends no little time in
pointing out the traces of resemblance between us. I
have often smiled internally at the easy faith of other
parents in the unnatural precocity and smartness of their
first-born. But between us, I really think that our boy,
if he lives, will make an uncommon man. But little
more than two years old, he can already scold papa and
mamma in two languages, call himself `bon garçon' in
French, and knock over the plates and cups, like a young

lord. Indeed, Martha thinks him altogether the finest boy
within three leagues, and her countenance lowered, and
I discovered for the first time since we have been married,
that the serenity of her feelings was ruffled, just
before I left home, because a Creole lady from Durango,
who has read romances, and is something of a Spanish
blue-stocking, observed, in reply to the customary
questions of Martha, as she was showing her the dear
boy, that she saw but very little difference in children
of two years old.

“Of Martha I can say with entire truth, that I love her
now more heartily, than I did on the day when I led her
to the altar. We have distinguished no such period as
the honey-moon, and we have never had a word that
could properly be called dispute about religion, or in fact
about any thing else. Sir, I have been absent more than
five months, and have travelled more than a thousand
leagues. You can hardly imagine my impatience to be
at home. If I had wings, you would soon lose sight of
me in the air. I fancy that I can see my dear Martha
leading our boy under the noble sycamores, in front of our
mansion, her white robes fluttering in the wind, and she
looking impatiently in the direction of my return. May
she have been the charge of good Angels! Captain,
when shall we be at Alexandria?” The answer was,
“Perhaps in two days.” “Then in fourteen days
more,” he impatiently added, “if God will, I shall be at
home, and never, never will I leave it again without the
dear ones that I have left there.” “I too,” said I, “have
been absent from those, that I most love, seven long
months; and I left them a miserable invalid, expecting
never to return. I am, it may be, as impatient as you,
and the more so, as I am nearer home. Every traveller

in such a case has observed, that the attraction of affection,
like that of gravity, quadruples as it approaches the
centre of its desires. But your story yet runs in my
head. Your adventures have been quite out of the common
way, and your present felicity seems to be still more
so. There is generally, so much grumbling among married
people, that your case seems to be that of a black
swan. I should be glad to hear a little more about you.
I hope you will be good enough to tell me something
about your trip to our dear native New-England, that
we are so rapidly distancing every day. I will not
mind the excessive praises which you seem to levy as
a tax from all quarters. There are other good and
pretty fellows beside you, in the world. I, for instance,
am no small affair at my own home. I am very well
satisfied with my good old `lang syne' at home, but I am
absolutely in love with your wife. She seems beautiful,
without being vain, and affectionate to the last degree,
without being silky-milky. I only wonder, that you
whose means are so ample, did not take her with you.”
“She was anxious,” he answered, “to accompany me
as it was, and it was a business more painful, than I wish
to describe, that of parting with her. She will accompany
me on this same trip next Spring.” “I understand
you,” I answered, “and I am told this thing, which
among agriculturists is rather coarsely expressed by
the technical phrase, `crossing the breed,' is considered
a great improvement. I have seen it succeed wonderfully,
where an American has married a French
Creole wife. The children unite the desirable points of
character in both races. But to the point. I am particularly
interested to hear something further about the
good Wilhelmine.”

“I am entirely willing,” he rejoined, “to inform you
what became of her. It is your own proper eulogy to
be interested in that charming girl, as good as she is
beautiful. But for me, most people consider the interest
of such adventures as mine at an end the moment the
parties are fairly married; and ours is an old story of
that sort by three good long years.” “Yes,” said I;
“but there I have always differed from the rest. My interest
is most intense at the point where that of others ends.
For example, I am more interested in your Martha and
you, under your sycamores at Durango, than in any period
before you were married. If happiness on the earth
be not all a joke, a mere poet's reverie, it is only to be
found in the shades of domestic quiet and affection. I
have meditated, as a disinterested looker-on, all sides of
ambition, and distinction, and wealth, and pride,
and my feelings constantly return to the ark of
domestic affection, as the only place where happiness
can find rest for the sole of her foot.”

