University of Virginia Library

1. PART I.
CHILDHOOD.

1. CHAPTER I.

We behold a child eight or ten months old; it has brown,
curly hair, dark eyes, fair conditioned features, a health-glowing
cheek, and well-shaped limbs. Who is it? Whose
is it? what is it? where is it? It is in the centre of fantastic
light, and only a dimly-revealed form appears. It may
be Queen Victoria's or Sally Twig's. It is God's own child,
as all children are. The blood of Adam and Eve, through
how many soever channels diverging, runs in its veins, and
the spirit of the Eternal, that blows everywhere, has animated
its soul. It opens its eyes upon us, stretches out its hands to
us, as all children do. Can you love it? It may be the heir
of a throne, does it interest you; or of a milking stool, do
not despise it. It is a miracle of the All-working, it is endowed
by the All-gifted. Smile upon it, and it will smile you
back again; prick it, and it will cry. Where does it belong?
in what zone or climate? on what hill? in what plain? It
may have been born on the Thames or the Amazon, the
Hoan Ho or the Mississippi.

The vision deepens. Green grass appears beneath the
child. It may, after all, be Queen Victoria's in Windsor
Park, or Sally Twig's on Little Pucker Island. The sun
now shines upon it, a blue sky breaks over it, and the wind
rustles its hair. Sun, sky, and wind are common to Arctic
and Antartic regions, and belong to each of the three hundred
and sixty terrestrial divisions. A black-cap is seen to
fly over it; and this bird is said by naturalists to be found in

every part of the globe. A dog, or the whelp of a dog, a
young pup, crouches near it, makes a caracol backwards,
frisks away, and returns again. The child is pleased, throws
out its arms, and laughs right merrily.

As we now look at the child, we can hardly tell to which
of the five races it belongs; whether it be a Caucasian,
Mongolian, American, Ethiopian, or Malay. Each child on
this terraqueous ball, whether its nose be aquiline, its eyes
black and small, its cheek-bones prominent, its lips large, or
its head narrow; whether its hue be white, olive, or jet, is of
God's creating, and is delighted with the bright summer light,
a bed of grass, the wind, birds, and puppies; and smiles in
the eyes of all beholders. It is God's child still, and its
mother's. It is curiously and wonderfully made; the inspiration
of the Almighty hath given it understanding. It will
look after God, its Maker, by how many soever names he
may be called; it will aspire to the Infinite, whether that
Infinite be expressed in Bengalee or Arabic, English or Chinese;
it will seek to know truth; it will long to be loved; it
will sin and be miserable, if it has none to care for it; it
will die. Let us give it to Queen Victoria. “No,” says
Sally Twig, “it is mine.” “No,” says the Empress Isabella,
“it is destined to the crown of Castile.” “Not so shure
of that, me hearty, it is Teddy O'Rourke's own Phelim.”
“Nay,” says a Tahitian, “I left it playing under the palm-trees.”
“What presumption!” exclaims Mrs. Morris, “it
is our Frances Maria, whom the servant has taken to the
Common.” “I just bore it in my own arms through the
cypresses,” says Osceola.

It seems to be in pain. “Mein Gott! gehet eilend hin.”
“Poor Frances Maria!” “Paneeweh htouwenaunuh neenmaumtehkeh!”
“Per amor del Cielo!” “Jesus mind
Teddy's Phelim.” “O Nhaw nddg erm devishd!” “Wæ
sucks! my wee bonny wean, she'll die while ye are bletherin
here.” “Bismillahi!” “Ma chere enfante!” “Alohi, Alohi!”
“Ora pro nobis!” “None of your whidds, dub the
giggle, and take the bantling up.” “Eatooaa!” What a
babel of exclamations! What manifold articulations of affection!
But hold, good friends, may be the child does not
belong to you.

The scene advances. Two hands are seen thrust down
towards it, and now it smiles again. Near by discovers itself
a peach tree. Where does that belong? Not like the black-cap
everywhere. In the grass shows the yellow disk of a

dandelion; the skin of the child settles into a Caucasian
whiteness, and its fat fingers are making for the flower. Be
not disappointed, my friends, your children still live and
smile; let this one live and smile too. Go, Mongolian,
Ethiopian, American, or Malay, and take your child in your
arms, and it will remind you of this, since they are all so
much alike.

Now the child crawls towards the peach tree. Those two
hands, that may belong to its brother, set the child on its feet
by the side of the tree, as it were measuring their heights,
which are found to be the same. Yellow and brown chickens
appear on the grass, and run under the low mallows and
smart-weed. A sheet of water is seen in the distance, spotted
with green islands. Forest trees burst forth in the rim of
the picture — butternuts, beeches, maples, pines. A sober-faced
boy, seven or eight years old, to whom the two hands
are seen to belong, sits down, and with a fife pipes to the
child, who manifests strong joy at the sound. A man in a
three-cornered hat and wig, with nankeen small-clothes, and
paste buckles, takes the child in his arms. Where is the
child? A log cabin appears; a woman in a blue striped
long-short and yellow skirt, comes to the door. An Anglo-Saxon
voice is heard. If you were to look into the cabin or
house, you would discover a loom and spinning-wheels, and
behind it, a larger boy making shingles, and somewhere
about a jolly-faced man drinking rum. The woman, addressing
the first boy as Chilion, tells him to bring the child
into the house.

This child we will inform you is Margaret, of whom we
have many things to say, and hope to reveal more perfectly to
you. She is in the town of Livingston, in that section of the
United States of America known as New England. And
yet, so far as this book is concerned, she is for you all as
much as if she were your own child, and if you cared anything
about her when you did not know her, we desire that your
regards may not abate, when you do know her, even if she
be not your own child; and we dedicate this memoir of her
to All who are interested in her, and care to read about her.
In the meantime, if you are willing, we will lose sight of her
for seven or eight years, and present her in a more tangible
form, as she appeared at the end of that period.

Returning, they came to the greensward in front of the
house, where was a peach tree.

“I remeber,” said her brother, “when you and that
were of the same size, now it shades you. It is just as old
as you are. How full of fruit it is.”

“Beautiful peaches they are too,” said Margaret, “when
they are ripe. How did it grow?”

“I put a peach-stone in the ground one winter,” replied
her brother, “and it sprouted in the spring.”

“I was an acorn once,” rejoined she, “so Obed says, and
why did'nt I grow up an oak-tree?”

A dog bounding towards them interrupted the conversation.
This animal had enormous proportions, and looked
like a cross of wolf and mastiff; his color was a brindled
black, his head was like the ideas we have of Cerberus, his
legs were thick and strong, and he was called Bull. Following
the dog, approached the jolly-faced father of Margaret
from the barn, where he had been swingling flax; his hat,
face, and clothes were covered and strung with tow and
whitish down, but you could see him laugh through the veil;
and the glow of his red face would make you laugh. He
caught Margaret and set her on the dog, who galloped away
with his load. They encountered her older brother coming
in from the woods, where he had been burning a piece; his
frock crusted with ashes, his face smirched with coals. He
spoke tartly to Margaret, and contrived to trip the dog as he
ran by, and throw his sister to the ground.

“Oh, don't do so,” said she.

“Let Bull alone,” he replied, speaking in a blubbering
washy manner, which we cannot imitate. “You'll spile him;
would you make a goslin of him? Here's your sticks right
in the track;” saying which he scattered with his foot a little
paling she had constructed about a dandelion. She must
needs cry; the dog went to her, looked in her eyes, lapped
her tears, and she put her arms about his neck. Her brother,
who seemed to be a kind of major domo in the family,
whistled the dog away, and ordered his sister into the house
to help her mother. Her father and older brother wore
checked shirts, and a sort of brown tow trowsers known at
the time — these things happened some years ago — as skilts;
they were short, reaching just below the knee, and very large,
being a full half yard broad at the bottom; supported by no
braces or gallows, and resting on the hips. Neither wore any
coat, vest, or neckcloth. Her father had on what was once a

“I can't stop to hear you now,” replied her mother. “Run
and do what I have told you.”

When Margaret had finished the several chores, she went
to the Pond. She was barefoot and barearmed. She wore a
brown linen gown or tunic, open in front, a crimson skirt, a
blue checked apron, and on her head was a green rush hat.
By a narrow foot-path, winding through shrubbery and
brambles, and defiling along the foot of a steep hill that rose
near the house, she came to the margin of the water. Chilion,
her brother, who was at work with a piece of glass, smoothing
a snow-white bass-wood paddle, for a little bark canoe he had
made her, saw Margaret approach with evident pleasure, yet
received her in the quietest possible manner, as she leaped
and laughed towards him. He asked her if she remembered
the names of the flowers, and while he was finishing the
paddle, she went along the shore to gather them. The Pond
covered several hundreds of acres, its greatest diameter measured
about a mile and a half; its outline was irregular, here
divided by sharp rocks, there retreating into shaded coves;
and on its face appeared three or four small islands, bearing
trees and low bushes. Its banks, if not really steep, had a
bluff and precipitous aspect from the tall forest that girdled
it about. The region was evidently primitive, and the child,
as she went along, trod on round smooth pebbles of white
and rose quartz, dark hornblende, greenstone, and an occasional
fragment of trap, the results of the diluvial ocean, if
any body can tell when or what that was. In piles, among
the stones, lay quivering and ever accumulating masses of
fleece-like, and fox-colored foam; there were also the empty
shells of various kinds of mollusks. She clomb over the
white peeled trunks of bemlock trees, that had fallen into the
water, or drifted to the shore; she trod through beds of fine
silver-grey sand, and in the shallow edge of the Pond, she
waded on a hard even bottom of the same, which the action
of the waves had beaten into a smooth shining floor. She
discovered flowers which her brother told her were horehound,
skull-caps, and indian tobacco; she picked small
green apples that disease had formed on the leaves of the
willows; and beautiful velvety crimson berries from the black
alder.

When all was ready, she got into her canoe, while her
brother led the way in a boat of his own. With due instructions
in the management of the paddle, she succeeded tolerably
well. Chilion had often taken her on the water, and she

was not much afraid. It was commonly reported that the
Pond had no bottom, and an indefinable awe possessed the
minds of people regarding it; but this Margaret was too
young to feel; she took manifest delight in skimming across
the top of that deep dark mystery. She toppled somewhat,
her canoe shook and titled, but on it went; there was a thin
wake, a slight rustle of the water; her brother kept near her,
and she enjoyed the fearful pastime. Reaching the opposite
shore, Chilion drew up his boat, and went to a rock, where
he set himself to catch fish with a long pole. Margaret
played awhile with her canoe, and turned into a recess where
the trees and rocks darkened the water, the surface of which
lay calm and clear. The coolness of the spot was inviting,
and birds were merry-making in the underwood, and deep in
the water she saw the blue sky and the white clouds. “That
looks like her,” she said, calling to mind her dream. She
urged her canoe up a flat rock on the shore, where she took
off her hat and apron; and, simply dressed as she was, the
process of disrobing being speedily done, she waded into the
water. She said, “I will go down to the bottom, I will tread
on the clouds;” she sunk to her neck, she plunged her head
under; she could discover nothing but the rocky or smooth
sandy bed of the Pond. Was she disappointed? A sand-piper
glided weet weeting along the shore; she ran after it,
but could not catch it; she sat down and sozzled her feet in
the foam; she saw a blue-jay washing itself, ducking its crest,
and hustling the water with its wings, and she did the same.
She got running mosses, twin-flower vines, and mountain
laurel blossoms, and wound them about her neck and waist,
and pushing off in her canoe, looked into the water as a
mirror. Her dark clear hazle eyes, her fair white skin, the
leaves and flowers, made a pretty vision. She smiled and
was smiled on in turn; she held out her hand, which was
reciprocated by the fair spirit below; she called her own
name, the rocks and woods answered; she looked about her,
but saw nothing. Had she fears or hopes? It may have
been only childish sport. “I will jump to that girl,” she
said, “I will tumble the clouds.” She sprang from her
canoe, and dropped quietly, softly on the bottom; she had
driven her companion away, and as she came up, her garlands
broke and floated off in the ripples. Wiping herself on a
coarse towel her mother wove for her, she dressed, and went
back to her brother. A horn rang through the woods.
“Dinner is ready,” he said, “we must go.”

2. CHAPTER II.

The child Margaret sits in the door of her house, on a low
stool, with a small wheel, winding spools, in our vernacular,
“quilling,” for her mother, who, in a room near by, is
mounted in a loom, weaving and smoking, the fumes of her
pipe mingling with the whizz of the shuttle, the jarring of
the lathe, and the clattering of treadles. From a windle the
thread is conducted to the quills, and buzz, buzz goes
Margaret's wheel, while a grey squirrel, squatted on her
shoulder, inspects the operation with a most profound gravity.

“Look up the chimney, child,” says the mother, “and see
what time it is.”

“I don't know how,” replies Margaret.

“I suppose we must get the Master to learn you your
a b c's in this matter,” rejoined the mother. “When the sun
gets in one inch, it is ten o'clock, when it reaches the stone
that bouges out there, it is dinner time. How many quills
have you done?”

“The basket is full, and the box besides. Chilion said I
might go and sail with him.”

“We have a great deal to do. Miss Gisborne's flannel is
promised the last of the week, and it must be drawn in to-morrow.
I want you to clean the skans; there is a bunch of
lucks down cellar, bring them up; get some plantain and
dandelion on the smooth for greens; you must pick over
some beans; put some kindlers under the pot; then you may
go.”

“I had a dream last night.”

“You are always dreaming. I am afraid you will come to
a bad end.”

“It was a pretty dream.”

“I can't help your dreams; here pick up this.”

The woman had broken a thread in the chain, and while
Margaret helped her out of the trouble, she looked into her
mother's face, and, as if following out her thoughts, said,
“A woman came near to me, she dropped tears upon me, she
stood in the clouds.”

three-cornered hat, but the corners were now reduced to loose
ragged flaps; and he wore in addition a leather apron. Her
brother had a cap made of wood-chuck skin, steeple-shaped,
from which the hair was pretty well rubbed off. They went
to the cistern on the back side of the house, washed and
rinsed themselves for dinner. The father discovered a gamesome
expression of face, shining scirrous skin, and plump
ruby head; his eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks whealed and
puffed, and through his red lips his laughter exposed a suite
of fair white teeth; his head was nearly bald, and the crown
showed smooth and glairy; and under the thin flossy wreath
of hair, that invested the lower part of his head, you could
not fail to see that one of his ears was gone. Her brother
had a more catonian look, and thick locks of coarse black
hair kept well with his dark russet, sunburnt face, and his
lips, if by nothing else, were swollen with large quids of
tobacco.

The dinner-table, appropriate to the place in which it was
set, consisted of boards laid on a movable cross-frame without
a cloth. A large wooden dish or trencher, contained, flummery-like,
in one mass, the entire substance of the meal —
pork, potatoes, greens, beans. There were no suits of knives
and forks, and the family helped themselves on wooden plates,
with cuttoes. A large silver tankard curiously embossed,
and bearing some armorial signets, formed an exception to
the general aspect of things, and looked quite baronially down
on its serf-like companions. This filled with cider constituted
their drink. They were seated on blocks of wood and rag-bottom
chairs. Margaret occupied a corner of the table near
her younger brother Chilion, and had a cherry plate with
a wolf's bone knife and fork he made for her. They all ate
heartily and enjoyed their meal. After dinner, Chilion went
with his gun into the woods, the father and elder brother
returned to their respective employments, her mother resumed
her smoking and weaving, and Margaret had a new stint at
quilling.

3. CHAPTER III.

The house where Margaret lived, of a type common in the
early history of New England, and still seen in the regions of
the West, was constructed of round logs sealed with mud and
clay; the roof was a thatch composed of white-birch twigs,
sweet-flag and straw wattled together, and overlaid with a
slight battening of boards; from the ridge sprang a low stack
of stones indicating the chimney-top. Glass-windows there
were none, and in place thereof swung wooden shutters fastened
on the inside by strings. The house was divided by
the chimney into two principal apartments, one being the
kitchen or commons, the other a work-shop. In the former,
were prominently a turn-up bed used by the heads of the
family, and a fireplace; this last, built of slabs of rough
granite, was colossal in height, width, and depth; for dogs or
andirons were splinters of stone. A handle of wood thrust
into the socket of a broken spade supplied the place of a
shovel. The room was neither boarded nor plastered; a
varnish of smoke from tobacco pipes and pine-knots possibly
answering in stead; and the naked stones of the chimney
were blackened and polished by occasional effusions of steam
and smoke from the fire. The room also contained the
table-board, block, and rag-bottom chairs, and little stool for
Margaret before mentioned. In one corner stood a broom
made of hemlock twigs. On pegs driven into the logs, hung
sundry articles of wearing apparel; sustained by crotched
sticks nailed to the sleepers above, were a rifle and one or two
muskets; a swing shelf was loaded with shot-pouches, bullet-moulds,
powder-horns, fishing tackle, &c.; on the projecting
stones of the chimney were sundry culinary articles, and conspicuously
a one-gallon wooden rum-keg, and the silver
tankard, as likewise pipes and tobacco. In the room, which
we should say was quite capacious, hung two cages, one for a
Robin, the other with a revolving apartment for a grey squirrel,
called Dick. You would not also forget to notice a violin
in a green baize bag, suspended on the walls, which belonged
to Chilion, and was an important household article. On a

post, near the chimney, were fastened some leaves of a book,
which in examining you would find taken from the Bible,
and consisting chiefly of statistical portions of the Old Testament.
There were two windows or wall-openings in the
kitchen, on the south and west sides. The floor of the room
was warped in every direction, slivered and gaping at the
joints; and, being made of knotty boards, the softer portions
of which were worn down, these knots stood in ridges and
hillocks all over the apartment. The workshop, of smaller
dimensions, was similar, in its general outline, to the kitchen;
it contained a loom, a kit where the father of Margaret sometimes
made shoes, a common reel, hand reel, a pair of swifts,
blades, or windle, a large, small, and quilling wheel, a dye
tub, while yarn of all colors hung on the walls. The garret
was divided by the chimney in a manner similar to the rooms
below; on one side Margaret slept, and her brothers on the
other; her bed consisted simply of a mattrass of beech leaves
spread on the floor, with tow and wool coverlids, and coarse
linen sheets. At each end of the garret was a window, like
those in the kitchen. The ascent to this upper story was
by a ladder. From the back side of the kitchen, a door opened
into the shed, a rough frame of slabs and poles. Here
were a draw-shave, a cross-cut saw, an axe, beetle and wedges,
an ox-yoke, hog and geese yokes, barking irons, a scythe, rakes,
a brush-bill, fox-traps, frows, sap-buckets, a leach-tub, a small
pile of wood and bark; here also hens roosted. At one corner
of the shed was a half-barrel cistern, into which the water
was brought by bark troughs from the hill near by, forming an
ever flowing, ever musical, cool bright stream, passing off in
a runnel, shaded by weeds and grasses. On all sides of the
house, at some seasons of the year, might be seen the skins of
various animals drying; the flesh side out, and fastened at the
extremities; silver-grey and red foxes, wood-chucks, squirrels,
martins, minks, musquashes, weazles, raccoons, and sometimes
even bears and wolves; the many-colored tails of which,
pendant, had an ornamental appearance. The house was on
the west side of the road, and fronted the south. Opposite
the house to the south, across what might have been a yard,
saving that there were no fences, was a butternut tree, — the
Butternut par excellence—having great extension of limb, and
beautiful drooping willow-like foliage; near this was the Peach
tree which has been noticed. Beyond lay the eastern extremity
of the Pond. On the north was a small garden enclosed by a
rude brush hedge. On the east side of the road was a log-barn,
covered with thatch, and supported in part by the trunks
of two trees.

The name of the family whose residence we have explored
was Hart, and it consisted essentially of six members; Mr.
and Mrs. Hart, their three sons, Nimrod, Hash and Chilion,
and Margaret. We should remark that the heads of this
house were never or rarely known by their proper names.
Mr. Hart at some period had received the soubriquet of Head
and Pluck, by the latter part of which he was generally designated;
his wife was more commonly known as Brown Moll.
Mr. Hart had also a fancy for giving his children scriptural
names; his first-born he called Nimrod; his second, Maharshalalhashbaz,
abbreviated into Hash; and for his next son he
chose that of Chilion. It must not be thought he had any
reverence for the Bible; his conduct would belie any such
supposition. He may have been superstitious; if it were so,
that certainly was the extent of his devotion. The subject of
this Memoir was sometimes called after her mother, Mary or
Molly, and from regard to one long since deceased she had
received the name of Margaret. Her father and mother were
fond of contradicting each other, especially in matters of small
moment, and while the latter called her Margaret or Peggy,
the former was wont to address her as Molly. Her brothers
gave her, one, one name, another, another.

Nimrod, the oldest son, was absent from home most of the
year; how employed we shall have occasion hereafter to
notice. Hash worked the farm, if farm it might be called,
burnt coal in the fall, made sugar in the spring, drank, smoked,
and teazed Margaret the rest of the time. Chilion fished,
hunted, laid traps for foxes, drowned out woodchucks, &c.;
he was also the artizan of the family, and with such instruments
as he could command, constructed sap-buckets and
spouts, chairs, a cart, cages, hencoops, sleds, yokes, traps,
trellises, &c. He was very fond of music, and played on the
violin and fife; in this also he instructed Margaret, whom he
found a ready pupil; taught her the language of music, sang
songs with her; he also told her the common names of many
birds and flowers. He was somewhat diffident, reserved, or
whatever it might be; and while he had manifestly a deep
affection for his sister he never expressed himself very freely
to her. Mr. Hart, or Pluck, if we give him the name by
which he was universally recognized, helped Hash on the
farm, broke flax, made shoes, a trade he prosecuted in an
itinerating manner from house to house, “whipping the cat,”

as it was termed, and drank excessively. Mrs. Hart, or Brown
Moll, carded, spun, colored and wove, for herself and more
for others, nipped and beaked her husband, drank and smoked.
At the present time she was about forty-five or fifty; she had
seen care and trouble, and seemed almost broken down alike
by her habits and her misfortunes. She was wrinkled, faded
and grey; her complexion was sallow, dark and dry; her
expression, if it were not positively stern, was far from being
amiable; she was a patient weaver, impatient with everything
else. Her dress was a blue-striped linen short-gown, wrapper,
or long-short, a coarse yellow petticoat and checked apron;
short grizzly hairs bristled in all directions over her head. If
in this family you could detect some trace of refinement, it
would not be easy to discriminate its origin or to say how far
removed it might be from unmixed vulgarity.

The term Pond, applied to the spot where this family dwelt,
comprised not only the sheet of water therein situated but also
the entire neighborhood. In the records of the town the
place was denominated the West District. Sometimes it was
called the Head, or Indian's Head, from a hill thereon to
which we shall presently refer, and the inhabitants were called
Indians from this circumstance. An almost unbroken forest
bounded the vision and skirted the abode of this family. They
had only one neighbor, a widow lady, who resided at the north
about half a mile. A road extending across the place from
north to south terminated in the latter direction, about the
same distance below Mr. Hart's, at a hamlet known as No. 4.
In the other course, directly or divergingly, this road led to
sections called Snakehill, Five-mile-lot, and the Ledge. On
the south-west was a plantation that had been christened
Breakneck. The village of Livingston, or Settlement, as it
was sometimes termed, lay to the east about two miles in a
straight line. If a stranger should approach the Pond from
the village he would receive the impression that it was singularly
situated up among high hills, or even on a mountain,
since his route would be one of continual and perhaps tedious
ascent. But those who abode there had no idea their locality
was more raised than that of the rest of the world, so sensibly
are our notions of height and depression affected by residence.
From the village you could descry the top of the Head, like a
tower upon a mountain, elevated far into the heavens. To
this hill, it being a striking characteristic of the Pond, we ask
attention. Directly to the west of Mr. Hart's house and not
more than six rods distant its ascent commenced. It rose

with an abrupt acclivity to the height of nearly one hundred
feet. Its surface was ragged and rocky, and interspersed
with various kinds of shrubs. From the edge of the water its
south front sprang straight and sheer like a castle-wall. The
top was flat and nearly bare of vegetation save the dead and
barkless trunk of a hemlock, which, solitary and alone, shot
up therefrom, and was sometimes called the Indian's Feather.
This hill derived its specific name, Indian's Head, from a rude
resemblance to a man's face that could be traced on the south
front. This particular eminence was not, however, a detached
pinnacle; it seemed rather to form the abrupt and crowned
terminus of a mountainous range that swept far to the north
and ultimately merged in those eternal hills that in-wall every
horizon. Behind the hill, at the northern extremity of the
Pond proper, where its waters were gathered to a head by a
dam, and a saw-mill had been erected, was the Outlet; which
became the source of a stream, that, proceeding circuitously to
No. 4, and turning towards the village where it was again
employed for milling purposes, had been denominated Mill
Brook.

Mr. Hart had cleared a few acres in the vicinity of his
house, for corn, potatoes and flax, and burnt over more for
grain. He enjoyed also the liberty of brooks, rivulets and
swamps, whence he gathered grass, brakes and whatever he
could find to store his barn. Beyond the barn was a lot of
five or six acres, known as the Mowing or Chesnuts. It was
cleared, and partially cultivated with clover and herdsgrass.
This consisted originally of a grove of chesnut trees, which
not being felled, but killed by girdling, had become entirely
divested of bark even to the tips of the limbs, and now stood,
in number two or three score, in height fifty or seventy-five
feet, denuded, blanched, a resort for crows, where wood-peckers
hammered and blue-linnets sung. The otherwise
sombre aspect of this lot was agreeably relieved, though we
cannot say its solid advantages were enhanced, by a variety of
shrubs, small green chesnuts starting from the roots of the
old ones, white birches, choke cherries and others.

When Margaret had done her task, she was at liberty to
repair the effect of Hash's spleen and attend to her other own
little affairs. Obed Wright, the son and only child of their
only neighbor, was at hand to assist her. She had beans,
hops and virgin's bower trained up the side of the house, and
even shading her chamber window. To prevent the ravages
of hogs and geese, Chilion had fenced in a little spot for her

near the house. Obed brought her new flowers from the
woods and instructed her how to plant them. He was thirteen
or fifteen years of age, homely but clever, as we say, a
tall knuckle-jointed, shad-faced youth; his hair was red, his
cheeks freckled; his hands and feet were immense, his arms
long and stout. He suffered from near-sightedness. He was
dressed like his neighbors, in a shirt and skilts, excepting that
his collar and waist-bands were fastened by silver buttons;
and he wore a cocked hat. It seemed to please him to help
Margaret, and he stayed till almost sunset, when Hash came
in from his work. Hash hated or spited Obed partly on Margaret's
account, partly because of misunderstandings with his
mother, and partly from the perverseness of his own nature;
and he annoyed him with the dog, Bull, who always growled
and glared when he saw the boy. Margaret stood between
him and the dog and saved him from serious harm. In the
present instance, she held Bull by the neck, till Obed had
time to run round the corner of the house and make his
escape.

Margaret seated herself on the door-step to eat her supper,
consisting of toasted brown bread and watered cider, served in
a curiously wrought cherry-bowl and spoon. The family were
taking their meal of bread, potatoes and cold pork in the
kitchen. The sun had gone down. The whippoorwill came
and sat on the Butternut, and sang his evening note, always
plaintive, always welcome. The night-hawk dashed and hissed
through the woods and the air on long, slim, quivering wings.
A solitary robin chanted sweetly a long time from the hill.
Myriads of insects swarmed and murmured over her head.
Crickets chirped in the grass and under the decaying sills of
the house. She heard the voice of the waterfall at the Outlet,
and the croaking of a thousand frogs on the Pond. She saw
the stars come out, Lyra, the Northern Crown, the Serpent.
She looked into the heavens, she opened her ears to the dim
evening melodies of the universe; yet as a child She was interrupted
by the sharp voice of her mother, “Go to your roost,
Peggy!”

“Yes, Molly dear,” said her father, very softly, “Dick and
Robin are asleep; see who will be up first, you or the silver
rooster; who will open your eyes first, you or the dandelion?”

“Kiss me, Margery,” said Chilion, as she went through the
room,—she climbed into her chamber, she sank on her pallet,
she closed her eyes, she fell into dreams of beauty and heaven,

of other forms than those daily about her, of sweeter voices
than either father or mother.

We conclude this chapter by remarking, that the scenes
and events of this Memoir belong to what may be termed the
mediæval or transition period of New England history, that
lying between the close of the war of our Revolution, and the
commencement of the present century.

4. CHAPTER IV.
THE WIDOW WRIGHT.

Margaret was up early in the morning, before the sun.
She washed at the cistern and wiped herself on a coarse crash
towel, rough, but invigorating, beautifying and healthy. She
did her few chores, and, as she had promised, started for the
Widow Wright's. Hash was getting ready his team, a yoke
of starveling steers, in a tumbril-cart, the axle fast in the
wheels, which were cut from a solid block of wood. He set
her in the cart, he desired to show his skill in driving, perhaps
he wished to tease her on the way. “Haw! Buck, hish!
Bright, gee up!”; vigorously plied he his whip of wood-chuck
skin on a walnut stock. The cart reeled and rattled. It
jolted over stones, canted on knolls, sidled into gutters. The
way was rough, broken, unfinished. Margaret held fast by
the stakes. “Good to settle your breakfast, Peggy. Going to
see Obed, hey? and the widder? ask her if she can cure the
yallers in Bright.” Margaret was victimized and amused by
her brother. She half cried, half laughed. Her brother came
at last to the lot he was engaged in clearing. He lifted Margaret
from the cart. She went on, and Bull followed her.
Hash called the dog back, and in great wrath gave him a blow
with his whip. The animal leaped and skulked away, and
joined again with Margaret, who patted his head, and he ran
along by her side. She entered woods; the path was narrow,
grass-grown. She picked flowers, and followed the cow-tracks
through the thickets of sweet fern almost as high as
her head. She descended a pitch in the road to a brook,

which was crossed by a bridge of poles. The dog stopped to
drink, she to look into the water. Minnows and pinheads
were flashing and skirting through the clear, bright stream.
There were hair-worms fabled to spring from horse-hair, in
black lines writhing on the surface; caddice-worms clothed
with shells and leaves, crawling on the bottom; and boat-flies
swimming on their backs. The water made music with the
stones. She waded in, and sported bare-feet on the smooth,
shiny round pebbles. She looked under the bridge, and that
shaded spot had a mystery to the child's mind, such perhaps
as is more remembered in future years, than commented on at
the time. She pursued a trout, that had shown its black eye
and golden spotted back and vanished. She could not find it.
On she went towards Mrs. Wright's.

This lady had lost her husband a few years before. He left
her in possession of a small farm, and a larger reversion in the
medicinal riches of the whole district. It had been a part of
Dr. Wright's occupation to gather and prepare herbs for the
sick. His materia medica was large, various and productive.
He learnt as he could the nature of diseases, and was sometimes
called to prescribe as well as to sell his drugs. When
he died, his wife came in full possession of his secrets and his
practice. She gathered plants from all the woods, sands and
swamps. She knew the quality of every root, stalk, leaf,
flower and berry. Her son Obed she was instructing to be
her servitor and aid, as well as the successor of his father.
The lady's habits were careful, saving, thriving. She cultivated,
in addition, a few acres of land. Her house was neat
and comfortable. It was a small frame building, clap-boarded
on the sides and roof. It had a warm, sunny position, on a
southern slope, with rocks and woods behind. It stood in the
centre of a large yard, surrounded on all sides by a stump-fence,
those of hemlock-trees, with their large, spreading, tangled
roots, like the feet of giants, turned towards the street, making
an impenetrable and very durable barrier. You entered the
yard by a stile formed of the branches of these roots. Within
the enclosure were beds of cultivated herbs, caraway, rue,
savory, thyme, tansy, parsley and other aromatic and medicinal
plants. Obed was at work among the beds. Margaret climbed
the stile. Bull leaped up after her. When Obed saw Margaret
his dull face gave a recognition of joy which was succeeded
by an expression of dismay.

“Bull won't hurt you, Obed. He's a good dog,” said Margaret.
“Put your hand on his head.”

“He's a great dog,” said Obed. “He's got dreadful big
teeth. Hash's allers makin' him bite me.”

The dog went and laid down in the sun under the eaves of
the house. Margaret helped Obed pull the weeds from his
beds, while with a hoe he loosened and aired the roots of the
plants. The atmosphere was charged with the perfume of the
flowers. Margaret shook the thyme-bed, and a shadowy
motion, like the waving of a cloud, floated over it. Bees, flies,
beetles, butterflies, were bustling upon it, diving into every
flower, and searching every cup.

“What d'ye think of the yarbs, Moll?” said the widow,
who stood in the door of her house.

“They look pretty,” replied Margaret.

“Not looks, child, 'tis use. We 'll get a hundred bunches,
this year. The saffron we 'll cut to-morrow, and the balm 'll
be ready soon.”

“You are not going to cut all these pretty flowers, are
you?”

“Yes. Them's for medicine. Wait till the flowers is
gone, they wouldn't be worth more'n your toad-flax and bean
vines. They wouldn't fetch a bungtown copper. See here,
that's sage, good for tea. That's goat's rue, good for women
as has little babies. Guess you was a little baby once. I've
known ye ever sen ye warn't more'n so high.”

“Was I so little?” asked Margaret.

“Yes, and pimpin enough. An I fed yer marm with rue,
and comfrey-root, or ye never'd come teu this. Ye was thin
and poor as a late chicken. Now sow some sand.”

Margaret took the dish, and began to sprinkle the floor.

“Well done,” said the woman. “Ye'll make a smart gal.
Here's some honey and bread.”

The Widow Wright was dressed in the costume of the times,
a white linen short-gown, checked apron, black petticoat.
She wore on her head a large brown turban. Her eye was
black and piercing, and she possessed a singular power of
laughter which was employed to express every variety of
emotion, whether pleasure or pain, anger or complacence.

There was a bee-hive in front of the house, a close, well
built shed, open to the south. The little workers were streaming
through the air like a shower, dropping at the mouth of
the hive, their legs laden and yellow with the dust of flowers.
Margaret stood in front of the range. The bees shot by her
from side to side, multitudes wheeled round her, some lit on
her hat, some crawled over her neck. She watched the confusion;

she listened to the hum within the hive. Not one
offered her harm; she was not stung.

“A marvellous wonderful gal,” uttered the widow to herself,
as she surveyed the scene from the door. “Pity 'tis she's
Brown Moll's child.”

Margaret had an errand at the place, to get some honey for
a bee-hunt Chilion had proposed for the next day, and stated
her desire to the widow. There was an old feud between the
two families, not affecting intercourse and acquaintance, so
much as matters of interest. The widow received the message
rather coldly, and beginning in unwillingness, ended with
invective.

“He's a lazy, good for nothin feller, Chil is. He's no
better than a peaking mud-sucker. He lives on us all here
like house-leek. He's no more use than yer prigged up creepers.
He is worse than the witches, vervain nor dill won't
keep him away. I tell ye, Chil shan't have no honey.”

Margaret was abashed, silenced. She could understand
that her brother would feel disappointed; that he was not so
bad. Beyond this she did not discriminate

“Chilion is good,” she stammered out at last.

“Good! what's he good for?” rejoined the woman. “Does
he get any money? Can he find yarbs? He don't know the
difference between snake-root and lavender.”

“He's good to me,” said Margaret. This was an appeal
that struck the woman with some force. She seemed to
soften.

“Ye are a good child; ye help Obed.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, as if watching her cue, “I will
help Obed. I'll mind the beds when the birds are about.
I'll go into the woods and get plants. I'll keep Bull off from
him.”

“Bein ye'll help Obed, I'll give ye the honey. But don't
come agin.”

Margaret, taking the article in question on some green leaves,
went merrily home.

We cannot dismiss this chapter without remarking that the
Widow Wright revered the memory of her husband. It was
certainly of some use for her to do so, as his reputation had
been considerable in the line of his practice. The representation
of the deceased, which she herself bore, she designed
by degrees to transfer to her son. The silver buttons,
which shone on Obed, as well as other articles of dress
he occasionally wore, belonged to his late father. With all

her thrift and care, the lady liked our Margaret very well.
“She was so feat and spry, and knowing, and good-natered,”
she said, “she could be made of some use to somebody.”

5. CHAPTER V.

The next morning, Chilion and Margaret, joined by Obed,
started on a bee-hunt. Obed was to remain with them till
they should have been successful in this enterprise, then Margaret
agreed to help him gather such plants and roots, growing
wild in the woods, as could be of use to his mother. They
took with them the honey, an axe, leather-mittens for the
hands, and screens for the face, some brimstone and a tinder-box,
a basket, spade, &c., for their several purposes. They
entered the woods lying to the south of the Pond, an unlimited
range, extending in some directions many miles. The honey
was placed on a stump, and several bees, springing up as it
were from vacuity, lading themselves with it, darted off. Our
hunters pursued, watching the course of their flight, and were
conducted by the unconscious guides to their own abode.
This was a chesnut tree, hollow at the root and partially
decayed in the top. Not many strokes were requisite to bring
it crashing to the ground. It was a more difficult job to possess
themselves of the honey. The angry bees seemed to
spurt out from their nest like fire; their simultaneous start,
their mixed and deepened buzz, their thousand wings beating
as for life, made a noise not unlike a distant waterfall, or the
hidden roar of an abyss. Their persecutors speedily covered
their faces and hands and waited for the alarm to subside.
Margaret said she thought they would not hurt her, as those
at the widow's did not. It is said there are some persons
whom bees never sting. She kindled the brimstone each side
of the tree. The bees within, called out by a rap on the
trunk, and those without, flying and crawling about their nest,
fell dead in the smoke. Chilion cut about the cavity where
the comb was deposited. Margaret, looking in, and seeing

the beautiful well-constructed house of the bees, seemed struck
with remorse. She had eaten honey and honey-comb. She
had seen bees, but she never had associated the two together
in such a touching, domestic and artistical sense. She saw
the bees lying dead in heaps. She had killed them. She had
seen them aroused by a relentless hand from the repose and
security of their house, and sink in the blue flame. Some
were not quite dead, some lay on their backs, their feet convulsed
and arms quivering. Others were endeavoring to stretch
their wings. She could give back no life; she could set not
a muscle in motion; she could re-form not a filament of a
wing. They would visit her flowers no more; their hum
would blend never again with the sounds she loved to hear.
Whether the reflections of the child were just of this sort,
order and proportion, we are not told. The bees were dead
and she was sad. She had seen dead squirrels, raccoons,
partridges, pigeons. But they were brought in dead; she had
not killed them. What is the child's first sense of death?
She would have given all her little heart was worth, could she
render back that life she had so thoughtlessly taken, could she
see them again busy, blithe, happy about their house. Tears
ran down her cheeks, the unconscious expiation of Nature to
the Infinite Life. Chilion and Obed were apparently too much
occupied to notice her agitation, nor would she have dared to
speak to them of what she felt.

