University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

A WOMAN, accustomed to those duties in the settlement,
with the aid of two or three slaves, robed and
prepared the body for its last sleep. Nor, while these
painful duties were performing, were they interrupted
by the cries and shrieks to which, on such occasions,
they were accustomed. These mourners remembered
the promise, so recently given, and they walked backwards
and forwards in the paleness of death; but there
were no words, no audible lamentings. The children
clung to their mother with an expression of terror and
awe, but were not heard to cry. Silent respect and
sympathy were on the countenances of the neighbours.
The passing slaves stopped, took off their hats, and
gazed respectfully for a moment on the face of the
dead, and passed on. Slander had been busy with the
name of the deceased, while living; but the claims of
truth and justice are every where felt to a certain degree.
The manner of these people told more eloquently
than any words, they could have used, what
had been their real thoughts of him, while living. Of
the case of the mourners we need say nothing. The
Author of nature called them to endure it. My reader
knows, as I know, that this is no distress of fiction; but
that we have each in our turn to be actors in the same
scene. There is as much truth as poetry in the figure
which calls this earth “a vale of tears.”

I may remark in passing, that it is the character of
people, such as those among whom Mr. Mason deceased,
to be deeply moved with such scenes of distress,
as these. Whatever appeals directly to their senses
powerfully affects them. They forgot their envy and

slander of the living, and were saying in an under tone
among themselves, what a wise and learned man he
had been, and how they pitied his poor and helpless
family. They were considerate and unequivocal in the
offer of the aid of servants, provisions, and ail the little
decencies, and mournful preparations for such a funeral
as the customs of that region prescribed. There was
no white person at that time within thirty miles, who
was accustomed to perform the usual religious duties
on that occasion. This circumstance was stated to
Mrs. Mason. It aroused her feelings from the stupefaction
of her distress to think that the remains of her
dear husband, who had so many hundred times uttered
the voice of prayer over the lifeless bodies of others,
should be carried to their long home without prayer.
Pompey, a converted methodist slave of Mr. Garvin,
was in the habit of preaching to the negroes, and of
praying at their funerals. Mrs. Mason very properly
preferred, that he should perform the funeral solemnities
of her husband, rather than to have none on the
occasion. Through a pardonable remain of former passions,
and the feelings which had been nurtured in
another country and another order of things. Mrs.
Mason chose that the body of her deceased husband
should be placed in the coffin, robed in the gown and
bands, the insignia of his former office and standing.

I should be glad to give my youthful reader as distinct
an image, as I have myself of this rustic funeral in
the Mississippi forest. I see the two solitary cabins
standing in the midst of the corn, the smaller cabin over-topped
by the height of the surrounding corn. I see
the high and zig-zag fence ten rails high, that surrounds
the field, and the hewn puncheon steps in the form of
crosses, by which the people crossed over the fence into
the enclosure; the smooth and beaten foot-path amidst
the weeds, that leads through the corn-field to the cabins.
I see the dead trees throwing aloft their naked
stems from amidst the corn. I mark the square and

compact enclosure of the deep green forest, which limits
the prospect to the summits of the corn-stalks, the
forest, and the sky. A path is cut through the corn a
few feet wide to a huge sycamore left in its full verdure
in one corner of the field, where Mr. Mason used
to repose with George, when he was weary, and where
he had expressed a wish, during his sickness, that he
might be buried. Under that tree is the open grave.
Before the door of the cabin, and shaded by the western
slope of the sun behind it, is the unpainted coffin,
wanting the covering plank. In it is the lifeless form
of the pastor, the cheek blanched to the color of the
bands about the neck, and contrasting so strongly with
the full and flowing black silk robe, in which, in the far
country of his birth, he had been accustomed to go up
to the house of the Lord. I see the white mothers,
their children, and a considerable number of blacks,
who had been permitted to attend the funeral in consideration
of the service, which was to be performed by
one of their number. I see the tall and swarthy planters
with the sternness and authority of the rude despotism,
which they exercise over their slaves, and their
conscious feeling of their standing and importance, impressed
upon their countenances. I see the pale and
subdued faces of the little group of mourners, struggling
hard with nature against lamentations and tears. They
could not have, and they needed not, the expensive and
sable trappings, which fashion has required for the show
of grief. Their faded weeds, and their mended dresses
were in perfect keeping with the utter despondency in
their countenances, and their forlorn and desolate prospects.

