University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

To meet these evils they had one grand resource
beside religion. We would to God that every family in
the world had the same. Nearly one half of the misery
of our earth comes from selfishness and disunion in families.
The heads care not for each other or their children.
The members have no sympathies in common. The
voice of angry jangling, dispute, and separate interest is
heard in the family dwelling. Good angels scatter not
their blessings in such habitations. Such was not this
family. Their evening union was one of peace, love,
and joy. Every one, even to their youngest boy,
brought love and good feeling to the common stock.
From the heads to the youngest member, whoever
touched one touched the whole. There was no one
of the number that had been taught to sit down and
brood over his selfish joys by himself. The bright
evening fire was kindled. The Bible was read. They
prayed together, and each one of these affectionate inmates
loved each other one, as he loved his own soul.
This mutual affection shone in every look and action.
The mother loved her husband and her children with
an affection almost guilty and idolatrous. Nor were
protestations of similar feelings on the part of the husband
and the father at all necessary. The unity and
beauty of this mutual attraction, if the comparison
might not seem too learned, was like that of the sun for
all the planets in our system, which, in their turn, and
according to their size and importance, exercise an attraction
back again upon their centre. When the members
of a family really and sincerely love one another,

this alone is food and raiment, and society, and cheerfulness,
and every thing. To such a family external
sorrows and troubles are what weight is, pressing upon
an arch, the strength of which increases with the
amount of pressure applied. But when to poverty and
trouble and evil report and sickness, are added selfishness,
jarring, disputing, and quarrelling within, I know
not how the members of such a family can sustain life.

With this resource, notwithstanding their passing disquietudes
and vexations, the winter wore away comfortably
and pleasantly. On every fine sunshine day Mr.
Mason was seen along with young George before the sun-beams
had dispersed the frost, girdling the trees. The
latter had his little axe and grubbing-hoe, cutting down
the smaller trees, and grubbing up the shrubs by their
roots, delighted with the mellow appearance and the
healthy smell of the virgin mould. A hundred times his
delight was excited by seeing the gray and black squirrels
skip away from the trees which he began to fell. The
parroquets, in their splendid livery of green and gold,
were fluttering about among the sycamores, raising their
shrill scream, as disagreeable as their plumage is brilliant,
and seemed to be scolding at these meddlers with
the freshness of their empire. The red-bird, springing
away from the briar copse, which he began to disturb
with his grubbing-hoe; the powerful mocking-bird seated
at its leisure on a dead branch, and pouring its gay
song, and imitating every noise that was heard; the
loud and joyous bark of the family dog, as he was pursuing
his own sport beside them, digging for an opossum;
the morning crow of the cock; the distant cry of
the hounds in the settlement, ringing through the forests;
the morning mists, lying like the finest drapery of
muslin, spread over the tops of the trees; these, and a
thousand mingled and joyous morning cries of animals
in the woods, filled his young and susceptible heart
with the purest joy. Excitement and the fulness of joy
often arrested his axe and his grubbing-hoe. The

father once saw him musing in this way, and asked
him of what he was thinking.

“I cannot tell you,” replied George, laying his hand
upon his bosom, “how glad I feel here, this morning.
When I see the sun slanting his light along the white
arms of the sycamores, and hear the birds sing, and
every thing so gay, I cannot tell you how happy I am.
How different is all this from January in New-England!
Yet, glad as I feel here, I cannot forget the old church
and the grave-yard, and the school-house, and my
school-mates. Oh! if one could be here, and there at
the same time! Before the people came here it was
all woods, without people. Yet, I suppose, the birds
sung as sweetly then as now.”

“Undoubtedly, my son,” answered the father. “This
forest was a temple of God as soon as the waters flowed,
and the trees were green, as much as now. All
these joyous sounds, which you hear, were the morning
praises of the Almighty. Who knows but His angels
feel the same joy at contemplating these green solitudes
which we do? There may be eyes to see, and ears to
hear in these forests, which we cannot behold.”

In such conversations and such pursuits passed away
the morning, until breakfast.

When the labor of clearing was resumed after breakfast,
the mother and Eliza came out, attended by the
younger children, and looked on the work as they sat
knitting on the logs beside the clearing. The crash of
a falling tree was a grand object of awaited excitement
and terror to them. Henry, a fine stout boy of ten,
had already obtained permission to take his share in
these labors. Not unfrequently the whole group of
laborers would suspend their toils from laughter, to see
him tug upon the branch of a shrub, catching by its points
upon others and pulling him back, delighted to see his
little cheeks flush with pride and exercise, and to note
the promise of future perseverance in seeing him tug
until he had overcome the resistance and added it to
the pile.