The tall, gawky form of Obed went before through the woods.
The lad's skilts, through which were thrust his lean dry shanks,
gave him a semblance to a peasant of Gascony on stilts. His
shovel hat dodged to and fro, bobbed up and down among the
branches. It was, as we might say, a new scene to Margaret.
She had never gone so far into the forest before. She was susceptible
in her feelings, and fresh as susceptible. The impression
of the bees somewhat abated, though its remembrance
could never be stifled. The woods,—where Adam and Eve enjoyed
their pastime and sought their repose; where the Amorites
and Assyrians learned to pray, and the Israelites to rebel; where
all ancient nations found materials for sacrifice and offering;
where Hertha, the Goddess of the Angles, had her lovely residence;
where the Druids “thought everything sent from
heaven that grew on the oak;” the religion and worship of
the old Germans, Italians, and Gauls; where Pan piped, the
Satyrs danced, the Fauns browsed, Sylvanus loved, Diana
hunted, and Feronia watched; whence Greek and Saracen,
Pagan and Christian derived architecture, order, grace, capitals,

groins, arches; whence came enchantment and power to
Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Scott, Cooper, Bryant,
Titian, Rosa, Poussin, Claude, Meyer, Allston; where
“the stately castle of the feudal lord reared its head, the
lonely anchorite sang his evening hymn, and the sound of the
convent bell was heard,” and the fox and stag-hunter pursued
their game; where Robin Hood and his merry men did their
exploits, and king Rufus was slain; the enlivenment and
decoration of the Feast of Tabernacles, May-day, Whitsuntide,
Christmas; the ward of dryads, the scene of fairy revels, and
Puck's pranks, the haunt of bul-beggars, witches, spirits,
urchins, elves, hags, dwarfs, giants, the spoorn, the puckle, the
man in the oak, will-o'-the-wisp; the opera-house of birds, the
shelter of beasts, the retreat of mosquitoes and flies; where
sugar was made, and coal burnt; where the report of the
rifle was heard, and the stroke of the axe resounded; the
home, manor, church, country, kingdom, hunting-ground and
burial place of the Indian; the woods, green, sweet-smelling,
imparadisaical, inspiring, suggestive, wild, musical, sombre,
superstitious, devotional, mystic, tranquillizing;—these were
about the child and over her.

That we must know in order to know, that we must feel in
order to feel, was a truth Margaret but little realized. She
was beginning to know and to feel. Could the Immortal
Spirit of the Woods have spoken to her? but she was not
prepared for it; she was too young; she only felt an exhilarating
sensation of variety, beauty, grandeur, awe. She leaped
over roots, she caught at branches above her head, she hid
herself in thickets, she chased the birds. Yet with all that
was new about her, and fitted to engross her vision, and supplant
her recent sorrowful impressions, there seemed a new
sense aroused, or active within her, an unconscious instinct,
a hidden prompting of duty; she trod with more care than
usual; a fly, or beetle, or snail, she turned aside for, or stepped
protectingly over; she would not jostle or tear a spider's
web—the wood-spider that strings his lines across from bush
to bush.

“It won't hurt ye,” said Obed. “It brings good weather.”

“I know that,” replied Margaret, “but I don't want to kill
it.”

Obed was homely and clever, as we have said, simple and
trusting. He never argued a point with Margaret; he was
glad to have her help him, and glad to help her. He held
back the low wiry branches of the hemlocks where she passed,

he assisted her over the round slippery trunk of a fallen tree,
he lifted her across the narrow deep stream of Mill Brook,
running in green spongy banks. He brandished his spade,
and said he would keep off the snakes; Margaret replied that
she was not afraid of them. They came to a sunny glade in
the woods, tufted with black and white moss, shaded by huckle-berry
shrubs, and sown with checker-berries, whose fruit hung
in round crimson drops, and little waxen flowers bloomed under
the dark shining leaves. Margaret sat down and ate the
sweet berries and their spicy leaves. The shadows of the
forest vibrated and flickered on the yellow leaf-strewed earth
and through the green underwood; the trunks of the trees shot
up, in straight, rough, tapering stems clear through the branches
into the sky.

The particular patch of woods where Margaret now sat was
of great age, and the trees were very large, and the effect on
her mind was like that of a child going into St. Peter's church
at Rome. But there were no bronze saints here to look down
on her; a red squirrel, as she came in sight, raised a loud
shrill chattering, a singular mixture of contempt, welcome and
alarm. She made some familiar demonstrations towards the
little fellow, and he, like a jilt, dropped a nut into her face.
She saw a brown cat-headed owl asleep, muffled in his dark
feathers and darker dreams, and called Obed's attention to it.

“That's an owl,” cried the startled lad; “it's a bad sign;
Marm says it will hurt ye.”

“No,” replied Margaret; “I've seen them on the Butternut
a good many times.” Knowing that as Obed never reasoned
so he could never be persuaded, Margaret joined him in leaving
the ominous vicinage.

“That's saxifax,” said her companion, striking his spade
into the roots of a well-known shrub. “It's good teu chaw;
the Settlers eats it—take it down, and they'll give ye ribbons
and beads for it.” Wisping the top together, and
bending it over, he bade Margaret hold on, while he proceeded
with the digging. The light black mould was removed,
and the reddish damp roots disclosed. “Taste on't,”
he said, “it's as good as nutcakes.” He gave her a fibre—
fleshy it was, moist, soft and of agreeable flavor, and rubbing
the earth from the mass, cut it into short bits and
laid it in his basket. Margaret loitered, wandered, attracted
by the flowers she stopped to pick. “Marm won't let us,”
said Obed, “them ant yarbs, they won't doctor, the Settlers
won't give anything for them.” Margaret, whether convinced

or not, yielded, and ran on before, apparently the most anxious
to discover the plants desired.

“That's um!” cried Obed.

Margaret was bounding through a wet bog, springing from
one tussock of sedge to another. She, too, had espied it, and
in sight of its beauty and novelty forgot everything else. It
was a wake-robin, commonly known as dragon-root, devil's
ear, or Indian turnip. Margaret broke off the flower, which
she would have carried to her nose.

“Don't ye taste on't!” exclaimed Obed, “it's orful burnin;
put it in the basket.” So the plant, flower and all, was deposited
with the rest of their collection.

It was time to go home. They had reached the edge of the
woods whence they started.

“That's him!” cried Margaret.

“It's the Master!” echoed Obed, evidently a little flustered.

There appeared before them a man, the shadow of whom
they had seen moving among the leaves, about fifty or sixty
years of age, and dressed in the full style of the times, or we
should say of his own time, which dated perhaps a little earlier
than that of Margaret. He wore a three-cornered hat, with a
very broad brim tied with a black ribbon over the top. His
coat, of drab kerseymere, descended in long, broad, square
skirts, quite to the calves of his legs. It had no buttons in
front, but in lieu thereof, slashes, like long button holes, and
laced with silk embroidery. He had on nankeen small-clothes,
white ribbed silk stockings, paste knee and shoe buckles, and
white silk knee-bands. His waistcoat, or vest, was of yellow
embossed silk, with long skirts or lappels, rounded and open
at the bottom, and bordered with white silk fringe. The
sleeves and skirts of his coat were garnished with rows of silver
buttons. He wore ruffle cuffs that turned back over his wrists
and reached almost to his elbows; on his neck was a snow-white
linen plaited stock, fastened behind with a large paste
buckle, that glistened above the low collar of his coat. Under
his hat appeared his grey wig, falling in rolls over his shoulders,
and gathered behind with a black ribbon. From his side
depended a large gold watch-seal and key, on a long gold chain.
He had on a pair of tortoise-shell bridge spectacles. A golden-headed
cane was thrust under his arm. This was Mr. Bartholomew
Elliman, the Schoolmaster, or the Master, as he
was called. He was tall in person, had an aquiline nose, and
a thin face.

“Ha, my Hamadryad!” said he, addressing Margaret, salutem

et pacem, in other words, how do you do, my girl of the
woods?”

“Pretty well, thankee,” replied Margaret.

“I thank you, Sir,” said he, amending her style of expression.

“I forgot,” she added, “pretty well, I thank you, Sir.”

He nodded to Obed, who stood aloof in awkward firmness;
besides there were signs of uneasiness or displeasure on the
faces of both.

“How came the Pond Lily in the woods?” said he.

“I came out after herbs,” replied Margaret, “and I have
some flowers too,” added she, taking off her hat.

“Flowers, have you? You are a noble specimen of foliacious
amfractuosity—A hortus siccus of your hat! Would I
could send you and your flowers across the waters to my friend,
Mr. Knight, the great botanist, nox semperlucens.”

“He shan't hurt Molly,” interrupted Obed. “He'll drown
her, he'll pull her teu pieces. Marm says he spiles everything.
He wants to pitch Molly into the Pond.”

“Don't be alarmed, my glandulous champion, no harm shall
come to this fair flower.”

“He'll git um all, Molly; don't ye let him have any.”

“I tell you,” responded the Master, “Margaret is a flower;
she is my flower.”

“No, she an't a flower,” rejoined Obed, “she's Pluck's
Molly.”

Obed became quite excited, and spake with more than his
customary freedom. It needs perhaps to be explained, that
Master Elliman and the Widow Wright were somewhat at
odds. He was in pursuit of science, she of gain. They took
a common track, herbs and flowers; their ends essentially
diverged. They frequently encountered, but they could never
agree. Margaret herself became another point of issue between
them, and the Widow was jealous of the child's attachment
to the Master. The impression that Obed derived on
the whole was, that he was an evil disposed person, and one
whose presence boded no good to Margaret.

The Master proceeded in the examination of the flowers
Margaret gave him.

“I have another one,” said she, and thrusting her hand
into Obed's basket, drew out the wake-robin.

“An Arum!” said the Master, “the very thing I have been
written to upon.”

“Tan't yourn, Molly; it's Marm's,” said Obed, seizing the
flower and replacing it in the basket.

Here was, indeed, a mistake. Margaret had unreflectingly
given the flower to Obed to carry, at the same time thinking
it was her own property. She did not know the value attached
to it by Obed, whose mother had enjoined him to get one if
possible, for some particular purpose of her own. At last she
said,

“I can get more, I know where they grow.”

“Can you, can you?” said the Master, “their habitat is
sphagnous places, what you call swamps. It is impossible for
me to reach them—stultiloquent yarb-monger! ” he broke
out, speaking of or to Obed; “son of an helminthic android!
you ought to be capistrated.”

“That's hocuspocus, Molly,” said the lad; “Marm says 'tis.
He'll hurt ye, he'll hurt ye.”

“I will get some for both of you,” said Margaret; “I will go
to-morrow.”

“You don't know the way,” rejoined Obed, “snakes 'll bite
ye; there's painters in the woods, and wild-cats, and owls.”

“I'll take Bull with me,” answered Margaret.

This allusion to the dog gave Obed more trouble. He feared
his mother, who he thought would not wish the Master should
have the flower; he dreaded the dog, he disliked the Master, he
loved Margaret; he was in a quandary. He stammered, he
tried to laugh, he put his hand on Margaret's head, he yerked
up his trowsers, he looked into his basket. He leaned against
a tree, and dropped his face upon his arm. Margaret ran to
him, she took hold of his hand. “Don't cry Obed,” she said;
“poor Obed, don't cry.”

The Master, seeing the extremity of affairs, told Margaret
not to care, that he presumed she would be able to get the
flower for him, and took her hand to lead her away. She
clung to Obed, or he to her, wholly enveloping her little hand,
wrist and all, in his great knuckles. Thus linked, sidling,
skewing, filing as they could through the trees and brush, they
soon emerged in the road. The Master went on with them to
the house, and Obed continued his course homeward. Master
Elliman was evidently not a stranger to the family. His visit
seemed welcome. Even the hard, ragged, muddy features of
Hash brightened with a smile as he entered. The dry, pursed
mouth of the mother opened with a pleasant salutation. Chilion
offered him the best chair. Pluck was always merry. Margaret
alone for the moment, contrary to her general manner,
appeared sorrowful.

6. CHAPTER VI.

After dinner, hospitable as it was rude, of which the
Master partook with sensible relish, Pluck proposed that
Chilion should play.

“The rosin, Margery,” said her brother.

“I have some rosin in my pocket,” said the Master, at the
same time producing a pint flask, which he set upon the table.
“A bibilous accompaniment,” he added, “I thought would
not be out of place.”

“Good enough for any of their High Mightenesses!”
ejaculated Pluck, drinking, and returning the bottle to the
Master.

“Nay, friend,” replied the latter; “Femina et vinum
maketh glad the heart of man. Let her ladyship gladden her
own.”

Mistress Hart also drank.

“Now, he who maketh speed to the spoil, Maharshalalhashbaz,”
said the Master.

“Not so good as pupelo,” replied Hash.

“A rightly named youth,” said Pluck, who receiving the
bottle to return it to the Master, perceived its contents nearly
exhausted.

“Mi discipula,” said the Master, addressing himself to Margaret,”
“you must be primarum artium princeps.”

“No thankee,—thank you, sir,” replied she.

“Well done, well done!” exclaimed he.

“What! would you not have the child exhilarate and spruce
up a little?” cried the father.

“You mistake me, friend,” said the Master, “I approbated
the girl, not that she did not receive this very genial beverage,
but that she manifests such improvement in speech.”

“Let her drink, and she will speak well enough,” rejoined
the father. “She won't touch it! She mopes, she nuzzles
about in the grass and chips. She is certainly growing weakling.
Only she sings round after dark, like a thrasher, and
picks up spiders, pismires, beetles, like a frog.”

“This is none of your snow-broth, Meggy,” said the
mother, “it's warming, it's as good as the Widow's bitterbags.”

“Don't you touch it,” said Chilion, who had been screwing
and snapping the strings of his violin.

“Yes, drink, Peggy,” said Hash, thrusting his slavery lips
close to her ear. “He'll bring some more, he likes ye. He
wants you to.”

Margaret started from him, “I can't,” she said, “It won't
let me.”

“What won't let you, dear?” asked her father, drawing her
between his knees, and patting her head.

“She's always a dreaming,” said her mother, “she is a
born bat, and flies off every night nobody knows where. And
in the day time I can't get her to quilling, but she's up and
away to the Widow's, or to the Pond, or on the Head, or
somewheres. She gets all my threads to string up her poses;
she's as bad as a hang-bird that steals my yarn on the grass.”

“Did'nt I do all the spools?” enquired the child.

“Yes, you did,” responded the father, “you are a nice gal.
Hush! Let us hear our son Chilion; he speaks well.”

Chilion played, and they were silent.

“Now it's your turn my daughter,” said Pluck, “you will
play if you won't drink.”

Chilion held the instrument, while Margaret taking the bow
executed some popular airs with considerable spirit and precision.
“Now for the cat, child;” so she imitated the cat,
then the song-sparrow, then Obed crying.

At this, and especially the last, there was a general shout.
The Master seemed highly surprised and pleased. “A megalopsical
child!” he exclaimed. Margaret, with blushes
and tremors, glad to have succeeded, more glad to escape her
tormentors, ran away and amused herself with Dick her
squirrel, whom she was teaching to ride on Bull the dog's
back. The flask having been drained, the keg was brought
forward from the chimney wall.

“Here's to Miss Amy,” said Pluck, ogling the Master.

“Mehercule!” exclaimed the latter, “you forget the propitiatory
oblation. We must first propose his Majesty the
King of Puppetdom, defender by the grace of God of England,
France, and America; the most serene, serene, most
puissant, puissant, high, illustrious, noble, honorable, venerable,
wise, and prudent Princes, Burgomasters, Counsellors,
Governors, Committees of the said realm, whether ecclesiastical

or secular; and the most celebrated Punch and Judy of our
worthy town of Livingston, Parson Welles and Deacon Hadlock,
to whom be all reverence.”

Pluck. “Amen. I stroke my beard, and crook my hamstrings
as low as any one.”

The Master. “Your promising daughter, Mistress Hart.”

Mistress Hart. “Long life to you, and many visits from
you.”

Hash. “I say yes to that; and here's for Peggy to Obed.”

The Master. “Miss Sibyl Radney.”

“How you color, Hash!” exclaimed his mother. “Hang
your nose under your chin, and it would equal old Gobbler's
wattles. Put you into the dyetub, and Meg won't have to get
any more log-wood. There now, Meggy must go down for
some copperas this very afternoon.”

“Odzbodkins! You won't spoil our sport,” cried her husband.
“Your crotchets are always coming in like a fox into
a hen-roost.”

“I have work in hand that must be done,” replied his wife.
“Panguts!” she exclaimed, raising her voice and her fist at
the same time, “what do you do? lazying about here like a
mud-turtle nine days after it's killed. You may whip the cat
ten years, and you won't earn enough to stitch your own rags
with.—I have to tie up your vines, or you would have been
blown from the poles long since.”

“Dearest Maria,” began Pluck.

“Don't deary me with your dish-cloth tongue,” said Brown
Moll; “you had better go to trencher-scraping, and I'll take
care of the family.”

While Mistress Hart was entertaining her spouse in this
manner, for it seemed to be entertainment to him, the Master
called Margaret, and asked her to spell some words he named
to her, which she did very correctly. “You must certainly
have a new spelling-book,” said he. “And now I want you
to repeat the Laplander's Ode.” She began as follows:

“I think I must go,” said the Master.

“And I will go with you,” said Margaret.

“Here are the eggs,” added her mother, “Deacon Penrose
must give a shilling a dozen. One pound of copperas, six
skeins of No. nine, half a pound of snuff, the rest in tobacco.”

Margaret, wearing in addition to her usual dress, a pair of
moccasins, which an Indian who came sometimes to the Pond
gave her, called Bull and started off. Hash, in no unusual
fit, ordered the dog back.

“Woman! woman!” cried Pluck, “the keg is out, it is
all gone.”

“Let the yarn go,” said her mother, “and get it in rum.”

“She will bring home some of the good book,” said Pluck
to Hash, “the real white-eye, you know. Let her take the
dog.”

Her brother yielded and she went on with Bull and the
Master; the latter, having grown a little wavering and muddled
by liquor, taking the child's hand.

There were two ways to the village, one around by No 4,
the other directly across through the woods; the distance by
the former course was nearly four miles, that by the latter, as
we have said, about two; and at the present season of the
year, the most eligible. This they took; they went through
the Mowing, traversed a beautiful grove of walnuts, black-birches,
and beeches, and came to the Bridge so called, a
large tree lying across the small brook Margaret encountered
on her way to the Widow's. This stream, having its rise
among the hills on the north of the Pond, and descending to
the village, at the present point, flowed through a deep fissure
in the rocks. The branches of the tree rose perpendicularly,
and a hand rail was fastened from one to another.

“Danger menaces us, my child,” sighed the Master.

“Give me one of your hands,” said Margaret, “hold on by
the rail with the other, shut your eyes, that is the way Pa
does.”

“How it shakes!” exclaimed the Master. “It would be
dreadful to fall here! How deep it is! My head swims, my
brain giddies, I am getting old, Margaret. Tempora mutantur
et nos—. When I was young as you I could go anywhere.
Facilis descensus—.”

“You can hold on by Bull, he'll keep you steady. Here
Bull.”

The well trained dog came forward, and the Master leaning
on this tri-fold support, the child's arm, the rail, and the
animal's head, accomplished the pass. They descended
abruptly into a broad ravine, and came up on the higher
banks of the stream. Their course was downward, yet with
alternate pitches and elevations, now by a sheep's track, now
across a rocky ledge, now through the unbroken forest. The
fumes of the liquor subsiding, and the path becoming more
smooth and easy, the Master spake to Margaret of her dreams.

Master. “Dreams come of a multitude of business, says
Solomon.”

Margaret. “What, Solomon Smith? He says that great
folks come of dreams, that children will die, and some be
rich; and people lose their cows, and have new gowns, and
such things. I dream about a great many things, sometimes
about a pretty woman.”

Mas. “A pretty woman! Whom does she look like?”

Mar. “I don't know, I can't tell him.”

Mas. “You; always say you to me. The juveniles and
younkers in the town say him. How does she seem to
you?”

Mar. “She looks somehow as I feel when Ma is good to
me, and she looks pale and sorry as Bull does when Hash
strikes him.”

Mas. “Where do you see her?”

Mar. “Sometimes among the clouds, and sometimes at the
foot of the rainbow.”

Mas. “That is where money grows.”

Mar. “Not money, it is flowers, buttercups, yellow columbine,
liverleaf, devil's ears, and such as I never saw before.”

Mas. “Arum, the Arum! Your covetous friend Obed
won't like it if you get those flowers.”

Mar. “His mother wants to know what the woman does;
if she makes plasters out of the flowers, and if they will cure
worms.”

Mas. “Caustics of aures diaboli! The Devil is no vermifuge,
tell the widow. Ha! ha!”

Mar. “But she don't speak to me; she stands in the flowers,
and breaks them off, and they fly away like little birds;
she pricks them into the rainbow, and they grow on it.”

Mas. “Are you not afraid of her?”

Mar. “She tells me not to be.”

Mas. “You said she did not speak to you.”

Mar. “She don't speak, but she tells me things, just as
Bull does. He don't speak, but he tells me when he is hungry,
and when there is anything coming in the woods. Sometimes
she kisses me, but I don't feel her. She goes up on
the rainbow, and I follow her. I see things like people's faces
in the sky, but they look like shadows, and there is music
like what you hear in the pines, but there are no trees, or
violins. She steps off into the clouds. I try to go too, and
there comes along what you call the egret of a thistle, that I
get on to, and it floats with me right into my bed, and I wake
up.” So they discoursed until they issued from the woods,
in what was known as “Deacon Hadlock's Pasture,” an extensive
enclosure reaching to the village, which it overlooked.

The village of Livingston lay at the junction of four streets,
or what had originally been the intersection of two roads,
which widening at the centre, and having their angles
trimmed off, formed an extensive common known as the
Green. In some points of view, the place had an aspect of
freshness and nature; extensive forests meeting the eye in
every direction; farm-houses partially hidden in orchards of
apple trees; the roads rough, ungraded, and divided by
parallel lines of green grass. Yet to one who should be
carried back from the present time, many objects would wear
an old, antiquated and obsolete appearance; the high-pitched
roofs of some of the houses, and jutting upper stories; others
with a long sloping back roof; chimneys like castles,
large, arched, corniced. Here and there was a house in
the then new style, three-storied, with gambrel roof, and
dormar windows. The Meeting-house was not old, but
would now appear so, in its slim tall spire, open belfry, and
swarm of windows. There were Lombardy poplars on the
Green, now so unfashionable, waving like martial plumes; and
interspersed as they were among the spreading willow-like
elms, they formed, on the whole, not a disagreeable picture.
South of the Green was the “Mill,” on Mill Brook, a stream
before adverted to; this was a small distinct cluster of houses.
Beyond the village on the east you could see the River, and

its grassy meadows. Livingston was the shire town of the
county of Stafford. The Court-house was a square yellow
edifice, with a small bell in an open frame set on the top of the
roof; the Jail was a wooden building constructed of hewn
timber. The Green contained in addition, a pair of Stocks, a
Pillory, and a Whipping Post; also one store, a school-house,
one tavern, known as the “Crown and Bowl,” one joiner's,
blacksmith's, shoemaker's, and barber's shop. The four streets
diverging from the centre were commonly called the North,
East, South, and West Streets. A new one had been opened
on the west side of the Green, and received the name of Grove
Street. Let us observe the situation of the principal buildings.
The Meeting-house stood at the north-west corner of
the Green; in the rear of this were the Horse-sheds, a long
and conspicuous row of black, ricketty stalls, having the
initials of the owner's name painted in a circle over each
apartment; at the east end of the sheds was the School-house;
and behind them terminated an old forest that extended indefinitely
to the north. The Tavern stood at the corner
formed by the junction of the West street with the Green,
a few rods from the church. Below the tavern, flanking the
west side of the Green, in succession, were the Court-house,
Jail, and Jail-house, the jail-fence being close upon the highway.
The Pillory with its companions stood under the trees
in the open common fronting the Court-house; the store was
on the east side of the Green. The West street, that into
which Margaret and the Master entered from the “Pasture,”
ascending in a straight line about one hundred rods, curved
to the north, thereby avoiding the hills on which the Pond
lay, and became the main-road to Dunwich, a neighboring
town.

Master Elliman lodged with the Widow Small, who lived
on the South Street. Across this street, and not far from the
widow's ran the small brook, over which lay the Tree-bridge
above-mentioned. To this stream, we may add, the Master,
from some fancy of his own, gave the name of Kedron; and
the path by which they came through the woods he called
Via Dolorosa.

Children were playing on the Green, the boys dressed in
“tongs,” a name for pantaloons or over-alls that had come
into use, and round-a-bouts; some in skirt coats and breeches;
some of them six or eight years of age were still in petticoats.
The girls wore checked linen frocks, with short sleeves, and
pinafores. All were bare-footed, and most of them bareheaded.

“He's coming!” “The Master!” was a cry
that echoed from one to another. They dropped their sports,
and drew up in lines on either side as the object of their attention
passed; the boys folding their arms and making short
quick bows; the girls dove-tailing their fingers and squatting
in low courtesies. Margaret, with Bull at her heels, came on
at a respectful distance behind. “Moll Hart,” exclaimed
one of the boys. “A Pond Gal.” “An Injin, an Injin.”
“Where did ye git so much hat?” “Did your daddy make
them are clogs?” So she was saluted by one and another;
but the dog, whose qualities were obvious in his face, if they
had not been rendered familiar in any other way, saved her
from all but verbal insolence.

The Master's was a ground room in an old house. It was
large, with small windows; the walls were wainscotted, the
ceiling boarded, and darkened by age into a reddish mahogany
hue. The chairs were high-top, fan-back, heavy
mahogany. A bureau-desk occupied one side, with its slanting
leaf, pigeon-holes, and escutcheons bearing the head of
King George. On the walls hung pictures in small black
frames, comprising all the kings and queens of England, from
William the Conqueror to the present time. Margaret's
attention was drawn to his books, which consisted of editions
of the Latin and Greek classics, and such school books as
from time to time he had occasion to use; and miscellanies,
made up of works on Free-Masonry, a craft of which he was
a devoted member; books of secular and profane music, a
science to which he was much attached; various histories and
travels; the works of Bolingbroke, Swift and Sterne; the
Spectator and Rambler; Milton, Spenser, Shakspeare, Ben
Jonson, Darwin, Pope, and other poets; Wolstoncraft's
Rights of Women, Paine's Age of Reason, Lord Monboddo's
works; Tooke's Pantheon; Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy;
the Echo, by the Hartford Wits, the American Museum,
and the Massachusetts Magazine; Trumbull's McFingal,
The Devil on Two Sticks, Peregrine Pickle; Quincy's
Dispensatory; Nurse Freelove's New Year's Gift, the Puzzling
Cap, the “World turned upside down.” He gave Margaret,
as he had promised, “The New Universal Spelling Book,” by
Daniel Fenning, late School-master of the Bures in Suffolk,
in England.

The Store, to which Margaret next directed her steps, was
a long old two-story building, bearing some vestiges of having
once been painted red. The large window-shutters and door

constituted advertising boards for the merchant himself, and
the public generally. Intermixed with articles of trade, were
notices of calves found, hogs astray, sales on execution; beeswax,
flax, skins, bristles and old pewter, you were informed
would be taken in exchange for goods, and that “cash and
the highest price would be given for the Hon. Robert Morris's
notes.” One paper read as follows: “You Josiah Penrose, of
&c., are hereby permitted to sell 400 gallons W. I. Rum,
do. Brandy, 140 Gin, and 260 pounds of brown Sugar, on all
of which the excise has been duly paid, pursuant to an Act of
the Legislature.

(Signed) William Kingsland,
Collector of excise for the County of Stafford.”

There was also on the door a staring programme of a lottery
scheme. Lotteries, at this period common in all New England,
had become a favorite resort for raising money to support
government, carry on wars, build churches, construct
roads, endow colleges, &c. There was one other sign, that
of the Post-office. Entering the store you beheld a motley
array of dry and fancy goods, crockery, hardware, and groceries,
drugs and medicines. On the right were rolls of kerseymeres,
callimancoes, thicksets, durants, fustians, shaloons,
antiloons, ratteens, duffils and serges of all colors; Manchester
checks, purple and blue calicoes; silks, ribbons,
oznaburgs, ticklenbergs, buckram. On the left were cuttoes,
Barlow knives, iron candlesticks, jewsharps, blackball, bladders
of snuff; in the left corner was the apothecary's apartment,
and on boxes and bottles were written in fading gilt
letters, “Arg. Viv.” “Rad. Sup. Virg.” “Ens Veneris,”
“Oculi Cancrorum,” “Aqua æris fixi,” “Lapis Infernalis,”
“Ext. Saturn.” “Pulvis Regal.” “Sal Martis,” &c. On
naked beams above were suspended weavers' skans, wheel-heads,
&c., and on a high shelf running quite around the
walls was cotton warp of all numbers. The back portion of
the building was devoted to a traffic more fashionable and
universal in New England than it ever will be again; and a
row of pipes, hogsheads and barrels, indicated an article the
nature of which could not be mistaken. Above these hung
proof-glasses, tap-borers, a measuring rod, a decanting pump;
and interspersed on the walls, were bunches of chalk-scores
in perpendicular and transverse lines. Near by was a small
counter covered with tumblers and toddy sticks; and when
Margaret entered, one or two ragged will-gill looking men

stood there mixing and bolting down liquors. Had she looked
into the counting-room, she would have seen a large fire-place
in one corner, a high desk, round-back arm-chairs and several
hampers of wine.

Margaret sat waiting for two young ladies, who appeared to
have some business with the clerk. These were Bethia
Weeks, the daughter of one of the village squires, and Martha
Madeline Gisborne, the daughter of the joiner. The
clerk's name was Abel Wilcox.

“For my part,” said Miss Bethia, “I don't believe a word
of it.”

“He has kept steady company with her every time he has
been in town,” responded Miss Martha Madeline.

“As if every upstart of a lawyer was to Captain Grand it
over all the girls here,” added the clerk.

“I don't think the Judge's folk are better than some other
people's folk,” said Martha Madeline.

“Susan is a nice girl,” rejoined Bethia.

“I should not be surprised if they were cried next Sabbath,”
said Martha Madeline.

“I guess there will be more than one to cry then,” added
Bethia.

“Now don't; you are really too bad,” rejoined Abel.

This conversation continuing some time, was unintelligible
to Margaret, as we presume it is to our readers, and it were
idle to report it.

“How much shall I measure you of this tiffany, Matty?”
at length asked Abel.

“Oh dear me suz! I don't know,” she replied. “Perhaps I
shall not take any now. You give three shillings for cotton
cloth, and this is nine and six a yard, I declare for't I shall
have to put to; and I must get some warp at any rate. We
have been waiting for some we sent up to Brown Moll's to be
colored, and I don't think it will ever be done.”

“There's young Moll now,” said Abel, pointing to Margaret,
who was seated behind the ladies.

“Has your Marm got that done?” asked Martha Madeline.

“No, she has not,” replied Margaret.

“A book, a book!” exclaimed Martha Madeline, “The
Ingin has got a book. She will be as wise as the Parson.”

“Can you say your letters?” asked Bethia.

“Yes,” replied Margaret.

“Who is teaching you?”

“The Master.”

“Pshaw!” ejaculated Martha Madeline, “I never was at
school in my life. Now all the gals is going; such as can't
tell treadles from treacle have got books. And here the Master
goes up to that low, vile, dirty place, the Pond, to larn the
brats.”

Margaret came forward and stated her errand to the clerk.

“Yes, I dare say, she wants rum,” added Martha Madeline.
“Daddy says there is no sense in it; they will all come
to ruin; he says Pluck and his boys drink five or six times a
day, and that nobody should think of drinking more than
three times. Parson Welles says it's a sin for any family to
have more than a gallon a week. There's Hopestill Cutts, he
has been kept out of the church this ten months, because he
won't come down to half a pint a day.”

“Never mind,” interposed the clerk, “I guess they will
find their allowance cut short this time, ha! ha! Here ain't
eggs enough, gal.”

“Marm says you must give a shilling a dozen,” replied
Margaret.

“Perhaps your Marm will say that again before we do,”
rejoined the clerk. “Eggs don't go for but nine-pence in
Livingston or anywhere else.”

Margaret was in a dilemma; — the rum must be had, the
other articles were equally necessary.

“Pa will pay you,” she bethought herself.

“No he won't,” answered the clerk.

“Chilion will bring you down skins, axe-helves, and whip-stocks.”

“I tell you, we can't and won't trust you. Your drunken
dad has run up a long chalk already. Look there, I guess
you know enough to count twelve, twelve gallons he owes
now. You are all a haggling, gulching, good-for-nothing
crew.”

“I will bring you some chesnuts and thistle down in the
fall,” replied Margaret.

“Can't trust any of you. What will you take for your
book?”

“I can't sell it; the Master gave it to me.”

“If he would teach you to pay your debts he would do
well.”

A little girl came in about the age of Margaret, and stood
looking attentively at her a moment, as one stranger child is
wont to do with another, then lifting Margaret's hat as it were
inspecting her face, said; “she is not an Injin; they said she

was; her face is white as mine.” This little girl was Isabel
Weeks, sister of Bethia.

“Ha, Belle!” said the latter, “what are you here for?”

“I came to see the Injin. Have you got a book too?” she
said, addressing herself to Margaret. “Can you say your
letters?”

“Yes,” replied Margaret, “but they want it for rum.”

“That's wicked; I know it is. Ma wouldn't let me give
my spelling-book for rum. I have threepence in my pocket
— you may have them.”

“Save a thief from hanging and he will cut your throat,”
said Martha Madeline.

“Can't bore an auger hole with a gimlet,” interjected
Abel; “two threepences won't be enough, Miss Belle.”

“Judah has got tenpence, I'll go and get them,” answered
Isabel.

The dog at this moment seeing the trouble of his mistress
began to growl, and the young ladies to scream.

“Out with your dog, young wench, and go home,” cried the
clerk.

“Lie down, Bull!” said Margaret. “Here, sir, you may
have the book.”

The bargain being completed, Margaret, taking her articles,
left the store; and Isabel followed her.

“The lower classes are very troublesome,” said Abel, “we
have to take odds and ends, and everything from them. If
we didn't favor them a little, I believe they would take the
store by storm. Deacon Penrose says it is a mercy to ourselves
and the town that we have liquors to sell. The other
day when I had been drawing a keg for Parson Welles, Ike
Tapley, because I wouldn't let him have the lick of the tap,
was as mad as a March hare. Precious little profit do we get
out of these folks.”

Isabel walked on with Margaret across the Green in silence.
She said nothing, but with her pinafore wiped the
tears from Margaret's eyes. She was too young, perhaps, to
tell all she felt, and could only alleviate the grief she beheld
by endeavoring to efface its effects.

Margaret, happy, unhappy, fagged up the hill; she had lost
her book, she had got the rum; herself was miserable, she
knew her family would be pleased, yet she was wholly sad
when she thought of the Master and then of her book. She
left the highway and crossed the Pasture. The sun had gone
down when she reached the woods, she feared not; her

dreams, her own fresh heart, and Bull, were with her. The
shadow of God was about her, but she knew Him or It not;
she was ignorant as a Hottentot. She came to the bridge;
the water ran deep and dark below her. Who will look into
her soul as she looked into the water? Who will thread the
Via Dolorosa of her spirit. For the music, the murmurs of
that brook there were no ears, as there were none for hers.
Yet she looked into the water, which seemed to hiss and race
more merrily over the stones, as she looked. She heard owls,
frogs, tree-toads; and she might almost have heard the tread
of the saturnine wood-spider, at work in his loom with his
warp-tail and shuttle-feet, working a weft which the dews
were even then embroidering, to shine out when the sun rose
in silver spangles and ruby buds; and her own soul, woven as
silently in God's quilt, was taking on impressions from those
dark woods, that invisible universe, to shine out when her
morning dawns. Alas! when shall that be; in this world, in
the next? Is there any place here for a pure beautiful soul?
If none, then let Margaret die. Or shall we let her murmur
on forever, like the brook, in hopes that some one will look
into her waters and be gladdened by her sound. She ran on
through the Chesnuts, the strange old bald trees seeming to
move as she moved, those more distant shooting by the others
in rapid lines, performing a kind of spectral pantomine. Run
on Margaret! and let the world dance round you as it may.
When she reached home, she found the family all a bed, excepting
Chilion, who sat in the dark, patiently, perhaps doggedly,
waiting for her.

“Is she come?” cried the father, waking from his sleep.
“Give us a nip.”

“None of your sneaking here, old bruiser!” broke out the
mother, rising in bed. “You are a real coon that would
suck the biggest cock dry.”

They both drank, and Margaret, having eaten a morsel
Chilion kept for her, went to her bed. She had not been
long asleep, when she was awakened by a noise below. Her
father was calling her name, “Molly! Molly!” She started
immediately to go down.

“Never mind, Margery,” spoke Chilion, from his own
chamber, as she descended the ladder. “He will come out of
it soon.”

Her father, overcome by his liquor, had fallen into a sort
of delirium. “Bite, will ye? spit fire, ram lightning down a
babe's throat, Molly! Molly!” She seized the convulsed

arm of the old man, and rubbed it. “There, there,” she
said, “it will be over soon.” Her mother lay trussed and
frozen in sleep.

“Sweet angel,” said the father; “hold on, put their tails in
the stocks and let them squirm,—Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed
out, changing his tone. “There's pitch-forks, and swingling
stands, and two Bibles dancing a hornpipe, and Deacon Penrose
playing on a rum-hogshead.”

“I shwum,” cried Hash, swaggering down the ladder, “if
they an't a toping the whole. Why didn't you tell me you
had got back, Peggy?” He took the keg to make sure of
what remained.

“Hash! Hash!” cried Margaret, “he thinks he's falling
off the bridge, I can't hold him.”

“Let him fall and be — and you too,” was the reply.
The paroxysm began to subside, the old man's arm relaxed,
his breathing became easier. Margaret reascended the stairs,
whither Hash had already preceded her, and returned to that
forgetfulness of all things which God vouchsafes even to the
most miserable.