The assembled group was summoned to prayer.
The black, who officiated, by the contributions of his
fellow-servants of the whole settlement, was dressed in
a grab as near like that of the methodist ministers, who
were in habit of preaching in the settlement, as the case
would admit. The position was to him one of novelty

and of awe. His honest and simple heart was affected
at once with the extreme distress of the mourners and
the trying position, in which he was placed. He began
at first in awkward and unsuccessful attempts to imitate
the language and manner of educated ministers. He
soon felt the hopelessness of the effort; and poured out
the earnest, simple, and spontaneous effusions of real
prayer in the tones of the heart, and in language not less
impressive from being uttered in the dialect of a negro.
He dissolved into tears from his own earnestness, and
while the honest and sable faces of hi fellow-servants
were bathed in tears, the contagion of sympathy extended
through the audience, producing a general burst
of grief. I should despair of being able at all to catch
the living peculiarities and dialect of the discourse, or
exhortation, which followed. Nevertheless, I shall attempt
an outline of the beginning, which may fairly
serve as a sample of the rest.

“White Massas and people, please to hark, and hear
the poor words of Pompey. Great God let white men
bring poor Pompey over the sea, and make him work
hard in field. Great God good, when he seem hard
with us. He send good men to turn Pompey's heart,
and make him christian. Strange things God work.
Here Massa Mason, great Yankee preacher, know all
tongues, read all books, wear the grand gown, you see
there in coffin, preach in big meetin. He come way
off here to Massaseepe to die, die in the woods. Nobody
pray over him, but poor Pompey. Well. Me
think all one thing fore God. Me feel here, when me
die, me go to heaven. God no turn me out, cause me
no got book-learning. Massa Mason he die, he go to
heaven. Oh! Lord God, touch Pompey's lips, that
he speak a word in season to poor Missis, and the dear
children. Oh! Missis! you see heaven, you no want
him back. No sin, no labor, no tears.”

And the poor, earnest slave proceeded to pour forth
from the fulness of his heart, all the motives of resignation,

patience, and hope, that his retentive memory,
and the excitement of his feelings, enabled him to utter.
For me, I have often heard the cold and studied words
of doctors, learned, and famed in the schools, with less
effect, than the heart-felt preaching of this devout
slave. The audience melted anew into tears, as he
proceeded; and those of Mrs. Mason, and those of her
children, who were able to comprehend, were tears of
resignation and religion. When the service was finished,
he recited, in his peculiar accent and dialect,
those beautiful verses of a methodist funeral hymn,
which he had so often heard repeated, as to have committed
to memory.

I have never heard voices so sweet, as of some female
blacks on such occasions. The thrilling tones
will remain on my memory, while I live. To me, too,
there is something affecting in that sacred music in
which the whole congregation join. Every one joined
in this hymn, and it seemed to be a general wail sent
up from the woods to heaven.

When the hymn was closed, the man, who officiated
as master of ceremonies on the occasion, proposed
to those, who wished to take a last look at the deceased,
to come forward. It is a common custom in that country
for widows, who affect refinement, to shut themselves
in retirement from the funeral solemnities of their husbands.
Such was not the way, in which Mrs. Mason
expressed her grief, and her affection. She walked
firmly to the coffin, and all her children came round her.
They looked long, and without tears, at the pale and
care-worn countenance, and the deep and sunken eye
of the husband, the father, the being who had been,
next to God, their stay and their dependence. Well
might the widow remember the day, when in the prime
of youth, love, and hope, in the same robes of office, in

which his body was now lying before her in the coffin,
he had led her to the church, the sabbath after their
marriage. Oh! there are views and reflections of a
moment, that fill remembrances of years. The look of
unutterable thoughts and feelings was over. The unpainted
cover was applied to the coffin, and the nails
were driven. Twelve of the most substantial planters
were the bearers. The mourners walked directly behind
the coffin, and the whole mass followed through
the corn-field in a crowd. The coffin was let down into
the grave, and the fresh and black soil was heaped
upon it. According to the affecting and universal custom
of that region, each one present gathered up a
handful of earth, and threw into the grave. A couple
of stakes were planted, the one at the head, and the
other at the foot of the grave; and the neighbours dispersed
to their several abodes, and the widow and her
children returned to their desolate dwelling.