After sunset it was a high treat to the children to fire
the huge piles of dry bushes and logs, heaped for burning,
and see the flames rising above the tops of the
highest trees, gleaming in the forests, enlightening every
object as far as they could see, and disturbing the owls
and roosting birds from their retreats. The noise of
the bursting cane-stalks was like the report of a thousand
guns, and they called these evening fires their
celebrations. Not but there were discouragements and
difficulties even in this work of clearing. Mr. Mason
was both unused to labor and feeble in health. A single
Mississippi sycamore of the larger size, afforded
three days' occupation for his best exertions to cut
down. Of course he was compelled to allow all the
larger trees to stand in his clearing, only deadening
them by girdling. His taste on this as on every subject,
was severe to a morbid excess. How it grieved
him to see his rich and level field marred in its appearance
by a hundred huge, standing, dead trees, and the
broken limbs and branches, that the wind was constantly
detaching from them to the ground. It was trying to
his pride, too, to have one of his coarse neighbour planters
regard his work with a sneer of affected pity, expressed
in conversation something like this: “Why,
doctor, if you do not get a greater force you will have
a field hardly large enough for a truck patch. One of
my negroes will cut away more trees in a day than
you would in a month. Doctor, you want some negroes.”
But he generally took especial care not to
offer their services.

But the severest of the whole experiment was splitting
rails. This was a task absolutely beyond the
strength of young George. The kind-hearted boy was
assiduous to hand the wedges and the maul to his exhausted
father. In this most laborious business there is
a dexterity to be learned only by practice. Many a
tree, cut down with great labor, would not split at all.
It was long before Mr. Mason, with his utmost exertions,

could make twenty-five in a day. It did not
help the matter to be told by those who looked on his
work, that one hundred and fifty a day was the regular
task of each one of their negroes. At night the father's
hands were one blister. Poor George could count his
blisters too. Mrs. Mason bound up their sore hands,
and turned away her face to conceal her tears. The
severe toil, too, caused Mr. Mason rheumatic pains and
sleepless nights. He found, moreover, when stormy
weather confined him to the house, that a body full of
the pains of exhausting labor, would not allow scope to
his thoughts, when he sat down to his great work with
his pen. Unremitting toil, in such a frame, blunts the
sensibilities, suspends the exercise of the imagination
and fancy, and after a fruitless effort to stir up his
thoughts, he was compelled to admit, that severe labor
and writing are incompatible. But neither the voice of
complaining nor of dejection was heard; for in this family
there was union, mutual affection, prayer, confidence
in God, and the hope of immortality.

The middle of March was soon at hand; and in this
climate it is the dawn of Spring. The wilderness began
to be gay. The Red Bud in a thousand places
was one compact tuft of peach-blow flowers. The umbrella
tops of the Dogwoods were covered with their
large blossoms of brilliant white. At every step the
feet trampled on clusters of violets. The swelling buds
and the half formed leaves diffused on every side the
delicious aroma of Spring. The labors of Mr. Mason
had been slow and painful, but they had been constant
and persevering. A little every day soon makes a
great result. In four months the clearing was increased
from six to nine acres, which were well fenced and
prepared for planting. The surface of the soil was
black, rich, and perfectly tender. It was a pleasant
novelty to him to plant corn without ploughing, and
among thick deadened trees, reaching almost to the
clouds. The field was laid out in rows in right lines,

by taking sight from one tree to another. The father
went before, making a hole for the corn with his hoe.
George followed dropping the corn, and covering it
with his. Eliza, with her face shaded by her large sun
bonnet, and Henry with his broad straw hat, with little
bags pinned to their sides, walked beside George and
his father. They carried beans, the seeds of pumpkins,
squashes, cucumbers, and the different kinds of
melons, to hand to each, where a place offered, that
seemed suitable to these seeds. A garden, or, as the
people call it, a truck patch, was also prepared, and
sowed, and planted with such seeds and transplanted
vegetables as their more considerate neighbours taught
them, were congenial to the soil and climate, or would
be luxuries in the summer, or capable of being preserved
through the winter.