7. CHAPTER VII.
RETROSPECTIVE AND EXPLANATORY.

At this day of comparative abstinence and general sobriety,
one is hardly prepared to receive the accounts that might be
given of the consumption of intoxicating liquors in former
times. In the Old World, drinking was cultivated as an Art;
it was patronized by courtiers, it fellowshipped with rustics;
it belonged to the establishment, and favored dissent; it followed
in the wake of colonial migration, and erected its institutions
in the New World. Contemporary with the foundation,
it flourished with the growth and dilated with the extension of
this Western Empire. Herein comes to pass a singular historical
inversion; what we rigorously denounce as “distilled
damnation,” the Puritans cheerily quaffed under the names of
“Strong Water,” and “Aqua Vitæ,” Water of Life. While

we expel rum from our houses, as a pestilence, an earlier age
was wont to display it with a picturesque effect, and render it
attractive by environments of mahogany and silver.

In Livingston there were five distilleries for the manufacture
of cider-brandy, or what was familiarly known as pupelo.
There was also consumed a proportionate quantity of alcoholic
liquors of other kinds. The entire amount annually drank
among a population of about twelve hundred, could not have
been less than six thousand gallons. It found its way into
every family, loaded many side-boards, filled innumerable jugs;
all denominations of men were alike under its influence. In
the account kept with Parson Welles at Deacon Penrose's,
rum composed at least one half the items. Master Elliman, as
we have seen, was not exempt from the habits of his age. He
drank constantly and at times excessively. To the cheer prevailing
at the Pond he was no stranger; but, on the other hand,
it afforded him no small satisfaction to become a sharer in
their potations. His botanical excursions were enlivened and
relieved by the humor of Pluck and the liberality of his entertainment.
In addition to this there were other causes operating
to bring together these two persons of qualities and manners
in some respects so apparently opposed. On these we must
beg the patience of the reader, while we briefly delay. The
first permanent settlement in Livingston was effected in the
year 1677, at the close of the war of King Philip or Pometacom,
the chief of the Wampanoags. The original inhabitants
came partly from the old colonies; and were reinforced
by migrations direct from Europe. A one-story log-house,
with thatched roof, was the original church, and stood
on the same spot with that to which the attention of the reader
has been called, a tin horn, in place of a bell, summoning the
people to worship. What is now known as the Green early
became the centre of the town, and on the four streets before-mentioned
many of the planters established themselves. The
town underwent and survived the various incidents and vicissitudes
that belong to our national history; Queen Anne's war,
Lovell's war, the Seven Years' war, incursions from the Indians,
drafts of men for the frontiers, small-pox, throat-distemper,
Antinomianism, Newlightism, Scotch Presbyterianism, an attempted
“visit from Whitfield,” settling ministers, the stamp-act,
succession of sovereigns, kings in England, governors at
home, earthquakes, tornadoes, depreciation of currency, taxes,
etc. etc. A period of more exciting interest approached. The
question of a final separation from the mother country engaged

all minds. An organic system was instituted throughout the
country, embracing the states, counties and towns. Committees
of Safety, Inspection, Vigilance or Correspondence, whatever
they might be called, were formed in every village; these cooperated
with the County Committees, which in their turn
became auxiliary to those of the State. “The towns,” say
our historians, “assumed, in some respects the authority of an
individual community, an independent republic. The Committee
met daily and acted in a legislative, executive and
judicial capacity. All suspicious persons were brought before
them, and if found guilty were condemned.” “Numerous
arrests, imprisonments and banishments were made.” “The
Committee was impowered to use military force. Many tories
and their families were expelled the State, and others required
to give security to reside in prescribed limits; and
occasionally the jails, and even the churches, were crowded
with prisoners, and many were sent for safe-keeping to the
jails of neighboring States.” An “Association,” as it was
termed, covenant, or oath, was prepared and offered for the
signatures of the people of Livingston. The sessions of the
court, which had been interrupted elsewhere, received little or
no disturbance in this town. Judge Morgridge, a resident of
the place, who received his commission under the king, and
faithfully administered the old laws of the State, was equally
devoted to the interests of the people. News of the battle of
Lexington had arrived; Tony, the negro barber, fiddler and
drummer, had gone through the streets at midnight, sounding
alarms from time to time. Court week came, and in addition
to such scenes as for many years had characterized that occasion,
trading, huckstering, wrestling, fighting, horse-racing,
multitudes thronging the streets; at the present moment there
assembled greater quantities of people, from Livingston itself,
and the neighboring towns, who were animated by unusual
topics. There was little business for the functionaries of law,
and more for the officers of the people. The County Committee
was in session. Numbers of delinquents were brought from
various parts, and lodged in the jail. The Crown and Bowl
was filled with people, among whom was Pluck. While others
were drinking to the Continental Congress, he toasted the
king; when rebuked, he replied in some wanton language.
This, in addition to other conduct of a suspicious nature,
exposed him to the action of the Committee, before which he
was taken; that body consisting in part of his fellow-townsmen,
Deacon Hadlock and Mr. Gisborne the joiner. The proceedings
in his case may be known by the subjoined extract from
the records.

The next day an event occurred that aroused the people still
more against Pluck. Another individual in town had rendered
himself obnoxious to public sentiment. This was Col. Welch,
a brother-in-law of Judge Morgridge, who had derived his title
for services against the French in the Seven Years' war. He
occupied a large house at the head of the West Street, near
“Deacon Hadlock's Pasture.” He refused to sign the Association,
and used language which gave the people cause to doubt
his patriotism. He declined also accepting a command in the

Continental armies, and intimated that his present commission
could not be supplanted or displaced. He had already been
summoned before the Town Committee, where his replies were
not satisfactory. Further measures were proposed. At this
crisis of affairs, late in the evening, Judge Morgridge, with
some of his family, visited his brother-in-law, and informing
him of what was in progress, suggested that he had no other
alternative but recantation or flight. The Colonel replied that
the former he would not do, and if it came to the latter, that
should be done; and with his family made hasty preparations
for departure. In the middle of the night, he left Livingston,
went to New York, whence he ultimately sailed for Nova-Scotia.
When the two families had indulged those tokens of
regret, speedily finished, which were natural to the occasion,
and the Colonel was on the point of starting, it was discovered
that one horse delayed, and the cause was as soon obvious.
Cæsar, a servant of Judge Morgridge, was found clinging
passionately to Phillis, the servant of the Colonel. Such a
moment for the expression of what they might feel, was certainly
most inopportune, and the two lovers were unceremoniously
separated. The next morning Pluck understanding
from Cæsar what had happened, and withal as we say now-a-days,
endeavoring to make capital out of the fellow's distress,
appeared again on the Green, and more than half in liquor,
made boast of toryism, applauded the conduct of Col. Welch,
and declaimed on the cruelty practised towards the negro.
Already sufficiently odious, he would have done better not to
trifle with an indignant populace. He was declared not only
inimical but dangerous, and by order of the Committee was
confined in jail. Among a multitude of fellow-prisoners he
found one of whom till that moment he had known but little;
this was his townsman and subsequent acquaintance, Master
Elliman. This gentleman, inveterately attached to olden time,
without reverence for the people, and, as his subsequent conduct
would indicate, with no other regard for kings than
consisted in a preference for an old and long-established state
of things over any new projects that might be proposed, possibly
unwilling to have his quiet disturbed, perhaps averse to
receiving dictation from those whose children he had flogged,
or who themselves may have been under his thumb; certainly
not, we have reason to believe, from any conscientious scruples;
this gentleman, we say, received the Committee, who waited
upon him, with an irritating indifference, and refused to sign
the Association. It was considered unsafe to have him at large,
and he was thrown into prison. Here commenced an intimacy
that in the result proved not unfavorable to one as yet unborn,
Margaret. Whatever points of resemblance might exist between
Pluck and the Master, became strengthened by their
confinement together, and their contrarieties were forgotten in
a sense of common calamity. The cells of the jail were
crowded, comforts were not abundant, and whatever relief
could be had from an exchange of sympathies, the convicts
would naturally betake themselves to; and in the result it
appeared that Pluck and the Master became very good friends,
and the visits of the latter to the Pond, originating in the
double cause which has now been related, were in after years
not infrequent. Add to this a deep and ingenuous interest in
Margaret, and we shall understand why he came so often to
her house, and exerted himself so readily for her instruction.
The durance of these two recusants lasted no more than two
or three months. Pluck, as being of less consequence, was
released almost on his own terms. In the Kidderminster
Chronicle appeared the following which relates to the Master:

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Nimrod made his annual visit to his father's. Where he
had been, or what he did, none asked, none knew. His appearance
would indicate the sailor and the horse-jockery; he
wore a tarpaulin and blue jacket, a pair of high-top boots with
spurs and leather trousers; he flourished a riding stick, commonly
known as a cow-hide, a pair of large gold rings dangled
in his ears. He rode a horse, a cast-iron looking animal, thin
and bony, of a deep grey color, called Streaker. He seemed
also to have money in his pocket, as he evidently had brandy
in his saddle-bags and humor in his soul. He brought one or
two books for Margaret, to whom he showed great attachment,
and whose general management seemed surrendered to him,
while he was at home. These books were Mother Goose's
Melodies, National Songs and Bewick's Birds with plates.
He gave her, in addition, a white muslin tunic with pink silk
skirt. Nimrod was tall in person; he had bluish, lively eyes,
light hair and a playful expression of face. All the family
seemed delighted with his return; Pluck, because his son's
temper was congenial with his own; his mother, for some presents;
Hash, because of the brandy; Chilion was happy to see
his brother; and Margaret for obvious reasons. He leaped
from his horse, as he rode up to the door, and ran to Margaret
whom he saw working on her flower-bed; raised her in his
arms, kissed her, set her down, took her up again, made her
leap on his horse, caught her off and kissed her a second time.
“Can you spell Streaker?” said he, which she did. “Ah,
you little rogue!” he added, “you are spruce as a blue-jay.”

“Has the Indian come yet?”

“Yes, he was here last week.”

“An't you afraid of him?”

“No. The little girl that was with him gave me some
apples.”

“That's you, for a broad joe! Never be afraid of any body,
or anything, two-legged or four-legged, black, white, blue or

grey, streaked or speckled, on the earth or in the air. I have
learned that lesson. How is our other Margaret, the Peach
tree?”

“Don't you see what beautiful red peaches there are on it?”

“Yea, verily,” as the Master says, “this is like a woodchuck
in clover. These are sweet and luscious as your cheek,
Margaret.”

Nimrod ran into the house, and out to the cistern, and
towards the Pond, and up the Head. He shook his father's
hand heartily; to his mother he made a low bow; Hash
chuckled and grinned at sight of him, and Nimrod laughed
harder in response. Chilion greeted him cordially, but said
little. Bull he held up by his paws, made sundry bows
and grimaces to the dog, and talked to him like an old friend,
so that Margaret declared the animal laughed.

If Nimrod were enjoying a furlough or vacation, or anything
of the kind, it seemed to be his purpose to make the most of it.
He talked of the meeting in the woods, a turkey-hunt the
next moon, a husking bee, thanksgiving ball, racing and a
variety of things. In whatever he undertook Margaret was made his constant attendant; and at some risk even, he carried
her into all scenes of wildness, exposure and novelty; nor
can it be said she was loth to go with her brother.

The meeting in the woods was the first in order of time.
This practice, imported from England, began to flourish incipiently
in our country. From the suburbs of old cities, from
church-yards, court-yards, gardens, the scene was transferred
to pine forests, shady mountains and a maiden green-sward.
Heptenstall Bank was revived in Snake Hill. The scoffing
Kentishmen appeared in the “Injins,” No. 4's and Breaknecks.
What lived in Europe must needs luxuriate in America. The
jumpers of Wales were outdone by the jerkers of Kentucky.

The meeting was to be held in the district we have before
spoken of as Snake Hill, lying four or five miles north of the
Pond. Nimrod started off horseback, with Margaret behind
him on a pillion. Hash and Bull went afoot. At the Widow
Wright's, they found that lady with her son mounting their
horse,—a small black animal resembling the Canada breed,
called Tim,—and just ready to proceed on the same excursion.
The Widow was solemn and collected, and she greeted Nimrod,
for whom she had no strong affection, with a smile that a susceptible
eye might have construed into coldness. Tim, the
horse, had a propensity for dropping his ears, biting and kicking,
when a stranger approached. He began some demonstrations

of this sort as Nimrod came up. Whether Nimrod
regarded this an insult on Streaker, or was nettled at the
manner of the woman, or to gratify his own evil taste, he
dealt the horse a smart blow with his cowhide. Tim darted
off at a full jump; insomuch that Obed and his mother, with
all their use to his back and manners, had much ado to keep
their seats. Nimrod ambled forward, about a mile, crossed
the intersecting west road from the village, and came to a
house known as Sibyl Radney's, where he overtook the Widow
and her son, breathing their horse. Sibyl lived alone with her
mother in the woods, cultivated a small farm, kept a horse and
cow, mowed, cut wood, and did all her work without aid.
Her face and neck were deeply browned, her arm was like
that of a blacksmith. She was also getting ready for Snake
Hill. Nimrod contrived to stimulate the three horses into a
race, which was executed in a manner a fox-hunter might
have envied, through brambles, over stumps, across ditches.

The spot to which these riders directed their way was in a
forest on the crown of a hill. A circular opening had been
cut among the trees for the purposes of the meeting. At one
end of this amphitheatre was the pulpit, constructed of rough
boards; about the sides were arranged the tents or camps,
made for the most part of hemlock boughs. Seats of slabs,
logs and stumps were strown in front of the pulpit. In the
centre of the whole was a huge pile of wood to be kindled in
the evening for warmth, if need be, or for light. There were
also booths on the outside for the sale of cider, rum, gingerbread,
and the practice of various games. Here were assembled
people from twenty different towns. Nimrod fastened
his horse to the trees amongst scores of others. The Widow
reminded Nimrod of the circumstances of the place, admonished
him of his recklessness. “I kalkilate God is here,”
said she, “and you had better not be pokin your fun about.”
Compassionating the dangerous situation of Margaret, she
requested that she might be delivered to her care. Nimrod,
who thought he should find entertainment in a manner that
might not possibly be agreeable to the child, consented to
yield her to the woman. He and Sibyl went towards the
booths, and Mistress Wright, leaning on the arm of her son,
leading Margaret, entered the encampment. Three men in
black occupied the pulpit, their heads powdered, with white
stocks and bands, and straight square-cut collars. One of them,
a tall bronze-complexioned man, was addressing the people,
hundreds of whom filled the seats. The Preacher was proceeding

in the way of narration. “The sacred flame,” said
he, “has spread in Virginia. Brother Enfield, the assistant
in the Brunswick Circuit, conjectures that from eighteen hundred
to two thousand souls have been converted since the
middle of May. Twelve hundred experienced the work of
grace in Sussex; in Amelia half as many more. Many christians
had severe exercises of mind respecting the great noise
that attended this work of God. Some thought it was not
divine; yet from its effects they dare not ascribe it to Satan;
but when the Lord broke in upon their own families, they saw
it at once, and began to bemoan their own hardness of heart.
Many gospel-hardened, old, orthodox sinners, have, as mighty
oaks, been felled; and many high-towering sinners, as the
tall cedars of Lebanon, bowed down to the dust. As many
as fifteen or twenty commonly gave up in a day under
Brother Staffin's preaching, who is indeed a Samson among
the Philistines. It is no strange thing now for children
down to seven years of age to give in.”

The Preacher then digressed in a strain of exhortation
designed to reproduce effects similar to those he had recounted.
A thunder cloud gathered in the sky, and buried
the woods in darkness. “That,” said he, “is the shadow of
hell. It is the smoke of torments that ascendeth up forever
and ever.” The thunder burst upon the camp, its hollow
roar reverberated among the hills. “Behold!” he exclaimed,
“God proclaims his law in fire and smoke!” It began to
rain, “What!” continued he, “can you not endure a little
wetting, when you will so soon call for a drop of water to
cool your parched tongues?” The lightning flashed upon
them, it blazed through the trees. “The great day of the
Lord is coming,” he went on, “when the elements shall
melt with fervent heat; the heavens also shall pass away with
a great noise, the earth also shall be burned up.” There was
a movement in the congregation; some shrieked out, some fell
upon their faces, some flung their arms wildly in the air.
“Oh my soul!” “Lord have mercy!” “Jesus save!”
“Glory! glory!” rang from seat to seat. “It is the Lord's
doings and marvellous in our eyes,” exclaimed one of the men
in the pulpit. Nimrod and his confreres from the booths ran
in to see what had befallen. There sat Obed waving to and
fro on his seat, groaning, and calling upon his mother. “Yes,
my son,” exclaimed the latter convulsively, “its an orful
time. God has come, we are great sinners. I han't done my
duty by ye. Parson Welles would let us all go teu hell together.”

“What a mercy,” exclaimed another, “we can
come where the gospel is preached!” “O Lord, forgive me,”
cried a third, “for going to the Universalist up to Dunwich;
I do believe there is a hell, I do believe there is a hell.”
“I have been down among the Socinians,” echoed a fourth.
“God be praised I have found where there is some religion
at last. Glory, glory!”

The Preacher, the storm and the effect increased. Some
fell away, some foamed at the mouth, some lay on the ground
in spasms, the faces of several grew white, others purple and
black, one appeared to be strangling and gasping for life,
another became stiff, rigid, and sat up like a dead man on his
seat; there were groans, sobs, shrieks, prayers and ejaculations.
There came a terrific crash of thunder, as if the heavens
had split and the earth would give way. There was a
stifled groan, a retreating shudder among the people; the
Preacher himself seemed for a moment stunned. Margaret
shrieked and cried to the top of her voice, which sounded for
the instant like a clarion over an earthquake. Nimrod impulsively
rushed among the people, dashed Obed from his seat,
seized Margaret and drew her out. The Preacher recovering
himself as he observed this movement. “Son of Belial!” he
broke forth, “thinkest thou to stop the mighty power of God?
Will he deliver that child into thy hand as he did the children
of Israel into the hand of Chushan-rishathaim? Stop, on thy
soul, and repent, lest ye die.”

“I guess I shan't die before my time,” retorted Nimrod,
“nor any sooner for your croaking, old Canorum. The child
is gittin wet, and she is sca't. I han't lived in the woods to
be skeered at owls, I snore.”

“A scoffer!” “A scoffer!” one or another exclaimed.
The people began to look up, and about them. The tide of
feeling was somewhat diverted. “Oh! there will be mourning,
mourning, mourning,” &c., was pealed forth from the
pulpit, and a full chorus of voices chimed in. The Preacher
renewed his exhortations, and the attention of the assembly
was restored to the subjects that had occupied them.
The groans and sobs were renewed. “This beats the
Great Earthquake all hollow,” exclaimed one of the congregation.
“Yes,” echoed the Preacher, “what a rattling
among the dry bones.” “Oh Lord!” cried one of his assistants,
“send an earthquake, shake these sinners, send it quick,
send it now. There were near four hundred converted at
the last earthquake in Boston.” “Oh! what a harvest of

souls we should have, brother!” rejoined the Preacher.
“Help me with your prayers brethren, as Aaron and Hur did
Moses.”

In due time these exercises closed. After supper, in the
evening, the pile of wood was kindled, pine knots were lighted
at the corners of the pulpit; the horn blew and the people
reassembled. Margaret ran off into the woods with Bull and
laid down under a tree, her head resting on the flanks of the
dog, and her feet nestling in the soft moss. Nimrod was
drinking and roistering at the booths. Hash was beyond the
reach of influences spiritual or temporal. After the evening
service was over the people dispersed to their tents. A
middle aged man, Mr. Palmer, from the Ledge, happening in
the woods, saw Margaret asleep under the trees, took her in
his arms, carried her into one of the tents, and gave her in
charge of his wife. The good woman with one hand patted
Margaret on her head, while with the other she tended her
own with a pinch of snuff, and asked her if she didn't want to
be saved. Margaret replied that she didn't know.

“The spirit is here mightily,” said the woman, taking a
fresh pinch, “won't you come in for a share?”

“It won't let me,” replied Margaret.

“You may lose your soul.”

“I havn't got any.”

“Mercy on me!” exclaimed the woman, “Don't you know
the devil will git you if you don't come in?”

“No it won't,” replied Margaret, “Bull won't let it.”

“What will you do when all the little boys and gals goes up
a singing?”

“I'll stay at home and hear Chilion play on the fiddle, and
read my new books.”

“Luddy mussy! can you read? Where do you live?”

“Down to the Pond.”

“Han't they got any of the religin at your house?”

“No, Marm, they drink pupelo and rum.”

“A born fool!” ejaculated the woman with herself.—“But
she can read, she must be knowing. Wonder if the power
an't in her? She will certainly die, and she an't no more
ready than our Rufus.”

The people began to crowd into the tent, among whom was
Mistress Wright and her son Obed. The Widow made immediately
for Margaret, who with Mistress Palmer, was sitting on
the straw in a corner apart. She heard the latter lady's soliloquy,
and added, “Oh no, I'm afeered she an't.”

“What's the matter of the child?” asked Mistress Palmer.

“Don't know, Marm,” replied the Widow. “I wish sutthin
could be done for her, she's bred in orful wicked ways.
Any sick up your way, Miss Palmer? I've brought a few
yarbs with me. If we could only keep the poor sinners alive
long enough for um teu save their souls it would be a great
marcy.”

The speakers were interrupted by noises in the tent into
which a large number of people had found their way, who
began to sing, exhort and pray. They had Obed down flat on
his back. His mouth was open, his eyes shut; he shook
spasmodically, he groaned with a deep guttural guffaw. Men
and women were over and about him; some looking on, some
praying, some uttering “Glory!” The Preacher came in,
a bland smile on his face, rubbing his hands; “Good!” he
ejaculated with a short, quick snap of the voice. “The Lord
is here, Miss Palmer,” said he.

“Yes in truth, you told us we should have a great time,”
rejoined the woman. “But see this gal, I wonder if anything
can be done with her.”

“Ah my little lamb,” said the Preacher, taking Margaret's
hand and drawing her gently towards him. “Hope you have
found the Saviour, you are old enough to recent.” Margaret
wrested herself from him. “Why what's the matter, dear?”
enquired the man. “You are not one of the wicked children
that reviled the prophet, and the bears came out of the woods
and tare them in pieces?”

“I an't afraid of the bears,” replied Margaret, pettishly.

“A mazed child! a mazed child!” exclaimed Mistress
Palmer.

“Don't you want to be converted?” asked the Preacher.

“I don't like you, I don't like you,” replied Margaret.
“You hollered so and scared Obed, he's scared now. They
are hurting him,” she said, pointing where the youth lay.
Darting from her company, she penetrated the crowd and
knelt down by the side of Obed. “Poor Obed!” she said,
“don't make such a noise, Molly is here.”

“I am going to hell,” hoarsely and mournfully replied the
boy.

“The arrows of the Almighty are thick upon him,” ejaculated
the Preacher, approaching the scene.

“If the Lord would only grant him deliverance!” said his
mother, looking through the crowd.

“Pray, brother, pray, sister,” said the Preacher, addressing

one and another. “Jacob wrestled all night in prayer with
God. The Ark is now going by. Three have already closed
with the offers of mercy in Dunwich tent.”

“Don't cry so, Obed,” said Margaret. “They shan't hurt
you.”

“The devil is in that child, take her away,” said the
Preacher.

Some one endeavored to pull her off. “Let me alone,” she
exclaimed, “I can't go, I won't go,” and she adhered to the
boy, whose arm had become closed about her neck as a man
in a fit.

There was a jarring hubbub of voices; men and women
reeking with excitement, and vieing one with another who
should pray the most importunately.

“What the devil are ye doing here?” shouted a still louder
voice over the heads of the crowd. It was Nimrod, who
half-intoxicated thrust himself among them. “Bite um Bull,
bite um,” he rubbed the dog's ears and holding him between
his legs, teazed him into a piercing yelp and howl that startled
the people.

“Bull! Bull!” shrieked Obed. “He's comin, he'll bite
me.” The lad sprang to his feet and stared wildly about.

“Satan has come in great wrath,” cried the Preacher.

“Yes, and I guess you know as much about him as anybody,
old cackletub!” rejoined Nimrod. “You set them all
a going, and then snap them up like a hawk.”

“Hoora!” shouted another of the scoffers from the other
side of the tent. “I hearn him comin down from a tree jest
now; look out or he'll be in your hair, white-top.”

“I've cotched him by the tail,” said another of the fry,
twitching the dog, who thereupon renewed his roar.

“Pray, brethren, pray!” said the Preacher, and the people
began to pray more lustily. “As with the sound of rams'
horns the walls of Jericho fell down, so shall these sinners
tremble before God.”

“Where's Sibyl Radney?” cried one of the opposers.
“She's got the bellows pipe for ye, and will let ye have some
of the broomstick too, if you want.”

“Oh! oh!” screamed Margaret, “you hurt me. They
are treading on my toes. Nimrod! Nimrod! I can't get
out.”

“Margaret, are you in there, like a mouse among cats?”
hallooed her brother.

“Yes, and Obed is here too.”

“Let Obed go to Ballyhack. Come along out.”

“Cast him out of the synagogue,” cried the Preacher.

“Back with ye,” said a man making up to Nimrod. “The
Lord is here.”

“Guess you will find somebody else is here too. Take
yourself back,” replied Nimrod, at the same time rendering
the man a blow that nearly levelled him with the ground.

“I can't stay here,” said Mistress Palmer.

“Hope the Lord won't leave us yet,” responded a woman
at her side.

“I fear the spirit will be grieved to depart,” said another of
the company.

“How many souls will perish for this man's wickedness!”
sighed the Preacher.

Sibyl Radney rushing forward, seized Margaret, whom
she held like a pup, under one arm, and with the other
cleaved her way through the people. The lights were
smothered; there was a surging to and fro; the props of the
tent broke asunder; some ran one way, some another; others
were trodden under foot. Margaret found herself in the
woods supported by Sibyl. Nimrod presently appearing, said
they must go home. Sibyl helped him mount his horse, and
Margaret contriving to keep her brother in equipoise, they
returned to the Pond.

9. CHAPTER IX.
MARGARET SUCCESSFUL IN A NOVEL ADVENTURE.

A few days afterwards, there came to the Widow Wright's
Mr. Palmer from the Ledge, the man who found Margaret
in the woods and delivered her to his wife. He purchased
of the Widow a prescription for his daughter Rhody,
who he said was not in strong health, and then stated that his
family had been troubled for want of water, and intimated a
conjecture of his wife that Margaret was one in whom resided
the faculty of discovering it, and asked the Widow if she
would accompany him to Pluck's, and aid in procuring the

services of the child for the purpose indicated. They went
to Margaret's house, where Mr. Palmer gained the consent of
the family to his object, and especially that of Nimrod, who
evinced a positive delight in the project, and even volunteered
to be Margaret's gallant on the occasion. They all proceeded
together, accompanied by the Widow, who suggested that her
personal attention might be of some benefit to Rhody. The
Ledge was six or seven miles from the Pond; it was properly
speaking a marble quarry, and belonged to Mr. Palmer, who
with his sons, in addition to a large farm they cultivated,
sometimes worked at gravestones and hearths.

Mr. Palmer was in popular phrase a forehanded man, his
house and barns were large, and his grounds indicated thrift.
He had three sons, Roderick, Alexander and Rufus, stout,
vigorous boys; and one daughter Rhody about eighteen, who
evinced a sickly temperament, but was otherwise a fair-looking,
black-haired girl. This family were obliged to bring their
water from a considerable distance, not having been able to
find a spring near the house. Agreeable to the doctrines of
rhabdomancy, formerly in vogue, and at the present moment
not entirely discarded, a twig, usually of the witchhazle, borne
over the surface of the ground, indicates the presence of
water, by immediately moving in the hand. The number of
persons would seem to be small in whom this power is lodged,
or through whom the phenomenon exhibits itself. It appeared
that the neighborhood had been canvassed for an operator, but
none succeeded. It occurred to Mistress Palmer, at the Camp,
that Margaret might be endowed with this rare gift, and the
child was accordingly sent for. The family at the Ledge
showed great joy on the arrival of the party from the Pond.
Mistress Palmer took a pinch of snuff, and helped Margaret
from the horse, and even received Nimrod kindly, although
his pranks at the meeting might have operated to his prejudice.
The large pewter tankard of cider was passed round,
but Margaret refused to taste, saying she should prefer water.
“Dear me! we han't got a drop of decent water in the
house,” exclaimed Mistress Palmer. “The gal shall have
some milk, the best we have; Rhody get some of the morning's;
pour it out cream and all.” Of this Margaret drank
freely. “Poor thing!” ejaculated the lady, “she don't know
as she has got a soul, and our Rufus is nigh as bad, for he
won't do nothing to save his.”

“I tell you what it is, Marm,” rejoined Rufus, her youngest
son, about twelve or fourteen years of age; “I an't a going

to have that old preacher whining and poking about me. I
believe I can get to heaven without his help; if I can't, then I
am willing to stay away.”

“Well, well, child,” replied the mother, “I shall not care
how, if you get there at all, only I want you to be a good
boy.” She took a large pinch of snuff. These preliminaries
being settled, and Margaret having received her instructions
to hold the stick firmly and tell when it moved, proceeded on
her duty. She made sundry gyrations, she traversed the
grounds about the house, she tried the garden, but effected
nothing. “It is too wet,” said one; “it is too cold,” said a
second; “it is too dry,” said a third; “it is too warm,” said
a fourth. Mistress Palmer took a pinch of snuff. Another
trial was proposed. The child went farther from the house,
she perambulated the orchard. All looked on with a breathless
interest; she moved about slowly and carefully, the stick
held horizontally forward in her two fists — a little diviner,
in a green rush hat and Indian moccasins; the wind shook
her brown curls, her blue checked pinafore streamed off like a
pennon. Did they do wrong to use a little creature so? Yet
is not God useful? Is not Utility the sister of Beauty? At
last she cried out that it moved. Mr. Palmer hastened forward
and struck his spade into the spot; Margaret ran off.
The boys came up with hoes, crows and shovels, and began
to dig. Presently there were signs of water, then it bubbled
up, then it gushed forth a clear limpid stream. Mr. Palmer
praised God. The boys hooraed. Mistress Palmer took a
pinch of snuff.

“Taste on't, Alek,” said Rufus.

“No,” replied the father. “It belongs to the finder to be
the first taster. The gal, where is she?”

Rufus was despatched for Margaret. He found her at the
quarry trying to get a hare-bell that grew far above her head.
The boy crouched under her, and she stepping on his
shoulders succeeded in reaching the flower. When she would
have descended Rufus fastened his arms about her, and bore
her off on his back, papoose-like. Approaching the spot
where the water was found, she leaped down and scudded
around the house, Rufus pursued, she laughed, he laughed, and
full of frolic, he brought her to the spring. She said she was
not dry and would not drink, and would have run away again;
when Nimrod prevailed with her to the end desired. Then
they all drank, and pronounced it excellent water. Mistress
Palmer said it was soft and would wash well; Mistress

Wright declared it was nice to boil mint in; Alexander didn't
care if he hadn't to lug any more from the brook. All were
satisfied, and Margaret became a wonder.

A sumptuous home-made dinner, with a suet Indian-pudding
and molasses for dessert, was served on bright pewter
plates with stag-horn knives and forks. After this, Rufus
brought Margaret a marble flower-pot he had made, also a
kitten very well executed, which he had cut from the same
material. Rhody gave her a root of the Guelder rose. Mr.
Palmer paid the Widow handsomely for her visit to his
daughter, whose case she elaborately investigated. He offered
money to Nimrod, who refused it. Mistress Palmer made
Margaret a present of linen cloth of her own weaving, enough
for two or three entire under dresses.

“Thank Miss Palmer,” said Nimrod to his sister.

“Oh no!” exclaimed the lady. “Take it and welcome,
and anything we have got. But do, my young friend,” she
added as he was mounting his horse, “do think on your ways,
strive, strive, who knows but you may find the good thing at
last. And the little gal — she is a good child as ever was. It
was very kind of her to come all the way up here, and do us
a service. She is worth her weight in gold. I hope she will
have a new heart soon. Here,” she continued, “let me help
you on.” Margaret scarcely touching the woman's hand
sprang to the pillion. “Why, how she jumps! She is as
spry as a cricket. How pretty she does look up there behind
you; I must have a kiss out of her, — there, — remember thy
Creator in the days of thy youth — and don't you forget, my
young friend — good day.”

“I want Rhody to kiss me,” said Margaret.

“Run Rhody,” said her mother. So Rhody went forward
and kissed Margaret.

“Did Rhody kiss you?” asked Nimrod, when they had
rode on awhile without saying anything.

“Yes,” was the reply.

10. CHAPTER X.

It is a noticeable fact, that we of the present age have
fewer holidays than our puritanical ancestors. “The King's
Birth Day,” was formerly celebrated with great pomp; in addition
there were enjoyed “Coronation Days,” the “Birth of
a Prince,” Accessions and Burials of Governors, Victories in
War, Masonic Festivals, to say nothing of Military Reviews,
Election Days, Ordination of Ministers, Executions for
Murder; and at a still later period Washington's Birth Day,
now almost forgotten, The Fourth of July, at present diverted
to a Sunday-school or Temperance Festival. But of Thanksgiving;
a day devoted to mirth, gratefulness, hospitality,
family love, eating, drinking; a day sometimes externally
snowy, rainy, benumbing, drenching; internally so elastic,
smiling, lark-like, verdant, blithe; it is not sanctified or
squandered like Merry Christmas in the Old World; it has no
gooding, candles, clog, carol, box, or hobby-horse; it has no
poetry or song; it does not come in the calendar, only by the
Governor's proclamation; New Englanders can sing with Old
Englanders, mutatis mutandis:

they cannot add,

Our houses and churches are brown and sear as the gardens
and orchards about them. The cedar may be green in the

woods, the box-tree, the fir and the pine together, we never
use them. In both cases, there is, or was, an abundance of
wassailing, dancing, gaming, shooting, and if one pleases to
say, “Heathenrie, Divelrie, Dronkennesse, Pride.” We have
no budding oak or holy-thorn, which sprang from the staff of
Joseph of Arimathea, and bears milk-white blossoms every
Christmas day, in the forests of Glastonbury; although we
have no doubt such trees might be found in our woods. Unlike
Christmas, bread baked Thanksgiving Eve moulds never
the slower. Yet, bating ecclesiastical days and a few calendar
superstitions, which the dissenting Colonists left behind, how
much did they not bring with them from their native soil!
“We owe,” says the Democratic Review, “our political
institutions, and nearly all the arrangements of our public,
social and domestic life, to our English ancestors.” In addition
to religion, language, habits, costume, fashions, science,
art, architecture, agriculture, the military and naval art,
horses, carriages, cows, sheep, grasses, bells, knives and forks,
crockery and glass ware, apples, pears, peaches, etc. etc.,
there floated across the sea, and has descended the stream of
time, idiosyncrasies of temper, idioms of speech, rhetorical
figures, colloquial metaphors, an entire dialect of vulgarisms,
ballads, madrigals, maxims, apologues, saws, witticisms, jokes,
snibs, witchcraft, bigotry, omens, signs, a thousand and one
fanciful calculations on the moon, the weather, beasts, birds,
persons, — a whole argosy. Some of these may be traced to
the Saxons and Britons, in unbroken succession. They still
exist in England, Germany, Sweden, nay, everywhere. We
must look perhaps for some great Oriental centre, some fountain
head beyond the Indus. The fathers of the Sanscrit,
the authors of the Vedas, the original Brahmins, whoever they
may have been, possibly the step-sons of Noah, seem to have
given population, language, law, philosophy, superstition, and,
saving Christ, religion to the world.

John Bull and Brother Jonathan, a North Briton and a
Yankee, have the same flesh and blood, the same corpuscular
ingredients, the same inspiration of the Almighty. The latter
differs from the former chiefly in this, breadth; his legs are
longer and his feet larger, because he has higher fences and
steeper hills to climb, and longer roads to travel; he is more
lank because he has not time to laugh so much, since it takes
him so long to go to mill, to pasture, to his neighbors; he is
less succulent and oozy because he gets dry and hardened in
the extensive tracts of open air he has to traverse; he is

more suspicious because in his circuits he meets with more
strangers; he is more curious for the same reason; he is
more inventive and calculating for this same breadth, that he
has not aids at hand, and must depend on himself; his eye is
keener because he sees his objects at a greater distance; he
is more religious because he has farther to go for his religion,
that is to say, to meeting; men valuing what costs them
much; — the whole difference is breadth, interminable forests,
rivers, mountains, platitudinous farms, families reaching from
the Madawaska to the Yazoo. The same cause operates to
distinguish the Kentucky hunter from the Yankee, cypress
swamps, alligators, catamounts, the Indians, the Mississippi.
Sam Slick is an elongated and skinny John Browdie, and
David Crockett is the same “critter,” knobbed and gnarled.

Thanksgiving was an anti-Christmas festival, established as
a kind of off-set to that. Yet both are a fealty paid to the
universal gala-sentiment. We cannot always work, we cannot
always pray. So say young and old, grave and gay. Hence,
Hindoo Doorga, Celtic Juul, Jewish Succoth, Japanese
Majira, the Panathenæa, Fête des Fous, Volks-fest, Carnival,
Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving.

Thanksgivings have been observed — what do we say?
The first Thanksgiving must have been of God's own ordaining
about the beginning of the new year 1621, that is to say, the
25th of March, at New Plymouth, after a dismal winter of
destitution, disease and alarm, when the snows were melting,
and “brooks of sweet fresh water” broke loose, the children
found a new May-flower peeping from the dead leaves, the
buds of the dog-wood began to swell, and the birds to sing,
the “sick and lame recovered apace,” and the Colonists saw
something that looked like living and home. The first Thanksgiving
“by authority,” was, if we are agreed, June 13, 1632.
We can hardly call this a New England Thanksgiving, inasmuch
as it embraced but a handful of the people. The Indians
must have kept it as a Fast.

Thanksgivings were appointed for “the removal of sickness,”
“the precious life of our Sovereign;” “success of
the king of Prussia,” “the conquest of Martinico,” that “God
had been pleased to support our most gracious Queen in the
perils of childbirth,” “for success against the Indians, so that
scarce a name or family remain in their former habitation,”
“the suppression of rebellion in Great Britain,” “the near
view of peace.” Fasts, the antipodal holiday, were proclaimed
by reason of “the small-pox,” “earthquakes, inundations,

and other calamities in Europe,” “distressing Indian
wars,” “that we may be preserved against the rage of the
heathen,” “the great number of insects,” “drought,” “unseasonable
rains,” “divisions in our churches,” “the Ranters
and Quakers,” “the low estate of the people of God,” “some
heathen yet in hostility,” “the great distresses of Ministers,
their salaries being paid in depreciated paper.”