I feel a chill pass over me, as in imagination I look
in this evening upon this desolate family. I mark the
empty chair, where the deceased had been used to sit.
I observe his vacant place at the rustic table, and the
supper removed untouched. I remark the deeper sense
of desertion and loneliness, when Mrs. Mason took down
the family Bible at the accustomed hour of evening
prayer, and gave it to George. The noble boy remembered,
that his dying father had delegated to him the
responsible and patriarchal authority of head of the
family, and had warned him against giving way to sorrow
and tears. He opened the Bible at that sublime and
pathetic chapter of Job, which begins, “Man, that is
born of a woman, is but of few days, and full of trouble:”
a strain of poetry so deep, pathetic, and sublime,
that it reads in my ear, like a funeral hymn, with the
accompaniments of an organ. He had reduced to
writing his father's evening prayer, as he remembered it,
and in a firm and distinct voice he read it. He sung
sweetly, and had long been accustomed to raise the

evening hymn. It was an effort beyond his firmness,
and instead of the customary concert of voices, was
met by a general burst of grief. I need not describe,
how dark this night looked to the children, as it settled
on the forests, nor describe the thrill, with which the
long and dismal howl of the wolves, echoing through
the woods, came upon their ears; nor need I mention
the convulsive shudder, with which her orphan daughter
lay down with her upon the mattrass, on which her
father had died.

The days that followed, seemed to them of immeasurable
length. George and William went to the
field, as they had been wout, when their father was alive
—for on the first morning after the funeral, it was agreed,
that to proceed to their duties, as usual, was the proper
construction of his dying charge. Resolution in
a well-principled mind can do much. But the heart
knoweth, and will feel, its own bitterness. The boys
dreamed at their task, or thought too intently of something
beside it, to make much progress. Days, however
prolonged by sorrow, came and went to them, as
though they had been in joy. For a few days the
neighbours looked in upon them, with countenances of
sympathy for their distress; but in a fortnight all this was
to them, as though it had not been, and the bereaved
family was regarded with as much indifference, as the
dead trees about the dwelling. After that, had it not
been for the connexion of some of their own selfish
feelings with their case, whether they were naked or
clothed, whether they were hungry or fed full, whether
their hearts ached or were glad, would have been
known only to themselves and God.

It is not with the idle desire to sadden my youthful
reader with the relation of the details of a funeral, that
I have recorded the above minute delineation of this.
We all know, that man is born to die, and that these
things belong to our mortal condition. We know, too,
that sympathy with distress is one of the purest and best

feelings of our nature. It is never excited, without
rendering the subject of it better. I have wished to inspire
sympathy in the young bosom of my reader. I
have wished, above all, to furnish, by example, lessons of
duty, exertion, firmness, and industry under the utmost
pressure of bereavement and poverty.

I do not purpose very particularly to narrate the subsequent
fortunes of this bereaved family, any farther,
than as their deportment is calculated to furnish these
lessons. I have more particularly in view to develope
the character and conduct of George. It is only
necessary to say, that for the present the family were
amply supplied with corn, and the common vegetables
from their field, which nature had been beneficently
ripening for them, during their utmost distress. They
might, therefore, behold the approach of winter without
any immediate apprehension of starving. But a family
may suffer, and suffer acutely, from poverty, after the
fear of the immediate want of food is removed. The
clothes, which they had brought with them from New-England,
were wearing out, and there were no means remaining
to them to replace them. The deer-skin dress,
so common in the country, was still more expensive to
purchase, than the cheap domestic articles of the country.
Either were alike beyond her means, which, as
regarded money, by the sickness and death of Mr.
Mason were entirely exhausted. There are many resorts
and expedients in such cases to which backwoods
people are accustomed, which this family had yet to
learn. The decent pride of the mother had hitherto
kept the clothes of her children whole, by patching and
mending. But this could not be possible much longer.
It is the real pinching and misery of poverty, for such
a family, to see one another becoming ragged, and an
object of scorn to the rude and undistinguishing passengers.
There are severe frosts even in that climate.
Nor could five children be always confined to the narrow
precincts of a log-house. In the bright and delightful

frosty mornings of the first of winter, it is natural, that
children should feel the cheering elasticity and invigorating
influence of the frosts, as other animals. They
soon, like the domestic fowls and animals, became accustomed
to running abroad unshod. But, when they
returned from their excursions, to hover round the fire,
their feet, red, inflamed, and smarting to agony, with
the reaction of the fire, the tender mother felt the inflammation
as keenly as though it had been on her own
heart. She saw, also, with humiliation and bitterness,
rather than the natural maternal pride, the ripening
beauty of her daughter, so strongly opposed to the forlornness
of her dress and condition. Her own troubles
of the same sort were as nothing in the comparison.