The violent thunderstorms of that climate and season
were at first a source of alarm to the family. They
trembled as they heard the thunder echoing through
the forests, and saw the lightning firing the high, dead
trees. They soon perceived that the thunderbolts fell
harmless to the earth. Their ears became accustomed
to the crash, and the beautiful mornings, that ensued,
hailed by all the birds of spring, and embalming the air
with the mingled ambrosia of the forest, more than
compensated for the passing terrors of the night.
There are a few, and I could wish there were many lovers
of nature, who will be able to comprehend the enjoyment
of this family, on visiting their field the first Sabbath
after their crop had fully come up. It is a delightful
spectacle to any one that has eyes and a heart. But
this family loved nature with a keen relish for her pleasures.
It was the promise of future support to a family
that had nothing else on which to depend. It promised
future subsistence and comfort to all they loved on
earth. It was cultivated vegetation, just sprung up
on the wild soil, where nothing but weeds and bushes
had flourished from the creation. I enter into their

delight, as their eye caught the straight stems of the
corn, rising in lines that already marked the rows with
a strength of vegetation and a depth of verdure, which
they had never seen corn wear before. Parents and
children gazed with unsated eagerness upon the melons
and cucumbers, starting up with leaves broader and
fresher than any they had ever beheld in New-England.
There they required great care in preparing the hills,
and laborious attention to the kind and amount of the
manure. Here they were barely deposited in the virgin
soil. There, in March, the ground was still covered
with snow. Here, these vegetables had already
thrown out the second leaves. The inspection of the
sweet potatoe patch, which was large, and the hills of
which had been prepared with great care, was a source
of still more gratifying curiosity. The family were exceedingly
fond of this nutritious vegetable, and had
never seen it growing. There are some minds so constituted,
as to imagine with what gratified observation,
they watched the unfolding stem, and the first development
of the leaves of this beautiful creeper.

The season was favorable, and their crop came forward
to their utmost hopes. To watch its daily advance
was a constant source of amusement. But the
sad leaven of sorrow and discouragement remained at
the botom of the cup. The high heats of the new climate
began to make themselves felt early in April.
The lassitude that ensued was a new sensation to the
family, at first scarcely unpleasant. But the increase
of this lassitude, as the season and the heat advanced,
became a source of disheartening apprehension to Mr.
Mason. A half an hour's labor in his field, after the
sun was fully up, completely drenched him in perspiration,
and left him powerless to renew his labor, until
after he had rested an hour on his mattrass. The
reasoning of his inward apprehension was, If such be
the effect of an April sun, what will be that of July and
August? Had he been aware of the wise and kind

plan of Providence, in the process of acclimation, he
would have dismissed all fears upon this head, and
would have so accommodated himself to the imperceptible
change of the season, as to have been prepared to
meet the high heats of July and August with as little
inconvenience as he felt from those of April.

Their neighbours, now grown familiar with them, had
broken through the first unconscious restraint, arising
from feeling the difference of their education and character.
The respect extorted from them by this comparison,
once laid aside, their feelings naturally vibrated
to the other extreme. The natural dignity of their
manner was now called pride and self-importance. “If
they were such great people,” it was remarked, “that
nobody must speak to them, except with such respect,
why did such poor folks come away from a country,
where people knew what was due to them? Strange,
that they, who had to work like negroes, should hold
their heads so high! It was mighty pretty to see Mrs.
Mason and Eliza look so grand, merely because they
were a little fairer than the creoles.” When Mr. Mason
did preach, he was proud of his college learning,
and had no religion; and when he did not preach, it
was because he was lazy, and never cared any thing
about it from the first. There were two or three wicked
babblers among them, who answered in this settlement
the purposes of newspapers elsewhere, who began
to whisper stories, “that the old man,” as they
called Mr. Mason, “had been driven out of the country
for slandering the President and passing counterfeit
money!” The effect of these conversations was soon
visible to the family, in the cool contemptuousness and
the rude familiarity of their manners toward them.
Many an hour did the family spend in vain conjectures
what could be the cause of this. As these stories remained
uncontradicted, the propagators began to gather
boldness. One of them, aware that the family knew
not the specific charges against them, and desiring that

they should have a full taste of the bitterness, officiously
pretending kindness and sincerity, divulged the whole
story, and told them with many an ingenious added
comment of his own, all that was said of them.