“To continue, then,” said he; “about the middle of
October, 1822, we escaped from the tears and embraces
of my wife's family, and started with Bryan and his wife
on horseback, and a female servant in the coach, for the
American frontier. It was during that charming season,
which we call Indian Summer. We had a prosperous
and delightful trip. We stopped to contemplate the battle
field of Palos Blancos on our way to St. Antonio.
The calabozo where I was imprisoned, the terrible spot
where so many poor fellows underwent military execution,
and whither I was conducted expecting the same fate,
was contemplated with a solemn moral interest; and as I
related the sad story a couple of fine eyes glistened with
tears of sympathy.

“Nothing happened worth mentioning, until we arrived
at Natchitoches on Red river. It was the first
American town under an American government, that
Martha had ever seen: and although it is an odd mixture
itself of Spanish, French, and American, her black eyes
glistened with an intense curiosity, and she asked me a
thousand and one questions, and I felt a suitable pride
and interest as a kind of cicerone in letting her see that
I knew all about American men and things. She already
admired the sample of these things which this town
offers, and reasoning from the less to the greater, I enjoyed
in anticipation her delight when she should see the
fine towns as we ascended the rivers, and on the Atlantic
coast.

“In this town I was recognised by many of my compatriots
in our unfortunate attempt at revolutionizing
Texas. They received me with open arms. We told
over our old stories, and my classmate, to whom I was
much attached, who was now handsomely settled in this
place as a lawyer, and had been advanced to the dignity
of judge, cracked some of our college jokes again.
We had some excellent Madeira, and we fought over
again the battle of Palos Blancos; and he related the adventures,
by which, from the very lowest part of fortune's
wheel, where the issue of that battle had left him,
he had gradually risen to his present independence and
good fortune, and he cried as we arrived at the end of
the story and the wine

“You may be sure we did not attribute the loss of that
battle to ourselves. In private he admired my wife
and her snug fortune, and seemed to be much of opinion
with Lord Byron in respect to the beauty of the finer

Spanish ladies, and admitted, that one would be hardly
likely to meet a prettier woman on any May morning.

“When we arrived on the Mississippi, she never ired
in admiring the beautiful and noble steam-boat that took
us in at the mouth of Red river. She was delighted
with the notion of so splendid and comfortable an hotel
floating so rapidly against the current of the Mississippi.
Then her curiosity started a thousand questions about
the machinery, and I answered them with much seeming
understanding of the thing. I am her oracle, and I
wished to keep up the credit of the shrine; but the truth
is, in some of my positive answers about what I did not
understand, she actually caught me napping. But on
the whole, I had the pleasure of journeying with a woman,
to me at least, the prettiest in the world; fresh,
young, pleased with every thing, reared in a convent
of one of the most ancient nations in Europe, and here
examining the rising wonders of this new world, with the
eager curiosity of a child united with the intelligence of
one who had read much, and travelled extensively.
Natchez, Louisville, and still more Cincinnati, seemed to
her fine towns, and she could hardly comprehend that
they were little more that thirty years old. The number
of the river-craft and steam-boats, that were continually
passing us up and down, was a fresh source of astonishment.

You can imagine her surprise on entering the neat
and beautiful city of Baltimore with its noble public
edifices, and so totally unlike a Spanish town. Philadelphia
and New-York increased this surprise, and more
than all, the multitudes of fine-looking and well-dressed
people of both sexes, that were threading the streets.
Accustomed as she had been to see such multitudes of

beggars and leperos, even in Mexico itself, she eagerly
inquired, where we contrived to dispose of the canaille
of our cities out of the way.

“My own heart beat high when I entered my native
State, for we travelled from New-York to Boston by
land. We were constantly amused by the smartness
and the shrewdness of the answers to our questions by
the people at the toll gates and hotels, and as they were
collected indiscriminately, of all conditions, sexes, and
ages, Martha justly considered them as fair indexes of
the general distribution of intelligence and quickness
among the people. I was inwardly delighted and I surmise
that she was not displeased, by a remark made upon
her by a tall, awkward-looking fellow among the
hills on our road in the county of Worcester. He was
coming from his work at noon in his shirt sleeves, and
as he stood drinking at the pump, while our horses were
watering, he eyed Martha very attentively, and observed
of her to his companion in an under tone, but
loud enough for us both to hear, “By the blazes! John,
that gal's eyes would touch off gun-powder.” Martha
remarked that a still finer compliment, of the same sort,
had been paid and with more justice to the bright eyes
of the Duchess of Devonshire, to which I answered, that
there was no probability that the Yankee had ever heard
of that, and that this remark must have been elicited by
the actual brightness which he saw.