The mode, in which herself and daughter obtained
a partial and present relief from these difficulties, was
scarcely less embarrassing than the difficulties themselves.
Their utter destitution and inability to remedy
it, were matter of common conversation among their
neighbours. To some it was a theme of mere indifferent
conversation. To some, who regarded their imagined
pretensions to something above them, it was a
subject of envious gratification. From Hercules Pindall
and Jethro Garvin it effectually excluded the view
of Eliza Mason. She was invited to their junkets, their
holiday amusements, and their Sabbath meetings, by
their sisters to no purpose, and their ingenuity readily
assigned the reason. The influence, which these Herculean
rustics possessed with their parents, induced
them, with no small degree of parade, since they found
it must be done, to present the mother and daughter
each with a new dress. The articles presented were
not in many respects such, as they would have chosen,
nor such, as befitted their condition. But necessity,
such as theirs, they thought, ought not to know the
laws of pride or taste. The mothers of these young
men presented the articles, not forgetting their way of
emblazoning their own charity and good feelings in the

case, not manifesting much delicacy, in touching
upon their known poverty, nor failing to leave broad
hints, that they expected that the mother and daughter,
thus clad, would show themselves abroad, and
not sit there moping at home, mourning for one,
who could never return to them. Of Eliza, they said,
it was a pity, that she should always be shut up in the
cabin, and not learn any thing of the pleasures and fashions
of the world. They expected, that she would
come and see their daughters; and particularly invited
Mrs. Mason to bring her and George to a party, and a
nut-gathering, which was to take place at the house of
Mrs. Pindall in a few days, stating, as a particular accommodation
of considerate feeling, that out of regard
to their case, as mourners, there was to be no dancing,
which would otherwise have made a part of the amusements
on the occasion.

Mrs. Mason's mind was placed in a state of painful
doubt and perplexity, whether she ought, under such
circumstances, to accept the presents at all. Necessity,
and scruples of conscience, which arose from fear
that pride would dictate the refusal, induced her to accept
the offered presents. She stated, however, and
that distinctly, that she should not be understood, by
accepting them, to lay herself or her daughter under
any obligations of any kind, but those of gratitude, and
that she thought her peculiar troubles were too recent
to allow her properly to go to such a place, on such an
occasion, but that she would take the matter into consideration,
and give them such an answer, as should be
thought right, after such deliberation. I hope my reader
will never be placed in a situation like that of this
mother, needing such assistance, and yet dreading the
pride, that would refuse it, and the obligations to be
incurred by receiving it; recoiling from any intimate
connexion with the donors, yet, out of tender regard to
those dearer than life, dreading to provoke their wrath,
and the weight of their power, by showing a manifest

purpose to avoid them. Such was precisely the relation
of Mrs. Mason with these neighbours, whose good
will, she was aware, was absolutely essential to her.

While the family deliberated upon the impropriety of
going to a party, in such a place, in six weeks from the
time of the decease of its head, the other family, anticipating
the view, which they would take of the affair,
changed the name of it to a “preaching,” against which
they foresaw no objection could lie. This settled the
case, and she became convinced, that duty and interest
called on her to accept the invitation. So, arming her
daughter with all the preparatory cautions, which she
could devise, how to conduct with the young people,
when they should be by themselves, she sent a note,
signifying, that she would accept their invitation, and
spend the day and the evening with them, as requested.

When the important day arrived, George was left to
keep house with the care of the younger children, while
the mother and daughter, in their new dresses, with
hearts aching with apprehension, were helped into the
carriage, which Mr. Pindall had sent, in great form, to
convey them to the feast. When they arrived, they
found the table spread in a very large hall, the walls of
which were of fresh hewn logs, decked everywhere
with evergreens, and the last flowers of the season.
This hall answered alternately the purpose of a ball-room
and a church. The company was a selection of
all the considerable planters for ten miles round. The
number was twenty, with twice as many sons and
daughters. The latter, if not generally beautiful in
person, were tall, graceful, and powerful in form. Six
yellow women, and as many yellow men, waited at table
in liveries. The planters and their wives were
dressed in their best, and their daughters, as flaunty,
as red, coquelico, and crimson could make them.