It does not need much knowledge of human nature
to know what kind of torment the general circulation of
such reports would naturally create in the bosoms of a
high-minded family, with a keen sense of honor. They
had a long debate in conclave upon the question, what
was proper to be done in the case, and whether it
was better to take any steps to vindicate themselves.
In the close of the argument upon which Mr. and Madam
Mason, and George, and Eliza, had each given an
opinion, it was unanimously settled, that people, who
could invent and circulate such falsehoods, would invent
and circulate another brood if these were refuted,
and that it was wise and right to treat the whole affair
with silent contempt. All said that the inventors were
people not worth the trouble of attempting to disprove
what they said. The meeting broke up by a mutual
agreement of each member, to meet the propagators of
these stories as before, and to think and to care nothing
about the slanders. But while we are in the flesh,
we shall always feel as in the flesh. These high-spirited
children promised to forget, and the more they attempted
to do it the more deeply the remembrance and
the humiliation rankled in their bosoms. Time is the
only efficacious remedy for such evils.

Midsummer already furnished their table with green
corn and the common table vegetables of the season in
ample abundance. But their joy in view of the prospects
of their crops was damped by observing, that as
the summer heats advanced, the health of Mr. Mason
more visibly sunk under the influence of the season.
He could no longer labor abroad more than an hour in
the day, and that must be in the morning before the
sun was above the trees. The heavy dews which lay
like rain upon the leaves of the corn, and the rank

weeds, were found scarcely less noxious to his health,
when necessarily drenched by them, than the heats of
the sun. Young George, fully comprehending the case,
labored from morning until night to spare his father,
and to keep down the weeds. It discouraged him to
see, that more grew up in a night, than he could cut
down in a day.

In attempting to work with his son in the sweet-potatoe
patch on the fourteenth of July, under the influence
of a powerful sun, Mr. Mason experienced a
sun-stroke and was aided to his bed by the united exertions
of his whole family. For three hours he was
not expected to survive from one moment to another.
I do not design, nor wish to attempt, to describe the
agony of the family, during this interval. He, who
knows how they loved one another, can imagine it.
There are events, too, which bring upon the mind the
stupefaction of a thunder-stroke, and it was only when
Mr. Mason exhibited manifest signs of being out of immediate
danger, that tears were shed in this family.

He slowly revived until the evening. At the hour in
which he had been accustomed to lead in evening
prayers, after informing the children that he was too
weak to do it this evening, he requested them to retire
into George's house, as the smaller cabin was called.
He then held a long and solemn conversation with Mrs.
Mason alone. A thousand of those tender things, which
are appropriate to such conversations, were said upon
both sides. They were such things as such a husband
would naturally say, in such circumstances, to a wife
so loved, and who had been for so many years the
faithful and inseparable companion of his toils, who was
the mother of his children, who was at once so destitute
and helpless, and whom he felt he was about to leave
to the sole care of his five children. I know that such
circumstances are occurring somewhere every hour;
but if the bare recounting them does not make my
reader feel the situation of Mr. Mason, I am aware,

that nothing, which I can say, will do it. Having made
many of those remarks, touching his situation, and hers,
and his wishes in regard to her and the children for
the future, she rallied fortitude to ask, why he chose to
make such remarks at this time.

“Because, Eliza,” he replied calmly, and taking her
hand, “I am convinced I shall never rise from the illness
which this disaster has occasioned me.”

Mrs. Mason aswered him with tears, embraces, and
denials, and an extravagance of grief, which soon spent
itself by its own excess. He replied calmly, that, “rational
being were bound by every consideration to take
a forecasting contemplation of great changes of condition
that were certainly before them, and that it much
more became such persons as they were, to foresee the
evils before them, and forearm themselves against them,
than to shut their eyes, like children, upon consequences,
and shrink from duty, through the enervating influence
of grief.” He inculcated again and again upon
his wife, sobbing upon his bosom, that he now felt it
had been the fault of them both, that they had fostered
a morbid and shrinking temperament, the effect of
which had been to unnerve them, and unfit them for
the sterner duties of life He solemnly insisted upon an
absolute trust in the sustaining and gracious care of the
Almighty, and he placed before her the guilt of distrusting
the love and the mercy of Him, “who noteth the
fall of a sparrow, and heareth the young ravens, when
they cry!”