“At length from afar I pointed out to Martha the
spires of Boston, now considerably more numerous than
when I left it. As we were nearing this city, which
gives such magnificent promise from afar, I endeavoured
to prepare her for her reception at my father's, by suitable
views of the plain and rustic, but plentiful and independent

way of living in the family of a respectable
New-England farmer. To prepare for this visit
too, in another way, and to insure if possible my
welcome, I sent forward Bryan as a pioneer, with a good
round sum of dollars, and I had no fear that they would
be misspent; for the people every where within twenty
leagues of Boston, know wonderfully well, that there are
one hundred cents and no more in a dollar. The chief
object in this thing was, that, as we should make a good
round addition to my father's family, there might be
plenty of wine, turkies, and pies for a sociable visit of a
whole winter. I knew well too, that each one of my brothers
would have a new suit in addition to his sunday
one. They are all, as my wife thinks me, good-looking
lads, as fresh and ruddy as full blown roses. I felt
anxious that my dear Martha should see my brothers
in their best, and my sisters in a full blaze of beauty.
My father had, as is the fashion in New-England, a fine
large shingle palace, painted white, and even the stone
wall I was aware when I came in sight of the house, would
be found white-washed. Bryan too, I had discovered,
knew how the land lay, and was disposed to give the
villagers a suitable idea of the dignity and importance
of my wife.

“Meanwhile, to give time to this precursor to take
effect, we were enjoying for a couple of days the hospitalities
of that charmingly hospitable place, Boston.
Democratic, however, as we are in New-England,
no little importance is attached, in that city, to
rank and family. My wife received every attention,
was caressed, admired, followed. It could
hardly be otherwise. But I could almost have grieved
to discover that the points in her, which had

alone won my affection, had apparently stood her
in less stead than that she was the daughter of a
condesa, and of the most ancient descent in Europe.
When we were entirely rested, and had made a sufficient
number of purchases for presents for the old and
young children of my native village, we set out after dinner
for that place. I really felt some singularly refreshing
feelings, I think they must have been something of
what we call self-importance, as I started my fine foreign
wife, and my grand equipage over Charlestown
bridge for my father's house. Thought I, “How prettily
those good-natured soothsayers will be dumfounded,
who prophesied that I should come out at the little end
of the horn! How comfortably the young men will feel
who envied me the distinction of college-learning, and
who predicted that the pride of the lazy fellow would
have to come down after all!” I might naturally exercise
a little quiet and snug exultation in the faces of
those who foretold that I should lay my bones as a beggar
in the forests of the West. These were but the feelings
of a moment, the childish heritage of Adam. I
looked to the `pit from which I was dug, and the rock
from which I was hewn,' and I became humble. It is
hardly necessary to say, that Martha had found in Boston
all her anticipations more than realized.

Describe the feelings if you can, of a man who has
been long and far away from such a home as mine, the
place of his birth; who has seen and suffered much, and
who returns to the view of the spires of his native village,
and the place `where heaves the turf in many a
mouldering heap,' in which his forefathers, his relatives,
and friends have found rest. Tears driven from their
deep fountains by confused and blended feelings filled

my eyes; and my dear Martha's eyes were filled from
sympathy. “How far,” I cried, “I have wandered! How
much I have seen! How often I have been in danger!
More than once my grave seems to have been prepared
for me! And behold me here again, safe, sound, and
happy, with fortune beyond my most avaricious wish,
and the prettiest and best wife in the world. And yet,
in this peaceful and healthy place, where the greatest exploit
has been a sleigh ride, and the farthest peregrination
to Boston, how many in the full tide of youth and
promise have gone to their everlasting home; while I, from
the journeyings and dangers of so many thousand miles,
have returned to see the same sun-beams playing on the
gilded vane of yonder spire that did when I left it. After
all, dear Martha, there is nothing permanent, nothing
important but religion, the grand point of relation between
things changing and things perpetual, the grand
bond that unites this point of existence with eternity.
Let it be our grand aim, since God has given us such
ample means of enjoyment and of doing good, that our
happiness shall consist in rendering others happy.
Look, Martha, yonder are the pines whose moaning
tops, sounding with the east wind, first gave me the mingled
feelings of awe, sublimity, and melancholy. Yonder
is the sweet stream where in my boyhood I culled
flowers as I carelessly sauntered to church, and in which
I have bathed and angled a thousand times. I can now
distinguish the door of the church. Venerable old pastor!
Thy loud and earnest voice, which resounded
there for the sabbaths of more than half a century, is
still in death. Thy worn-out frame is removed from
the pulpit to the church-yard, and a young man, who
knows not Joseph, has arisen in his place.” Feelings of
this sort, a thousand of which always rush upon a traveller
on such a return, if he has a heart, continued to
crowd upon me, and I had more than once felt the pressure
of Martha's lip on my cheek.