The preaching, as we have remarked, was the pretence
for the dinner, and answered, besides, the purpose
of satisfying a multitude of the settlement, that

could not be invited to the dinner. To have received
from such rich people an invitation to come there, and
feast upon the good word, sent them away satisfied.
The preaching was of course the first in order. The
minister was ignorant and heavy, and withal smelt the
flavor of the preparing dinner so keenly, that he hurried
through his reluctant services as fast as possible, curtailing
every part of them, but the burst of noise and
passion at the close. The good man finished the short
campaign, as Bonaparte said, “with a clap of thunder.”
The lesser people, who might not abide the
dinner, retired, apparently well satisfied with their penny-worth;
and the preacher made his way to the dinner-table,
as glad to leave the services as the people
were to hear him say, Amen.

The important matter of arranging the parties at table
was next to be settled. It might have been a point
of as much difficulty and delay as occurred between
the duke and Don Quixote, on a similar occasion, had
it not been announced, that this was the freedom dinner
of young Mr. Hercules Pindall, and that he had of
course the privilege of assigning places at the table as
he pleased. The young man, dressed in his freedom
suit of rich blue broadcloth, and a splendid scarlet sash
about his waist, and with all his “blushing honors thick
upon him,” proceeded immediately to discharge his
delegated duties. I am only interested to mention,
that Mrs. Mason was seated high in honor, on the right
hand of the head of the table, and her daughter opposite
her on the left. Mr. Hercules took the head himself,
and his mother was at the foot. These important
preliminaries settled, the remainder of the company,
old and young, arranged themselves at their choice.
The table groaned with turkeys, venison, beef, perk,
pies, vegetables, and all the foreign luxuries, which the
steam-boats brought from New-Orleans; in short every
thing, that the country could furnish, or the luxury of
cooking in that region prepare. The clatter of knives

and forks followed, and the gay and good-natured conversation,
inspired by the sight of beauty, and the palpable
relish of good cheer, still further aided by the artificial
excitement of wine and whiskey-punch, produced
that Babel mixture of sounds, that every one, who has
been at such a place, so well remembers. Nor let
those, who have had the honor to be present at great
and given dinners, among the men of power, place, and
opulence in cities, vainly think, that elegance, and wisdom,
and wit, will die with them. There was as much
smirking and showing off here as there. There were
as many attempts at wit, and a much greater amount of
laughter. There was as much concealed passion of
every sort. In short, there was at this table a sample
of every thing that has been seen in pavilions and palaces,
on a like occasion. The grand git of the merriment,
however, was the happy era of the arrival at
majority of Mr. Hercules, and a great many broad allusions
to a supposed union, that was contemplated between
the tall and powerful young heir, and the sweet
and blushing child, who sat in her weeds on his left.
Her exquisite beauty drew from these hearty fellows
the strong terms of encomium, in which backwoodsmen
know so well how to express themselves. Hercules,
too, elevated by his new dignity, and warmed by the
occasion and a glass of wine above fear, made love to
the shrinking Eliza in direct and strong terms, and in a
style and language so new and curious, that, child and
inexperienced as she was, in another situation, and under
other circumstances, it could not but have drawn
smiles from a girl, now turned of thirteen, with fine natural
powers, and an arch eye. As it was, the whole
scene inspired her with terror and aversion. She had
recently learned, that the father of Hercules had a claim
to the land on which her mother lived, supposed to be
better, than that which her deceased father had purchased.
In many ways she felt, that her mother was
in the power of this man, so courted, and dreaded
through the settlement. Her charge from her mother
had been to steer in the midst between encouraging,
and affronting this young swain. Amidst the uproar
and clatter her mother could only partially hear what
he said to her, and divine the purport and effect, by
discovering the alternate changes from the rose to the
lily, in the countenance of her dear orphan.