Thanksgiving was at hand for Livingston, the Pond, Nimrod,
Margaret. Its succedanea, as respects the latter, were a
turkey shoot the next day, and a ball the following night, at
No. 4. If Margaret had lived in the village, or almost any
where else than at the Pond, she might have enjoyed the meeting
of families, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren,
uncles and aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins; she
might have partaken in the consumption of pigs, turkeys, geese,
ducks, chickens, plum-pudding and plum-cake, pumpkin,
mince and apple pies, beer, cider, flip; she might have gone
to church and heard a discourse from Parson Welles on the
distressing state of the times, and the imminent danger from
French influence, and learned what a Philistine Napoleon
Bonaparte was; she might have gone to a party of boys and
girls at Esq. Weeks's, and played “blind-man's-buff,” “run
round the chimney,” and “button, button, who's got the
button;” but she did not. Yet she was quite busy at home.
Two or three of the preceding days she spent riding about
with Nimrod to invite company and arouse interest for the
ball. They went to Mr. Pottle's at Snake Hill, and Mr. Dunlap's
at Five-mile-lot, where they also encountered the camp
Preacher sedulously disputing the field with them. They went
also to the Ledge, where the Preacher followed. But Mistress
Palmer decided the question by saying that Roderick, her
oldest son, had professed a hope and would not think of going,
but that Rhody had not come forward at all, and she thought
it would do her good to have the exercise, and that Rufus, if
he had been serious, had lost his impressions, and it would not
do him any harm to go. They went into the various districts,
and left some invitations in the edge of Dunwich and Brandon.
The party was designed to be select, and all people of a certain
caste and character were carefully omitted. Thanksgiving
Eve was kept at the Pond in this wise; their candles were pine
torches, which they flourished about the premises, under trees,
in the shed, in pursuit of hens and turkeys; their clogs were
large clumps of wood, stumps, twigs, &c. crowded into the
immense fire-place; their carol consisted of oaths, smirks,
songs; for ale they had an abundance of pupelo. No St.

Nicholas watched about the chimney during the night, or filled
Margaret's stocking in the morning. Who is the patron saint
of Thanksgiving?

Only Chilion made her a present of a beautiful blue-painted
sled to coast with when the snows came. It was
framed of the best materials, put together in the form most
fitted for speed, shod with highly polished steel, and named
Humming Bird. They had stewed chicken and crust coffee
for breakfast, and for dinner chickens roasted by strings suspended
before the fire, potatoes, brown bread and cider. Pies
and cakes were wanting. The remainder of the time was
occupied in preparing for the events of the next day, scouring
guns, brushing shoes and coats, polishing buckles, &c. Nimrod
took occasion to renew his instructions to Margaret in the
dancing art, and Chilion intimated some of his best tunes.
No. 4, to which the attention of the family was now directed,
lay in a valley below the Pond, formed by the passage of Mill
Brook, and was enriched by nature with fine intervals and
excellent drainages. The approach to the place was by a narrow,
woody, rocky road or lane. Opposite you, on the south,
rose a gradually ascending eminence and range of hills that
jointed the horizon. Through No. 4 ran the highway from the
village of Livingston to Brandon, a town on the south-west.
Here was a large tavern, known as Smith's, and a distillery
owned by the same gentleman. In the language of a writer
of the times, this hamlet presented a spectacle of “houses
without windows, barns without roofs, gardens without enclosures,
fields without fences, hogs without yokes, sheep without
wool, meagre cattle, feeble horses, and half clad, dirty
children, without manners, principles or morals.” The people
were loungers about the tavern, which seemed to have exhausted
the life of the place, and to have diffused over it instead,
dearth, indolence, dreariness and sterility. This was a
large two-story house, having a long stoop in front. Between
it and the Brook was the Still, a long black building, surrounded
by barrels and hogsheads of cider. Near the tavern was held
the turkey shoot, the day after Thanksgiving, to which Nimrod
took Margaret, and Hash carried one or two turkeys. It was
chilly and drizzling, and Margaret was deposited in the kitchen
of the tavern, where she had a chance to become acquainted
with Mr. Smith's daughters, the Gubtail's, Hatch's, Tapley's
from the neighborhood, Paulina Whiston, Grace Joy and Beulah
Ann Orff from Breakneck. The bar-room was filled with men
and boys, fumes of rum and tobacco, and a jargon of voices;

the air about was charged with the smoke of powder; the
turkeys were perched on a stump and tied by the leg: there
were the report of rifles, the running to and fro of men and
boys; disputes about the shots; wrangling, wrestling; in all
which Margaret had no share. Thus passed the fore part of
the day.

In the evening, Nimrod, as one of the masters of arrangements,
with Margaret, came early to the tavern. Soon the
ladies and gentlemen began to assemble. Of the number
were Pluck and his wife, the Widow Wright and Obed, and
Sibyl Radney; among the spectators were several elderly men
and women from the neighborhood; among the loafers were
Abel Wilcox, the clerk, Hancock Welles, grandson of the
Parson, from the village. The hall was a long unfinished
upper room; the naked timbers, joists and sleepers, were garnished
with branches of pine and hemlock, laced with wreaths
of ground laurel. Tallow candles were supported in wooden
blocks on the walls, and rude benches were fixed to the sides
of the room. The ladies' dresses presented considerable variety;
some had made requisition on the wardrobes of their grandmothers,
some had borrowed from their neighbors, servants
from their mistresses; in some appeared the latest style of the
cities; several wore gowns of their own manufacture, striped
or checked linen, with flowers elaborately wrought with the
needle. There were sacques, trails and one or two hoops.
There were corsages long and pointed, round and medium,
high and narrow. Sleeves were tight, short and bordered with
ruffles. All had necklaces of gold, glass, or waxen beads.
The coiffures were equally diversified, ringlets, crockets,
twists, tye-tops, crape cushions, toupees, sustained and enriched
with brass and gilt clasps, pins, silk and velvet fillets,
feathers and flowers. The shoes were striped with a white
welt. There was an agreeable intermixture of old and faded
brocades and damasks, rustling padusoys, shining lutestrings,
changeables, embossed linens, and plain white muslins. Many
wore ear-hoops of pinch-beck, as large as a dollar. On the
side of the gentlemen was a similar blending of old and new
patterns. If Joseph's coat of many colors had been miraculously
enlarged, and cut up into separate garments, it would
form the appropriate suit of this assemblage, in which red,
blue, yellow, chocolate, butternut, green and all hues but
black, were represented. Some wore a costume resembling
that of the Master's, we have before described. The hair of
most of the gentlemen was powdered, and some had it done in

tyes, queues, frizzes. Of buckles there were silver, plated,
brass, iron, steel, pewter and paste. Most of them sported
ruffle cuffs. Margaret wore the new dress Nimrod bought her,
and her moccasins. Pluck retained his leather apron, his
wife had donned a clean long-short. Chilion, the chief
musician, wore a pearl-colored coat, buff swansdown vest,
white worsted breeches and ribbed stockings. Tony Washington,
the negro barber from the village, and assistant violinist,
had his head powdered, wore a crimson silk faded coat with
long skirts, ruffle cuffs and white smalls. It was a singularly
freaked and speckled group. There were burly, weather-beaten
faces under powder and curls; broad, hard hands in kid gloves;
thewy, red elbows that had plied brooms, shuttles, cards,
frisking lace ruffles; there were bright eyes, smiling faces and
many pleasant words. Chilion, whose general manner was
reserved and obscure, grew animated when the dance began.
Margaret, omitted at first, was presently called up by Rufus
Palmer. None were so young and small as she; but she
enacted her part with vigor and precision. Her father asked
her for a partner, and it gave her new life when she saw she
pleased him. She was, for the most part, among strangers, in
a strange place and strangely occupied. The lights, the open
fantastically shadowed garret above, the evergreens, the windows
shining with the dew of so many breaths, the mystic
motion, steps which one takes and comprehends not, balancing,
gallopading, confusion harmonized, oiled intricacies, ploughboys
graceful and boors mannerly, earnestness of participation,
so earnest that even in the height of the game no one smiles;
and then above all and in all, the clear, exhilarating, penetrating
notes of the violin, and Chilion's violin, that she always
loved to hear, played in its best way; the life of all this life,
the motion of this motion, the inspirer and regulator of this
maze,—she felt grateful to her brother, and for the rest, she
seemed to enjoy it with a deep unconsciousness of joy. One
might have noticed her brother Chilion peculiarly employed.
He not only controlled the action, but seemed to gratify himself
in varying and modifying it. He evidently fantasied with
the company. He made them move faster or slower as he
pleased. He might have been seen watching the effect of his
viol, or his own effect through it. Whatever power he possessed
he exerted to the utmost. He seemed to be playing
more upon the dancers than upon his instrument. In the
midst of a figure he would accelerate the parties, drive them
from point to point with the wildest rapidity. In a contradance,
to the “Campbells are Coming,” never did plaided
Highlander leap down his native rocks with a more headlong
step than those same pied bumpkins sprang over that hall floor.
He slackened the motion at the close, and dismissed them
quietly to their seats. In one of the intermissions, might have
been seen entering the place the indefatigable Preacher. He
stole through the crowd, erected his tall dark form on a bench,
and taking advantage of the pause, broke upon them like a
thunder gust. His loud, guttural, solemn voice, rang through
the room.

“Thus saith the Lord God, thy pomp shall be brought down
to the grave, and the noise of thy viols!”

“A sermon! A sermon!” cried Abel Wilcox.

Preacher. “You look fair and seemly, but you are stench
in the nostrils of the Almighty.”

Crowd. “Another set, who'll lead off?”

Preacher. “The Lord will take away the bravery of your
tinkling ornaments, your cauls and round tires like the moon,
your chains and bracelets and mufflers.”

Pluck. “Let us praise God in the dance, praise him with
the stringed instruments. Let us, as David did, dance before
the Lord.”

Preacher. “This place shall be as God overthrew Sodom
and Gomorrah; owls shall dwell here, and satyrs shall dance
here.”

Crowd. “Peggy and Molly!” “The Haymakers,” “Here's
Zenas Joy and Delinda Hoag want `Come haste to the
Wedding!' ”

Preacher. “You stand on slippery places, your feet shall
stumble on the dark mountains.”

Crowd. “Chorus Jig! Hoa! Chilion, where are you?”

Chilion. “Take your partners.”

Preacher. “Rhody Palmer! Sylvina Pottle! Myra Dunlap!
are you in this scene of noise and confusion? Didn't you
come forward to be prayed for? Myra, didn't you profess to
have submitted? Oh! oh! God has been at Snake Hill, Five-mile-lot
and the Ledge, and he would have gone clear through
Breakneck and No. 4, but for this dance! And here I espy
the arch-adversary of souls, the contriver of your eternal ruin,
the very devil himself in your midst.”

Nimrod. “The devil you do.”

Preacher. “Young man, you will have your portion in
hell-fire.”

Nimrod. “I go to hell if I do.”

Preacher. “The deep damnation of God is prepared for
you.”

Nimrod. “I be damned if it is.”

Preacher. “What profanity! what blasphemy to add to the
catalogue of your sins.”

Chilion. “All ready.”

The words of the Preacher, as not unusually happens, were
disregarded. He pitched his voice still higher. They danced
the faster, Chilion played with the greater energy. The
Preacher himself exhausted, or discouraged, became at length
a listener, and finally his eye was rivetted to the scene before
him. Chilion played on almost wildly. Tony seconded the
purposes of his master to the best of his endeavors, his teeth
and eyes shone with a terrified whiteness, and the powder from
his hair sprinkled his face. Chilion was unmoved in the storm
he raised. Curls uncurled, ruffles were ruffled, trains trailed;
but the dance went on. Margaret revelled in the movement;
she danced as to the winds; she knew her brother, she loved
his power, she leaped out his spirit and tones. She sprang
through the figure like a shuttle, she spun round and round like
a top. Chilion, in his own time, softened the measure, and
suffered the piece to glide away in the gentlest pulsations.
The night waxed and waned. The Preacher, the elderly
people and children, and other spectators had gone; most of
the dancers left.

Here we must recede a moment to relate that in the
forenoon, Hash the brother of Margaret, and Zenas Joy, a
resident of the place called Breakneck, had a serious misunderstanding
about a shot the latter made at a turkey set
up by the former. Numbers came forward to the arbitration,
and in the result it happened that the interests and jealousies
of all parties became joined in issue, and the strength and
prowess of the several neighborhoods were arranged under the
respective standards of the Pond and Breakneck. It was proposed
to adjust the difficulty by a champion from each side in
a wrestling match. A rain, however, separated the combatants,
and broke up the ring. At the supper-table in the
evening, the subject was renewed. Again at this late hour of
the night, there were not wanting causes to stimulate the feud
in such as remained. Mr. Smith, the tavern-keeper, brought
forward a fresh supply of liquors, of which both gentlemen
and ladies freely drank; and the two young men from the
village had no other business than to foment and egg on the
rivalships of the several districts. A final dance was called

for; but there appeared little self-possession, either in respect
of temper or limb. Chilion played a while, and then relinquished
his instrument. Zenas Joy seized Hash by the
collar; Joseph Whiston tripped Obed, who, poor youth, was
already nearly down with liquor; Abel Wilcox spurred Rufus
Palmer to tread on Beulah Ann Orff's trail; Grace Joy taunted
Nimrod with a false step Margaret had taken; Sibyl Radney
rushed into the fray, pounced upon Zenas Joy, and sent him
whirling about the room, as she would a spinning wheel. So
one and another were engaged. Margaret, who had left the
floor, was standing by the side of Chilion. She looked at the
quarrellers, and then at her brother. He snapped his viol
strings, and was silent.

“Sing, Margery,” at length he said. He began a familiar
tune, “Mary's Dream,” — he played and she sang. This
twofold melody, sweet and plaintive, seemed to touch the
hearts of those excited people. They stopped to hear, they
heard to be won. They moved towards the music; they were
hushed if not subdued, they parted in peace if not in harmony.
Thus ended their Thanksgiving, and we must end
ours, and turn to other times and scenes.

11. CHAPTER XI.
A REVISED ACCOUNT OF NIMROD AND HIS DOINGS.

We shall omit the wild-turkey hunt of a bright autumnal
moon-light night in the woods, exciting and engaging though
it was, and the race with Streaker, in which Margaret bore no
part, while we proceed to enumerate some particulars of her
eldest brother, that have a relation to herself. Nimrod evinced
a volatile, roving, adventure-seeking habit from his boyhood.
The severe waspish temper of his mother he could not abide,
the coarse, dogged despotism of Hash he resented; Chilion
was only a boy, and one not sufficiently social and free; with
his father he had more in common. At the age of fourteen
he became an indented apprentice to Mr. Hatch the blacksmith
at No. 4. But of the different kind of blows of which
he was capable, he relished those best that had the least to do
with the anvil. He liked horses well enough, but preferred

their hides to their hoofs; and became more skilful with the
fleam than the buttress. He left his master in a rage, himself
in good humor. He next let himself at the Crown and Bowl
in the village, where one might fancy he would find his element.
He was hostler, bar-tender, wood-bringer, errand-boy,
chore-doer, farrier, mistress'-man, waiting-maid's man and
everybody's man by turn. He entertained travellers at the
door, girls in the kitchen and boys in the stoop. He was
quick but he always loitered, he was ingenious yet nothing
was well done. It would not seem strange that he should
prove a better auxiliary to every one's taste and fancy, than to
Mr. Stillwater his employer's interest. He hung a flint stone
on the barn-door to keep the devil from riding the horses in
the night; but this did not prevent indications of their having
been used at unlawful times and in unlawful ways, which
their owner was disposed to charge upon Nimrod. He was
dismissed. While he served others at the bar he must needs
help himself, and he became at an early age an adept in what
an old writer denominates the eighth liberal art. At the close
of the revolutionary war, it became more difficult to fill
vacancies in the army, than it had been originally to form
companies. There were “Classes” in Livingston, as everywhere
else, whose duty it was to furnish a certain number of
soldiers, as exigency required. By one of these, Nimrod, not
yet fifteen years of age, but of due physical proportion and
compliance, was hired. He joined a detachment ordered on
the defence of our northern frontier.

But even military discipline was insufficient to correct his
propensities, or reform his habits. He deserted, and crossed
the Canada lines. He connected himself with a band of
smugglers that swarmed in those quarters, and during the
spring of the year 1784, we find him in New York in a sloop
from up river. The vessel was anchord in the stream not far
from the Albany Basin. She had a deck-load of lumber, and
wheat in her hold, the ordinary supply of the country at the
time; her contraband goods were stowed in proper places.
Government, both state and national, was pressed for means;
the war, taxes, suspension of productive labor, had heightened
necessity, and diminished resource. Duties were great, but
legislation was irregular. The city held in its bosom many
who had suffered during the late contest. The general amnesty
while it retained the disaffected, failed in some cases to
reconcile them. Hence smuggling, while it grew to be a
most vexatious practice, was one of tolerably easy accomplishment.

Laws were severe, but there was wanting the force to
execute; the police was more numerous than energetic. Still
the business demanded skill, caution and prudence.

Late in the evening, the cabin of the sloop was visited by
an elderly gentleman in buff coat and breeches, having an
eagle holding an olive branch wrought on his left breast. He
was addressed by the Captain as Mr. Girardeau. He complained
bitterly of the times, the rise of taxes, financial depressions,
the decline of real estate and sundry misfortunes.
He said that his clerk, meaning thereby his daughter, had
eloped, and that his old servant Simon was dead. He had
evident connection with the private objects of the vessel, and
under his supervision preparations were made for carrying the
contraband articles to his own store in the city. These, consisting
of silks, ribbons, laces, &c. were laid in coffin-shaped
boxes, and Nimrod with another of the crew was detached as
porters. They rowed, in a small boat, as far as the beach in
Hudson Square, threaded a lane along the woods and hills of
Grand Street, came down through the marshes and fields of
Broadway, till they reached a small wooden house lying under
a hill back of the City Hall, which was the residence of Mr.
Girardeau whom they found waiting to receive them. They
encountered several of the police stationed on the skirts of the
city, one of whom they frightened by intimations of the
small-pox; another they avoided by slinking into the shadows
of trees; another they succeeded in stupifying by drafts of
rum, a supply of which they carried in their pockets. Nimrod
recounted his adroit passages to Mr. Girardeau, who seemed
pleased with the success if not with the character of the
youth; and, in fine, hearing him highly recommended by the
Captain, he the next day engaged him, under the assumed
name of Foxly, to fill the place recently held by his deceased
servant Simon. Nimrod was nothing loth to exchange masters,
and enter upon new scenes. Mr. Girardeau's quarters
comprised both his store and dwelling-house. The building
was one of the old style, having its gable to the street. In
the rear of the shop-room was a kitchen, and above were
sleeping apartments. In the first instance, Mr. Girardeau
intimated to Nimrod the necessity of a change of apparel, and
that he must wear one of a color like his own. He himself
had been a resident in the city during the war, while the
British had possession, and at that time wore a scarlet coat,
with the arms of the king. At the peace, he changed his hue
and badge. In the next place, he undertook to indoctrinate

his new servant in the secrets of his business, and to impress
upon him a sense of the responsibleness of his vocation.
“I — I should say we, — 'tis all one concern, one interest,”
so his employer unfolded himself, “we are poor, we are embarrassed.
You, Mr. Foxly, perhaps know how awful a thing
poverty is. You can understand me. We are opposed, we
are maltreated, we are vilified. Enemies beset us night and
day; even now they may be listening to us through the
walls.”

Nimrod, who was not without a tincture of the superstition
of his times, notwithstanding his ordinary display of fearlessness
and daring, started. “They won't take us off in the
night, will they?” exclaimed he.

“Yes, in the night,” replied Mr. Girardeau.

“Then I may as well be a packing,” said Nimrod. “I
can't stay here. I thought you hadn't any of them in the
city.”

“Why the city is full of them,” rejoined Mr. Girardeau,
“hence we see the necessity of care, confederation and
secrecy.”

“But they come in anywhere,” answered Nimrod. “They'll
whisk you right out of your bed. Aunt Ravel had seven
pins stuck into her in one night. Old uncle Kiah, that used
to live at Snake Hill, was trundled down hill three nights
agoing, and his skin all wore off, and he grew as lean as a
gander's leg.”

“Mr. Foxly!” interrupted Mr. Girardeau, “you misunderstand
me, — I see you are from the country, a good place, —
but you misunderstand me. It is men I mean, not spirits.
We have no witches here, only hard-hearted, covetous, ignorant,
griping, depraved, desperate men.”

“Sho! its humans you are speaking of,” replied Nimrod;
“I an't no more afraid of them than a cat is of a wren. I
like them, I could live among them as well as a fish in
water.”

“Mr. Foxly!” continued Mr. Girardeau, solemnly. “We
have something to fear from men. Here likewise you mistake.
I fear you are too rash, too head-strong.”

“Anything, Sir,” answered Nimrod, “I will do anything
you wish,” he added, more soberly. “I will serve you, as
they did the troops in the war, work for nothing and find
myself.”

“You may well say so,” added Mr. Girardeau, Simon was
faithful, he spared himself to provide for me. We are in

straits, we must live frugally. Persecution surrounds us.
We have enemies who can do us a great injury. I can be
made to injure you, and you to injure me. We need circumspection,
we are, if I may so say, in one another's power.
There are those who might take advantage of my necessities,
to compel me to surrender you to the rigor of unjust laws,
and you might end your days in a prison. My whole life has
been one of exposure and want, labor and toil.” Thus was
Nimrod addressed. In the third place, added Mr. Girardeau,
“I must admonish you, Mr. Foxly, and most rigidly enjoin,
that on no account are you to have conference, or hold any
relations with a certain young woman, that sometimes comes
here, whom I will point out to you.” Nimrod found upon the
premises a little black-eyed boy eight or nine years of age,
whom he took for the grandson of his employer. This boy
was sent to school, and when at home played on the hill back
of the house, and slept in a room separate from Nimrod's,
with whom Mr. Girardeau did not seem anxious that he
should have much intercourse. These three constituted the
entire family. Nimrod became cook, washerman, porter, and
performed with alacrity whatever duty was assigned him.
How Nimrod relished his new service and new master for a
while, we need not relate. He could not fail, however, to be
sensible that his food was not quite as good as that to which
he had been accustomed, and to find that his master did not
prove exactly what he expected. He found Mr. Girardeau to
be, to say the least, harsh, arbitrary, exacting; he began to
suspect something worse than this; he believed he told him
falsehoods; that he had money, and that in abundance. As
he lay on the counter, where he usually slept at night, he was
sure he heard the sound of coin in the room over head. Of
the young woman, respecting whom he had been cautioned,
he saw nothing, till one day, he heard voices in the chamber.
He listened at the foot of the stairs, and distinguished a
female's voice. There were sharp words, severe epithets.
Presently a woman came hurriedly down, and passed into the
street.

“Did you see that girl?” asked Mr. Girardeau, descending
immediately afterwards.

“Yes, Sir,” replied Nimrod.

“She is my daughter,” added Mr. Girardeau. “Yes, my
own flesh and blood. You know not the feelings of a father.
She has been guilty of the greatest of crimes, she has disobeyed
me, she has violated my will, she has endangered my

estate. She has married to her own shame, and my grief.
I have borne with her, till forbearance becomes a sin. She
would strip me of my possessions. The author of her degradation
she would make the pander to her cruelty. I am
doubly beset, they are in a conspiracy against me. Heed her
not, listen not to her importunity, let her suffer. I have no
feelings of a father; they have been wrenched and torn
away; I cannot own a viper for a child.”

Nimrod thrust his fists in his waistcoat pockets, where he
clenched them angrily. He was silent. He listened as to an
unanswerable argument; he believed not a word. In the
mean time let us refer to some events wherein his own interest
began to be awakened; and which we shall embody in a
new chapter, with a new title.

12. CHAPTER XII.
THE STORY OF GOTTFRIED BRÜCKMANN AND JANE GIRARDEAU.

Among the Mercenaries, popularly known as Hessians, employed
by England against America during the war of our
Revolution, was Gottfried Brückmann. He was, properly
speaking, a Waldecker, having been born in Pyrmont, an inconsiderable
city of that principality. From what we know of
his history, he seems to have shared largely in the passion for
music, which distinguishes many of his countrymen. To this
also he added a thirst for literary acquisition. But, being a
peasant by caste, he encountered not a few obstacles in these
higher pursuits. He became bellows-boy for the organ in the
church of his native town, and availing himself of chance-opportunities,
he attained some skill on that instrument.
He played well on the harpsichord, flute and violin. In
the French language, at that time so much in vogue
among the Germans, he became a proficient. Nevertheless,
he fretted under the governmental yoke that was laid so
oppressively and haughtily upon the necks of that class of the
people to which he belonged. His conduct exposing him to
suspicion, he fled into the region of country described as the
Hartz Mountains. Whatever of romance, literature, poetry,

descended into the mass of the population; whatever of
legendary tale or cabalistic observance was cherished by the
common heart; whatever of imaginative temper, ideal aspiration,
or mystic enthusiasm has ever characterized any portion
of his countrymen; Brückmann possessed; and in the vicinity
where he now found himself, there was a supply of objects
fitted to animate the strongest sentiments of his being, and
scenes and associations that were congenial with his inclinations;
— forests of oak and beech, fir and pine; every kind
and conformation of rock; birds of all descriptions; cloud-piercing
hills, unfathomable chasms; lakes embosomed in
mountains; waterfalls; mines and smelting-houses, with the
weird and tartarean look of the workmen and their operations;
gorgeous sunsets; dense and fantastic fogs; perennial
snows: points of local and traditionary interest; the Altar
and Sorcerer's Chair, the seat of the festival of the old Saxon
idol, Crotho; the grottoes Baumanshole and Bielshole; a cave
reputed, at the time, to have no termination; wildness, irregularity,
terror, grandeur, freedom and mystery, on every side.
In addition, were little villages and clusters of houses in
valleys embowered in forests, and overshadowed by mountains,
into one of which Brückmann's wanderings led him, that of
Rubillaud, through which runs the Bode. Here in the midst
of almost inaccessible rocks and cold elevations, he found
fruit-trees in blossom, fields green with corn, a small stonechurch
surmounted with a crucifix, a May-pole hung with
garlands, around which the villagers were having their Whitsun
dances. In this place he remained awhile, and was
engaged as a school-teacher for children, the parents of whom
were chiefly miners. Here, as we subsequently learn, he
became warmly attached to one of his pupils, Margaret Bruneau,
daughter of the Pastor of Rubillaud, who was a
Lutheran. In her he found tastes and feelings like his own.
With her he rambled among mountains, penetrated caves,
sang from rocks; and had such an intercourse as tended to
cement their affection, and prosecuted whatever plans were
grateful to their natures. But in the midst of his repose, came
that cruel and barbarous draft of the British Crown on the
German States. Some of the inhabitants of Rubillaud, who
were subjects of the King of Hanover, were enlisted in this
foreign service. Requisition was made on several provinces
then in alliance with England, Brunswick, Hesse Cassel,
Hanau, Anhalt and Waldeck; and on Brückmann's native
town, Pyrmont. The general league formed among these
princes against the peace and liberty of their people, would not
suffer that Brückmann should escape. He was seized, as if
he had been a felon, and forcibly taken to Rotterdam, the
place of embarkation. The reluctance with which this body
of levies contemplated the duty to which they were destined,
will be understood when it is told, that they were obliged to
be under guard on their march to the sea-coast; that many of
them, bound hand and foot, were transported in wagons and
carts; some succeeded in deserting; others making the attempt
were shot. Brückmann, for some instance of insubordination,
received a wound at the hand of his own Captain, from
which he never entirely recovered. Swords ruled souls.
Their avaricious and tyrannical lords let them out as slaves,
and had them scourged to their tasks. Brückmann and Margaret
parted in uttermost bitterness of spirit, and with the
fondest expressions of love. They wafted their adieus and
prayers to each other across the bridge of the Bode, over
which he was rudely snatched, to see her in this world no
more forever.

We shall not follow him through the fortunes of the war;
but hasten to its close, when he was stricken and overwhelmed
by the news of Margaret's death. A strong bond, and perhaps
the only one that attached him to his native country, was
broken; and, in common with many of his countrymen, he
chose to remain in America after the peace. These Germans,
such as survived,—more than eleven thousand of their
number having perished during the war,—scattered themselves;
some joined the settlements of their brethren in Pennsylvania,
some pushed beyond the Ohio, some were dispersed
in the New England States. Brückmann took up his abode
in New York. Those who returned to Germany he bade
plant Margaret's grave with narcissus, rosemary and thyme,
and visit it every Whitsun Festival with fresh flowers; while
he would hallow her memory with prayers and tears in his
own heart. He was disappointed in purpose, forsaken in
spirit, broken in feeling. Contrary to the usual maxim, he
loved those whom he had injured, and was willing that whatever
of life or energy remained to him should be given to the
Americans, while he remembered the land of his birth with
sorrow, upbraidings and despair.

Owing to our numerous and profitable relations with France
at this time, the French language had arisen in the popular
estimation, and was in great request. He would teach it, and
so earn a livelihood, and serve the land of his adoption.

Music too, the musical spirit of Margaret and of his native
country, that which survives in the soul when everything else
is prostrate, came over him. He would live again in song.
He would recall the scenes of the past. Margaret would
reappear in the tones of their love and their youth; her spirit
would echo to the voice of his flute; in song, like night, they
would meet again; by an invisible pathway of melody they
would glide on to the grave. Poor Brückmann! Poor
America! What with his deficiency in our tongue, and his
former services against our liberties, he obtained but few
scholars. Superior and more agreeable Frenchmen were his
rivals. Music! How could we pay for music, when we could
not pay our debts? The crescendo and diminuendo were
other than of sound our people had to learn. He grew
sicker at heart, his hopes had all fled, and his spiritual visions
seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer. He sat by the narrow
window of the small unlighted room he rented, in the night,
and played on his flute to the darkness, the air, the groups of
idle passers by, to memory and to the remote future whither
his visions were flying, and the fair spirit of his reveries had
betaken herself. Yet he had one and not an unconcerned
listener, and perhaps another. These were Jane Girardeau
and her father. Mr. Girardeau had discovered the sound of
the music proceeding from the hill behind his house, and his
daughter listening to it. He called her in; she would go up
to the chamber window, and repeat her curiosity. He ordered
her to bed; she would creep from her room, and sly into the
street that she might hear it. He detected her, rebuffed her,
and locked her into her room. “Can you indulge such extravagance?”
was the language of Mr. Girardeau to his
daughter. “Can you yield to such weakness? Will you
waste your time in this way? Shall I suffer in you a repetition
of all your mother occasioned me? Will you hazard
your reputation? Why will you so often break my commands,
and thwart my wishes? Shall I be compelled to resort to
harsh measures? Are you growing so perverse that moderation
is of no avail? I will have none of this. You are impudent,
beastly.”

His daughter ill brooked all this. To the mind of her
father, she was rash, reckless, turbulent, obstinate, wasteful,
inordinate, selfish, lavish, insensible. She was lavish, but only
of her heart's best affections; she was rash, not in head, so
much as in impulse; she was insensible, but only to the demands
of lucre; she was troubled, not turbulent; she was

inordinate, for no want of her heart had ever been supplied;
she was selfish in the sense of obeying her nature, while she
disregarded the behests of stupidity and meanness.

Jane had rebelled under the iron jurisdiction of her father.
Like the hidden fires of the earth she broke out wherever she
could find vent. She was held down, not subdued. She was
too elastic to flatten, too spiritual to stagnate. She rebounded
with a wild recoil. Her fits of anger, or sallies of spirit,
whatever they might be called, were frequent and energetic.
As she grew older, she became more sensible of her degradation
and wrongs, as well as more capable of redressing them.

She was the only child of an ill-assorted marriage. She
became of some service to her father. Her personal beauty
was an attraction to customers, and he valued her aid as shopgirl.
She presided over the department of the store devoted
to the sale of fancy goods, which, obtained in various ways,
afforded enormous profits, and became an item of trade,
that, notwithstanding her father's extensive and multifarious
business, he could not well forego. She was also a good accountant
and book-keeper. Brückmann was straitened for
means. His quarterly rent was due. He would make one
effort more; and that perhaps the most dangerous for a poor
man; he would borrow money. He knew of the broker near
by, he knew his reputation for great wealth. He had no
friend, no backer. He obtained a certificate from the parents
of one of his scholars, to the effect that he was believed to be
an honest man. He presented himself at the store of Mr.
Girardeau. Jane was there; she recognized in him the flute-player,
whom she had sometimes seen in the streets, or at his
window. Brückmann was a Saxon throughout; his eyes were
full blue, his complexion was light and fair, his hair was of a
sandy brown, thick and bushy. Dejection and disappointment
were evidently doing their work upon him. His face had
grown thin, his eyes were sunk, and his look was that of a
sick man. He addressed Mr. Girardeau in broken English.
“Speak in your own language,” said the latter gentleman,
“I can understand you.” He stated briefly his object. Mr.
Girardeau looked at the note, and replied in German, “Hard
times, Sir, hard times; securities scarce, liabilities uncertain,
business dull, great losses abroad, foreigners do not appreciate
our condition.” He then proceeded to interrogate Brückmann
on his business, circumstances, prospects. There were two
listeners to the answer, father and daughter, both intent, but
in a different manner. The old gentleman ordered Jane away

while he transacted a little private business. She retreated to
the back part of the store where she persistingly stood; and it
was obvious, although the stranger spoke in his own tongue,
she comprehended what he said. From one thing to another
Brückmann was led to recite his entire history; his birth, his
retreat to Rubillaud, his interest in Margaret, his enlistment,
his service in the war, Margaret's death, his present method
of support. Mr. Girardeau replied, in brief, that it was not
in his power to accommodate him. The agitation of Brückmann
was evidently intense at this repulse; and there seemed
to be aroused a corresponding sympathy of distress in the
heart of Jane. The story of the stranger interested her, it
took strong possession of her imagination. As he left, her
thoughts followed him with that most agonizing sense of powerless
compassion. Could she but see him, could she but
speak with him, she would bestow upon him her condolences,
if she could offer him no more substantial aid.

Jane studied day and night how she might encounter the
unhappy stranger, the enchanting musician. To perfect her
for his purposes, her father allowed her to do a little business
in her own name. These earnings, ordinarily devoted to
some species of amusement or literary end, she now as sedulously
hoarded as increased. She discovered where Brückmann
had some pupils in a private family. Thither, taking
her private purse, she went; sought her way to his room, and
seated herself among the scholars. She heard the recitation,
and the remarks that accompanied it. She discerned the
originality of Brückmann's mind, as she had formerly been
interested in the character of his sensibilities. He spoke in
a feeble tone, but with a suggestive emphasis. She knew well
the causes of his depression. He sang also to his pupils one
of his native hymns, she admired its beauty and force, and
perhaps more the voice of the singer. She stayed behind
when the scholars left. He spoke to her. She replied, to his
surprise, in his own language, or something akin to it. She
told him who she was, that she had heard his story, that she
compassionated his wants, that her father was abundantly
rich, and that from her own earnings she had saved him some
money. She pressed upon him her purse, which neither delicacy
demanded, nor would necessity allow that he should
refuse. She told him how much she had been interested in
his history; she desired him to repeat it. “Tell me,” said
she, “more about Margaret Bruneau.” He related as much
as the time would permit.

She was reproached, she was maledicted by her father, on
her return, although he knew not where she had been. An
Idea had seized her, and for that she was willing to sacrifice
everything. It had neither shape, nor color, nor definition, nor
end. She thought of it when she went to bed, she dreamed
of it, she awoke with it. She would see the stranger. She
went again to his school-room. She walked with him on the
Parade. “Tell me,” she would say, “more about Margaret.
How old was she? How did she look? How did you love
her? Why did you love her?” He would repeat all he had
said before and discover new particulars each time.

“Were her parents rich or poor?” asked Jane.

“Poor,” replied Brückmann.

“Happy, happy Margaret! O if my father were poor as
the sheerest mendicant I should be happy.”

“You may be able to do much good with your money,
sometime or another.”

“I see nothing before me but darkness and gloom,” replied
Jane. “My father,—you know what he is. My dear, dear
mother, too fond of her child, too opposed to her husband, too
indulgent, too kind,—she has gone from my love and my
approach forever. I may be in the midst of affluence, I am
cursed, blighted by a destitution such as you know nothing of.
Gold may be my inheritance, my prospects are all worthless,
fearful, sombre. You say you will meet Margaret in
heaven!”

“Speak freely with me,” said Brückmann, “I love to hear,
if I cannot answer. Margaret and I often talked of what we
could not comprehend. We strove to lift each other up, even
if we made no advance. She had a deep soul, an unbounded
aspiration. We sang of heaven, and then we began to feel it.
We were more Sphinxes than Œdipuses. Yet she became
Heaven to me, when there was none in the skies. She was a
transparent, articulate revelation of God.”

“How I should love Margaret!” said Jane to him one day.
“What was the color of her hair? like yours?”

“No,” replied Brückmann; “as I have told you, she was
not of German origin. Her ancestors came from Languedoc
in the Religious Wars. She was more tropical in her features,
and perhaps in her heart, than I. She had black hair and
eyes, she resembled you, Miss Girardeau, I think.”

“How I wish I could see her!” replied Jane. “You say
she does come to you sometimes?”

“Yes,” said Brückmann,” and since I have known you she

comes more frequently, more clearly. My perishing heart had
scarce power to evoke her. My song became too faint a
medium. You have revived those visions, those refreshing
communions.”

“Then I am happy,” said Jane; “I knew not that I had
such a power. You, sir, know not the misery of being able to
make no one happy. I torture my father, I plague Simon. I
am of use to no one. And my poor self answers not for
itself.” * * * * *

“How could you, Mr. Brückmann —”

“Call me not that,” he said, interrupting her, “call me
Gottfried, as Margaret always did.”

“Then you must do the same by me,” she replied, “you
must call me Jane; though no one does but father and Simon.
But if you will call me so, I shall forget that any one else ever
has. I was going to ask how you came to fight against our
poor country?”