“By this time I was recognised by my native villagers.
It was a perfect press. Nothing could equal
it, parva componere magnis, but the rush about La Fayette
the past summer. In a few minutes I had the satisfaction
of embracing my good father and mother, my
brothers and sisters, and finding all well. I paused
with astonishment in looking at my mother. I had been
gone nine years, and at the first look, she seemed nine
years younger than when I left her. On closer inspection
I saw she wore false `everlastings,' false teeth,
every thing false but her maternal heart, and I felt in a
moment, that this was as true as the needle to the pole.
My father had attained the dizzy eminence of his aspirations.
He was a squire, a member of the General
Court, carried a large silver-headed cane, and wore a
long-tailed wig. My sisters, bless my heart, I should
not have known them! They had long Italian faces and
calash bonnets, and made my wife as pretty dancing-school
bows as you could imagine. My brothers were
more unsophisticated, and received me with true Yankee
welcome. There was something of mincing and restraint
for some time, and apparently a touch at ceremony.
But Martha, foreigner though she was, had native
good sense and instinctive perception of what is right
every where. She soon put them all at their ease by a
joy so evidently sincere, by an affection for every thing
that appertained to me so manifest, that in half a day
she was a mother, sister, and daughter in the family.
There was the old sofa, the cat on one side and the dog

on the other, and my father in his corner and my mother in
hers, just as the thing used to be. What an air of tranquillity
and repose prevailed in the old place! What a
train of recollections rushed upon me as the family came
in for evening prayer, and the magistrate laid aside his
dignity to fall on his knees before God!

I can hardly convey to you an image of our happiness.
As for Martha, they soon vibrated from the extreme
of respect to the extreme of fondness! I had to
tell my story and my travels as often as poor Robinson
Crusoe and Friday. The people were willing to give
me a title, but they were not exactly agreed what it
should be. Some called me Don, some Duke, but the
greater part fairly dubbed me General. Then we had
invitations, and dinners, and parties without number.
All our relatives to the fifth degree hunted out the pedigree
of our relationship. I pitied the poor generation of
turkies, for it was a hard business upon them. Mince
pies, and pumpkin pies were never seen in this village in
such abundance before. I heard Bryan telling a brother
Irishman, that he had stuffed himself so long on turkey,
that he had often felt a strange inclination to gobble.
“Ireland, honey,” said he, “may be a green
place, and a pleasant and good for parates, and New
Spain has plenty of lean beef and mezcal, but for cheap
rum and the vegetable called a turkey, there is no country,
honey, like yours.”

“The villagers, as might be expected, had soon incredible
stories of my wealth and importance, and the
battles in which I had been engaged, and generally my
adventures and `hair-breadth 'scapes.' It was curious
to observe, according to the prevalent taste and feelings
of the manufacturer, according as his inventions were

the fruit of malignity or not, I had been a hero, a redresser
of wrongs, and a deliverer of distressed damsels, or
a murderer, a buccaneer, a Robert Kidd, and all that.
There were some of the villagers and their daughters
who were not in habits of being familiarly admitted
among us, and who, of course, saw me through the least
favorable medium. They soon had a fine string of teatable
stories, as how I had murdered, and split heads
asunder, and plundered peaceable Spanish families, and
carried off whole bars of gold. But I had the satisfaction
which every honest man is sure to have in that
country soon or late, of being estimated somewhat according
to my merits. The people there all possess, at
least, a most accurate sense of the real and practical
utility of dollars; and much as they look down upon all
assumption of every sort, they think none the less of a
man for being rich.