The dinner terminated, as such affairs in such places
usually do, except that at the earnest remonstrances of
the host, there was little intoxication, and the jolly planters
arose from table, only “well to live,” as the phrase
was among them. They dispersed, followed by their
dog and egroes, to shoot at a mark, and decide the
comparative merits of the horses, that were entered
for the next horse-race. The married ladies retired to
another room, to commence a quilting. The young
gentlemen and ladies paired themselves and marched off
into the woods, to witness the cutting of a bee-tree, and
to gather grapes and peccans. Hercules would have
insisted upon leading off Eliza, but with a shrewdness
and a knowledge of things, which might not have been
expected from her age, she clung firmly to the arm of
his sister, Letitia, so far a blue-stocking, as to be able
to read a novel with very little spelling. Seeing himself
anticipated in his purpose, the young gentleman
had nothing to do, but to saunter, somewhat moodily,
by the side of his sister.

It was a gay spectacle, to see so many girls in their
gaudy dresses, and with their streamers fluttering in the
breeze, as they spread n groups among the pawpaw
groves, under natural bowers, covered with the rich
clusters of the blue grape. It was the sweet autumnal
season of the south country, in which the air is bland,
the temperature delicious. The leaves were plashing
in the little pools; and those that remained were red,
yellow crimson, or sear, and in every rich and mellow
tint, from green to brown. There was chatting, and
laughing, and reckless gaiety in abundance; and even

Eliza caught the gaiety of the rest, and the inspiration
of the scene, and would have been cheerful, but for her
terror of the tall young man, whose eye was so constantly
fixed on hers, with an expression, before which
hers quailed. For the rest, they were as merry, and
as witty, and made love in their way as heartily, and to
as much purpose, and all their thoughts, hopes, desires,
and affections were as completely filled with the
scene, and, probably, far more so, than are the gay
parties at Ranelagh.

When they arrived at the point proposed, Miss Letitia
informed her young friend, as Hercules left them for
a moment, that his inventive brain, inspired, as she insinuated,
by love, had devised the striking spectacle,
that they were now to witness. They had come to a
grand, perpendicular, lime-stone bluff, four hundred
feet high, down which precipitated a white sheet of
water from a spring on the summit, looking like a wide
ribband of silver-lustre, suspended in the air, and falling
with a pleasant murmur into a basin at the foot of
the bluff. Thence it wound away in a still stream,
which crept slowly through the bottom. On the banks
of this stream was a wide turf, covered with the most
splendid mosses, short, silken, and seeming like buffgreen
velvet. It was shaded with prodigious sycamores
and peccans, alive with wild pigeons and parroquets,
feeding on the grapes and the nuts. At the
basin, refreshments, cakes, pies, and claret wine, were
prepared, and two or three blacks, dressed in fantastic
finery, played the fiddle and the hurdy-gurdy.

Beside three trees at a proper distance stood three
negroes, each with an axe in his hand. The young
gentlemen and ladies were all assembled around the
fountain. The negroes were scraping their fiddles
and hurdy-gurdies in great glee. Suddenly they
came to a dead pause, and Miss Letitia whispered
Eliza, that she must wave a handkerchief, and that
something grand would happen in consequence. She

perceived that all eyes were turned upon her, in mute
expectation. Merely to get rid of the awkwardness of
this pause, she held up a handkerchief, which she
had received, as part of her recent present, and waved
it. At the signal the three blacks struck two or three
quick blows upon the trees, by which they stood, and
three prodigious trees, the very giants of the forest,
bent in opposite directions, giving two or three sharp
cracks, and then thundered down with a crash, that
was terrific, sweeping whole trees and limbs and every
thing that opposed, from their course, and striking the
earth with a force that made the very earth tremble
under their feet and echoed far through the woods.
The pigeons and parroquets fluttered in clouds from
the scene. The dogs barked. The young men huzzaed,
and there was a general and long waving of
handkerchiefs from the young ladies to correspond.

One of these prodigious fallen trees was a bee-tree,
in which was a large and rich swarm that had
been discovered and reserved for the occasion; and this
tree, and the other two were prepared for the festival,
by being cut so nearly off as only to require a blow
or two to fell them. One of the other trees was a peccan,
covered with nuts, and the other a sycamore,
whose summit was crowned with clusters of the blue
grape. It was a new source of amusement to gather
nuts and grapes, which, but a few moments before, had
been a hundred feet in the air. There was, of course,
a new theatre for wit and mutual gymnastic efforts, on
the part of the lads and lasses, and many were the
feats of springing, reaching, and climbing, on both sides,
and well, and gracefully did the lovers show their
elected their love and daring, in getting for them, at
any effort and any risk, the clusters, or nuts, for which
they expressed an inclination.