“I never did,” he said, “my heart and soul were with the
Americans. I was forced into the work. I was bayoneted to
the lines. My musket shared the indisposition of its owner,
and shot at random. Wounds that had been spared by those
against whom I was arrayed, were anticipated by my own officers.
Often staggering under the effects of a blow received in Germany,
when I attempted to escape, have I been drawn out
against those, so called, my enemies; and at this moment am
I sensible of the pain.”

“Yet you might have been killed in battle,” said she,
“and I, poor, ridiculous, selfish me! should never have seen
you.”

“Nor I you,” he rejoined; “I know not which is the most
indebted.”

It cannot be supposed these interviews were had without
greatly provoking the indignation of Mr. Girardeau. He
noticed the frequent, and sometimes protracted absences of his
daughter; he traced them to the indigent German, whose
application for money he denied, to the villanous musician
that had given him so much annoyance. His passion had no
bounds. He ceased to expostulate; he raved, he threatened;
he shut Jane into her chamber, he barred the door, he declared
he would starve her. As Jane had never learned filial obedience,
so she had not disciplined herself to ordinary patience.
Even in matters that concerned her interest and happiness
most vitally, she was impetuous, inconsiderate. She could
bear imprisonment, she could bear starvation, she could bear

invective and violence; she could not endure separation from
Brückmann. She had, in respect of him, new and joyous sensations,
enchanting her whole existence. She looked on him as
a superior being. She felt that he alone could understand her,
appreciate her, sympathize with her. She felt that of the mass
about her, he only seemed to have a common nature with her.
She thought not of his poverty, or his dejection. She thought
only of his soul into which she could pour her own. She was
eager for him, as a child for its mother's breast. His love for
Margaret Bruneau only heightened his value in her eyes. He
seemed for his devotion to Margaret Bruneau, purer, greater,
diviner. He and Margaret constituted to her mind a delightful
company. She entered a magic circle when she came into
their communion. She became one of a glorious trio. Then
she saw herself interpreted and resembled in Margaret; and
she acted as a conjuration to bring that delightful vision from
the shades. Brückmann she assisted, encouraged, enlivened;
she rendered him more hopeful, more happy. And she herself
had no life, except as he was able to explain that life. His
soul seemed to respond to hers, and her own grew serener and
stiller as it received that response. “He, too, will suffer,”
she said to herself, “if he sees me not. His own heart will
break again. Margaret will come to him no more;” and
every thought of his uneasiness or suspense vibrated, like a
fire, through her.

Mr. Girardeau waited to see some tokens of his daughter's
repentance and amendment, but none appeared. The more
completely to secure his purposes, he instigated a prosecution
against Brückmann, on the score of debt, and he was thrown
into the City Jail. The old gentleman then approached his
daughter, apprized her of what had befallen her friend, and
announced his final decision. He told her if ever she saw
Brückmann again, if ever she communicated with him by word
or letter, he would turn her into the streets, he would close
his doors upon her forever, he would disinherit her, and cast
her off to utter shame, destitution and wretchedness. With
whatever tone or spirit this sentence may have been distinguished,
and there could be no mistake as to its general
purport, its effect on Jane was scarcely perceptible. Her die
was cast, her resolution taken. She undid the fastenings of
her room, she escaped into the street. Going to the Jail, she
obtained access to the cell and was locked in with Brückmann.
Through his drooping heart and wasting frame he received
her with a bland, welcome smile. She fell at his feet, and

poured herself out in a torrent of tears, her swollen heart broke
in sighs, sobs and convulsions. His kindness reassured her,
and she told him what had transpired. “But,” she continued,
“Gottfried, I must see you, I must be with you, I cannot live
away from you, I die without you. Existence has not the
faintest charm, not a solitary point of interest, if I am separated
from you. You have awakened within me every dormant
and benumbed faculty. You have spread over time the
hues of a higher being. You have given back to my soul the
only answer it ever received; with your eyes I have looked
into myself and discovered some beauty there, where before
was only a deep and frightful chaos. In a world of shallowness
and stupidity you alone have anticipated, understood,
valued me. I repose on you as on the breast of God. You
have introduced me to an elevated communion; you have
welcomed me to the participation of yourself and Margaret;
you have inspired me with a desire to know more of the laws
of the spirit's life. For all this I have made you no return.
I am little, how little, to you. You owe me nothing, I owe
you everything.”

“Jane,—” said he.

“Do not interrupt me now,” she continued. “Let my poor
soul have its say. It may be its last. I have now no home
on earth but you. May I remain with you? May I hear your
voice, look into your eyes, be blessed and illumined by your
spirit?”

“Is it possible,” said Brückmann, “that your father will
never relent? He needs you, his own fortune is under obligations
to you.”

“You know not my father,” was the decisive reply. “He
is fixed, inexorable, as the God he serves. I look to you, or
to vacancy, to nought, to the sepulchral abyss of my own
soul, to the interminable night of my own thoughts. To be
poor is nothing, to be an outcast is nothing; to be away from
you is worse than all calamities condensed in one blow. Do
not be distressed, my good Gottfried. I will not embarrass
you. Gottfried—I will marry you—I do embarrass you. I
do distress you—I will not. No! I go away—I leave you—
Farewell, Gottfried!”

“Stay!” replied he, “do not go away.”

“Speak to me,” she said. “Chide me, spurn me. I can
bear anything. I will not stir, nor wince, nor weep. I can
stiffen myself into insensibility. I will sit here unmoved as a
curb-stone. Speak, Gottfried, speak, if you kill me.”

“Jane,” said he, calmly but kindly, “you have nothing
to fear from me, we have nothing to fear from each other.
We know each other too well to be alarmed by surprises, or
perplexed at disclosures. We have no secrets to keep or to
reveal, no hopes to indulge or disappoint. Our natures are
bared to each other; our several destinies too well understood;
a word, the faintest expression of a wish is sufficient.
You know Margaret, I need not —”

“No, Mr. Brückmann, you need not—”

“Call me Gottfried. Margaret called me Gottfried. You
must never call me anything else.”

“Oh,” said she, “if I could do Margaret's least office for
you, if I could ever remind you of her! And this assimilates
me nearer to her. It gives me a prerogative, which, with all
my rashness, I should hardly otherwise dare to claim. But
you need not speak to me of her. I know all about it, and
you, and her. Yet, not as a beggar, not as a friend, not as
one who has the slightest demand on your notice, yet, I say,
obeying an impulse which I know how neither to control nor
define, but which is deep as the central fires of my being, I
ask for entrance, for a home, in that which you are, for fellowship
with you and all your life. Tell me more of Margaret;
I will grow up into her image; I will transmute myself to her
nature. You shall have a double Margaret; no, not double,
but one. Nay, if needs be, I will go out of myself; I will be
the servant of you both. Call me your child, your and Margaret's
child, your spirit-child, and so love me. And when
we get to Heaven, you may do what you will with me. Sure
I am, I shall never get there if you do not take me. I cannot
sing, as you say she could. But my soul sings. If my larynx
be inelastic, I can describe with my sensations as many octaves
and variations, as you on your flute; and with your nice
ear perhaps you could hear some pleasant strains. Away
from you, I am all discord, a harsh grating of turbulent
passion.”

“Have you thought,” asked Gottfried, “how we should be
situated. This prison is my home now, and I have no better
prospect for the future.”

“I have enough in my purse,” said Jane, “to release you.
You can teach as you have done. I perhaps could give instruction
in the more popular branches.”

“Dear Jane!” said he, “you are dearer to me than all on
earth beside. But how fade all earth-scenes from my thought!
I feel myself vanishing into the spirit-world. Daily I perceive

the hand of destiny lying more heavily upon me. Hourly
invisible cords are drawing me away. The echoes of my song
sound louder and louder from the shadowy shore.”

“Ah, dearest Gottfried!” said she; “if you die, I will die
too. I cannot live without you; I cannot survive you; I perish
with you. I will be absorbed with you into the Infinite.
All your presentiments I share.”

“We will be married,” said Gottfried. “We yield to the
Immortal Love. We rise to the empyrean of pure souls.
With you the past is nearer to me, the present more cheerful,
the future more hopeful. We shall all of us live a trebled
life. I have ever loved you; I will still love you; you deserve
my love. Margaret too will love you; and the Heaven-crowned
shall bestow her blessing on the Earth-worn.”

Jane procured his release from prison, by paying debts and
costs of suit. They went to the house of the Rev. Dr. —
a very kind and benevolent old clergyman, by whom the marriage
ceremony was performed, the wife and daughter of the
Rector being present as witnesses. They knelt on a couch
for an altar, her long black hair, gathered loosely about her
temples, and descending down her clear marble neck, her dark
eyes, a crimson flushing her face, contrasted with his light
thick hair, deep blue eyes, and flickering pale face; both subdued,
and somewhat saddened; yet the evening light of their
souls, for such it seemed to be, came out at that hour and shed
over them a soft, sweet glow. The old man blessed them,
and they departed.

They sought lodgings in a quarter of the city, at some distance
from their former abode. Brückmann was enabled to
form a small class in French. If female education, or the employment
of female instructors, had been as common in those
days as at the present time, Jane might have directed those
powers with which nature had enriched her, to some advantage.
She secured, in fact, but a solitary pupil, and that one
more anxious to be taught dancing and dressing, than to advance
in any solid acquisition. She found a more satisfactory
as well as promising task in perfecting Brückmann in the English
language. This difficulty once surmounted, she fancied
he would be able to pursue his practice to any desirable extent.
So five or six months passed away. — Whether it was the seeds of
disease constitutionally inherited, the effect of disappointment,
want, heart-ache, he had been called to endure, the internal
progress of his wound, or his own presentiments, acting upon an
imagination sufficiently susceptible—Brückmann fell sick. He

lay upon his bed week by week. Jane abandoned everything
to take care of him.

“Jane,” said he, “I must die.”

“I know it,” said she, “you told me you should soon die.
I believed it then, I am prepared for it now.”

“Voices,” he added, “are calling me away.”

“I know that too,” she replied; “I hear them.”

“An inward force propels my spirit from me.”

“Yes,” said she, “I feel it.”

She bent over him, not as over a sick and dying man, but a
convalescing angel. He seemed to her not to be wasting to
skin and bones, but to spirit and life. His eye brightened, his
smile was sweeter, as he grew paler and thinner.

“I wish you would sing to me, Jane?”

“I am full of music and song,” she said, “can you not hear
me? All that you have ever played, or sung, or spoken, leaps,
trills, is joyous, within me. Do you not hear a soft chanting?”

“Yes,” he replied; “it sounds like the voice of Jesus and
Margaret.”

“How glad I am our little Margaret is to have her birth-place
in song!” said Jane. “She feeds on melodies.—Yet if I
should die before her birth, will she die too? Tell me, Gottfried.”

“I think her spirit will go with ours,” he replied.

“Then we could train and nourish and mould the undeveloped,
unformed spirit in Heaven. And our other Margaret will
be there to help us bring up the little Margaret.—Will Jesus
bless our child, as you say he blessed the children of olden
time?”

“Yes,” replied Gottfried. “He died for all, and lives to give
all life.”

“I shall not need to make her clothes?”

“You had better do that, Jane, we may both survive her birth.”

In this exigency, their private funds having become well
nigh exhausted, she repaired to her father's house to procure
some articles of her own, out of which to prepare clothing for
the expected child. By a back entrance she ascended to her
old chamber, where, as the event should prove, Mr. Girardeau
detected her, and drove her off. At this moment, as she retreated
through the store, Nimrod, who in the mean time had
succeeded to the place of the deceased Simon, saw her, as has
been related in the previous chapter. Here also these two
episodical branches of this memoir unite.

When Nimrod learned from Mr. Girardeau who the woman
was, how she stood related to him, and what were her fortune
and condition, we may naturally imagine that his curiosity,
always restive, always errant, would be more than usually
aroused. A new object presented itself; he must pry into it.
Having ascertained the place of Jane and Gottfried's residence,
being out of an errand, he made bold to enter the house, and
knock at their door.

“Ax your pardon marm,” he said, shuffling into the room, as
Jane opened the door, and the sick man lay on the bed before
him; “hope I don't intrude. I sarve at Master Girarders, since
Simon's dead. I am the fellow what see you running out of
the store like a duck arter a tumble-bug. What was you so
skeered for? I wouldn't a hurt you any more than an old
shoe. I guess the old gentleman an't any better than he should
be—”

“Young man!” said Jane breaking in upon him, “whoever
you are, we have no connection with Mr. Girardeau.”

“Yes—marm,” said Nimrod, who nothing daunted, approached
the bed. Gottfried rose a little, with his wan beautiful
face. Jane, paler if possible, and more beautiful, held
her arm under his head, and her dark, loving eyes brimmed with
tears, the nature of which Nimrod could not understand.

“I vum,” said he, “I'm sorry. What is the matter? If the
Widder was here she would cure him in a wink. Won't your
Dad let you go home? Won't he give you a limb to roost on?
I tell you what it is, he's close as a mink in winter; he's hard
as grubbing bushes. I don't guess he's so poor.”

Jane, remembering her father's servants in Simon, who was
a perfect creature of his master, if at first she was annoyed
by the familiarity of Nimrod, or was suspicious of his motives,
soon perceived that his manner was undisguised and rusticity
sincere. She was led to question him as to himself, who he
was, &c. He gave her his real name, and that of his parents.
In fact he became quite communicative, and rendered a full
description of his family, their residence and mode of life. He
was pleased with his visit, which he promised to repeat, and
whenever he had a chance, he dropped in to see his new found
friends. As our readers will have anticipated the result of this
story of Gottfried Brückmann and Jane Girardeau, we shall
hasten to its close. When Mr. Girardeau became apprised of
the real situation of his daughter, he manifested deep disturbance
of spirit. He addressed himself anew to Nimrod. “That
girl,” said he, “is a runaway, a spendthrift, a wanton. She is

about to have a child, the fruit of her reckless, ruinous misconduct.
That child may do me an injury, a great injury.
The offspring of that viper may turn upon me with the malignity
of the mother. That child must be watched. You know,
Mr. Foxly, we are identified in interest. You know if I let
you go, or you me, we both fall. That child must be watched.
Do you understand?”

“That wa'nt in the bargain when I came to live with ye,”
replied Nimrod. “I must have a little more, a little of the
ready.”

Nothing could be more opportune to Nimrod. He was now
at liberty to prosecute his visits to Jane and Gottfried at his
leisure. Whatever money he obtained from Mr. Girardeau,
eked out by his own scant purse, he applied to their necessities.
He felt himself to be of more consequence than he had ever
been before, and although he exercised his function rather
pragmatically, he made himself greatly useful. Brückmann
grew more feeble; Jane approached the period of her child's
birth.

“Nimrod,” said she a few days before that event, “we are
going to die.”

“No, no,” he rejoined. “He'll give up the ghost as sure
as wild geese in cold weather. But you will come out as
bright as a yaller bird in Spring.”

“We must die — I shall die,” she continued, hardly noticing
what he said, having become quite used to his manner.
“We have loved, tenderly loved, if you know what that
means.”

“Yes — marm,” replied Nimrod. “If I am a Ponder and
you live in the city, you need'nt think we are as dull as millers
that fly right into your links, and never know whether they
are singed or not. When I have been by uncle Bill Palmer's,
that lives at the Ledge, as you go up to Dunwich, and seen his
Rhody out there, jolly! she has gone right through me like an
ear-wig; it sticks to me like a bobolink to a saplin in a wind.
I an't afeered of the old Harry himself, but I vum! I never dare
to speak to Rhody. But you great folks here don't care anything
about us, no more than Matty Gisborne, and Bet Weeks
down among the Settlers.”

“Yes I do care for you,” said Jane; “you have been very
kind to us. I know not what we should have done without
you. But we are really going to die. It has been foretold that
we should.”

“Oh yes,” said Nimrod, relapsing into a more thoughtful

mood, “I remember. I heard a dog howl in the streets the
other night, and I dreamed of seeing monkeys, and that is sartin
death.”

“You must bury us, Nimrod,” continued Jane. “And you
must promise one thing, to take care of our child. Its name is
Margaret, you must call it by no other. You will contrive
means to take it to your own home, the Pond. You are poor,
you say, that is the greatest of blessings. Your house is apart
from the world. Your little brother Chilion, you say, would
love it as his own sister. Now promise us, Nimrod, that you
will do all we desire.”

Nimrod not only promised, but volunteered a declaration
having the full weight of an oath, that her wishes regarding the
child should be studiously fulfilled. At this crisis they were
also visited by a daughter of the clergyman who married them;
she having become informed of their state, sought to minister
to their needs. Brückmann died as he had presaged. “Farewell,
Jane!” he said. “Yet not farewell, but, follow me. I
kiss you for the night, and shall see you in the morning. The
sun fades, the stars glow, brighter worlds await us. We go to
those who love us.” Nimrod bent reverently over the dead
form, that did perhaps what life itself could never have done,
made of the strong man a child, and tears gushed from his eyes.
Jane knelt calmly, hopefully by his side, kissed his lips, and
smoothed the bright curling locks of his hair. Nimrod, assisted
by the clergyman before mentioned, and some of Brückmann's
countrymen that remained in the city as servants, bakers,
or scavengers, and could do little more for their old friend
than bear him to his grave, saw him decently buried. The
wife and daughter of the clergyman were with Jane at that period
which she had anticipated with so much interest. Her
hour came, and as she had predicted, a girl, the “little Margaret”
was born. She lingered on a few days, without much
apparent suffering or anxiety, blessed her child, and melted
away at last in the clouds of mortal vision. The child was
taken in charge by those ladies who had kindly assisted at its
birth. Mr. Girardeau, who had exhibited ceaseless anxiety,
as well as glimpses of some unnatural design, during these
events, the progress of which he obliged Nimrod carefully
to report, ordered the child to be brought to his house. His
language was, that “it must be put out of the way.” It was a
dark night; Mr. Girardeau, availing himself of a weakness of
his servant, plentifully supplied him with liquor. He also
threatened him, in case of disobedience, with a legal prosecution

on the score of his smuggling connections. Nimrod, sufficiently
in drink to make a rash promise, started for the child.
But apprehensions of some dark or bloody deed came over him;
the recollection of his solemn vows to the mother of the child
upbraided him; the spectral shadows cast by the street-lamps
startled him. He remembered the smuggling vessel which had
made another trip, and was about to return. The child was
delivered to him, and in place of going back to his master, he
made directly for the sloop, which was even then on the point
of sailing. The captain and crew, however serviceable they
might be to Mr. Girardeau's interest, cherished little respect
for his character, and Nimrod had no difficulty in enlisting
their aid for his purposes. We need not follow him all the
way to the Pond; or recite the methods he adopted to sustain
and nourish the child. On his way up the river he found
plenty of milk in the cabin. Leaving the vessel, he spent one
night in the shanty of an Irishman, whose wife having a nurseling
at her side, cheerfully relinquished to Margaret one half
of her supply. In one instance he found a sheep which he made
perform the maternal office. One night he slept with his charge
in a barn. On the third evening he reached his home. The
family were all abed; his father and mother, however, were soon
ready to welcome their son. Surprise was of course their first
emotion when they saw what he had with him. He recounted
the history of the child, and his purpose to have it adopted in
the family. The course of his observations on the subject was
such, as to allay whatever repugnance either of his parents may
have felt to the project, and they became as ready to receive
the child as they might have been originally averse.

“Call up Hash and Chilion,” said Pluck. “The child must
be baptized to-night.”

“Wait till to-morrow, do Dad,” said Nimrod. I guess she
needs something to wet her stomach more than her head.”

“Fix her something woman, can't wait.”

His wife prepared a drink for the child, while Nimrod aroused
his brothers. Chilion, then a boy, seven or eight years
old, held a pine-torch that streamed and smoked through the
room. Mistress Hart supported the child, while Nimrod and
Hash stood sponsors. The old man called her Mary. “No,
Dad,” interposed Nimrod, “it must be Margaret.”

“No! Mary,” replied his father, “in honor of my esteemed
wife. Besides, that's a Bible name, and we can't liquor up on
Margaret. Yours is a good name, and you never will see
cause to repent it, and there is Maharshalalhashbaz; that I

chose because it was the longest name in the Bible; I wanted
to show my reverence for the book by taking as much of it as
I could; and Chilion's is a good one too; all Bible names in
this family.”

“I tell you no, Dad, she must be called Margaret,” repeated
Nimrod.

“Do call her Margaret,” said Chilion.

“Well, well,” replied Pluck, “we will put it to vote. — Three
for Margaret, I shall call her Mary, and Hash goes for Peggy.
We won't break heads about it, if we do we shan't the bottle.
So here goes for Margaret and Mary.”

The family, severally and collectively, laid themselves under
strict injunctions to keep the history of the child a secret, and
to regard it as their own. Mr. Hart and his little son Chilion
were glad enough to receive it on its own account; Mistress
Hart, if for no other reason, in consideration of the money
Nimrod represented he would get from its grandfather, a reflection
that prevailed with Hash also. The secluded position
of the family rendered it possible indeed for children to be born
and die without exciting observation. Their neighbor, the
Widow Wright, was the only person from whom they had cause
of apprehension. It was presumed, however, to be an easy matter
to bring her into the arrangement of secrecy, which was accordingly
done by an oath sealed with a small douceur. In
behalf of the child were enlisted both the Widow's superstition,
and her avarice. What might befal her son Obed, then six or
seven years of age, she knew not. So Margaret was only spoken
of as a child of the Pond. When Obed asked his mother
where the little baby came from, she said it dropped from an
acorn-tree.

Such is the origin of Margaret, who a few months later has
been phantasmagorically introduced to our readers.

We might add, in conclusion of this chapter, that Nimrod,
the next year, made a visit to New York, and sought an interview
with his old Master. The disappointment, chagrin and
displeasure of the latter were evidently great. Their conference
was long and bitter. In the result, Nimrod declared in a
cant phrase that he would “blow” on the old gentleman, not
only as a smuggler, but as a murderer, unless he would settle
on the child a small annual sum, to be delivered at sight. To
such a bond Mr. Girardeau was obliged to give his signature.
He asked where the child was, but on this point Nimrod kept
a rigid silence.

13. CHAPTER XIII.
RETURNS TO MARGARET, WHO ADVANCES IN CHILDHOOD AND
KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD.

Military Trainings we have alluded to as a sort of New
England Holiday. Pluck, taking with him Margaret and Hash,
Chilion and Bull, went down to the village at an early hour.
The Green flowed with people, soldiers, men, women and children.
Portions of the horse-sheds were converted into booths
for the sale of liquors, fruits and bread; wheelbarrows and
carts were converted to the same use. An angle of the Meeting-house,
Mr. Smith, the Tavern Keeper at No. 4, appropriated
for his peculiar calling. Pluck engaged himself as tapster
in one of the horse-sheds. Margaret, having orders not to
go home, till her father returned at night, sat with Bull on the
grass near the Meeting-house by the side of some other boys
and girls, who all moved away when she approached. Tony's
beat of the troop was the signal for the soldiers to assemble.
They were first marched to the south front of the church,
when prayer, as usual, was offered by Parson Welles, standing
on the steps. “O Lord God,” for thus he prayed, “we thank
thee that thou hast raised up a defence to Israel, whereby thou
hast cut off the mighty men of valor, and the leaders and captains
in the camp of the king of Assyria. We humbly beseech
that thou wouldst send prosperity, that thou wouldst be an
enemy to our enemies, and destroy all them that afflict our
soul. Let the gates be lifted up, and the Lord, the Lord strong
and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, come in. And now O
God, we fall down upon our knees before thee, for and in behalf
of thy cause, name, people and interest, that in this day
are so deeply designed against by the serpent and his seed, and
from this black cloud of tumult and confusion among the nations,
wilt thou bring forth the accomplishment of those promises
thy people are so earnestly looking after and waiting for.”

The old man was fervid and earnest. His massive white
wig fluttered in the wind, his venerable form was bent over
his ivory-headed cane. Some of the people were moved to
tears.

The soldiers were then drawn into a line for inspection. The

Captain was Jonas Hoag; 1st. Lieutenant, Eliashib Tuck, from
the Mill; Corporal, Joseph Whiston, a Breakneck; Chilion
Hart, fifer; and Tony Washington, drummer. Their equipments
presented hardly so uniform and symmetrical an aspect as
appears in the militia of our day. There had been, however,
a gradual improvement from the primitive array of Colonial
times; when the troops were made up of pikemen, bowmen,
and musketeers with match-locks. Miles Standish, and his
puritan coadjutors, was dressed in a coat of mail, on his left
arm he bore a target, in his right a rapier or broadsword, iron
gloves shielded his hands, an iron helmet with a visor covered
his head and face, his breast was plated with iron. In this
Livingston Company many wore three-cornered hats, shad-bellied
coats, shoe and knee buckles. Some retained the identical
dress of the late war. The children who may read this
memoir, and we hope there are many such, do not fancy that
our Revolution was fought in cocked-hats and small-clothes!

Among the spectators, seated on the grass under the eaves
of the Meeting-house, were several, whose wounds and infirmities,
contracted during the war, rendered them muster-free.
There were six or eight of this description; one had lost a
leg, another an arm, one had survived a shot through the groin,
one had pined away on insults, blows, hunger and cold in the
Jersey prison-ships, and bringing home his stark skeleton, became
a town pauper. Another one, whose name was Alexis
Robinson, having the side of his face shot away, and with one
eye and ear, losing a moiety of his senses, and failing besides
in his earnings, the certificates of which he always carried, by
the depreciation of the currency, was also provided for by the
town. These severally had hobbled out to see the training.

To these must be added certain soldiers of an earlier date.
Prominent among whom, was lame Deacon Ramsdill, leaning
with his left hand on a smooth crooked mountain-laurel cane, and
having his right folded over his narrow wrinkled face, perpetually
endeavoring to suppress a good-natured but somewhat undiaconal
smile, a risible labitur et labetur, that spirted out like
water between his fingers, and ran through the channels of his
cheeks, all around his eyes, and even back to his ears. At the
age of sixteen, in 1755, he was engaged in what is known as
the expulsion of the Acadians, or French neutrals, from Nova
Scotia; in 1757 he was at the surrender of Fort William Henry;
and in 1759 was with Gen. Wolfe at the battle on the Plains of
Abraham, where he received a wound in his leg. There was
also his brother Deacon, Hadlock, of a more Pythagorean temper,

who was engaged in the Spanish war, and served under
General Wentworth in the atttack on Carthagena, 1740, and
afterwards was in the defeat of General Braddock, 1755.

Nor would one forget to notice the children on this occasion
whose chief business consisted in buying gingerbread,
pitching coppers, watching the exercises and following
the steps of the soldiers; or to be reminded of a difference in
their habits between this and “good old Colony times,” when
the Legislature conceiving “that the training up of youth to
the art and practice of arms will be of great use; do therefore
order that all youths within this jurisdiction, from ten years
old to the age of sixteen years, shall be instructed by some
one of the officers of the band, upon the usual training days,
in the exercise of arms, as small guns, half pikes, bows and
arrows.”

Captain Hoag was an accomplished disciplinarian, esteemed
such at least by his contemporaries. His hair was powdered,
his coat faced with blue, on his hat appeared a large white
cockade, his waist was ornamented with a scarlet sash, his
shoulder rounded off with a silver epaulette, and silver lacings
graced his yellow buck-skin breeches. But what more peculiarly
distinguished him was the badge of the order of the
Cincinnati, a gold medal with the spread eagle, and blue
ribbon hanging from his coat buttons. “Attention! At this
word,” said he, giving instructions designed for the younger
members of the company, “you must be silent, moving neither
hand nor foot. To the Left, Dress! You will turn your
heads briskly to the left, so as to bring your right eye in the
direction of your waistcoat buttons.” “Handle Cartridge!”—
“Prime!” — “Shut Pan!” — “Draw Rammer!” — “Ram
down Cartridge!” — “Return Rammer!” — “Cock Firelock!”
— “Take aim!” — “Fire!” “At this word, Fire,”
continued he, “you will pull the trigger briskly, then return
to the priming position, the muzzle of your fire-lock directly
in front, the left hand just forward of the feather-spring, seize
the cock with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand.”
After the inspection and manual drill, the soldiers were
marched and countermarched over the Green.

There came also to the training, Master Elliman, who exempt
by his profession from arms, and had always ranked as a
Tory, nevertheless made it a point to appear at these times, as
it would seem to air his antipathies. If he encountered
Pluck, well; but this morning he saw one whom he more
fancied, Margaret, sitting with her dog.

“How do you enjoy it?” said he.

“Very well,” was the reply. “I love to see them.”

“Sævit toto Mars impius orbe.”

“I do not understand that.”

“I know you do not. You will by and by.”

“Chilion plays so on his fife, and Tony drums so well,—it
is almost as good as dancing; only the girls and women don't
go with them. See how they follow Chilion round just like
the dancers! Why don't they dance? How slow they
step!”

“It is not Chilion they follow,” replied the Master, “it is
that little laced android with a long knife in his hand, and a
lackered bunch on his shoulder. But here are Deacons
Ramsdill and Hadlock, αξιοι πρεσδυτεροι εχχλησιας του εου χαι
Livingston, and our broad-brimmed nay nay and yea yea android,
Anthony Wharfield. Salvete, Deacons; God bless thee,
Friend Anthony. Miss Margaret Hart, Friend Anthony.”

“How does thee do? sister Margaret;” said the latter.

“A Pond gal!” said Deacon Hadlock.

“What on arth are you doing with that little critter?” said
Deacon Ramsdill. “Larnin the young pup new tricks?”

“The dog that trots about will find a bone,” said Deacon
Hadlock.

“Qui vult cædere canem, facile invenit fustem,” responded
the Master.

Bull, whether that his name was used too freely, or from an
old habit in the presence of strangers, began to growl.

“Lie still,” said Margaret.

“There, you see the Scripter fulfilled. Soft words turn
away wrath,” said Deacon Ramsdill, with his right hand on
his mouth striving in vain to curb his laughter.

“So Friend Anthony gets rid of the wars, and trainings,
by his soft answers, I suppose,” said the Master.

“Not of paying,” responded the Quaker. “Ruth and I
were stripped of most we had, to support the troops.”

“See how God has blest you! What an army he is raising
for our defence,” said Deacon Hadlock, pointing to the
soldiers.

“What is that little man, with a long knife, doing to the
men?” asked Margaret.

“He is preparing them for war; he will prove a Joshua to
us,” said Deacon Hadlock, not so much, however, in reply to
Margaret, as to illustrate sentiments which he feared did not
sufficiently prevail with his friends.

“I rather guess he's larnin them bagonets and hatchets to
make pretty free work with our legs,” said Deacon Ramsdill,
pressing down upon his cane.

“He is teaching the science of puppetry,” said the Master.

“He is teaching them to break the commandments of
Christ,” said the Quaker.

“What is it for? what for!” exclaimed Margaret, starting
up with some surprise.

“I can tell you all,” said Deacon Hadlock. “It is under
God, the defence of our lives, liberties and fortunes.”

“How many of our people were killed in the French war,
and in the last war!” said Deacon Ramsdill.

“How many of us were shut in the Jail yonder,” said the
Master.

“How many farms in this town were ruined,” said the
Quaker.

“What blunders are ye all making!” exclaimed Deacon
Hadlock. “It is our enemies that we expect to kill.”

“Who?” asked Margaret.

“Our enemies, I say.”

“Who are our enemies?”

“Those who injure us.”

“What, kill them?” said Margaret. “Now I wish Chilion
would bring his violin and make them dance. They wouldn't
kill one another then. Why don't he play Chorus Jig, and
set them to dancing.”

“Clear nater,” said Deacon Ramsdill; “I make no doubt
the gal feels just so.”

“Oh, Brother Ramsdill,” exclaimed Deacon Hadlock,
“how can you! What are we coming to! I was informed
you countenanced mixed dancing; that you told Bethia
Weeks, a church-member, there was no harm in it if she
didn't carry it too far. Here you are encouraging that sinful
amusement and opposing our military preparations! I do believe
the Lord has forsaken us indeed.”

“Behold your defenders, pro aris et focis,” exclaimed the
Master, directing attention to the soldiers. A difficulty had
evidently arisen. The Captain was seen running towards the
rear.

It will be remembered that Hash, the brother of Margaret,
had a difference with Zenas Joy, a Breakneck, at the Turkey
Shoot. We would also state that Zenas was engaged to
Delinda Hoag, a daughter of the Captain. On the parade
this morning, Hash's conduct had been very unmannerly towards

Zenas, so much so as to offend Captain Hoag, both officially
and personally; and he changed Hash's place, transferring
him to a platoon under command of Corporal Joseph
Whiston, also a Breakneck. Hash could not brook this, and
carried his resentment so far, as to strike his Corporal on the
march; an offence that Joseph sought to punish by a blow in
return. Obed, also, who was that day doing his first military
duty, became somehow involved in the affray. The music
ceased; order was lost. Several voices called for Deacon
Hadlock to interfere in his capacity as Justice of the Peace.
The soldiers speedily resolved themselves into a civil tribunal,
and Hash and Obed were equitably tried and sentenced, the
former, to twenty-four hours imprisonment in the Jail, and to
pay a fine of twenty shillings; the latter, to receive twenty-nine
lashes at the whipping-post. The culprits were immediately
taken to their respective dooms, followed by crowds
of people. Margaret, probably not understanding exactly the
nature of events, went slowly after. She heard the shrieks of
Obed, she forced herself through the large ring that was
formed about him. He was stripped to his skin, the blood
was running in red lines down his back, four or five blows
only had been inflicted; she ran forward and threw herself
about the culprit. The constable tried to wrench her off, she
clung with an almost preternatural grasp. He threatened to
lay the lash upon her. She told him he should not whip
Obed. Judah Weeks, brother of Isabel, set up a cry “For
shame!” Isabel herself, who was playing near by, began to
utter a loud lament, all the children raised piteous moans, the
older people became confused; in fine Deacon Hadlock himself,
hearing Obed's entreaties, consented to remit the balance
of the penalty. Margaret walked through the people, who
drew off on either side as she passed, her face and clothes
dabbled with blood. She went with Isabel to the brook and
washed herself; Isabel going into her house, which was near
by, fetched a towel to wipe her with, and asked her to walk in
and see her mother. Margaret said she must go back to her
brother Hash. The Jail-yard, constructed of high posts, was,
as we have said, on a line with the street, and when Margaret
returned she found boys and girls looking through the crevices;
an example that she imitated. Deacon Ramsdill approaching,
asked her if she wanted to go in; she replied that
she did. After considerable parleying, the Deacon was able
to obtain of the Jailer, Mr. Shooks, permission for her to
enter, with Bull, whom it was not an easy matter to keep out.
She found Hash in a small, dimly lighted cell, rolling and
blubbering on the floor. She aroused him, and he took her
in one arm, and held the head of the dog by the other, and
seemed very much pleased to have them with him. She said
she would stay all night, but he told her that would not be allowed.
She saw another man in the cell, who, Hash whispered
to her, was a murderer. She saw him sitting, muffled
like an owl, in his long, black beard, long tangled hair, dark
begrimed face, and ragged clothes. She went to him, he took
her in his lap, pressed her hard to his breast, and stroked her
hair. She called Bull, and he patted the dog's head. He said
he had a little boy about as old as she was, whom he had not
seen for a long time, and never expected to see again. She
gave him some gingerbread which she had in her pocket, and
he munched it greedily. Hash offered him a quid of tobacco,
whereat he seemed greatly delighted, and tears ran down his
cheeks. Margaret said she would bring some flowers the next
time she came to the village. He thanked her and said he
should be glad to see them, that he had not seen a flower for two
years. The door was opened, the Jailor entered, and Margaret
was ordered to leave. She crossed the Green to the Horse
sheds, where her father was employed selling liquors. He
seated her on a cider barrel, and gave her another piece of
gingerbread and cheese, which she ate with a good appetite,
as she had hardly eaten anything since morning. The day
approached its close, and the soldiers drew up to ballot for
officers, Captain Hoag's term of service having expired. In
the result, Lieutenant Eliashib Tuck was chosen Captain, and
all the subaltern officers advanced their respective grades, excepting
Corporal Joseph Whiston, whose name, for some reason,
disappeared from the canvass. Captain Tuck replied as
follows: “Fellow soldiers, I lack words to express my sense
of the honor conferred upon me, as unexpected as it is undeserved.
We live in a glorious era, one that eclipses all past time,
and will be a model for future ages. The close of the eighteenth
century is sublime as its meridian was grand. It were an
honor for a man to be born in this period, how much more so
to be honored by it! My brave compatriots! Military life is
the path to distinction, and the means of usefulness. An
immortal crown awaits the head of the hero! The Lion of
Britain we have bound, and the Unicorn of France shall ere
long bite the dust! Livingstonians! my blood is aroused,
my ambition fired to be at the head of such a corps! Your
fame has spread from Bunker Hill to Saratoga, from Genessee
to King's Mountain. I will lead wherever you will follow, I
will dare all dangers with your support.”

Agreeably to custom, he then announced a treat. The
company was marched to the Crown and Bowl, and dismissed.
The citizens, old and young, thronged to the scene. Pluck,
leaving Margaret and his tapstership, joined in the general
exhilaration. Pails of toddy were brought from the bar-room.
The men drank freely, gave huzzas, and sang patriotic songs.
Ex-Corporal Whiston, however, and his particular friends, dignifiedly
indignant, withdrew, and went to the Store for their
entertainment. The old men drank, and the young men; boys
crept under the legs of the soldiers, and lifting the pails,
tugged at the slops; little children on their bellies lapped
the gutters, and sucked the grass, where the liquor fell.