“It was soon divulged that I purposed to spend part of
every year in the village, and that I intended to purchase
me a handsome farm, and to build on it a first-rate
house of pure Chelmsford granite—that I meant to plant
fine orchards and woods, and drain meadows, and paint
my trees, and improve the breed of cattle, and rear
Merinos and Saxon sheep, and start a cotton factory,
and make a dyeing and bleaching establishment, and
build an Academy, and furnish a bell, and new dress
the pulpit, and give the militia company uniforms and
standards, and be put up for congress, &c. &c. For all
these expectations I received no little court—at least I
got as much as I wished.

“Part of this homage to me was adventitious, I being
`a prophet in my own country.' But I had the satisfaction
to see, that the respect for my dear Martha was sincere

and real. The fresh air of the north freshened the tints
of the rose in her cheek and added new radience to the
brilliance of her eye. She was literally, a study among
my fellow town's-women. There was a visible affectation
of Spanish costume and manner among them. The
young girls imitated her gowns and caps, and they even
tried to catch her air, walk, and manner. Ten times a day
she received billets, requesting the loan of some little article
of dress, and then these billets were so respectful,
and expressed so much fear of being troublesome, that
there was no denying requests so sweetly urged.

She on her part, comprehended our manners at
once, and by a wise and regulated conformity won a
general tribute of good will. She regularly goes with
me to our worship and is solemn in her deportment
there. She is charmed with our singing and our young
minister, but returns to the religious strictness of observance
in the forms of her own worship. By the marriage
settlement, if we have sons, they are to be educated
as protestants, and the daughters, more or less, as
catholics. The very strictness of her observance
shames me into something like a decent regard for my
own. With respect to our discipline and manners, she
has all the hearty admiration of an ancient Puritan. She
says, “my dear Francis, I admire the cleverness and
industry of your young women. I reverence those institutions,
especially your free schools, which spread intelligence
and emulation through the community. My
heart is affected with the kindness of your ordinances
in regard to the suffering and the poor, and with your
numerous and efficient charities.” She was in raptures
at the first ball which she attended, and insisted that I
had brought her to a select community of beauties. She

reverences the unchanging order and peaceableness of
the people, and their aversion to revolution and blood.

We mean, as I said, to have a good house and
grounds at the north, and every season, when circumstances
will permit, we propose to start in the Spring for
Natchitoches, and thence by the steam-boat to Cincinnati,
and as soon as the canal to the lakes is completed,
by that route to the lakes, and thence by the New-York
canal to Albany, and thence to Boston. I grant you it
is an immense journey. But we are very comfortable
on board the steam and canal boats, and we can read,
and write, and teach children, as well there, as elsewhere.
We generally have pleasant company, and, on
the whole, the time of this passage is not the most unpleasant
of the year. In this way we mean to imitate
the birds of passage, and with them take our migrations
from the south to the north, and the reverse. We are
not so foolish as to expect “no sorrow in our note,”
though we mean to have “no winter in our year.”

Much as Martha is admired and beloved, and I could
not wish it more, yet we find human nature enough here
to take off the curse laid on those with whom there is no
fault found. We have for instance, in my father's family
and she has been there as a kind of heir-loom ever
since I can remember, a maiden aunt, called Charity,
I suppose, `ut lucus a non lucendo.' She has striven
with time and against wearing spectacles, with a womanly
fortitude, and has finally settled into a kind of religious
blue-stocking. She reads all the religious controversial
matter that is going, and discusses the subject
con amore. She seems rather shy of Martha, and she,
discovering it, has redoubledher assiduities and attentions.
She gave her complete editions of Edwards, and Hopkins,

and Emmons, and the other divines of that school,
as a present, but all to no purpose. My aunt finally let
me into the causes of her coolness. “Ah, nephew
Frank,” said she, “you have intermarried with the
Philistines, and I fear you will `eat of the fruit of your
own doings.' She is beautiful I grant you, and she looks
so winning and sweet upon me, that my sinful heart
tempts me to something of the same admiration that
others bestow upon her. But beauty, after all, is only
skin deep. Furthermore, it has been to many a trap
and a snare, and I doubt not, Frank, it was what carried
your carnal heart away. Beauty, like good works, is
but a filthy rag, unless it be sanctified. I asked her
the other day if she believed the `five points;' and
do you think that the poor thing did not admit that she
did not so much as know that there were `five points.' I
did hope that I might be the humble instrument of opening
her eyes to the truth. But that is all gone by, and I
fear she will grope on in Popish darkness to the grave.
I discovered in the course of this conversation, too, that
she was little satisfied with our minister, who, she allows,
is a very exemplary man, but somewhat liberal in his
opinions.