“Dear Eliza,” he continued, “I am aware that after
I am first gone, it will be to no purpose, to expect you
to be wise and firm at once. You know where I am
to rest, under the sycamore. Come there, and think
of the days which we have spent together, and give
scope to the first bursts of grief. The wise and the
unchangeable laws of Providence will prevent my being
visible to you. But I feel that in whatever place and
in whatever manner the All Gracious and All Good

shall dispose of me, this mind and this heart must lose
their identity, if I should cease to love you and my
children less than I do now. Nor will He, who gave
me this spirit, so imprison it, as that I shall not be able
to descend to the summits of the forest, to look in upon
you in the morning, and to cheer you to the duty of
watching over our children. I cannot now foresee
what you will do for subsistence, or how you will be
able to rear our dear helpless children among these
rough and wicked people. But I have seen a thousand
times that God never forsakes them, who do not forsake
themselves. You know my motto, “Nil desperandum.”
You have heard me repeat it a thousand times. I am
fully conscious that I have acted too little in the spirit
of this motto myself. I have prayed God a hundred
times, that my children, and especially my dear
George, may be of a firmer spirit than I have had.
Perhaps I have done wrong to bring you here. It is
useless now to spend time in mourning over what is irretrievable.
Besides, at the time of coming to the decision,
to bring you here, I called in aid all the reason
and forecast that I possessed to the deliberation. With
my temperament and under the same circumstances, I
should, probably, come to the same determination
again. I know you are too kind not to forgive what
was done for the best, even if it were wrong. I think,
too, had it pleased God to spare me a few years, that
I should have become comfortable in my circumstances,
and should have felt, that I had done wisely in
seeking independence in this way. As regards the future,
I thank God, that my mind is fixed and settled.
I shall resign my spirit in humble confidence to Him
who gave it, thanking Him, that through his dear Son,
my Saviour, I have not an axiety about it; but am
humbly confident, that in His own gracious way, and in
the mansion fitted for it, He will render me happy.”

To such conversations, which, to say the truth, so
far as respected his impressions, that he should not recover,

she had often listened before, Mrs. Mason could
only reply, that she had frequently seen him discouraged
in the same way, and that she had found him
recover notwithstanding; that she did not allow herself
to doubt for a moment, that he would recover now;
that she was ready to promise, if she survived him, that
she would do the best she could; and that she was very
sure, that the best would be so unworthily, that he had
much better live, and see to the management of the
family himself. Thus this solemn conversation terminated;
he assuring her, that he felt his present case
different from any thing he had ever experienced before;
and she, the more earnestly she was urged to
promise him to be courageous and resigned after he
was gone, returning to the beaten track of former
thought and conversation, and warning him that the only
way to give her courage was, to promise her to get
well.

This event occurred on Saturday. During that night
he was feverish and restless. Although, as she remarked,
Mrs. Mason had often heard him assert, in his
periodical turns of ill heath and discouragement, that he
should never recover, she felt this night more than
usually alarmed respecting him. While he lay delirious,
and breathing thick and pantingly, in short and disturbed
slumbers, the dreadful thought presented itself to her,
for the first time, that the husband of her youth was
about to leave her. The loneliness and destitution of
her case, in such a country, and with the care of so
many helpless children, came upon her mind in all the
gloom and dismay of the scene. Those deep and
bitter meditations, with which strangers do not intermeddle,
passed rapidly within. There is but one abiding
resource in cases like these. Happy, and thrice
happy they, who can resort to it with humble boldness.
Mrs. Mason had that happiness. She often and
earnestly wrestled with God for her dear husband, if it
were possible, that the cup of death might pass from

him. For herself she prayed, “Our Father, who art
in heaven! in this my extreme distress and dismay,
Thou only canst help. My husband, each of my dear
children, and myself, owe Thee a death. Give us resignation
and confidence, meekly to pay it in thine
own time and way. Only do Thou, in thy great mercy,
sustain us, while we are here, and when we depart, do
Thou save our souls.”