The sun went down, clouds darkened the sky, and in swollen
masses drifted over the town. Solomon Smith, son of the
Tavern-keeper from No. 4, set a pine-torch in his stand, and
with knap-sack, shoulder-straps, and dangling priming wire
and brush, called around him as many as he could, while his
father went after the little boys whose coppers he exchanged
for rum. Lights broke out from the wheel-barrows and carts,
all over the Green, which rung with shouts and song, and the
tramping of feet. At the Store they drank and sung. But
the excessive use of alcoholic stimulants aggravates the ordinary
symptoms of good cheer, and produces effects which the most
considerate do not always foresee. Intoxication supervenes,
accompanied by a paralysis of the physical, or an inflammation
of the nervous system. Captain Tuck was borne dead-drunk
by his reeling soldiers, and laid on the floor of the bar-room.
Ex-Corporal Whiston with his friends sallied from the Store; a
brawl ensued between the two parties, and Deacon Hadlock,
interposing to quell the fray, was knocked to the ground.
Some were seized with nausea, and repaired for relief to the
Horse-sheds. Margaret was driven from her seat by Delinda
Hoag, who bore thither her espoused Zenas Joy. She went in
pursuit of her father. She stumbled over a little boy that lay
helpless on the grass. This was Aurelius Orff, whom his sister
Beulah Ann, and Grace Joy, who had been making a visit
to Hester, niece of Deacon Penrose, were looking after;
whereupon Grace called her a hoddy-doddy guzzletail, and
Beulah Ann gave her a smart push, as if to test her condition;
whereby she was brought in involuntary contact with Paulina
Whiston, who having grasped her brother, the ex-Corporal, by
the collar, was punching and twitching him to the shed where

their horse was tied. She had also slung over her shoulders
a pair of saddle-bags, filled with articles for which she had
been bartering at the Store. She helped her brother mount,
but he was too weak to retain his seat, and before she gained
the pillion, he fell to the ground. Margaret seized the horse's
bridle, and curbed the animal, while Paulina recovered her
brother. Lights blinked and glowed from booth to booth.
The black shadows of men showed unearthly, like demons in
a pit. Boys yelled their excitement, Indian-like, across the
Green. Horses breaking loose, plunged madly through the
crowd. Corporal Whiston's horse was frightened and tore
away. It began to rain, the clouds emptied themselves in torrents,
as it might seem to animate and refreshen the people,
but really to superadd a burthen on such as already had more
than they could carry, and bury those who were fallen deeper
in the soil. Margaret hurried she knew not where; she
slunk from the rain under a cart, but was thrust away by its
drunken owner and his drunken customers. She ran towards
the Tavern, that was full of men. A thick darkness had come
on, the lights on the Green were extinguished. The faint
glare from the Tavern discovered her standing out in the rain.
Solomon Smith, leaving his own now deserted and useless
stand, coming along, kindly took her with him into the house.
Men in various stages of intoxication, stood, sat, and lay in
the stoop, and in the bar-room. Through these Solomon led
her into the kitchen. Here was a parcel of men and women,
boys and girls, some drying themselves by the fire, some waiting
for the rain to hold up, some singing, laughing and drinking.
Here also was Tony with his fiddle playing to a company
of dancers; and Pluck, sitting on his hams near the fire,
with his full-orbed cabbage-head, swaying to and fro, beating
time with his arms and legs, and balancing in one hand a mug
of flip. “Ha! my little lady!” said he, catching Margaret
with a bounce into his lap, and holding her near the fire,
“won't you drink a little, now do drink a little. See how it
creams; don't be snuffy, Molly, none of your mulligrubs.
Here's blood now, Obed's blood on your pinafore. A brave
deed that; you must have something to take. It's training
day, and they don't come only four times a year. There's
Beulah Ann, she loves it as well as a calf likes to be licked.
Sweet pinkey-posy, it is as good for your wet clothes, as the
Widder's horse-radish for dropsy, ha! ha!” Whereat as he
was pressing the mug to Margaret's lips, Tony, reaching over
with his fiddle-bow, struck it from his hand into the fire. The
blue blaze whirred up the chimney and darted into the room.
There was a cry of fire, and Mr. Stillwater, summoning himself,
lifted Pluck to his feet, and shoved him into the street. The
old toper anticipating some such issue of the day, agreeably
to custom, had taken Margaret with him to the village to be
conducted home by her at night. Margaret leading the way,
they ascended the hill, crossed the Pasture, and entered the
woods. The clouds hung low, and their floating skirts seemed
to be pierced and hetchelled by the trees. The rain had
thinned into a fine close mist. The path, to inexperienced
eyes, would have been absolutely indistinguishable. They had
threaded it before in similar darkness. They came to the
Brook, which, increased by the rain, flowed with a dismal
sound. They entered the ravine, that brought them now on a
level with the Brook, whose hissing waters rolled over their
feet. They attained the summit above, where the Tree-Bridge
lay. Pluck seemed terrified, and hesitated to cross. He sat
down, then extended his length on the grass, and ere long fell
asleep. Margaret would have been unwilling that her father
should go over, and was not sorry to have him stop; though
it was night, and rainy, and they were alone, and still a mile
from home. The rain-drops from the trees showered on her
head and lap, the grass was wet underneath her, and her
clothes were drenched with water. But of this she hardly
thought; what she more feared was the ways of her father in
his drunken sleep, his mysterious sufferings, his frenzied utterance,
his spasmodic agitation. This, and for this she feared;
she looked for it, and it came. She tried to quiet him, and
as she rubbed his arm he said she was a dove feeding him with
milk; and then he scratched and tore at his breast, which she
soothed with her hand, hot, rough, and hairy as it was; then
he said he was boiling in the still, and Solomon Smith was
holding the cap on; he shrieked and yelled till his roar exceeded
that of the Brook. Then he began to laugh wildly.
“Old Nick is turning the North Pole. There comes out of
the sea a whale walking on his tail; Parson Welles has got
astride of his gills with a riding stick, ha! ha! There
comes a star rolling on its five points, and next comes old
Suwarrow in his boots. Grind away, old fellow. Round, round
they go over the mountains, splash, splash across rivers. Can't
you hear the pismires laugh? There's St. Paul with a cat-o'nine-tails,
and Deacon Hadlock going to take me to the whipping
post. I'll be poxed, if you do. Hoa, Molly, Molly! help.”
He leaped from the ground, Margaret clung to the skirt of his
coat. He broke away. “The Bridge! the Bridge!” he exclaimed.
“They can't catch me then!”

“Father! father!” she screamed in uttermost agony,
“you'll fall, you'll fall!” He slipped from the uncertain tree;
he struck the sides of the chasm, and dashed into the stream.
Aroused by the shock of the fall, and the stimulus of the
water, he called aloud for aid, as he was borne on by the dark,
invisible rush of the stream. Margaret then, for the first
time in her life, felt the shuddering, appalling sense of danger.
What could be done? She ran down the ravine, she seized
the struggling arm of her father, and detained him till by his
own efforts he was able to bring himself to his feet. In silence,
and sickness, and weariness, she fagged homewards; in darkest
dead of night she went to her bed as to her grave.

14. CHAPTER XIV.

It was a Sabbath morning, a June Sabbath morning, a June
Sabbath morning in New England. The sun rose over a
hushed, calm world, wrapt like a Madonna in prayer. It was
The Day, as the Bible is The Book. It was an intersection of
the natural course of time, a break in the customary order of
events, and lay between, with its walls of Saturday and Sunday
night on either side, like a chasm, or a dyke, or a mystical
apartment, whatever you would please liken it to. It was such
a Sabbath to the people of Livingston as they used to have
before steam, that arch Antinomian, “annihilated time and
space,” and railroads bridged over all our vallies. Its light,
its air, its warmth, its sound, its sun, the shimmer of the
dawn on the brass Cock of the steeple, the look of the Meeting-house
itself, all things were not as on other days. And now
when those old Sabbaths are almost gone, some latent indefinable
impression of what they were comes over us, and
wrenches us into awe, stillness and regret.

Margaret had never been to Meeting; the family did not
go. If there were no other indisposing causes, Pluck himself

expressly forbade the practice, and trained his children to other
habits. They did not work on the Sabbath, but idled and
drank. Margaret had no quilling, or carding, or going after
rum to do; she was wont to sally into the woods, clamber up
the Head, tend her flowers; or Chilion played and she sang,
he whittled trellises for her vines, mended her cages, sailed
with her on the Pond. She heard the bell ring in the morning,
she saw Obed and his mother go by to Meeting, and she
had sometimes wished to go, but her father would never consent.
From the private record of Deacon Hadlock we take
the following:

“State vs. Didymus Hart.

“Stafford, ss. Be it remembered, that on the nineteenth
day of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight,
Didymus Hart of Livingston, in the County of Stafford, shoe-maker
and laborer, is brought before me, Nathan Hadlock,
Esq., a Justice of Peace for and within the aforesaid County,
by Hopestill Cutts, Constable of Livingston aforesaid, by warrant
issued by me, the said Justice on the day aforesaid, against
the said Didymus, for that the said Didymus Hart, at Livingston
aforesaid, on the twelfth day of May last, being the Lord's
day, did walk, recreate and disport himself on the south side
of the Pond lying in the West District, so called, of Livingston
aforesaid; which is contrary to the law of this State, made
and provided in such cases, and against the peace of this State,
all which is to the evil example of all others in like case offending.

“Wherefore,” witnesses being heard, &c., “it doth appear
to me, the said Justice, that the said Didymus Hart sit in the
stocks for two hours.”

Pluck was seated in the manner prescribed, very much to
the entertainment of the boys, who spattered him with eggs,
the disturbance and exasperation of his wife who preferred
that all inflictions her husband received should come from
herself, and resented any interference from others, and his
own chagrin and vexation, especially as the informer in the
case was Otis Joy, father of Zenas, a Breakneck, whose friendship
he did not value, and Cutts, the executive officer, was the
village shoemaker, and no agreeable rival, and the Justice was
Deacon Hadlock. By way of redress, he chose to keep from
Meeting entirely, and suffer none under his control to go. But
Chilion and Nimrod both urged that Margaret might attend
Church at least once in her life, and Pluck consented. This
morning she heard the bell ring; she saw Obed and his mother

riding by; the latter dressed in a small shining black satin
bonnet, and gown of similar material, with a white inside
handkerchief; the former in sky-blue coat and ruffled
sleeves, white neck-stock, white worsted vest, yellow buck-skin
breeches, white stockings, and silver-plated buckles,
which had all belonged to his father, whose form was both
shorter and thicker than his son's, and whose garments it certainly
showed great filial reverence in Obed to wear without
essential alteration. Obed had an old look, his face was furrowed
as well as freckled, and his mother, to remedy this disproportion,
and graduate her son to that consideration which
naturally attached to his appearance, had adopted the practice
of powdering his hair, and gathering it in a sack behind; and
for his nearsightedness, she provided him with a pair of broad
horn-bowed bridge spectacles. The whole was surmounted
by a large three-cornered hat. Whatever might have been the
effect of his recent whipping, there was nothing apparent.
His mother, unlike Pluck, would not suffer anything of that
kind to disturb the good understanding she ever wished to
retain with the people of Livingston.

But let us, if you are willing, anticipate these persons a little,
and descend to the village. The people are assembling
for Meeting; they come on all the four roads, and by numerous
foot-paths, across the lots, and through the woods. Many
are on horses, more on foot, and a very few in wagons. The
horses' heads are garnished with branches of spruce and
birch, to keep off the flies; most of the boys and some of the
men are barefoot; divers of the latter are in their shirt-sleeves,
carrying their coats on their arms, and their shirts are also visible
between their vests and breeches; some of the young
ladies have in their hands sprigs of roses, pinks, sweet-williams,
and larkspurs; others both old and young have bunches
of fennel, dill, caraway, peppermint, lad's love; some of the
ladies who ride, leap from their horses with the agility of cats,
others make use of the horse-blocks, four or five of which are
stationed about the Green. You would perhaps particularly
notice old Mr. Ravel and his wife from the North Part of the
town, on horseback, the former straight as an arrow, the latter
a little crooked, and both more than eighty years of age. For
sixty years they have come in that way, a distance of seven
miles; for sixty years, every Sabbath morning, have they
heated their oven, and put in an iron pot of beans, and an
earthen dish of Indian pudding, to bake while they are gone,
and be ready for their dinner when they return. To meet

any exigencies of this sort in the mean time, you will observe
that Mistress Ravel, in common with many other of the women,
carries on her arm a large reddish calico bag filled with nutcakes
and cheese. You will also see coming down the West
Street Mr. Adolphus Hadlock, nephew of the Deacon's, with
his wife and six children, and Mr. Adolphus will contrive in
some way or other to give you the names of all his children
without your asking, even before he reaches the steps of the
Meeting-house; Triandaphilda Ada, Cecilia Rebecca, Purintha
Cappadocia, Aristophanes, Ethelbert, and a little boy he
carries in his arms, Socrates; and you will hear the young
men and boys that are lolloping on the steps repeat these names
as the several parties to whom they belong arrive. Philip
Davis the sexton, who has himself been watching the people,
now strikes the second bell, and those who live immediately
on the Green begin to turn out, and when he commences tolling,
it is a sign Parson Welles has issued from his house,
which lies about a quarter of a mile from the Meeting-house,
on the South road. There are Mr. Stillwater, the tavern-keeper;
Esq. Weeks with twelve of his children, Isabel and
Judah among them; Judge Morgridge, his wife, his daughter
Susan, and her little brother Arthur; Mr. Cutts, the shoemaker;
Mr. Gisborne, the joiner; Lawyer Beach, and his
family; Dr. Spoor; Deacon Penrose, the merchant; Deacon
Hadlock and his wife; Deacon Ramsdill with his lame leg
and wife; Tony, the barber, with his powdered hair and scarlet
coat; Old Dill, a negro servant of Parson Welles, and
formerly a slave; The Widow Luce, a lady who lives near the
Brook, leading her little hunchback son Job; then you see the
Parson and his wife. This venerable couple have nearly attained
the allotted age of man, and are verging towards that
period which is described as one of labor and sorrow; yet on
the whole they seem to be renewing their youth, their forms are
but slightly bent, and the step of the old minister is firm and
elastic. He is dressed in black, the only suit of the color in
town—if we except that of the sexton, which is known to be
an off-cast of the Parson's—kerseymere coat, silk breeches and
stockings, on his head is a three-cornered hat, and voluminous
white wig, and under his chin are plain white bands; he wears
black silk gloves, and leans on a tall ivory-headed cane. His
wife's dress is of black satin, like that of the Widow Wright's.
Next comes their maiden daughter, known as Miss Amy, and
in near conjunction, the Master. And as if composing a part
of the ministerial train, riding slowly and solemnly behind,
appears the Widow Wright, who always contrives to arrive at
the Parsonage just as the bell begins to toll. The Parson and
his wife reverently, sedately ascend the steps, the crowd of
men and boys who have been modestly waiting about the
Porch, opens to let them pass, then all fall in behind, and enter
the Church; the bell ceases tolling, and the Green is still
as the grave. This morning considerable sensation was created—no
more indeed than usual on such occasions—by Deacon
Penrose, the clerk of the town, reading the banns of marriage
between Zenas Joy and Delinda Hoag. Leaving these
people, let us go back to the Pond.

Margaret's mother, who took a secret satisfaction in the
good appearance of her child, combed and dressed her hair—
which in its tendency to curl resembled that of Gottfried
Brückmann, while in color it took a shade between that of her
dead and to her unknown parents — put on her white muslin
tunic and pink skirt; she wore also her red beaded moccasins,
and green rush hat. She started away with a dreamy
sense of mystery attaching to the Meeting, like a snow-storm by
moon-light, and a lively feeling of childish curiosity. On the
smooth in front of the house, her little white and yellow chickens
were peeping and dodging under the low mallows with its
bluish rose-colored flowers, the star-tipped hedge-mustard, and
pink-tufted smart-weed, and picking off the blue-and-green flies
that were sunning on the leaves; and they did not seem to
mind her. Hash had taken Bull into the woods, and Chilion
told her she would not need him. Dick her squirrel, and Robin
were disposed to follow, but her mother called them back.
A little yellow-poll, perched in the Butternut, whistled after
her, “Whooee whee whee whee whittiteetee — as soon as I
get this green caterpillar, I will go too.” A rusty wren screamed
out to her, “Os's's' chipper w' w' w' wow wow wow — O
shame Molly, I am going to rob an oriole's nest, I would'nt go
to Meeting.” She entered the Mowing; a bobolink clung tiltering
to the breezy tip of a white birch, and said, “Pee wuh'
wuh' ch' tut tut, tee tee wuh' wuh' wdle wdle pee wee a a
wdle dee dee — now Molly here are red clover, yellow buttercups,
white daisies, and strawberries in the grass; ecod! how
the wind blows! what a grand time we shall have, let us stay
here to-day.” A grass-finch skippered to the top of a stump,
and thrusting up its bill, cried out, “Chee chee chee up chip'
chip' chipperway ouble wee — glad you are going, you'll get
good to-day, don't stop, the bell is tolling.” She thought of
the murderer, and she picked the clover, the buttercups and

daisies, heads of timothy and fox-tail grass, and some strawberries;
and hurried on; enveloped in the sweet perfume of
the fields. She gathered the large bindweed, that lay on its
back floating over the lot, like pond-lilies, with its red and
white cups turned to the sun and air; and also the beautiful
purple crane's bill, and blue-eyed grass. She came to the
shadows of the woods that skirted the Mowing, where she got
box-berry flowers and fruit, bunch-berry and star-of-Bethlehem
flowers. She entered a cool, grassy, shady close in the forest,
where were beds of purple twin-flower, yellow star-grass, blue
violets, and mosses growing together family-like, under the
stately three-leaved ferns that overhung them like elm-trees,
while above were the birches and walnuts. A black-cap k' d'
chanked, k' d' chanked over her head, and a wood-thrush whoot
whoot whooted, ting a ring tinged in earnest unison. “We are
going to have a meeting here to-day, a little titmouse is coming
to be christened, won't you stop?” But a wood-pecker rapped
and rattled over among the Chesnuts, and on she went. She
crossed the bridge, she decended the ravine, the brook flowed
on towards the village with a winsome glee, and while she
looked at the flies and spiders dancing on the dark water, she
heard a little yellow-throated fly-catcher, mournfully saying,
“Preeo preea preeeeo preeeea—Pray, Margaret, you'll lose
your soul if you don't;” and she saw a wood-pewee up among
the branches, with her dark head bowed over plaintively singing,
“P' p' ee ee ou wee, p' p' ee ee ou wee'—Jesus be true
to you Margaret, I have lost my love, and my heart is sad, a
blue angel come down from the skies, and fold us both in his
soft feathers.” Here she got the white-clustering baneberry,
and the little nodding buff cucumber root. She continued her
way through the woods; she broke off white thorn blossoms
with their red anthers, the beautifully variegated flowers of the
calico bush, large gold-dusted cymes of the pear-leaved viburnum,
and sheep's laurel with its rich rose clusters. The olive-back
fly-catchers answered to one another up among the green
sunny trees. “Whee whoo whee, wee woo woo wee, whee
whoo, whoo whoo wee—God bless the little Margaret! How
glad we are she is going to Meeting at last. She shall have
berries, nutcakes and good preaching. The little Isabel and
Job Luce are there. How do you think she will like Miss
Amy?” The Via Dolorosa became this day to Margaret, a Via
jucundissima. She came to the Pasture, where she again stopped
a moment, and added to her stock of flowers red sorrel blossoms,
beautiful pink azaleas, and sprigs of pennyroyal. Then
she sorted her collection, tying the different parcels with spears
of grass. The Town was before her silent and motionless,
save the neighing and whinnying of the horses, and squads of
dogs that trolloped to and fro on the Green. The sky was
blue and tender; the clouds in white veils like nuns, worshipped
in the sun-beams; the woods behind murmured their reverence;
and the birds sang their psalms. All these sights,
sounds, odors, suggestions, were not, possibly, distinguished
by Margaret, in their sharp individuality, and full volume of
shade, sense and character. She had not learned to criticise,
she only knew how to feel. A new indefinable sensation of
joy and hope was deepened within her, and a single concentration
of all best influences swelled in her bosom. She took off
her hat and pricked some grass-heads, and blue-bells in the
band, and went on. The intangible presence of God was in
her soul, the inaudible voice of Jesus called her forward. Besides
she was about to penetrate the profoundly interesting mystery
of the Meeting, that for which every seventh day she had
heard the bell ring, that to which Obed and his mother went
so studiously dressed, and that concerning which a whole life's
prohibition had been upon her. And, withal, she remembered
the murderer, and directed her first steps to the Jail.

She tried to enter the Jail House, but Mr. Shooks drove her
away. Then she crept along the fence till she came to a small
hole, through which she saw, on the ground-floor of the Jail,
the grim face of the murderer looking from the small dark
gratings of his cell-window.

“I have brought you some flowers,” said she; “but they
won't let me carry them to you.”

“I know that,” the murderer replied.

“I will fasten a bunch in this hole,” she said, “so you can
see them.”

“I should be glad if I could reach them,” he replied, thrusting
his lean fingers through the bars. “I shall be glad to
look at them. I havn't seen the sun, or heard a pleasant voice
these many months. I am so changed, I don't know as I am
a man. I expect to be hung in a few days, and shall love to
see the flowers before I die. I remember I was a man once,
and had a wife, and a child—I thank you—you are a good girl—
I shall cry again if you stay there any longer.”

She heard the sound of other voices, and she could see the
shadows of faces looking from other cells, and hear voices
where she could see no faces, and the Jail seemed to her to be
full of people, and they cried out to her to bring them flowers.

Mr. Shooks also made himself apparent to her. “What are
you about here, you little varmint?” exclaimed he, rushiing
from his house. “Encouraging rebellion, breaking the
Sabbath, giving flowers to the prisoners!” He tore away the
bunch she had inserted in the wall; she retreated into the
street, and graining a point where she could see the upper cell-windows,
she displayed her flowers in sight of the prisoners,
holding them up to the extent of her arm, and heard the prisoners
shout with joy. “If words won't do, I'll try what vartue
there is in stones,” said Mr. Shooks, who thereupon, suiting
the action to the word, fairly pelted her away. She directed
her steps to the Meeting-house, and entered the square buttress-like,
mysterious porch; she stood at the foot of the broad-aisle,
and looked in, she saw the Minister, in his great wig, and
band, and black gloves, perched in what seemed to her a high
box, and above him was the pyramidal sounding-board, and
on a seat beneath she saw three persons, in powdered hair,
whom she recognized as the Deacons Hadlock, Ramsdill and
Penrose. Through the balustrade that surrounded the high
pews, she could see the tops of men's and women's heads, and
little boys and girls clutching the rounds with their hands, and
looking out at her. The Minister had given out a hymn,
and Deacon Hadlock rising, read the first line. Then in the
gallery over head, she heard the toot of the Master, and his voice
leading off, and she walked farther up the aisle to see what was
going on. A little tiny girl called out to her from one of the
pews, and Philip Davis, the sexton, hearing the noise, came forward
and led her back into the porch. Philip was not by nature
a stern man, he let the boys play on the steps during the
week, and the young men stand about the doors on the Sabbath.
He wore a shredded wig, and black clothes, as we have
said, and was getting old, and had taken care of the Meeting-house
ever since it was built, and although he was opposed to
all disturbance of the worship, he still spoke kindly to Margaret.

“What do you want?” he said.

“I want to go to Meeting,” she replied.

“Why don't you go?”

“I don't know how,” she answered.

“But you musn't bring all your posies here.”

“May'nt they go to Meeting too?”

“I see,” he added, “you are one of the Injins, and they
don't know how to behave Sabber days. But I'm glad you
have come. You don't know what a wicked thing it is to break
the Sabbath.”

“Mr. Shooks said I broke it when I went to give the murderer
some flowers, and threw stones at me, and you say I break
it now. Can't it be mended again?”

“You should'nt bring these flowers here.”

“I saw the Widow and Obed bring some.”

“Not so many. You've got such a heap on um.”

“I got a bigger bunch one day.”

“Yes, yes, but these flowers are a dreadful wicked thing on
the Lord's day.”

“Then I guess I will go home. It an't wicked there.”

“Wal, wal. You be a good gal, keep still, and you may
sit in that first pew along with me.”

“I don't want to be shut up there.”

“Then you may go softly up the stairs, and sit with the
gals.”

She ascended the stairs, which were within the body of the
house, and in a pew at the head, she saw Beulah Ann Orff,
Grace Joy, Paulina Whiston, and others that she had seen before;
they laughed and snubbed their handkerchiefs to their
noses, and she turned away, and went round the other side,
where the men sat. The boys began to look at her and
laugh, and Zenas Joy, one of the tithing men, came forward,
and seizing her by the arm, led her back to the girl's side, and
told her to go to her seat. She looked for the Master, but he
was hemmed in by several men, and while she was hesitating
what to do, Old Dill, who was sitting in one corner, with Tony
Washington and Cæsar Morgridge, opened her pew door, and
asked her in. So she went and sat down with the negroes.
Parson Welles had commenced his sermon. She could not
understand what he said, and told Old Dill she wanted to go,
and without further ceremony opened the door and slipped
out. She descended the stairs, moving softly in her moccasins,
and turning up the side-aisle, proceeded along under the high
pews till she came to the corner where she could see the minister.
Here she stood gazing steadfastly at him. Deacon
Hadlock, observing her position, motioned her away. Deacon
Ramsdill came directly forward, took her by the arm, opened
the door of the pew where his wife was, and shut her in. Mistress
Ramsdill gave her some caraway and dill, and received in
return some of Margaret's pennyroyal and lamb-kill, and other
flowers. The old lady used her best endeavors to keep Margaret
quiet, and she remained earnestly watching the Preacher
till the end of the service. The congregation being dismissed,
those who lived in the neighborhood went home; of the rest,

some went to the stoop of the Crown and Bowl, some sat on
the Meeting-house steps, some strolled into the woods in the
rear; several elderly men and women went to what was called
a “Noon House,” a small building near the Schoolhouse,
where they ate their dinner and had a prayer; quite a number
went to Deacon Penrose's. Of the latter, was the Widow
Wright. Mistress Ramsdill, who lived about a half mile
from the Green, offered to take Margaret to her house, but
the Widow interfered, saying it was too long a walk, and all
that, and prevailed with Margaret to go with her. This going
to Deacon Penrose's consisted in having a seat in his kitchen
Sunday noons, and drinking of his nice cool water. Seats
were brought into the room, the floor was duly sanded, the
pewter in the dresser was bright and glistening. His own
family and their particular relations occupied the parlor. To
this place came Mistress Whiston, and Old Mistress Whiston,
Mistresses Joy and Orff, Breaknecks; Mistresses Hoag and
Ravel, from the North Part of the town; Widows Brent and
Tuck, from the Mill; also Grace Joy, Beulah Ann Orff, Paulina
and Mercy Whiston, and others. They ate nutcakes and
cheese, snuffed snuff, talked of the weather, births, deaths,
health, sickness, engagements, marriages, of friends at the Ohio,
of Zenas and Delinda's publishment, and would have talked
about Margaret, save that the Widow protected the child, assured
them of her ignorance, and hoped she would learn better
by and by. Mistress Whiston asked Margaret how she
liked the Meeting. She replied that she liked to hear them
sing. “Sing!” rejoined Paulina Whiston. “I wish we could
have some decent singing. I was up to Brandon last Sunday,
and their music is enough sight better than ours; they have
introduced the new way almost every where but here. We
must drag on forty years behind the whole world.”

“For my part,” said Mistress Orff, “I don't want any
change, our fathers got along in the good old way, and went
to Heaven. The Quakers use notes and the Papists have their
la sol mee's, and Deacon Hadlock says it's a contrivance to
bring all those pests into the land. Then it make such a disturbance
in the meetings; at Dunwich two of the best deacons
could'nt stand it, and got up and went out; and Deacon Hadlock
says he won't stay to hear the heathenish sounds. It's only
your young upstarts, lewd and irregular people, and the like of
that, that wants the new way.”

“If our hearts was only right,” said Mistress Tuck, “we
should'nt want any books; and the next thing we shall know,
they will have unconverted people singing.”

“We have got some better leaders,” rejoined Paulina,
“than Deacon Hadlock and Master Elliman; their voices are
old and cracked, and they drawl on Sunday after Sunday, the
same old tunes in the same old way.”

“If we once begin to let in new things, there is no knowing
where they will stop,” replied Mistress Orff.

“It is just so,” said the Widow Tuck. “They begun with
wagons and shays, and the horses wan't used to the noise, and
got frightened and run away; and our Eliashib came nigh
spraining his ankle.”

“I remember,” said the elder Mistress Whiston, “when old
Parson Bristead down in Raleigh, used to sprinkle thirty bushels
of sand on his floors every year, and I don't believe Parson
Welles uses five.”

“Yes, yes,” said her daughter-in-law, “great changes, and
nobody can tell where it will end.”

“When I was a gal,” continued the senior lady, “they
didn't think of washing but once a month—”

“And now washing days come round every Monday,” added
Paulina. “If you will let us have some respectable singing,
I will agree to go back to the old plan of washing, Grandma,
ha ha!”

“It's holy time, child,” said her mother.

“I remember,” said the Widow Brent, who was a little
deaf, “milking a cow a whole winter for a half a yard of
ribbin.”

“I remember,” said Mistress Ravel, “the Great Hog up in
Dunwich, that hefted nigh twenty score.”

“If you would go up to the Pond, to-day,” said Margaret,
“I guess Chilion would play you a better tune on his fiddle
than they sing at the Meeting.”

“Tush, Tush!” said the Widow Wright.

“There, there! You see what we are coming to;” said
Mistress Orff.” “Booly Ann where was the Parson's text this
forenoon?”

The Widow Wright assumed the charge of Margaret in the
afternoon. She kept quiet, till the prayer, when the noise of
the hinge-seats, or something else, seemed to disconcert her,
and she told her protectress she wanted to go home. The
Widow replied that there was to be a christening, and prevailed
with her to stop, and lifted her on the seat, where she could
witness the ceremony. The Minister descended from the pulpit,
and Mr. Adolphus Hadlock carried forward the babe;
which was enveloped in a long flowing blanket of white tabby

silk, lined with white satin, and embroidered with ribbon of
the same color. The Minister from a shining pewter basin
sprinkled water in the face of the child, saying, “Urania
Bathsheba, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and Son,
and Holy Ghost.” Margaret was not alone in the number
of causes that disturbed the serenity of the Meeting that day;
there was an amount of mirth in the minds of the people at
large, respecting Mr. Adolphus Hadlock's children, which as a
matter of course must spend itself on their annual return to the
altar. When the afternoon services were over, Mistress Ramsdill
insisted on Margaret's remaining to the catechising, an
arrangement to which the Widow Wright, who intended to
take the child home, consented. Margaret herself indeed at
first demurred, but Deacon Ramsdill supported the request of
his wife with one of his customary smiles, remarking that,
“Catechising was as good arter the sermon to the children, as
greasing arter shearing, it would keep the ticks off,” which he
said, “were very apt to fly from the old sheep to the lambs.” The
class, comprising most of the youths in town, was arranged in
the broad-aisle, the boys on one side, and the girls on the other,
with the Minister in the pulpit at the head. Mistress Ramsdill
with Margaret, and several of the elderly people, occupied
the neighboring pews.

“What is the chief end of man?” was the first question; to
which a little boy promptly and swiftly gave the appropriate
answer. — “How many persons are there in the Godhead?”
“There are four persons persons in the Godhead” — replied
a little boy in the same tone of confidence that characterized
his predecessor. But before he could give the entire answer,
there was a cry all about, “'Tan't right, 'tan't right.” The
Minister, being a little deaf, did not perceive the error, or at
least did not correct it. Deacon Hadlock at the instance of
Miss Amy intimated to him that there was a mistake. The
boy thus doubly challenged, seemed disposed to make good his
position. “'Tis right,” said he in a whisper loud enough to
be heard over the house, at the same time counting on his
fingers, “Marm said 'twas just like her and Daddy and me that
made three in one family, and now Grandad has come to live
with us it makes four.” The inadvertence being adjusted, the
questioning proceeded. “Wherein consists the sinfulness of
that state wherein man fell?” “The sinfulness of that state
wherein man fell, God having out of his mere good pleasure,
elected some to everlasting life, all mankind by the Fall are
under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to the pains of

Hell forever,” was the rapid and disjointed answer. The question
stumbling from one to another, was at length righted by
Job Luce, the little hunchback. His voice was low and plaintive,
soft and clear. Margaret looked over the pew to see him.
There were signs of dissatisfaction on the faces of others, but
his own was unruffled as a pebble in a brook. He was
shockingly deformed, his arms were long as an ape's, and he
seemed almost to rest on his hands, while his shoulders rose
high and steep above his head. “That's Job Luce,” whispered
Mistress Ramsdill to Margaret; “and if there ever was a
Christian, I believe he is one, if he is crooked. Don't you see
how he knows the Catechism; he has got the whole Bible eeny
most by heart, and he is only three year old.” Margaret's
eye became riveted on the boy, and the whole Catechism, Effectual
Calling, Justification, Adoption, and Sanctification, were
disposed of, without further attention on her part. When the
children were dismissed, she broke from her kind friend, the
Deaconess, and took Job by the hand, while little Isabel
Weeks joined him on the other side. She looked into his
face, and he turned up his mild timid eye to her as much as to
say, “Who are you that cares for me!” In truth, Job was,
we will not say despised, but for the most part neglected. His
mother was a poor widow, whose husband had been a shoemaker,
and she supported herself and son binding shoes.
The old people treated her kindly, but rather wondered at her
boy; and what was wonder in the parents degenerated into
slight, jest, and almost scorn, in the children; so that Job
numbered but few friends. Then he got his lessons so well,
that the more indolent and duller boys were tempted to envy
him.

“You didn't say the Catechism,” said he to Margaret.

“No,” she replied, “I don't know it; and I guess it isn't
so good as my Bird Book and Mother Goose's Songs.” Their
conversation was suddenly interrupted by an exclamation and
a sigh proceeding from Miss Amy and the Widow Luce, who
were close behind them.

“Oh dear! My poor boy! Woe, woe to a sinful mother!”
was the sigh of the latter.

“Child, child!” exclaimed the former, addressing herself
to Margaret, “don't you like the Catechism?”

“I don't know it,” replied Margaret.

“She an't bad, if they do call her an Injin,” said Isabel.

“I want to tell her about Whippoorwill,” said Job.

“God's hand lies heavily upon us!” mournfully ejaculated
the Widow.

“Can anything be done in such a sad state of things?”
anxiously asked Miss Amy.

The several parties stopped. Miss Amy took Margaret's
hand, Job's was relinquished to that of his mother; and as
Margaret's course properly lay in a different direction, she
turned up the West Street, and Miss Amy walked on with
her.

“Did you never read the Primer?” asked the latter.

“No, Ma'am,” was the reply.

“Do you know what God is?”

“The little boy said God was a spreeit.”

“Have you never learned how many persons there are in
the Godhead?”

“One of the little boys said there were four, but the others
said there were three.”

“Three, my child, three.”

“How do they all get in? I should love to see it.”

“Oh! Don't talk so, you amaze me. How dare you speak
in that way of the Great Jehovah!”

“The great what?”

“The Great God, I mean.”

“I thought it was a bird.”

“Alas! Can it be there is such benighted heathenism in
our very midst!” said the lady to herself. Her interest in the
state of Margaret was quickened, and she pursued her enquiries
with a most philanthropic assiduity.

“Do you never say your prayers?” she asked.

“No, Ma'am,” replied Margaret. “But I can say the Laplander's
Ode and Mary's Dream.”

“What do you do when you go to bed?”

“I go to sleep, Ma'am, and dream.”

“In what darkness you must be at the Pond!”

“O no, I see the Sun rise every morning, and the snowdrops
don't open till it's light.”

“I mean, my poor child, that I am afraid you are very
wicked there.”

“I try to be good, and Pa is good when he don't get rum at
Deacon Penrose's, and Chilion is good, he was going to mend
my flower bed to-day, to keep the hogs out.”

“What, break the Sabbath! Violate God's holy day! Your
father was once punished in the Stocks for breaking the Sabbath.
God will punish us all if we do so.”

“Will it put our feet in the Stocks the same as they did
father?”

“No, my child. He will punish us in the lake that burneth
with fire and brimstone.”

“What, the same as Chilion and Obed and I burnt up the
bees?”

“Alas! alas!” ejaculated the lady.

“We were so bad,” continued Margaret, “I thought I
should cry.”

“Deacon Penrose and the rest of us have often spoken of
you at the Pond; and we have thought sometimes of going
up to see you. In what a dreadful condition your father is!”

“Yes, Ma'am, sometimes. He rolls his eyes so, and groans,
and shakes, and screams, and nobody can help him. I wish
Deacon Penrose would come and see him, and I think he
would not sell him any more rum.”

“But, my child, don't you know anything of the Great
God who made you and me?”

“Did that make me? I am so glad to know. The little
chickens come out of the shells, the beans grow in the pods,
the dandelions spring up in the grass, and Obed said I came
in an acorn, but the pigs and wild turkeys eat up the acorns,
and I can't find one that has a little girl in it like me.”

“Would you like to come down to Meeting again?”

“I don't know as I like the Meeting. It don't seem so
good as the Turkey Shoot and Ball. Zenas Joy didn't hurt
my arm there, and Beulah Ann Orff and Grace Joy talked
with me at the Ball. To-day they only made faces at me,
and the man at the door told me to throw away my flowers.”

“How deceitful is the human heart, and desperately
wicked!”

“Who is wicked?”

“We are all wicked.”

“Are you wicked? then you do not love me, and I don't
want you to go with me any farther.”

“Ah, my dear child, we go astray speaking lies as soon as
we be born.”

“I never told a lie.”

“The Bible says so, child.”

“Then the Bible is not true.”

“Do not run away. Let me talk with you a little more.”

“I don't like wicked people.”

“Yes, but I want to speak to you about Jesus Christ, do
you know him?”

“No, Ma'am—Yes Ma'am, I have heard Hash speak about
it when he drinks rum.”

“But did you not hear the Minister speak about him in the
pulpit to-day?”

“Yes, Ma'am,—does he drink rum too?”

“No, no, child, he only drinks brandy and wine.”

“I have heard Hash speak so when he only drank that.”

“The Minister is not wicked like Hash,—he does not get
drunk.”

“Hash wouldn't be wicked if he didn't drink. I wish he
could drink and not be wicked too.”

“O we are all wicked, Hash and the Minister, and you and
I; we are all wicked, and I was going to tell you how Christ
came to save wicked people.”

“What will he do to Hash?”

“He will burn him in hell-fire, my child.”

“Won't he burn the Minister too? I guess I shan't come to
Meeting any more. You and the Minister, and all the people
here are so wicked. Chilion is good, and I will stay at home
with him.”

“The Minister is a holy man, a good man I mean, he is
converted, he repents of his sins. I mean he is very sorry he
is so wicked.”

“Don't he keep a being wicked? You said he was
wicked.”