The other rub was my own heritage, and from my
father, too. He was remonstrating with me on the folly
of ever returning to New Spain. He would have me sell
all there and fix myself permanently here; and he expressed
so much reluctance at the idea of another separation,
that I invited him to share my journey with me,
and spend the next winter in Durango. “Look you
here, son Frank,” said he. I would not swap that orchard,
and the broad meadow, and the barn hill field for
all the lands in Mexico. As to your Dukes, and your

Condes, and all that stuff, see this long-tailed wig; I
would rather be a justice of the peace, and of the sessions,
in this town, and Massachusetts State, than to be
the first Lord in Mahico, as you call it.—By the
way, I wonder if that's the pronunciation, that Morse
came to write it Mexico.—No. No. Your wife is a
sweet woman, that's not to be disputed; and the Mahican
dollars are all very well in their place. But you will
never catch me beyond the great river Connecticut.”

Although my father was not disposed to emigrate with
us, there were enough others, that were full willing; and
we could have carried back half the village, had we
chosen. I have a pretty sister called Temperance, who
did actually accompany us back, and Martha loves her
next after me, the boy, and her mother. It was a sad
day for the village when we returned. I would not
choose to tell how many tears were shed, and even Martha's
bright eyes were red with weeping. Aunt Charity
herself yielded to the sinful motions of the flesh, and kissed
her, and prayed for her conversion until we were out
of hearing.

One word about Wilhelmine to satisfy you on that
score, and this story is at an end. `Sat prata biberunt.'
I have now been at the north to see if our countryhouse
will be ready for us next Spring, and to attend to Wilhelmine's
money affairs. I should have remarked to
you, but I did not wish to break the thread of discourse,
that on my trip with Martha to the north, we found Wilhelmine
in the family of the Methodist minister. He
lived in a small village on the Mississippi, where he was
a local preacher. The steam-boat stopped there to
take in wood. I sent in my name and was instantly admitted.
At sight of me she sprang from her chair, and

the transitions in her countenance from crimson to deadly
pale, showed that she was deeply affected. She
heard that I was married, and her countenance soon became
calm. There was the same lovely face—and there
sat on it a kind of pale, pensive, and indefinable melancholy.
As soon as I told her that Martha was on board
the boat and wished to see her, she instantly seized her
bonnet, and after the ordinary ceremonies of civility to
the family, she accompanied me on board the boat. I
felt happy to see these lovely women exchange all the
tokens of a most cordial regard, although cach knew
how I had stood in the affections of the other, and my
wife had been informed that Wilhelmine had had the
first offer of my hand. She related to us how she had
passed her time since she had left me. It was a scene
of sad and tiresome uniformity. Disappointed in the
warmest affections of the heart, and that heart peculiarly
constituted to receive the purest impressions of religion,
it was in a state exactly fitted for the moulding of such
a man as he was, with whom she sojourned. With religion
always in his mouth, and enough of morals and
strictness to be always respectable; full of long and
reiterated observances, and apparently always having, as
his phrase was, the world under his feet; aiming always,
too, in his religious exercises at the feelings, placing
much dependence upon frames of mind, and considering
the exaltation or the depression of feeling, as the graduated
marks of nearness to God, or distance from him, it
was no wonder that he gained an increased hold upon
the sensitive and thoughtful nature of his fair associate.
There was something imposing, too, in this assumed austerity
of a young and handsome man, something sublime
in this apparent conquest of all earthly affections. Wilhelmine
became a regular attendant upon their class
meetings. She made, indeed, she confessed, a poor hand
at relating her experiences. But some considerate sister
in the meeting was always ready to eke it out with
something of her own. She discovered in the end, that
she had always been in training, always under an invisible
and unobserved inspection. “She admired,” as
she said, “the strictness of observance in his family.”
But her native taste and tact always rose against all the
cant of their sect, the nasal twang, and the uproar, and
riot of their worship, and the outrage upon the king's
English, and taste, and common sense in many of their
performances. She thought their ardour, their devotedness
to their cause, the tie of kind and fraternal feeling
towards each other, which binds them together with an
`espril du corps,' and which is so little like the cold selfishness
of other denominations in their intercourse together,
worthy of all imitation, and all praise.