Next day Mr. Mason had strong fever and shortness of
breathing, and was wholly unable to rise from his bed.
The heat of the season was intense, and the exhausting
ardors of the dog-star were in the sky. The paleness
of foreboding anxiety was spread over every countenance
in the family. The physician resided at the
distance of eight miles, and Mr. Mason affirmed, that
his complaint was of a kind to receive no advantage
from his aid, and he was wholly unwilling that they
should incur the useless expense of sending for him.
Mrs. Mason allowed him to believe that his wishes
should be fulfilled, and resorted to the innocent deception
of sending for a physician, without apprising him of it.
George promptly offered to take the trace through the
woods to the bank of the Mississippi, where the physician
resided. Henry begged to be allowed to attend
him. A pretext was invented, to account to Mr. Mason
for their absence through the day. A maternal tear
stood in the eye of Mrs. Mason as she kissed them, and
bade them make haste, and not return without bringing
the doctor. A trip of sixteen miles, through dark
forests, in which they would not pass a single house,
was an exploit sufficiently daunting for two such young
and inexperienced boys. Love triumphs over fear and
death; and these boys so dearly loved their father, that
nothing was formidable to them, which they could do
for him. Such conversations passed between these
affectionate boys, as might be expected from their years,
their errand, and the forests through which they passed.
Little Henry was afraid of the wolves, bears, and panthers.

More than once he cried with the soreness of
his feet. Their thoughts naturally tended to despondence.
Once they lost their way, mistaking a cow-path
for their trace. None can tell, if they would not have
wandered into the inextricable tangle of the swamps,
and have perished, had they not providentially been
met by a man hunting his cattle on horseback. He,
seeing them wandering on towards the swamps, naturally
comprehended their mistake, and led them back, and
put them on the right way. They arrived at length on the
banks of the river, and told their tale of distress. The
physician was absent, not to return until night. They
received the promise, that he should be sent on immediately
upon his return. The people of the house,
where the doctor boarded, pitied them, and received
them kindly. They gave them a glass of milk and a
slice of corn bread. But nothing could induce the affectionate
children to tarry longer than half an hour. They
insisted upon starting back to see how their dear father
was. The hour of their return was that of burning noon;
but their road was one continued covert of shade. Besides,
such children as these always find the road home
easier to travel, than that from home. The loneliness of
the way, and their apprehensions from the wild beasts,
and their fears of getting lost again, took from them the
disposition to converse much on the way. They pushed
on at the extent of their walking speed, casting fearful
glances among the bushes, as birds, or small animals
disturbed them. They had arrived in this way, as they
judged, within three miles of home, when the fatigue of
the way, and exhaustion from the heat, compelled them
to sit down and rest themselves.

They reclined themselves on a patch of wild grass at
the foot of a tree. The cheering thought, that they
were so near home, restored to them courage and a disposition
to converse, and the following conversation
passed between them.

Henry. “My feet are not half so sore coming back,

as they were on the way out to the river. Why should
they ache less now, than they did then?”

George. “It must be because we love home and
the folks there so dearly, that love pushes us on, and
keeps us from feeling the soreness.”

Henry. “Yes; that is just the case. Dear George,
I am forced to shut my eyes, whenever I think how
papa looked. I never saw him look so before, nor
mama seem so strange. Do you know what is the
matter?”

George. “Indeed I do not. But I heard him tell
mother last night, that he was certainly going to die.”

Henry, (beginning to cry.) “Father shan't die. If he
does, Henry will die too. How came he to come away
to this wicked country to die? When he dies, we shall
all starve to death here in the woods, and the wolves
will come into the house, and eat us. I am sure the
wicked people that talked against papa, would not give
us a slice of bread, to keep us from starving.”

George. “Henry, don't talk so to me. I feel it in
my heart to hate the people there in New-England, that
drove us away to this wild country. I could speak just
such words about them, as the wicked people used in
the boat, when we came down the river. Oh! it is too
bad, to think what will become of dear little Bill and
Tom, and mother, sister and all, when father dies.
I should rather a thousand times we might all die together.”

The boys were tired. The evening and the hour of
discouragement was coming upon them. Henry sobbed,
as if his heart would break. George, too, who
had been praised in the family for his strength of character,
was unnerved, to see his brother cry, and the tears
coursed one another down his cheeks. They had both
indulged in this way for some time, when George, summoning
courage, sprang on his feet, kissed his brother,
and wiped his eyes. “Get up, Henry, and leave off
crying. We can't die but once, thank God. How

often has father said over his Latin words to us, which
mean, `Don't give up the ship.' I am getting strong,
you see. I feel that I am to be a man. I love my
dear father better than my eyes. But, you know, he
is always sick. It is a hard thing to think, that my
poor father must die; but then he will be sick no more,
and will be happy in heaven. Never fear. I will take
care of all, when he is gone. To take care of mother,
and the rest of you, I would work like a slave, and be
stronger than a lion. Don't cry any more, Henry;
father will get well, when the doctor comes. While
he is sick, I will work harder, and take care of you all.”
Saying this, he looked cheerful, and took his brother by
the hand, and raised him up, embraced him, and kissed
him again and again, and talked to him in a voice so
firm and cheering, that Henry caught something of his
courage and cheerfulness, and rose up, and they resumed
their way, taking each other by the hand. Shortly
after they arrived safely at home.