When the young ladies had eaten grapes and nuts to
their satisfaction, and had filled their handkerchiefs,
and given them to their attending servants, to carry

home, a trial of the gallantry and devotion of their
swains ensued, which, so far from being semblance,
and unreal, was one worthy of the hardihood and daring
of a Sampson. The bee-tree, in falling, had broken
at the point where the swarm had formed their hive.
The little exasperated insects were whizzing by thousands
about the ruin of their habitation and fortunes, and
were denouncing vengeance against those who should
dare to add misery to affliction, by plundering them of
their honey. One young man after another, covering
his head with a handkerchief, walked up to the hollow,
amidst the shouts and bravos of the company, and with
as much adroitness, and as few stings, as might be,
brought off a fragment of the comb, and presented it
with a suitable speech to the young lady of his choice.

Hercules Pindall, to show more devoted love, and
more chivalrous daring, walked deliberately, and with
uncovered face, among the thickest of the bees, and
stooped down and took a full survey of the comb in the
broken hollow, and reached in his hand, and scooped
out the white and virgin circles of comb from the very
centre of the hive, and with his face and hands swollen,
and agonizing with fifty stings, presented his trophy to
Eliza. All this was accompanied with a suitable
speech, the witty part of which bore for burden, that
this external stinging had no relation, nor comparison
to certain smarts and agonies, inflicted by her mischievous
eyes in his bosom. There are few female hearts
of thirteen, I ween, that would not have softened something
from the rigor, imposed by maternal counsels, at
such notable proofs of daring constancy. Eliza pleaded,
that she was too young to love. Hercules, in reply,
was ready to wait her time, so that he might hope at
the end of his probation.

But I willingly pass over this scene. Hercules was
earnest, rough, and direct to his point, and used threats
withal. Eliza was young, and frightened, and trembled
at the thought of committing the grounds and

cabin, that sheltered her poor brothers and her mother.
It was a scene most trying to the unpractised child,
from which she only escaped by telling him, that even
if she were of age to love, it would be no way to inspire
it, to threaten ruin to her mother's family, and by
warning him, that if he did not desist, and let her off,
she would call the company. The party broke up,
partaking of the general gloom, created by the visible
ill humor of the chief entertainer, who was evidently
dissatisfied with the progress of his love-making, his
prospects, himself, and every thing. It was late in the
evening, when the carriage was ordered to carry Mrs.
Mason and her daughter home. The narrative of the
incidents of the feast was of course reserved for the following
day.

The first smile, which had been seen in this family,
since the death of its head, was excited in the listening
group, the next morning, as Eliza described, in her
way, the dinner, the nut-gathering, and the gallantry of
Hercules, manifested by the number of stings, and the
amount of swelling. From the little which she related
of what he had said to her, and the answers, which she
had made to him, the state of the case was sufficiently
obvious not only to the keen discernment of the mother,
but even to the inexperienced judgment of George.
They had been for some time aware, that their little
homestead was claimed by different titles, and that,
probably, that of Mr. Pindall was as valid as theirs. A
law suit, at least, was necessary to try their comparative
validity, and this would be as ruinous to them as to
be deprived of their home. The opulent, who are in
suspense about the fate of their ships, after a storm, can
have but a faint idea of the bitterness of apprehension,
with which this family regarded the idea of being turned
out of their humble home. It was their all, and not
the less important to them, because it would have been
nothing to another. Various were the devices proposed,
to soothe the disappointed vanity of the young man,

and ward off the vengeance of his father. Thomas ventured
to propose it as his judgment, that Hercules was
a fine, stout, young man, and called by all the people,
the “best” in the settlement of his years, and certainly
the richest. He thought sister might tell him,
that she would wait for him; “And you know,” he significantly
added, “you can make him wait as long as
you will. Then you could be sure of this, and the
great farm, and ride about in the coach, and we should
all be rich and happy.” A kind of musing contemplation
of the matter, in the same point of view, seemed
for a moment to pass over the brow of Mrs. Mason. A
paleness, as of death, and a burst of tears from the
daughter showed the light in which she considered the
most distant prospect of getting rid of their difficulties
in that way. It was settled, that they would deliberate
no further upon the subject until future difficulties called
upon them to act.