“Why, yes, he is wicked. We are all totally depraved.
You do not understand. I fear I cannot make you see it as it
is. My dear child, the eyes of the carnal mind are blind, and
they cannot see. I must tell you, though it may make you
feel bad, that young as you are, you are a mournful instance
of the truth of Scripture. But I dare not speak smooth
things to you. If you would read your Bible, and pray to
God, your eyes would be opened so you could see. But I did
want to tell you about Jesus Christ, who was both God and
Man. He came and died for us. He suffered the cruel death
of the cross. The Apostle John says, he came to take away
the sins of the world. If you will believe in Christ he will
save you. The Holy Spirit, that came once in the form of a
dove, will again come, and cleanse your heart. You must
have faith in the blood of Christ. You must take him as
your Atoning Sacrifice. Are you willing to go to Christ, my
child?”

“Yes, Ma'am, if he won't burn up Hash, and I want to go
and see that little crooked boy too.”

“It's wicked for children to see one another Sundays.”

“I did see him at Meeting.”

“I mean to meet and play and show picture-books, and
that little boy is very apt to play; he catches grasshoppers,
and goes down by the side of the brook, before sundown;—
that is very bad.”

“Are his eyes sore, like Obed's, sometimes, so that the
light hurts him?”

“It is God's day, and he won't let children play.”

“He lets the grasshoppers play.”

“But he will punish children.”

“Won't he punish the grasshoppers too?”

“No.”

“Well, I guess, I an't afraid of God.”

Miss Amy whether that she thought she had done all she
could for the child, or that Margaret seemed anxious to break
company with her, or that she had reached a point in the
road where she could conveniently leave her, at this instant
turned off into Grove Street, and Margaret pursued her course
homeward. She arrived at the Pond a little before sunset;
she fed her chickens, her squirrel and robin; her own supper
she made of strawberries and milk in her wooden bowl and
spoon. She answered as she was best able to all the enquiries
and banterings of the family relative to her new day's adventure.
She might have been tired, but the evening air and
the voices of the birds were inviting, and her own heart was
full of life; and she took a stroll up the Indian's Head.

Along a tangled path, trod by sheep, more by herself, and
somewhat by visiters to the Pond, she wound her way to the
summit. This, as we have said, was nearly one hundred feet
above the level of the Pond; on the top were the venerable
trunk of the Hemlock before referred to, a small cluster of
firs, a few spears of yellow orchard grass, and brown sorrel,
sparse tufts of hare-bells and buttercups, bunches of sweet-fern,
and mosses growing on the rocks. From the south front
projected a smooth shelving rock directly over the water,
forming the brow of the so called Head. This elevation commanded
points of extensive and varied interest; the Pond
below, its dark waters dotted with green islands, its forest-skirted
shore, the outlet, the dam, the deep and perpetual gurgle
of the falling water. Beyond the dam was a broken congeries;
the result of wild diluvial force; horrid gulfs, high
rocky pinnacles, trees aslant, green dingles; to the west, the
hills crept along by gentle acclivities, and swelling upwards,

formed, to an untrained eye, the apparent boundaries of this
nether world. On the north was a continuation of the ridge
of mountains of which the Head itself seemed to be the close,
proceeding indefinitely till they met and melted into the sky.
On the north-west, buried like a cloud in the dimmest distance,
appeared the round, bald, but soft and azure crown of
Old Umkiddin. Beyond the Pond, on the south, extended a
forest without visible break or limitation. Turning to the
east one beheld the River, its meadows, the mountain beyond,
and below you, were portions of the village; to the south,
through the tops of the woods, some of the houses in No. 4
were seen; and on the south-west lay the hamlet, Breakneck.
In every direction, here and there, on side hills, in glades of
the forest, among orchard-groves, appeared the roofs of houses
and barns, dappling the scene, and reflecting in the middle of
the day, a grey silvery light, like mica in granite. To this
place Margaret ascended; here had she often come before,
and here in her future life she often came. She went up
early in the morning to behold the sun rise from the eastern
mountain, and be washed by the fogs that flowed up from the
River; at noon, to lie on the soft grass, under the firs, and
sleep the midtide sleep of all nature; or ponder with a childish
curiosity on the mystery of the blue sky and the blue hills; or
with a childish dread, on that of the deep dark waters below
her. She came up in the Fall to gather thimble, whortle and
rasp-barries that grew on the sides of the hill, and get the
leaves and crimson spires of the sumach for her mother to
color with. She now came up to see the sun go down; she
sat on the grass, with her hands folding her knees. Directly
on the right of the sun-setting, was an apparent jog or break
in the line of the woods and hills, having on one side something
like a cliff or sharp promontory, jutting towards the
heavens, and overlooking what seemed like a calm clear sea
beyond; within this depression lay the top of Umkiddin, before
spoken of; here also, after a storm, appeared the first
clear sky, and here at mid-day the white clouds, in long
ranges of piles, were wont to repose like ships at anchor, and
Margaret loved to look at that point. Nearer at hand, she
could see the roads leading to Dunwich and Brandon, winding,
like unrolled ribbons, through the woods. There were
also pastures covered with grey rocks, looking like sheep; the
green woods in some places were intersected by fields of
brown rye, or soft clover. On the whole, it was a verdant
scene,—Greenness, like a hollow Ocean, spread itself out before
her; the hills were green, the depths were green, the
trees, grass and weeds were green; and in the forest, on the
south margin of the Pond, the darkness, as the sun went down,
seemed to form itself into caverns, and grottoes, and strange
fantastic shapes, in the solid Greenness. In some instances
she could see the tips of the trees glancing and frolicking in
the light, while the greedy shadows were crawling up from
their roots, as it were out of the ground to devour them.
Deep in those woods the black-cap and thrush still whooted
and clang unweariedly; she heard also the cawing of crows,
and the scream of the loon; the tinkle of bells, the lowing of
cows, and the bleating of sheep were distinctly audible. Her
own Robin, on the Butternut below, began his long, sweet,
many-toned carol; the tree-toad chimed in with its loud trilling
chirrup; and frogs, from the Pond and Mill Brook,
crooled, chubbed and croaked. Swallows skimmered over
her, and plunged into the depths below; swarms of flies in circular
squadrons skirmished in the sunbeams before her eye;
and at her side, in the grass, crickets sung their lullabies to
the departing day; a rich, fresh smell from the water, the
woods, the wild-flowers, the grass-lots, floating up over the
hill, regaled her senses. The surface of the Pond, as the
sun receded, broke into gold-ripples, deepening gradually into
carmine and vermillion; suspended between her eye and the
horizon was a table-like form of illuminated mist, a bridge of
visible sun-beams shored on pointed shining piers reaching to
the ground. Margaret sat, we say, attentive to all this; what
were her feelings we know not now, we may know hereafter;
and clouds that had spent the Sabbath in their own way, came
with her to behold the sun-setting; some in long tapering
bands, some in flocky rosettes, others in broad, many-folded
collops. In that light they showed all colors, rose, pink,
violet and crimson, and the sky in a large circumference
about the sun weltered in ruddiness, while the opposite side
of the heavens threw back a purple glow. There were
clouds, to her eye, like fishes, the horned-pout, with its pearly
iridine breast, and iron-brown back; floating after it was a
shiner with its bright golden armory; she saw the blood-red
fins of the yellow-perch, the long snout of the pickerel with
its glancing black eye, and the gaudy tail of the trout. She
saw the sun sink half below the horizon, then all his round
red face go down; and the light on the Pond withdraw, the
bridge of light disappear, and the hollows grow darker and
darker. A stronger and better defined glow streamed for a
moment from the depths of the sun, into the sky, and flashed
through the atmosphere. The little rose-colored clouds
melted away in their evening joy, and went to rest up in the
dark unfathomable chambers of the heavens. The fishes
swam away with the sun, and plunged down the cataract of
light that falls over the other side of the earth; and the broad
massive clouds grew darker and grimmer, and extended themselves,
like huge-breasted lions couchant which the Master
had told her about, to watch all night near the gate of the
sun. She sat there alone, with no eye but God's to look upon
her; he alone saw her face, her expression, in that still, warm,
golden sun-setting; she sat as if for her the sun had gone
down, and the sky unloosed its glory; she sat mute and undisturbed,
as if she were the child-queen of this great pageant
of Nature.

While at the Pond, the birds were closing their strains, and
Margaret was taking her parting look of the sky, in the village
at the same moment, broke forth the first song of the day, and
was indulged the first unembarrassed vision. When the last
shimmer of blue light vanished from the top of the mountain
beyond the River, whither tenscore eyes were turned, there
exploded the long twenty-four hours pent up, and swollen
emotion of tenscore hearts and voices. “Sun's down!”
“sun's down!” was the first unrestrained voice the children
had uttered since the previous afternoon. This rang out in
every family, was echoed from house to house. The spell
was broken, the tether was cut, doors and gates flew open,
and out the children broke into the streets, to breathe a fresh
feeling, clutch at a tantalizing and fast receding enjoyment,
and give a minute's free play to hands, feet and tongues. An
avalanche of exuberant life seemed to have fallen from the
glacier summits of the Sabbath, and scattered itself over the
Green. The boys leaped and whooped towards the Meeting-house,
flung their hats into the air, chased one another in a
sort of stampede, and called for games with all possible vociferation.
Little Job Luce alone seems to have no share in the
general revel. He has been sitting by the Brook under a
willow, and as the boys come trooping by, he shrinks into the
house; his mother holds him awhile in her lap at the window,
when he, as the grasshoppers have already done, goes to bed.
The villagers, Abel Wilcox and Martha Madeline Gisborne,
Hancock Welles and Hester Penrose, Deacon Ramsdill and
his wife, Deacon Hadlock, Dr. Spoor and his wife, Esq.
Beach, his wife and children, appear in the streets, they walk
up the different roads, and visit from house to house.

The Indian's Head, meanwhiles, sinks into shadows and
silence, and Margaret is hushed as the sky above her; the
cool fresh evening wind blows upon her, trills through her
brown curls and passes on. Her mother appeared on the top
of the hill, and without words or noise sat down beside her.
She folded her arm about Margaret's neck, and with one hand
grasped and fingered that of her child, and with the other
dallied with the locks of her hair;—but abstractedly, and with
her eye fixed on the darkening expanse. Her own grizzled
hair was swept by the wind, and her bared swarthy bosom
seemed to drink in life from the twilight world. In calm
sternness, in mute brownness she sat, and apparently thoughtful,
and as it were unconsciously she pressed Margaret hard to
her breast. Was it an old memory, some old hope, some
recollection of her own childhood, some revival of her own
mother's image—was it some feeling of despair, some selfish
calculation, a dim glimpse into eternity, an impulse of repenting
sin, a visitation of God's spirit—was it a moment of unavowed
tenderness? Presently Chilion came up with his viol,
and going to the projecting rock, sat with his feet dangling
over the precipice. Margaret leaving her mother went to her
brother, stood leaning on his shoulder, and looked down into
the mysterious depth below. Her brother began to play, and
as if he had imbibed the dizziness, dread and profundity of
that abyss, played accordingly, and she shuddered and started,
and then relieving the impression, he played the soft, starry,
eternal repose of the heavens, and chased away that abyss-music
from her soul. Then her father came up, his red face
glistening even in the shadows, with a bottle of rum, which he
drank, and laughed, and repeated over to her many passages
of the Bible, and imitated the tones, expressions and manners
of all the religious persons whom Margaret had seen in the
village; and then making a papoose of her, he carried her
down the hill.

That night Margaret dreamed a dream, and in this wise
dreamed she. She was in a forest, and the sun was going
down among the trees. Its round red disk changed to yellow,
as she looked, and then to white; then it seemed to advance
towards her, and the woods became magically luminous. She
beheld her old familiar birds flying among the branches with a
singularly lustrous plumage, the wild-flowers glowed under her
feet, and the shrubbery glittered about her. The ball of light
came forward to a knoll or rise of ground, about a dozen rods
before her, and stopped. A gradual metamorphosis was seen

to go on in it, till at last it came out in the form of a man, like
a marble statue, dressed not as Margaret had been accustomed
to see, but in a simple robe that descended to his feet, and he
leaned upon a milk-white cross. Near this appeared another
form of a man, clothed in a similar manner, but smaller in size,
and perched on his hand was a milk-white dove. Margaret
looked at these men, or forms of men, in silent wonder. Presently
she saw a suffusion and outflowing of animal life in
them. The face of the first was pale but very fair, and a
hidden under-tinge of color seemed to show through an almost
transparent skin, as she had seen the blush of the white goose-foot
shining through a dew drop. In the preternatural light
that filled the place, Margaret saw that his eyes were dark-blue,
and his hair, parted on the crown, flowed in dark-brown
curls down his neck. The appearance of the other was
similar, only the glow on his cheeks seemed to be more superficial,
and his look was more youthful. The cross on which
the elder leaned, Margaret now saw set in the ground, where
it grew like a tree, budded and bore green leaves and white
flowers, and the milk-white dove, becoming also endowed with
life, flew and lit upon the top of it. She then saw the younger
of the two men pick flowers from the blooming cross-tree, and
give them to the other, who seemed pleased with their beauty
and fragrance. She found herself moving towards these two
persons, who had so singularly appeared to her, and when she
saw one of them pick off the flowers, she was secretly impelled
to gather some. She proceeded to collect such as grew near
her, calico bush, Solomon's seal, lambkill and others similar to
those she found in the woods on her way to the Meeting, which
she tied with a grass string. Then she got a large bunch of
checker, partridge and strawberries. She carried her flowers
in one hand and her berries in the other. All at once the
milk-white dove flew from the green cross-tree and alighted
upon her shoulder, thus seeming to establish a communication
between herself and these two persons, and as she moved on,
all the birds in the woods, the same as she had heard in the
morning, sung out right merrily. When she stopped, they
ceased to sing, and when she started, they began again. As
she was going on, suddenly issuing from behind a tree, appeared
to her in her dream, the same lady who had talked with
her after meeting, Miss Amy.

“Where are you going?” said the lady.

“I am going to see those men, and give that beautiful one
these flowers and berries,” replied Margaret.

“That is Jesus Christ that I told you about this afternoon,
and the other is the Apostle John,” rejoined the lady.

“Is it?” said Margaret, “then I think he won't want my
flowers.”

“No,” added the lady. “He is God, the second person in
the Godhead. He does not want flowers.”

“Is he?” asked Margaret. “One of those things you told
me about in the Catechism? I am so sorry.”

“He is the same in substance with the Father, equal in
power and glory. He does not want your flowers, he wants
you to believe in him; you must have faith in that cross.”

“What shall I do?” responded Margaret. “I was going
to carry him some flowers, I saw him smell of some. He looks
as if he would love me.”

“Love you?” rejoined the lady. “What does the Primer
say, that you deserve everlasting destruction in hell, that you
have not prayed to God, and have broken his Holy Sabbaths.”

While they were talking, the birds ceased to sing, and the
dove leaving Margaret's shoulder, flew back to the cross. She
started impulsively and said, “I will go.” As she proceeded
slowly along, in the variegated phenomena of the dream,
Deacon Hadlock stood before her, and asked her where she
was going, to whom she made the same reply as before.

“You cannot go,” said he, “unless you are effectually
called. You are wholly disabled by reason of sin.”

“It is only a little ways,” replied she, “and I went clear
down to the village to-day alone. He looks as if he wanted
me to come.”

“Yes,” rejoined the Deacon, “if you were in a right frame
of mind, if you were duly humbled. You are vain, proud,
deceitful, selfish and wholly depraved.”

“No, I am not,” replied she.

“Even there you show the blindness of the carnal mind.”

“He is beckoning to me,” said Margaret.

“If he should appear to you as he truly is, a just God, who
hates sin, and should gird on his sword, then your rebellious
heart would show itself, then you would hate him.”

While Deacon Hadlock detained Margaret, the Widow
Luce went by leading her crooked boy Job, Mistress Adolphus
Hadlock and her son Socrates, Mistress Whiston and her
youngest daughter Joan, Mistress Hatch and her little boy
Isaiah, and Helen Weeks with her brother and sister Judah
and Isabel, and several elderly people, men and women.

“He an't a hanging on the cross as he is in the Primer,” said
Isaiah Hatch.

“Where is the tub, Ma?” asked Joan Whiston. “I
thought you said we were going to be washed in his blood.”

“Blessed Saviour! by faith I behold thee!” exclaimed
Mistress Palmer, coming through the woods.

“I guess he don't want you,” said Judah Weeks to Job
Luce.

“I shall have as many raisins as I can eat when I get to
heaven,” said Socrates Hadlock.

“I thought he was coming to judgment, in clouds and flaming
fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God,” said the
Camp-Preacher looking from behind a tree.

John the disciple and companion of Jesus was now seen
approaching. “Welcome to Jesus!” he said, as he came
near to the people. “The good shepherd welcomes his flock!
as saith the old Prophet, `He will take the lambs in his bosom
and gently lead those that are with young.' He is the Eternal
Life now manifested unto you; come to him that he may give
you some of his life; he is the truth, he will impart to you that
truth; approach him that his own divine image may be reflected
in you; love him, and so become possessed of his
spirit.” The crowd drew back, or rather within itself, as the
holy Apostle approached speaking. Children snuggled to their
parents, and the elderly people seemed disconcerted. “Christ
bids me say,” continued the Apostle, “Suffer the little
children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of
heaven.”

“I know not how many of us may be included in this invitation,”
said Deacon Hadlock, as the senior officer of the
church, and more prominent man, speaking on behalf of the
company.

“Whosoever thirsts,” replied the Apostle, “let him come.
Whoever would have the true life, like a well of water springing
up in his soul, let him come to the living source.”

“It is to be hoped that some of us have been made worthy
partakers of the efficacy of Christ's death,” said Deacon
Penrose.

“Whosoever doeth not righteousness,” rejoined the Apostle,
“is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother; every
one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”

“I want he should take me in his arms and bless me, as he
did the little children in the Bible,” said Isabel Weeks to her
sister.

“He looks so beautiful and good,” said Helen. “I should
rejoice to go near him. It seems as if my heart had for a
great while longed to meet such gentleness and purity.”

“Alas!” exclaimed Deacon Hadlock, “that you should apply
again that unction to your lips! You think your natural
amiability will commend you to Christ. You believe there is
something good in your nature.—“When,” added he turning to
the Apostle, “when will this young gal see herself as she is, feel
her own sinfulness, her utter helplessness by nature, and throw
herself on the mere mercy of God?”

“Hold!” said the Apostle. “She is in the way of salvation.
Her natural amiability is pleasing to Christ. He was
amiable in his youth before God and man. No human being
is sinful by nature. If she have deep love in her soul, that will
remove all traces of the carnal mind. Her love, I see it now,
flows out to Jesus, and his love ever flows out to her, and all
the children of men, and in this union of feeling and spirit will
she become perfect in holiness.”

By this time, little Job Luce, as it seemed in the dream,
forgotten and neglected by the crowd, slipping away unobserved,
and creeping through the bushes and trees, had gone round
and come out near the cross, under which he stood, and began
playing with the Dove, that offered itself very familiarly to him.
When Margaret saw this, she said she would go too, and
Helen and Isabel said they would go. “He's God!” cried
Isaiah Hatch, and run away. “He's all bloody!” said Socrates
Hadlock, and started back. Jesus, having taken Job by
the hand, was now seen leading him towards them. The little
crumpled boy appeared to have become cured of his deformity,
he walked erect, the hump had sunk from his back, and his
hands no longer touched the ground.

“We read that the crooked shall be made straight,” said Deacon
Ramsdill, with one of his very natural smiles.

“I don't care who or what he is,” spake out Mistress Palmer,
“I do love him, and if Rhody was here, she would love him,
and give right up to him now.”

“Wal, for my part,” responded Mistress Hatch, “I'm greatly
disappinted. It an't what I expected. He an't no more God
than anything. I shan't trust my soul to a man. Come Isaiah,
we'll go home.”

The Cause of this large company, and these varied sensations
now appeared distinctly approaching; Jesus himself
drew near. The tree-cross, green and flowering, moved along
with him; the birds in the woods renewed their song, and even
the milk-white dove flew from tree to tree, as it were to give
good cheer to some of the more timid little birds. Some of

the people retreated and stood afar off behind the trees, others
clustered about Deacon Hadlock.

“Behold him!” outspoke the Apostle John, “the fairest
among the sons of men; our elder Brother; he took upon himself
our nature, and is not ashamed to call us Brethren. He
hath loved us, and given himself for us, as the good Paul said,
an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor.”

The voice of Jesus himself was heard at last sounding heavenly
sweet and tenderly free among the bewildered people.
“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of
heart.” “The bruised reed he will not break,” added John,
“nor quench the smoking flax.”

“I am not come to condemn you,” was still the voice of
Jesus, “but that by me you may be saved. I give myself for
your life. Through my holiness ye shall sin no more.”

“Yes,” exclaimed Helen Weeks earnestly, “we will go to
him! Come Isabel, come Margaret.”

These three interlocked, Margaret still retaining her berries
and flowers, the kind Apostle led forward, and Jesus smiled upon
them as they approached, and took each of them by the hand,
and spake some comforting and assuring words to them, and they
looked with a reverential pleasure into his face. Margaret,
who from her own ignorance of the person she addressed
felt less fear of him than the others, was the first who spoke to
him. “Do you love flowers?” said she, at the same time extending
the bunch she had in her hand. Christ took them,
and replied, “Yes, I do. God bless you, my dear child.”
“Can he bless and love me?” said Helen, addressing herself
directly to Jesus, but adopting the customary third person.
“Yes,” replied he; “I love those that love me, keep your
heart pure, for out of it are the issues of life, and I and the
Father will come and dwell with you.”

“Can he have mercy on a poor sinner like me?” asked Mistress
Palmer. “I forgive you, Daughter,” he replied; “Go
and sin no more.”

“Are you God?” asked Margaret. “No, child,” he answered,
“I am not God. But love me, and you will love God.”

“Is he not the second Person in the Godhead?” enquired
Miss Amy, in a humble voice. “No,” said Jesus.

“It an't God!—The Primer is'nt right!” was whispered
among the children.

“There is some mistake here,” said Deacon Hadlock, as if
he was afraid Christ had not fully explained himself.

“There is no mistake,” replied St. John.

“But are we not saved by the Atoning Sacrifice, and can
that be made except by an infinite being, and is not that being
God?” added the Deacon.

“We are only saved by a Divine Union with God and
Christ. He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God
in him. This Inter-dwelling is our salvation, and this is the
Atonement.

“That's nater,” said Deacon Ramsdill, “I understand that.
I am afeered some of us are resting upon a sandy foundation.”

“I was a poor sinner,” continued the Apostle, “till I came
into this oneness with Christ. I feel safe and happy now, my
soul is elevated and purified. To be with him is like being
with God; to possess his spirit, is to bear the virtues of heaven;
to be formed in his image is the blessed privilege of humanity.
To effect such a change is the object for which he came into
the world, and that which I have seen and heard, and handled
and enjoyed, I declare unto you, that you, beloved friends,
may have fellowship with me; and truly my fellowship is with
the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

“We are emptied of all self-righteousness,” said Deacon
Hadlock, “we are altogether become filthy.”

“Have you no love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness,
faith?” asked the Apostle.

“Alas, none,” replied the Deacon.

“Say not so,” rejoined the Apostle. “A single look of his
will pierce you through and through.”

“What the gentleman says may be true,” interposed Deacon
Penrose; “but I think it highly inexpedient to speak of
these things. We might adjourn, a few of us, to my counting-room,
or to the Parson's study, and confer upon the matter;
but to talk in this way before all the people is the worst policy
that could have been adopted. It is an imprudence to which I
shall not commit myself; nor can I sanction it any longer with
my presence.” So saying he disappeared.

“Look at these children,” continued St. John, “the very
flowers and berries they bring are the affectionate tribute of
their hearts to the Infinite Goodness and Divine Beauty that
appear in Christ; it is the out-flowing of a pure love; it is
the earnest and fore-shadowing of the salvation that has already
begun in their souls. That young lady's yearning after the
love of Jesus is a sign that the Regeneration has commenced
within her, and by it a communication is opened between her
soul and his, which is the Atonement, and so also she becomes
united to God, who is manifested and resident in Christ.”

“But what will become of her past sins?” asked Miss Amy
anxiously.

“I forgive them,” said Christ. “All power, Daughter, is
given unto me, and that of complete and eternal pardon.”

“What have we been about all our lives, that we know not
so much of the Gospel as these children!” exclaimed Deacon
Hadlock mournfully and yet resistingly. Whereupon it came
to pass that the crowd withdrew or melted away like a mist,
and Margaret with Helen Weeks, her sister Isabel, her
brother Judah, and Job Luce were left alone with Jesus and
John. Helen fell at the feet of Jesus, and overpowered by her
emotions, wept with a calm deep weeping; Margaret looked
into his face, and tears came into her eyes also.

“Will you forgive me, Job,” said Judah to the little boy,
“for all that I have done to you?”

“Yes;” replied Job.

“Be good children and love one another,” said Jesus to them,
and the two boys disappeared.

“Weep not, child of my love,” said he to Helen, “confide in
me, dwell near my heart, obey the Gospel; I will be the life of
your life, the well-spring of your soul, and in purity shall Heaven
be revealed in you. The little Isabel, she shall be blest
too, I will carry the lamb in my bosom.” When he had said
this, they two vanished from the dream.

“You ask me who is God, child,” said he turning to Margaret,
who now alone remained; “God is Love. Be pure in
heart, and you shall see God. Love much, and he shall be
manifest to you. Your flowers are fair, your spirit is fairer;
I am well pleased with their fragrance, the breath of your
love is sweeter to me.—Margaret!” he continued, “to you
it shall be given to know the mysteries of Heaven. But the
end is not yet. Man shall rise against his fellow and many
shall perish. The Church has fallen. The Eve of Religion
has again eaten the forbidden fruit. You shall be a co-worker
with me in its second redemption. I speak to you in parables,
you understand not. You shall understand at another day.
You are young, but you may advance in knowledge and goodness.
You must be tempted, blessed if you can endure temptation.
Be patient, and earnest, hopeful and loving. I too was
a child like you, and it is that you must be a child like me.
Through the morning shadows of childhood you shall pass to
the perfect day. I unconsciously grew in favor with God and
man, so shall you. This Cross is the burden of life, which
all must bear. Bear it well, and it shall bring forth flowers and

fruit to you. This Dove stands for the innocency and virtue,
strength and support, that flow from God to all. In a dream
have all these things passed before you. Forget not your
dream. There is much evil in the world, sin not. You must
be afflicted, faint not. Let me kiss you, my sweet child.”

Thus spake Jesus, and the dream again changed. The two
persons were seen to return to marble-like forms, and these
forms became a round ball of light, which, receding through
the forest, stood on the distant mountains like the setting sun,
and Margaret awoke. The morning light appeared in her chamber,
and as she looked from her window, she saw the golden
sun coming up over the green woods, and the birds were pealing
their songs through the air. Margaret went down with
bright feelings, light-hearted and free; she brought water from
the cistern for her mother to wash, spread the clothes on the
bushes, and guarded some yarn from the birds.

15. CHAPTER XV.
MARGARET PASSES A NIGHT AT THE STILL, AND SOLOMON SMITH
MAKES HER USEFUL.

It will be remembered that Hash, the brother of Margaret,
at the Spring training, was punished not only by imprisonment,
but also with an inconsiderable fine, for disorderly behavior on
that occasion. Not being himself possessed of the money, he
had recourse to the Smiths at No. 4, to whom he pledged his
oxen for the sum advanced. To acquit himself in that quarter,
he engaged his services as night-warden at the Still. In addition—for
this seemed to be a point especially insisted upon—
he promised that Margaret should accompany him in that
duty.

The “Still,” or Distillery, was a smutty, clouted, suspicious
looking building, on the slope of ground between the Tavern
and Mill Brook. It rose a single story on one side and two on
the other, into the former of which the barrels of cider were
rolled, and emptied into the cauldron below. The latter was
the chief scene of operation; here were the furnace; the
boiler with its cap for collecting the vapor and conveying it
into the worm-pipe or condenser; the refrigerator, an immense

cask, holding the worm, and constantly supplied with
fresh cool water, brought by a series of large troughs from
the Brook above; and the receiver, a barrel, into which the
condensed vapor of the cider, now having assumed the form
called spirits, issuing from the worm, fell drop by drop. This
was a large long room, dark from the absence of windows, and
darker still from the accretions of smoke and dust about the
walls, and filled with a strong alchoholic effluvium. There
were barrels of spirits, and piles of wood lying about, and the
bare earth served for a floor. Into this place at night-fall were
wont to assemble the people of the neighborhood, men and
boys, and sometimes girls. Here came Margaret with Hash
and Bull. A pine torch was blazing on the top of the furnace.
Two boys sat in the light of the fire on the ground playing
mumble-the-peg. Old Isaac Tapley leaned on the furnace inhaling
the fumes of the boiling cider that puffed from a leak in
the cap; little Isaiah Hatch caught with his fingers the drops
that fell from the worm, and conveyed them to his mouth;
and the men vied with one another who should render themselves
most acceptable to Solomon, helping him crowd wood
into the fire. Damaris Smith politely offered to instruct Margaret
in the game of Fox and Geese, which they played sitting
on a bench having the requisite lines branded across it. At
length the nine o'clock bell was heard from the village, a tone
mellowed by the distance and the woods, and which breaking
in upon many a scene of idleness, dissipation, domestic quiet,
or friendly visit, admonished the gay of vanity, the devout of
prayer, and all of bed-time. The people went away, and soon
after Solomon, leaving Margaret and Hash to their night's
work, that of tending the fire. It was not long before Hash,
whom Solomon had been treating with singular generosity,
exhibited signs of intoxication, and in a few minutes was extended
senseless on the ground. Then was Margaret left
alone, with a dead-drunk brother, a roaring furnace, a hot and
hissing cauldron, barrels of detestable drink, grotesque and
frightful shadows leaping on the beams; while through the
aperture above, the reflected light seemed to grin at her like a
demon of the Still. When the fire burnt low, she replenished
it with dry hemlock wood, which snapped like the report of
subterranean musketry, and the splinters of fire dashed out
spray-like into the room, and fell upon her brother's face,
which she was obliged to shield with boards. The gurgling of
the water, as it flowed in and out from the vat, would have
been music to her ears, if she were free to enjoy it; but it was
her own sweet Pond contributing to the wicked business of
rum-making;—and so too was she. Would she finish her
work, and flow away as uncontaminated! Her father had
never troubled her with ghost-stories, and she was not disposed
to conjure up alarms from that source. The night showed
dark and chilly, as she looked from the door. She could see
nothing but darkness, and hear nothing but the Brook as it
rippled through the invisible air; but the pure coolness was
refreshing after her hot and fetid furnace-work. Bull followed
her to the door-sill, and crouching at her side, looked compassionatingly
into her face. When she saw his gentle sympathizing
expression, as she had done before, she put her arms
about his neck, and wept. She did not complain, or fear, or
feel any wrong or loss, but she wept irresistibly because her
dog loved her; and then she continued to weep as it were
mechanically because there was nothing to occupy her deep
sensitive faculties, and her tears alone remained to flow out;
and so too she fell to laughing, and laughed almost wildly and
incoherently; then chills crept over her, partly from the increasing
and overpowering coldness of the air, and partly from
an irrepressible nature which must always feel cold if it be not
deeply and warmly loved.

She again renewed the fire, and sat down on the bench before
it, and Bull, who followed her steps silently from place to
place, watched near her, and she began to try the movements
of the fox and geese game, then she turned towards the fire,
then she looked into the dog's eyes; and as she looked his
eyes seemed to grow larger and larger, and to run together,
and to cover his face. They had a soft clear aspect like
water. Then it seemed as if what she saw became a great
sheet of water, like her Pond, and golden waves, such as the
sunsetting gives, chased one another over it, and those golden
appearances which the moonlight occasions, she saw deep in
its bosom, like strings, or eels, or fishes, frisking and playing,
elongating and breaking off, dilating and narrowing. Presently
she found herself sinking in these waters, and down, down,
down she went, till she came to an open, hollow place, into
which the light shone as from a cloud. Here she saw a bright
silver basin, or cauldron set, with a fire burning under it, and
three beautiful girls busy about it. One kept renewing the
fire with rose-bushes, bright frost-reddened autumnal leaves,
aromatic dead ferns, and white cotton grass. One threw into
the pot wild flowers, eye-brights, azaleas, blood-roots, rhodoras
and others; then she caught in her hands the snake-like

moonbeam appearances, and threw them in; then with a long
rake she gathered a quantity of sunbeams which she put in;
then turning a facet at the end of a silver pipe connecting
with the blue sky, she set that running into the pot; then she
threw in a handful of sweet-scented herbs, lavender, chamomile,
balm, marjoram; at last cutting off a slice of the rainbow,
she grated that over the whole. The third, with a long
silver rod, stirred the contents of the pot. Then each one
taking a silver ladle began to dip out the liquor and pour it in
one place on the ground. As they poured it out, it became
congealed, and the mass increasing, it assumed a human
form; which was that of a female. As they continued to
pour over it the contents of the pot, feet were formed, and
legs, and breast, and arms, and the shape of a head. One
poured on another ladle full, and beautiful eyes appeared;
another another, and a delicate lovely color came out in the
face; the third added her ladle, which covered the head and
neck with long, dark, curling hair. When the Form was complete,
they wove with their fingers out of the light, a sort of
drapery which they threw over it. Then one began to
sing, and another to play on a sort of harp; while the third
led down from the skies the brilliant Planet Venus, by a bridle
of blue taste tied about one of its rays, and as it hung floating
near the ground, she fastened it to a spear of grass to keep it
from going off. While the two first were singing and playing,
the spirit of life came into the Form, it was animated with a
soul, and stood before them a perfect human being. The
three girls seemed greatly delighted with the beautiful lady
they had created, and were even transported to such a degree
as if they would worship her. Margaret, meanwhile, was
unobserved, and without being able to have any connection
with these persons, she quietly saw all that happened. The
Beauty, for such the new-formed woman might worthily be
called, did not, however, long consent to receive the adulation
of the others, but took pains to demonstrate her equality with
them in sundry pleasing ways, and the four disported together
on the green grass; then they all went to bathe in a stream of
clear water that opened near by. After this the Beauty was
seated on the brilliant Planet Venus, which was unhitched,
and holding by the blue taste as a snaffle, she sailed slowly
away into the air, followed, and as it were guarded, by the
others who were borne up by some invisible power in their
own bodies. The growling of Bull startled Margaret, and
she found she had been dreaming, and when she was fairly
awake, she discovered Solomon Smith coming stealthily
through the door of the Still. His manner showed great uneasiness
as if he were on some dubious expedition, he thrust
his head forward, like a turkey, into every part of the building,
as if he suspected somebody was hidden there, and manifested
great joy when he found Hash was so completely
insensible. Bull drew nearer to Margaret, and Margaret
pressed closer to Bull. But Solomon told her not to be afraid,
said he would not hurt her, and seating himself on the end of
the bench, edged himself towards her. What he said to her
was that she had been a good girl in minding the fire so well,
and asked her if she wouldn't have some toddy, which she
refused.

“You are a curis creetur,” he continued, “and an't no
moon-calf nuther. You know at the trainin', guess as how, I
found you out in the rain, and took you into the Tavern, and
you might have staid there all night for all anybody else lookin'
arter you. Now you won't begrutch me a favor will you,
Peggy? Can you tell what makes the likker come out of that
are pipe?”

“No, I can't,” she replied. “I wish it didn't.”

“What makes dogs howl when you die?”

“I don't know. I think Bull would, if I should die.”

“Didn't you know you could catch a thief by putting a
rooster under a kittle? It'll crow as soon as the rascal
touches it, guess as how.”

“I didn't know that.”

“You found the water up to Mr. Palmer's, didn't you,
Peggy?” he enquired in an increasingly low and earnest
manner.

“No,” replied she. “The boys found it.”

“You carried the stick, and Nimrod said you found it, and
so did Rhody and the Widder.”

“Did they say so?”

“Wal, now I want you should tell me if you ever found a
four-leaf clover? Speak low; walls have ears.”

“Yes,” she answered, “twenty, in the Mowing.”

“Did you ever kill a cricket?”

“No, they sing so pretty, I couldn't kill one.”

“That's you. I wouldn't kill one. It's dum bad. Do you
put a Bible under your pillow when you go to bed?”

“What, such as Miss Amy told me about? She says the
Bible makes people all wicked; and Pa's Bible makes us
wicked too. I don't like Bibles.”

“Little coot! Don't you know the Bible is the best book
in the world. I always sleep with one, guess as how.—Let
me see your finger nails. Is there any black spots on them?”

“When they are dirty, and I dig roots for Obed.”

“Now keep still, Peggy, I want to tell you something. I
have had a dream.”

“I wonder if you dream too!”

“Yes, I have had a dream three nights a runnin'. I can't
tell you about it now. But look here, Peg, Hash owes us for
money, and he'll have to lose his oxen if it an't paid dum
soon. He drinks more than his work comes to, but if you
are willing to do what I want you to, I'll let him off.”

“What shall I do?” said Margaret, with some degree of
uncertainty and distress. “Keep still, Bull, there, there,
Bull; they won't hurt me, Bull.”

“I want you to go up with me to-night to the Fortune-teller's,
Joyce Dooly's.”

To this proposal, Solomon, after considerable coaxing and
threatening, succeeded in gaining Margaret's consent; promising
that he would release Hash altogether from his obligations,
if she would do as he wished.

Solomon, in a few minutes, brought a horse to the door,
and taking Margaret behind him, with the dog in company,
rode off. They crossed Mill Brook, went up a half mile or so
on the Brandon road, when they dismounted, and took a
narrow path, on foot, into the woods. It was pitch dark, and
Margaret had to hold by the skirt of Solomon's coat, while he
felt his way before. They espied at length a light, and
entered a door. In a small, low, ragged room, in what sort
of a house or place it was impossible for Margaret to
tell, she found an old woman with a dish of coals and
two tallow candles burning before her on a table, both of
which she seemed to be intently watching. She was evidently
prepared for the visit, and showed by her manner that she had
been waiting their arrival. Joyce Dooly the Fortune-teller
was old, her face was pinched and sharpened, her eye
black and piercing; she was somewhat fantastically dressed,
and began using sundry cabalistic and charmed words. Five
cats darted from chairs and the chimney side, when Bull
entered, hissing and spitting, and all raised their backs
together in one corner of the room. This movement seemed
to disturb her for a moment, but observing it more attentively
she at length became quiet, as if all was right. Her immediate
business was with Margaret, whom, after settling certain

preliminaries with the coals of fire, the candle wicks, the
cats, some cards and astrological tracts that lay on the table,
but which we need not describe, she proceeded to examine.