The physician in due time arrived, and expressed no
certain opinion in reference to the case of his patient.
Hope and fear alternately swayed the family for some
days, and they endured the wearing agony of suspense.
Mr. Mason was sometimes better, and sometimes worse,
and as happens to nervous people, was elevated, or
depressed in his mind, according to his passing feelings.
Sometimes he was encouraged to think he might recover
speedily; and in an hour afterwards was in complete
despondency. Perhaps he might have recovered, had
he been able to obtain the common comforts which his
case required. But the depressing heat of the season
was against him. Affection and ingenuity devised every
thing that the field, the garden, or the woods could
yield, in the way of sustenance, or medicine. But
neither affection nor ingenuity can create from nothing;
and a hundred things, so necessary to the comfort and
recovery of a sick man, like him, were absolutely out
of the question in that place. Every one of the family

seemed completely vanquished with grief and dejection,
but George. Since his return from the river to
procure the physician, his character appeared to have
undergone an entire transformation. He alone shed no
tears. He looked thoughtful, but was always calm.
It was sufficiently evident, at the same time, that this
apparently strange conduct, in an inexperienced boy of
fourteen, who had been hitherto supposed to possess
the keenest sensibility, did not at all result from want
of feeling; but from a high purpose, and a fixed determination,
not to allow grief and discouragement to
unnerve him from his duty. His thoughts appeared
constantly occupied in inventing some kind of food, or
drink, that might be strengthening or pleasant to his
father. He seemed at once to be endowed with courage,
vigilance, and patience for watching with him, and
the skill and management of a nurse to take care of
him. It was affecting, to see with what heroism, zeal,
and tenderness this noble boy discharged offices, sometimes
laborious, sometimes disagreeable, and always
trying to the patience and fortitude even of professed
attendants upon the sick. It was love that taught him,
and every where, and in all trials, love can teach every
thing, and, like faith, can remove mountains.

The love of Mr. Mason, for this son, had not been
visibly partial, but he had been the helper and the companion
of his father. The firmness of the child exactly
matched with the ever-changing spirits of the parent.
It will be manifest, that this display of such new and
untried proofs of character in the son, on such an occasion,
would not abate the affection and confidence of
the father. The rest, the mother, Eliza, and Henry,
took their turn, indeed, in watching; but nothing ever
kept George long from his station beside the bed, by
night and by day. There sat the one holding the hand
of his father, and looking steadily on his pale and emaciated
face. The look that was every moment returned,
was that undescribed gaze, that explains all that

can be explained, of the bitterness of parting, and the
dreaded mystery of death. Whenever George was for
a moment away, and the father startled from sleep in
his absence, the first thing that his eye sought was this
cherished son. When George returned, resomed his
place, and asked what he could do, the reply, as his
satisfied countenance rested upon his son, was, “Nothing.”

The sickness of Mr. Mason had taken the form of a
gradual, and almost imperceptible, but fixed, and in-curable
decay. The physician came a few times, and
then assured Mrs. Mason, in private, that he could do
nothing more for him. It would be to us an affecting,
as it might be to others a useful history, to relate how
suspense in this family settled into the conviction, that
nothing could save him, and that they must prepare to
part with him. Words go but a little way, in explaining
this process, every stage of which is agony. The
heart of the reader may not be affected with it, as he
says, “It is the order of things every where. It has
taken place in uncounted millions of cases, and will so
continue to the end of time.” True; but to this family,
alone in the woods, it was as hard and as trying to
think of laying that venerated form in the silence of
death in the ground, as though it were the only case of
the kind, that could ever happen on the earth.

We ought to record for the honor of human nature, that
the neighbours, although seemingly insensible, felt that
there was misery in this family. Towards the close of
his sickness, their slaves were sent every day to watch,
and aid the family, and to bring to it such food and
comforts as their case required. They performed, also,
all the laborious duties of preparation for harvest, and
left the family no cares but to watch over its dying head.
No grief arrests the steady course of nature. The field
ripened. The family gradually reached the conviction,
that their head must be taken away, and were still
snatching at the hope, that it would be a long time before

he would wear out. Thus it is, that like children
in the dark, we contrive to shut our eyes upon events,
and as one bubble bursts, grasp at another.