In this way, without any particular affection for this
man, she was in a fair train to become his wife. He had
offered himself, and in her lonely condition she painfully
felt the want of a protector,and in her state of mind she probably
thought one good man would do as well as another.
Unhappily for him, a scheme of deep contrivance, and a
plot to bring this about, admirably sustained, was defeated
by one of those accidents by which Heaven seems to
delight to frustrate the deepest laid plans of human
wisdom. A letter sent by the minister to his sister, who
was abroad on a visit, was lost by a little black boy
who did errands for the family. He was carrying this
letter and was overtaken by a thunder-storm. He was
frightened at the storm and lost the letter; and to avoid
the whipping generally consequent upon such an act,

he declared that he had put the letter in the post-office, as
he was charged. It was dropped, as it happened, in
a grove through which Wilhelmine was accustomed to
take a daily walk. She saw the letter lying on the
ground, and recognised the handwriting of her host and
admirer. It had been wet in the storm, and the wind
in driving it against the bushes had broken it open.
Wilhelmine took it up, and her name struck her as the
first word that she saw in it. Some vague suspicion that
she was practised upon, stimulated her curiosity to read,
and as it was from her future husband to her sister, she
felt justified in availing herself of this unsought opportunity
of entering into their secret thoughts. Such a
disgusting scene of palpable contrivance between them
to bring about the union, disclosed itself, feelings so basely
mercenary, such curious replies to the sister, who
seems in a letter to which this was an answer, to have
been stipulating, and rather disposed to complain about
her share of the dividend in the concern, that she tore
the letter in pieces and indignantly broke off the negotiation,
and told the gentleman she had changed her
mind. Nothing could exceed his disappointment and even
exasperation. From that time she had suffered every
thing, had been hinted at, and talked at, and had endured
every sort of persecution. They had even resorted to
the despicable revenge of defaming her with the villagers,
and she had been seeking for a change of place when
we arrived. “Dear Martha,” said she, “I hope you
will allow me to accompany you?” Martha told her
it was the very thing she intended to propose. We sent
for her trunks immediately. We called for her bill, and
when sent, we doubled the pay, but still they sent her
away with deep murmurs and denunciations of the wrath
of Heaven, which threw a gloom over her countenance
long after we were under way. I told her that it was
well for us all that there is a higher and more equitable
tribunal than mere human opinion.

She went on with us, loving and beloved; and Martha
regards her as another sister. In my native village
I have observed the old minister was dead, and a young
one settled in his place. I considered him an exemplary,
amiable, and accomplished man. Wilhelmine was received
in my father's family as a child. The minister
saw her there, and loved her at first sight. He made
his offer through me, and she in making her decision,
consulted my wife and me, acknowledging that she hardly
thought that she should love him with that ardor
and romanticity, that some ladies consider necessary to
marriage; but that she thought him a serious man, and a
gentleman, and liked him very well, and would be guided
in her answer exactly by our opinions. My wife
and I were unanimous for him. I waited on him with
the decision. Poor fellow! He is a nervous man, and
loves with all his might, and I could see that he thrilled
with the agony of apprehension and suspense to the
deepest nerve of his frame. I had once sat on that gridiron
myself, and had a suitable fellow feeling. He was not
long in suspense. His rapture of course, was proportioned
to his doubts and fears. We saw them married, and
happy; and he has secured a most amiable wife and an
independent fortune, and we a most delightful appendage
to our society when we reside in the village.'

I have only to add, that when I parted from this
amiable man hurrying back to his Martha with the
eagerness and impatience of love, my fancy ran on to
sketching his meeting with his family in Durango. I

was verging towards something like envy at the idea of
the rare felicity that seemed to have fallen to his lot.
But on the whole, I remembered how soon the great
leveller, Death, will set all these things on a footing of
equality, and every emotion of that sort died away. I
returned to the retirement and obscurity of my own
family, blessing God, that he had once more restored
me to them in peace.