For some days, before the scene closed, Mr. Mason
was lethargic, arousing only at intervals to transient fits
of distress, and turning from side to side. He spoke
little more, than to call for water. The hand of George
was instantly clasped in his, and his satisfied look told,
that he had then obtained all that he wanted. His lips
would often move for a moment, and perhaps a tear or
two would roll down his cheeks, and he dozed again.

Such was the order of things until the twenty-fifth of
September. It was Sabbath evening, and a glorious
sunset. The sun was sinking behind the trees into the
misty veil of Indian summer. The turtle-doves were
cooing mournfully in the woods, as though sad at the
departure of day. Mr. Mason aroused, and instead of
relapsing, as usual, into lethargic drowsiness, seemed to
revive to unwonted consciousness. It was the mysterious
but common and sublime effort of the conscious
spirit, about to take its final flight. He requested that
his family might assemble about his bed. The whole
family, even to the youngest member, was instantly about
him, in that speechless awe, in that mute and unutterable
excitement of love, astonishment, and terror, which
presses too hard upon the whole nature, to allow scope
to any individual feeling. They were there to hear his
last words and to witness his last struggles with mortality.
In his left hand was a hand of each of the children;
in his right, that of the worn, pale, and speechless
companion of his toils. His eyes were turned upwards,
and his lips moved evidently in silent prayer. In
noticing what passed across his brow, any one might have
seen the earnestness of his pleading with Him, who
heareth prayer. It was obvious, that the last movements
of his spirit were those of agonizing wrestlings
with the Angel of the convenant, and the solemn words
of mingled faith, humility, and confidence in God, “I

will not let Thee go, until Thou bless them.” When
he had finished this sublime and speechless communion
of a dying father with his Maker, in a firm and distinct
voice he uttered the following words:

“The last twelve years of my life have been a succession
of days of pain and sorrow. I have a thousand
times anticipated all the circumstances of this hour.
For myself, I should rejoice to be gone. Death is but
the pang of a moment. All that is terrible in this hour
is, in leaving you behind. Love of you has such entire
possession of this heart, that it seems to me, as if it
could not grow cold. Eliza, my wife, you need
strength, and while you implore it of God, struggle for
it yourself. We are not here in sin and tears, to melt
in sorrow, but to conflict firmly with trial, temptation,
and at last with death. My last charge to you is, to
shed as few tears for me, as may be, after I am gone,
and to strive to associate pleasant instead of painful remembrances
with the intercourse we have had together
and with this parting. Gird up the loins of your
mind, and strengthen yourself in the strength of God for
your duty. Above all, look to God, and never despair.
Will you promise your dying husband this?”

A shuddering movement of her head gave consent.

“For you, George,” he continued, “I see the firmness
of duty in your eye. God has endowed you, as by a miracle,
with the strength of mind necessary to take care of
this helpless family. You are to labor, and to pray, that
you may become, as of iron, that you may have no sensibilities,
no fountains of tears; that you may act with
the singleness of firm and wise judgment for these dear
ones, that I now commit, under God, to your care.
In the management of them, will you be faithful, wise,
affectionate, and what I, your father, have not been,
firm? You are young, to take such a charge, and
make such a promise.”

A slight spasm passed over the beautiful and sun-burnt
face of the noble boy, which indicated, that the

machinery of tears was in operation. It was the struggle
of but a moment. He bent down, and kissed his
father's forehead, and uttered in a firm and unfaltering
voice, “Dear father, think only of yourself. I promise
all.” The father convulsively grasped his hand, looked
eagerly, and intently in his face, and said in a low and
expiring voice, “Now, Lord, lettest Thou thy servant
depart in peace.”

My reader has been over the dying bed of a father,
departing from the midst of his family. I leave it to
his thoughts to supply what followed. If the holy angels
are affected with aught that belongs to mortality,
it is with a scene like this. It is sufficient to say, that
no sobbing, no tears, no holding to this earthly prop
retained his spirit in its flight. After the sad example of
all before him, he heaved his last sigh. The bosom,
which still preserved the semblance of what had been
the seat of passion and sorrow, sunk to the stillness of
other inanimate matter.