“In what month were you born?” asked the Fortune-teller.

“I don't know,” replied Margaret.

“What, how!” exclaimed the old woman, in a tone of
mingled surprise and rebuke. “Why have you brought the
gal here? Nativity is the most important. In what house,
Aquarius, Cancer, or Mercury,—we know nothing about it.
Was Jupiter in the ascendant? The Moon in aspect to
what? How can we tell?”

“I don't care for your riggledorums,” retorted Solomon,
with suppressed impatience. “Will she answer my purpose?
You have got your money to find out that, and that is all I
want to know.”

“Hold, Solomon!” she said, with an overawing sternness.
“The cats are against you. Keep still. Here, child, let me
look at you. Curled hair,” so she went on, “denoteth heat
and drought; brown, fairness, justice, freedom and liberality.
Your signs are contradictory, child. Venus must have been
in square signs when you were born. Do you never have any
trouble?”

“Sometimes,” she replied, “when Deacon Penrose and
Mr. Smith sell rum to Pa and Hash.”

“Take note, Solomon,” continued the woman, “she refers
her troubles to you. She prognosticates disaster, sorrow and
death. You had better let her alone.”

Solomon became inwardly greatly excited, but he strove to
control himself, and whispered something in the ears of the
woman, who pursued her inspection of the child.

“Lips,” said she, “fairly set and well colored, argue
fidelity, and a person given to all virtue; brow high and
smooth, signifieth a sincere friend and liberal benefactress;
small ears, a good understanding; neck comely and smooth,
a good genius; brown eyes, clear and shining, ingenuity,
nobility and probity. Let me see you laugh. Teeth white
and even, argue sweetness and reverence; dimples, persuasion
and command; hand, soft and clear, hath discretion, service,
delight in learning, peace-loving; palm D in mount of the
Moon,—ha! ha! do you want to know, child! many and
dutiful and fair children,—would you like to have children?”

“Yes, Ma'am,” replied Margaret.

The Fortune-teller seemed to be wandering from her proper

point, and becoming quite absorbed in the characteristics and
tokens of the child gave renewed uneasiness to Solomon, who
expressed his feelings in a loud and somewhat menacing tone.

“Rest you, young man!” she replied, “your fortune is
wrapt in that of the child. The hour cometh. Your significator
must apply to a sextile of Mercury and Venus. I
see a coffin in the wick of this candle. Scare the cats, let
me see them jump once more. Now is your moment, depart.”

Whatever might be the meaning of this visit and this
singular mummery to Margaret, Solomon, it appeared, had
now accomplished his object, and was ready to leave. They
plunged from the light again into the darkness, and retracing
their steps through the woods, returned to the Still. Margaret
would have gone in to her brother, but Solomon declared he
had something more for her to do, and insisted that she should
ride a little farther with him. They went up the road leading
to the Pond, and arriving at a growth of trees known as the
Pines, lying on the west side of the way, Solomon hitched
his horse, and led Margaret once more into the woods.
Reaching a spot which he seemed previously to have in his
mind, he put a hazle-twig into the child's hand, and bade her
go about among the trees in the same manner as she did at
Mr. Palmer's at the Ledge. She was not long in announcing
the movement of the twig, and the young man secured himself
of the place as well as he could in the darkness, by piling a
heap of stones over it. She asked him what it was for, but
he declined telling; and what he would not do, we must,
since, in the sequel, the whole affair came out. This young
Smith had a dream, three nights successively, of gold hid in
the Pines. He could not identify the precise locality, and
sundry private canvassings of the earth with a spade had
hitherto been fruitless. Hence his anxiety to secure the services
of Margaret, whose success on a former occasion with
the divining rod he had been apprized of; hence also his visit
to Joyce Dooly the Fortune-teller, for the purpose of fortifying
himself more completely in his undertaking. Once more in
this night of wanderings and mystery was Margaret conducted
to the Still. Morning had scarcely begun to dawn,
and Solomon had time to dispose of his horse in the stable,
and himself in bed, before the family were up. Margaret
found Hash yet in his sleep, the fire decayed, and the Still
dark, cold and dismal as the morning after a debauch. She
rekindled the fire, sufficiently at least for her own comfort,
and lying down before it, with her head upon the breast of
Bull, fell fast asleep.

16. CHAPTER XVI.

“What is God?” said Margaret one morning to the
Master, who in his perambulations encountered her just
as she was driving the cow to pasture, and helped her put
up the bars.

“God, God—” replied he, drawing back a little, and
thrusting his golden-headed cane under his arm, and blowing
his nose with his red bandanna handkerchief. “You shut
your cow in the pasture to eat grass, don't you, mea discipula?”
added he after returning his handkerchief to his
pocket, and planting himself once more upon his cane.

“Yes,” she replied.

“What if she should try to get out?”

“We put pegs in the bars sometimes.”

“Pegs in the bars! ahem. Suppose she should stop eating,
and leaning her neck across the bars, cry out, `O you, Mater
hominum bovumque! who are you? Why do you wear a
pinafore?' In other words, should ask after you, her little
mistress; what would you think of that, hey?”

“I don't know what I should,” replied Margaret, “it would
be so odd.”

“Cows,” rejoined the Master, “had better eat the grass,
drink the water, lie in the shade, and stand quietly to be
milked, asking no questions.”

“But do, sir,” she continued, “tell me what God is.”

The Master folded back both his ruffle cuffs, lifted his golden-headed
cane into the air, and cleared at one bound the road-side
ditch, whereby his large three-corned hat fell into the
water. Margaret picked it up, and wiping it, handed it to
him, which circumstance seemed to recall him to the thread
of her feelings; and he replied to her by saying,

“Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. God, child, is
Tetragrammative, a Four-wordity; in the Hebrew [ILLUSTRATION][Description: Four Hebrew letters, spelling "Yahweh"], the
Assyrian Adad, the Egyptian Amon, the Persian Syre, Greek

Θεος, Latin Deus, German Gott, French Dieu; Τον πταρμον
Θεον ηγουμεθα, says Aristole; `God is the Divine Being,' says
Bailey; `Jupiter Divum Pater,' says Virgil.”

“Christ the Beautiful One, I saw in my dream, said if I loved
I should know God,” replied Margaret.

“Verily, as saith the Holy Apostle, God is Love.”

“Did Love make me?”

“Mundum fecit Amor; or as Jamblicus has it, `God produced
matter by separating materiality from essentiality,' or as
Thomas writes, `Creation is extension produced by the Divine
power.' ”

“Is God Latin?”

“He is in Latin. Deus is Latin for God.”

“I don't know anything about it. I had rather go into the
woods, or up to Obed's. His mother wants to see you; she
told me to ask you to call there, the next time you came to the
Pond.”

“I thought she did not like me.”

“But she wants to see you very much.”

“I hope she has no designs upon me?”

“I don't know. — It is something she wants.”

“She don't purpose to marry me?”

“I guess that is it. Hash said Miss Amy was going to
marry you.”

“What, both? You are a ninny. You never heard of the
Knights of the Forked Order. There is the old song:

Malum est mulier, women are an evil.”

Thus talking, they approached the Widow's. To the road
up which they went, the Master gave the name of Via Salutaris,
the stile by which they crossed the stump-fence into the
herb-garden or front yard, he called Porta Salutaris, as the
Leech herself he had already honored by the title of Diva
Salus.

“The child said you wanted me,” outspoke the Master, as
he entered the house, in a tone that savored of irritated
dignity.

“Please Ma'am,” interposed Margaret, both to explain and
appease, “he says he won't marry you.”

“Mehercule! What are you about, my little Beadswoman?”

exclaimed he, endeavoring to impose silence upon the child.
“In what way, capacity, office, character, can I do you service,
Mistress Wright?”

“Gummy!” retorted the woman. “He has been a talkin'
about me, and a runnin' of me down. I wouldn't stoop so
much as teu pick him up. I wouldn't crack my finger jints
for him.”

“He didn't mean you,” replied Margaret. “He said women
were an evil.”

“Not widows, child,” added the Master.

“Yes,” said the woman, “we are evil, but not evils, I
trust. No offence, I hope, sir,” she added in a softened tone.

“None in the world,” answered the Master. A widow the
good Fuller enumerates in his Holy State.”

“Ah yes, they would try teu make us think we are sutthin
when we are nothin, as the Parson says.”

“She is one, as that old writer observes, whose head hath
been cut off, yet she liveth, and hath the second part of virginity!”

“The Lord be praised,” said the woman, with a curtsey,
wiping her mouth with the corner of her apron; “I do
survive as good a husband, as ever woman had.”

“Her grief for her husband,” continues the Worthy to
whom I refer, “though real, is moderate.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She loveth to look on the picture of her husband, in the
children he hath left her, as adds our reverend Author,”
subjoined the Master turning his eye towards Obed, who stood
in the door, twitching up his breeches.

The manner of the Master was too pointed not to be felt,
and when he had succeeded in smarting the good Widow's sensibilities,
his object was attained. But she, on the other hand,
had the faculty, by a smile that was peculiar to her, of disguising
her emotions, and always contrived to cover up her
sense of humiliation with the airs of victory. These two
persons, as we have formerly remarked, did not like each other
very well, and in whatever respects they stood mutually beholden,
it was the object of each to make it appear that
favors were given without grace, and received without gratitude.
We will not follow their diplomatic banterings, but
join them when they have concluded to go peaceably about
their business. The Widow had invented a new medicine
which would cure a great variety of diseases. But she wanted
a scientific name for it, and also the scientific names of its

several specific virtues. Her own vocabulary supplied her
with an abundance of common appellations, but her purposes
aspired to something higher, and the Master's aid was brought
in requisition. The Leech sat by a table, holding a pen, with
a pewter inkstand, and some scraps of dingy paper before her,
and endeavored to avail herself of every suggestion of the
Master's by committing it immediately to writing.

“Widder or woman,” said she, “I knows what I knows,
and I know what is in this ere medicine, how many yarbs, and
how I gathered um, and how I dried um, and how I pounded
um, and how I mixed um, and I kalkelate there is a vartue in
it. It'll dill fevers, dry up sores, stop rumatiz, drive out rattle-snake's
bite, kill worms — there an't a disorder you can mention
that won't knock under to't.

“Except one.”

“What is that?”

“Cacoethes Feminarum.”

“Up-a-daisy! What a real soundin' one! Bile me up for
soap, if that an't a pealer,” exclaimed the delighted woman,
giving a kind of chuckling grin both to the Master and Margaret.
“Deu tell us what it is?” she added. “Is it round
hereabouts much? Has any died on't?”

“I know,” said Margaret, “it is something about women.
Femina is Latin for woman.”

“Oh forever! I dussay,” rejoined the Widow, “it's some
perlite matter, and he would'nt like to speak it out before a
body. How vallible is sientifikals and larnin'! Prehaps he'd
tell what brings it — lor me, what a booby I be teu ask. My
skull for a trencher, if I can't cure it, if it's as bad as the itch
itself.”

“Humors —” said the Master.

“Humors! Humors in wimmin — now don't say no more.
I knew 'twas some perlite matter. But I can cure it, or any
thing else; only give us the sientifikals and larnin'. There's
elderblows in my new medicine, and they'll drive out humors
as clean as a whistle. Only if I had the name. A name that
has the sientifikals and larnin' in't. Diseases dont take now-a-days
without they have the pecoolar; and you can't cure 'em
without the pecoolar. I've studied the matter out and out,
and I knows, what I knows, Widder or no Widder. I an't teu
be befooled by nobody, not I. I don't ask no favors of nobody.
But the Master knows so much, and here's our little Molly,
she's as smart and pecoolar as the best on um. The Master
knows there's a good deal in a name, if he'd only say so. There

was four cases up to Snake Hill, and I got two of um, and
should have got the rest bein Dr. Spoor hadn't a come in,
with his larnin' words, and that took. They'll all go teu the
dogs if they can't have the sientifikals and the larnin'. If he
would only be so kind as to give a poor woman a name for
her medicine — but I won't beg, no I won't.”

“Nominis stat umbra,” said the Master slowly and solemnly,
while with assumed gravity and inward impatience he had
been listening to the balderdash of the woman.

“Is that it?” asked she hastily.

“Verily,” he replied, “Nominis stat umbra.”

“Nommernisstortumbug,” said the Leech. “Why now, I
vum, I could a thought of that myself. Obed here, see how
easy tis, Nommernisstortumbug, remember, Obed, and you'll
be as larnt as Miss Molly. Git Molly some honey, prehaps
the Master would like teu taste on't. We'll go it into um
now. My husband made a great push in the sientifikals, and
his pills did amazin' stout; but he didn't live in my day. I
ought by good rights to make sutthin out of it, for I've took
pains and studied long enough teu git it through. Jest
give us the names, and we'll go right among the upper crust
anywheres, and Dr. Spoor may hang his saddle-bags in his
garret. There's Deacon Penrose's gally pots and spattles, and
Nigger Tony's prinked up Patents, I an't afeered of none of
um, no, nor of old Death himself. He daren't show his white
jaws where the larnin' is. A box of my Nommernisstortumbug
would give the saucy rascal an ague fit, and he'd be glad
teu put on some skin and flesh, and dress up like a man, and
not be round skeerin' people so with his old bones. There's
Parkins's Pints has been makin' a great pudder over to England,
but they an't knee high to a toad to't. The thing of it
is, people has got teu be so pesky proud and perlite, they will
have the very best of names. They'd all die every one on um,
before they'd touch the Widder's stuff, as they call it; but the
Nommernisstortumbug they'll swallow down box and all, and
git well teu, ha, ha! I knows what I knows, I've seen how the
cat has been a jumpin'. The ministers try to save their souls,
and have to preach sich things as 'll take; I mean to save
their bodies, and I must fix it so it 'll take; — I han't a grain
of interest in the matter, not I. As soon as Obed gits a leetle
older, I mean teu send him teu Kidderminster, and Hartford,
and Boston, and all about the country, with my medicines, and
there won't be a spice of disease left. The Pints is a pound
sterling, and I shall put my Nommernisstortumbug right up,
and when you ax a good round price, it 'll sell all the quicker.”

The Master, secretly amused at the Widow's self-complacence,
was not disposed to give her any interruption, at least
so long as he ate of her clear white honey, which Obed supplied
in liberal quantities, and of which he was thoroughly
fond. Nay he went farther, and at her request wrote down
for her, in scientific terms, the several and various properties
of her nostrum, which she described to him. The Widow's
bad feelings towards the Master were likewise so overcome by
the thought of her good fortune, as for the moment to throw
her off her guard, and she forgot her usual self-possessed
spitefulness. Their interview was in fair progress towards an
amicable termination, when the Master happened to say he
wanted Margaret to do a service for him that day. But the
Widow in the mean time had been concocting plans in her
own brains which included the aid of the child. Their difficulties
broke out anew, there were taunts on the one side, and
feminine objurgations on the other. How far the matter may
have been carried we know not, when Margaret took the decision
into her own hands, by running off. Both started for
her, and came to the stile nearly at the same moment. Margaret
had already got into the road. The Master, having a
little advantage in point of time, mounted the stile first, but
his course was checked by the skirts of his coat catching in
one of the roots that composed the fence. The lady in excess
of strong feeling pounced upon his ankles, and held him fast,
while Obed hovered near with a look that threatened to facilitate
his mother's purposes. The Master flourished his long
golden-headed cane in the air, greatly to the consternation of
Obed, and the merriment of the Widow, who dared him to
strike. Margaret hastened forward, intercedingly, and begged
the Master off, under such conditions as the woman chose
to stipulate, to wit, that she should come and help her some
other day.

The Master sometimes employed Margaret to scour the
woods in search of wild flowers, a pursuit for which she was
fitted both by her own lightness of heart and foot, and a familiar
acquaintance with the region. It was his wish that she
should preserve specimens of almost all kinds she encountered,
in the expectation, partly, of discovering some new variety.
He furnished her with a tin case or box to keep the flowers fresh
and sound. Providing herself with a lunch of bread and
cheese, she took a familiar route through the Mowing into the
rich Birch and Walnut woods lying towards the village. Bull
had gone off with Hash in the morning, and she was obliged
to fail of the usual companion of her rambles. The sun shone

warm and inviting, and the air was soft and exhilarating. The
olive-backs trolled and chanted among the trees, and in the
shadowy green boughs, innumerable and invisible creepers and
warblers sang out a sweet welcome wherever she came along.
She found varieties of fungus, yellow, scarlet, and blood-colored,
which she tore from the sides of trees, from stumps, and
rails. She gathered the wild columbine, snakeroot, red cohosh,
purple bush-trefoil, flaxbell-flower, the beautiful purple
orchis, and dodder, that gay yellow-liveried parasite; and
other flowers, now so well known and readily distinguished by
every lover of nature, but which, at the period of our Memoir,
had not been fully arranged in the New England Flora. She
turned to the right, or towards South, and came to a spot of
almost solid granite, through the hard chinks and seams of
which great trees had bored their way, and forced themselves
into the light and air. This place was set down in the vocabulary
of the district as the Maples, or Sugar Camp, from its
growth of sugar maple trees. Over these stones she stepped
as on a pavement, or leaped from one to another as one does
on the foam-crags at Nahant. In these dark crevices she
found the bright green bunches of the devil's ear seed, and
the curious mushroom-like tobacco-pipe; all about her, on the
rocks, the bright green polypods and maiden's hair waved in
silent feathery harmony with the round dots of quavering sun
light, that descended through the trees — little daughters of
the sun dallying with these children of the earth, and, like
spiders, spinning a thin beautiful tissue about them, which was
destroyed every night, and patiently renewed every morning.
Here also she found beds of shining white, and rose-colored
crystal quartz stones, large and small, striped and ruffled
with green moss. On the flat top of a large bowlder that was
thrown up from the mass of rocks, she saw growing a parcel
of small polypods, in a circle, like a crown on a king's head.
Up this she climbed, and sat among the ferns, and sang
snatches from old songs she had learned:

She selected some of the fairest of the fronds, and singing —

leaped down again. A humming-bird that she had seen, or
fancied she saw, early in the morning sucking her scarlet bean
flowers, shot by her. She would follow it. It led her towards
the road going from the Pond to No. 4. She pursued
it till she came to its nest on the branch of a tree, which she
was able to reach by means of a high rock. She found the
nest constructed of mosses, and lined with mullein down, and
in it were two tiny white eggs, a second hatching for the season.
Two birds, the male and female, darted angrily at her,
and ruffled their golden-green and tabby-colored feathers, as
if they would fight her. She spoke to them, and discovered
that they were really the same that had fed on honey from her
hand, and one took quietly to the nest, while the other winged
a swift, playful roundelay above her head. Leaving the birds,
she crossed the road, and entered the Pines, where Solomon
Smith took her a few nights before. Here, under the trees
she found a crowd of persons, men and women, boys and girls,
who seemed bent on some mysterious thing, which they pursued
with an unwonted stillness. Among them was a man, whom
she knew to be Zenas Joy, pacing to and fro with a drawn sword,
and keeping the people back. Damaris Smith ran to her, and
whispered her not to speak loud, and said they were after the
gold. Let us explain what Margaret herself had not been apprised
of, that young Smith, after discovering the supposed deposit of
the gold, for two or three nights, went and dug alone there.
Baffled in his search, but not in his expectations, he had recourse
to his neighbors, and so the secret leaked out. There
were five or six men employed in digging, and for more than
a week had they worked there, day and night, without intermission,
relieving one another by turns. They had excavated
the ground to the depth of nearly thirty feet, and with a proportionately
large breadth. A prodigious heap of earth and
stones had been cast up, and great pine-trees had been under-mined,
precipitated, cut off, and thrown out. When Margaret
approached near enough to look in, she saw the men,
noiseless and earnest, at work with might and main; scarcely
did they stop to wipe the sweat that reeked and beaded from
their faces. Among them she saw her brother Hash, and
others, whom she knew to be No. 4's and Breaknecks. It
was a received notion of the times, that if any spoke during
the operation, the charm was destroyed, hence the palpitating
silence Margaret observed, and for this purpose also a sentry
had been appointed to keep order among the people.

Margaret seeing Hash, was inconsiderate enough to speak

to him, and ask after Bull. For this Zenas Joy, since words
were out of the question, administered a corporeal admonition
with the flat side of his sword, and Damaris Smith, with the
other girls, seconding his endeavors, fairly drubbed her from
the place. She went off, singing as she went,

She had not gone far when Bull, who had been asleep in
the shade of a rock, awakened by the sound of her voice, came
leaping out to her, and continued in her company. In the
Pines she gathered such flowers as, for the most part, are
proper to that description of soil;—the sleepy catchfly that is
wide awake nights, pennyroyal with its purple whorls, yellow
bent spikes of the gromwell, the sweet-scented pettymorrel,
the painted cup with its scarlet-tipped bractes, yellow-horned
horse balm, peach-perfumed waxen ladies tresses, nodding
purple gay feather; she climbed after the hairy honey-suckle,
and the pretty purple ground-nut, which, despising its name,
overmounts the tallest shrubs. She encountered in her way a
“clearing,” now grown up to elecampane, mullein, fire-weed,
wild-lettuce. She forced herself through a thicket of brakes,
blackberries and thistles, and clambered upon a fence, where
she sat to look at the tall lettuces that shot up like trees above
the other weeds. The seeds disengaging themselves from the
capsule at the top, and spreading out their innumerable long
white filaments, but still hovering about the parent stalk, gave
the plant an appearance as if it had instantaneously put forth
in huge gossamer inflorescence. Then a slight agitation of
wind would disperse these flowers or egrets and send them
flying through the air, like globes of silver light, or little burred
fairies, some of them vanishing in the white atmosphere, others
brought into stronger relief as they floated towards the green
woods beyond. Descending towards the Brook, she gathered
the beautiful yellow droops of the barberry-bush, white wall-cress,
yellow none-such, flowers of the sweet-briar. She came
to the stream, Mill Brook, that flowed out from her Pond;
near it grew the virgin's bower or traveller's joy, bedstraw, the

nightshades, yellow spearwort, button-bush, purple thoroughwort,
the beautiful cardinal flower or eye-bright just budding,
and the side-saddle flower. On its grassy margin she took her
seat under the shade of a large white birch. She ate her
bread and cheese, sharing her morsel with the dog. She
kneeled and drank from the swift sparkling waters, where they
ran between two stones. It was now past noon; her box was
full, and quite heavy enough for one so young to carry, and
she might have returned home. The woods beyond, or to the
west of the Brook, were close and dark, hardly did the sun
strike through them, but the birds were noisy there, and she
must perforce enter them, as a cavern, and walk on the smooth
leaf-strewed floor. The ground ascended, then rounded over
into a broad interval below, down into which she went. Here
a giant forest extended itself interminably, and she seemed to
have come into a new world of nature. Huge old trees, some
white pines and white oaks, looked as if they grew up to the
skies. Birds that she had never seen before, or heard so near
at hand, hooted and screamed among the branches. A dark
falcon pierced the air like an arrow, in pursuit of a partridge,
just before her eyes. An eagle stood out against the sky on
the blasted peak of a great tree; a hen-harrier bore in his
talons a chicken to his young; large owls in hooded velvety
sweep flew by her; squirrels chattered and scolded one
another; large snake-headed wild-turkeys strutted and gobbled
in the underbrush; a wild-cat sprang across her path and she
clung closer to her dog. Resting herself at the foot of a large
pine-tree, she picked and ate the little red checker-berries
that grew in profusion on the spot. The birds fluttered,
rioted and shrieked, in strange confusion, among the trees, and
she entertained herself watching their motion and noise. The
low and softened notes of distant thunder she heard, and felt
no alarm; or she may have taken it for the drum-like sound of
partridges that so nearly resembles thunder, and which she had
often heard, and thought no more of the matter. Had she
been on the tops of the trees, where the birds were, she would
have seen a storm gathering, cloud engendering cloud, peaks
swelling into mountains, the entire mass sagging with darkness,
and dilating in horror. The air seemed to hold in its
breath, and in the hushed silence she sat, looking at the rabbits
and woodchucks that scampered across the dry leaves, and
dived into their burrows. She broke into a loud laugh, when
she saw a small brown-snouted martin in smart chase after the
bolt-upright, bushy, black-tipped tail of a red fox, up a tree,
and spat her hands, and stamped her feet, to cheer the little
creature on. She sung out, in gayest participation of the
scene, a Mother Goose Melody, in a Latin version the Master
had given her;—

While she was singing, hail-stones bounded at her feet, and
the wind shook the tops of the trees. Suddenly it grew dark,
then, in the twinkling of an eye, the storm broke over her,
howling, crashing, dizzying it came. The whole forest seemed
to have given way—to have been felled by the stroke of some
Demiurgic Fury, or to have prostrated itself as the Almighty
himself passed by. The great pine, at the root of which she
was sitting, was broken off just above her head, and blown to
the ground; and by its fall, enclosing her in an impenetrable
sconce, under which alone, in the general wreck, could her
life have been preserved. A whirlwind, or tornado, such as
sometimes visits New England, had befallen the region. It
leaped like a maniac from the skies, and, with a breadth of
some twenty rods, and an extent of four or five miles, swept
everything in its course; the forest was mown down before it,
orchard-trees were torn up by the roots, large rocks unearthed,
chimneys dashed to the ground, roofs of houses whirled into
the air, fences scattered, cows lifted from their feet, sheep
killed, the strongest fabrics of man and nature driven about
like stubble. In bush and settlement, upland and interval,
was its havoc alike fearful. When Margaret recovered from
the alarm and bewilderment of the moment, her first impulse
was to call for the dog;—but he, at the instant having been
caught off by the apparition of the wild-cat, was overtaken by
the storm, and borne down by the falling trees, losing all sense
of duty, wounded and frightened, he fled away. She herself
was covered with leaves, fragments of bark, hail-stones and
sand; blood flowed from her arm, and one of her legs was
bruised. The end of a bough had penetrated her box of flowers
and pinned it to the earth. The sun came out as the storm
went by; but above her the trees with their branches piled one
upon another on the great pine that had been her salvation,
formed an almost impervious thatch that enveloped her in
darkness. Making essays at self-deliverance, she found her
path in every direction closed, or at least distorted. The

fallen trees, mingled and matted with the shrubbery, obscured
and opposed her way, while the chasms made by the upturned
roots rendered progress devious and dangerous; and when at
last she reached the edge of the ruins, and stood in the open
woods, she knew not where she was, or in what direction lay
her home. There were no cart-tracks, or cow-paths, no spots
or blazes on the trees, that she could discover. The sun was
setting, but its light was hidden by the denseness of the forest.
As she advanced, hoping for the best, every step led her deeper
in the wood and farther from the Pond. She mounted knolls
and rocks, but could discern nothing; she crossed brooks,
explored ravines, but to no purpose. At last despairing, exhausted,
her sores actively painful, she sunk down under the
projecting edge of a large rock. She had not been sitting long
when she beheld, approaching the same place, a large, shaggy,
black bear, with three cubs. The beast came close to her,
smelt about her; she looked into its eyes, scratched its forehead,
as if it had been her own Bull. Possibly satisfied with
what it had eaten during the day, the bear was not disposed to
make a meal of the child. The mother-bear stretched herself
on the ground, partly crowding Margaret from her seat, and
the three cubs applying themselves to their supper with all
infantile zest, set an example that proved contagious, and our
other cub, with curiously wrought head, took possession of an
unoccupied dug, and was refreshed and soothed thereby. The
mother-bear and her young, cuddling themselves together,
went to sleep; Margaret pillowing herself in the midst of them,
went also to sleep.

Meanwhile the noise of the storm reached the Pond, where
its effects came not, and distressed the family with agonizing
apprehensions. Hash had not returned; after finishing his
bout in the Pines, he went with his comrades to see the results
of the wind at No. 4, and have a drunken carouse. The
Widow and her son came down both to seek news of the
storm, and inflame the impression of its terror. The ruddy
and wanton face of Pluck became pale and thoughtful. The
dry and dark features of his wife were even lighted up with
alarm. Chilion coming in from the Pond where he had been
fishing, when he learned the absence of his sister, seemed
smitten by some violent internal blow. He paced to and fro
in front of the house, listening to every sound, and starting at
every glancing leaf. The ordinary intercourse of the family,
if it were not positively rude and rough, was more frequently
of a light and trivial character, and, unaccustomed to the expression

of deeper sentiments, now in the moment of their
calamity, they said but little. Yet they watched one another's
looks and slightest words with an attention and reverence,
which showed how strongly interested they were in one
another's feelings, as well as in the common object of their
thoughts. They watched and waited, and waited and watched,
uncertain what course the child had taken, not knowing
where to go for her, and hoping each successive instant she
might appear from some quarter of the woods. The sun was
going down. Obed was despatched in the direction of the
dam, or north end of the Pond; Pluck went over into the
Maples; Chilion seizing the tin dinner-horn, ran to the top of
Indian's Head, and blew a loud blast. No response came
from the far glimmering sound but its own empty echo. Descending
he beheld Bull returning alone, lame and bloody.
The dog was at once questioned, and as if convicted of weakness
and infidelity to his mistress, or with that native instinct
which is proper to the animal, he pulled at Chilion's trousers
and made as if he would have him follow him in search of the
child. Chilion took the lead of the dog, who despite his
wounds pursued his way strenuously. They came to the place
of the gold-digging in the Pines. The sentry and the people
were gone; two men, the relay for the night, alone remained.
Suspended on the trees, and fastened in stone sockets below,
blazed pitch-knot torches. Deep in the hole toiled the two
men, in sturdy silence, and with most religious steadfastness.
Intercommunication was impossible; Chilion spoke to them,
but they answered not. Bull urged him onwards, he had
found the track of the child, and would abide no delay. They
took the same course Margaret had gone in the morning.
They crossed the Brook, they entered the thick woods. It
was now night and dark, but Chilion was familiar with each
vein, recess and loop-hole of the forest, and had often traversed
it in the night. They followed the footsteps of the child till
they came to the line of the storm. Here the prostrate trees,
upturned roots, vines and brush, knitted and riven together,
interrupted the track. A barrier was presented which baffled
the sagacity of the dog. He ran alongside the ruins, up and
down, tried every avenue, wound himself in among the compressed
and perplexed fissures of the mass, but, failing to
recover the scent, he returned to his master, and set up a loud
howl. What could Chilion do? He called his sister's name
at the top of his voice, he rung out the farthest-reaching alarm-cry.
He then repeated the attempt of his dog to gain an entrance
into the gnarled forest-wreck. He crept under trunks
of trees, he tore a passage through vines and brambles, he
climbed to the end of a tree and lowered himself down into
the centre of the mass; he groped his way in utter darkness
wherever he could move his hand. When he found a space
large enough to kneel or stand erect in, he again called aloud;
but no answer came. “She's dead, she's dead, she's crushed
under a tree”—such was the dreadful reflection that began to
ebb in upon his heart, and form itself in distincter imagery to
his thoughts. Armed with fresh energy he renewed his efforts.
He explored with his hand every vacant spot, trembling on the
one hand lest he should lay it upon her dead and mangled
body, hoping on the other that the vital spark would not be
entirely extinct; wishing at least to find her before the animal
warmth had wholly subsided in one for whom he evinced so
strong an attachment. A large limb, broken off in the storm,
which he was endeavoring to remove, fell upon his foot, bruising
the flesh, and nearly severing the cords; but of this he
took no notice. In uttermost despair, he exclaimed, “she is
dead, she is dead.” He, the moody and the silent, gave utterance
to the wildest language of distress. That deaf and dismal
darkness was pierced with an unwonted cry. “O my
sister! my dear, dear sister, sweet Margery, dead, dead!”
He fell with his face to the earth, his spirit writhed as with a
most exquisite sense of torture; from his stimulated frame
dropped hot sweat. “O Jesus, her Beautiful One, how couldst
thou let the good Margery die so? My music shall die, my
hopes shall die, all things die; sweet sister Margery, your
poor brother Chilion will die too.” His frenzy seemed to
assume the majesty of inspiration, as in all simplicity of earnest
love he gave vent to his emotions. Pain and weariness
combined with hopelessness of success to divest him of the
idea of finding her that night. He extricated himself from the
fallen wood, and not without extreme difficulty and much suffering,
both bodily and mental, accompanied by the dog, he
returned to his home. His father and mother were still up,
restless and anxious. His foot was immediately dressed and
bandaged, and he was obliged to be laid in his parents' bed.
Obed was also there, strongly moved by an unaffected solicitude.
As soon as it was light, he was sent to the village to
have the bell rung and the town alarmed; Pluck himself immediately
went down to No. 4. In the course of two or three
hours the entire population of Livingston received the exciting
and piteous intelligence of `A child lost in the woods, and supposed
to have perished in the storm!' At No. 4 Hash was
aroused from his boosy stupor to something like fraternal
activity, and the four families composing the hamlet, the
Smiths, Hatches, Gubtails and Tapleys, more or less of them,
started off for the scene of the disaster, under the direction of
Pluck, whom Chilion had advised as to the course probably
taken by the child. The village was deeply and extensively
moved. Philip Davis, the sexton, ran to the Meeting-house
and pulled swiftly and energetically a loud and long fire-alarm,
on the bell. The people flocked about Obed to learn the news,
and hurried away to render succor.

The Master, who was on his way to the barber's, hearing of
the sad probability respecting his little pupil, was like a man
beside himself; perfectly bemazed, he made three complete
circles in the road, drew out his red bandanna handkerchief,
and returned it without blowing his nose, poised his golden-headed
cane in the air, then leaped forward, like a hound upon
its prey, ran down the South Street, and disappeared, at full
speed, up the Brandon road. Judge Morgridge and his black
man Cæsar, rode off in a swift gallop, on two horses. They
overtook the Master, who had fainted and fallen, and lay beating
his breasts and abstractedly moaning. Cæsar and the
Judge helped lift him to the saddle of one of the horses, and
the Negro mounting behind and holding him on, they galloped
forward. Men with ox-carts, crossing the Green for their
work in the Meadows, stopped, threw out their ploughs,
scythes, rakes, pitchforks, or whatever they had, into the
street, turned their carts about, took in a load of old men
women and children, and drove for No. 4. Deacon Penrose
shut up his store, Tony his shop; Mr. Gisborne the joiner,
and Mr. Cutts the shoemaker, left their benches respectively.
Lawyer Beach, Esq. Weeks and Dr. Spoor started off with
axes and bill-hooks in their hands. Boys seized tin dinner-horns
and ran. A multitude of people, old and young, men
and women, hastened down the South street. At the corner
or forks of the road they were joined by others, who came
from the Mill. They shoaled up the Brandon road, like a
great wave of the sea, rapidly, urgently, solemnly. The Pottles
and Dunlaps, from Snake Hill and Five-mile-lot, came down
to the Pond, on foaming horses, and receiving their directions
from Chilion, hastened into the woods. A messenger had
been posted to Breakneck, and those families, the Joys,
Whistons and Orffs, turned out. Of all those engaged in the
hunt, were absent the two most interested in it, to wit, Chilion

and Bull, whose wounded and stiffened limbs rendered it impossible
for them to go out. Dr. Spoor rode up to see Chilion,
and little Isabel Weeks, her sister Helen and brother Judah
also came, and brought him cordials and salves. It was
his irrepressible conviction that Margaret was dead, and he
was slow to be comforted. Successively, as the several parties
arrived at that spot in the woods where Chilion had gone
the night before, they set themselves at work clearing away
the trees. It seemed to be the universal impression that the
child lay buried somewhere under the wind-fall. Capt. Eliashib
Tuck, and Anthony Wharfield, the Quaker, took the general
superintendence of the operations. The melancholy
silence of the workmen singularly contrasted with the vehemence
of their action. The forest resounded with the blows
of axes, and the crashing of limbs. Broad openings were
made in the compact mass. Little boys crept under the close-welded
vines prying about in anticipation of the men. Beulah
Ann Orff and Grace Joy helped one another bear away
the heavy branches. Abel Wilcox and Martha Madeline Gisborne
lifted large billets of wood. Deacon Penrose executed
lustily with a bill-hook. Pluck, Shooks, the Jailor, Lawyer
Beach, Sibyl Radney, Mr. Cutts, Solomon Smith and Hash,
rolled over a great tree, roots and all, while Judge Morgridge
and Isaac Tapley stood with shovels, ready to dig into the
mound of earth and stones which the roots had formed in their
sudden uprise. Zenas Joy and Seth Penrose rode off to get
refreshments. The Master alternatively worked with the
others, and sat on a stump, covering his eyes with his hands,
foreboding each moment some dreadful sight. In the midst of
all, kneeling on the damp leaves in the open wood, might be
heard the voice of the Camp-preacher, in loud and importunate
prayer, beseeching the Most High to spare, if possible, the
life of the child, and restore her to her afflicted friends and
family.

To return to Margaret. The night had passed, she had
slept and waked, and taken her breakfast with the cubs. She
felt her strength revive, and her hopes rise. She offered her
bruised and bloody arm to the bear, who licked the blood,
and soothed and fomented the wound with her tongue. She
attempted to walk, but her benumbed limbs refused their
office, and she sat down again. She dug out with her fingers
the roots of the polypods which she ate with good relish.
Then with her voice she raised the signal of distress, and
tried to make her situation known; but she had wandered far

from any neighborhood, and out of the ordinary haunts of
men. Dreary feelings and oppressive thoughts came over her,
and tears flowed freely, which the kind motherly bear wiped
away with her tongue. Then the three little bears began to
play with their dam, one climbed up her back, another hugged
her fore leg, and the third made as if it would tweak her nose,
and the one upon her back began to bandy paws with the one
that was hugging the leg, like kittens; and Margaret was
forced to be amused despite herself. Then she fell to singing,
and as she sang, the animals seemed to be moved thereby, and
the old bear and the three little bears seated themselves on
their haunches all in a row before her, to hear her; and they
appeared to her so much pleased with her performance, that
neither of them spoke a word during all the time she was
singing.

Where the people were at work, they made satisfactory examination
of a pretty large space of ground. One of the
boys, Isaiah Hatch, who was burrowing mole-like under the
ruins, raised an exclamation that brought several to the spot.
He had discovered the flower-box, which was soon recognised
as having been carried by the child. The limb that held it
was cut away, and battened and perforated it was borne to the
Master, who, clutching it in his hands, uttered a mixed sound
of pleasure, apprehension and regret. It was concluded that
she might have escaped from the storm, and while a few remained
and continued the search, they agreed that the main
body should distribute themselves in squads, and range the
forest. They took the horns wherewith to betoken success,
if success should attend them.

Margaret, who, as the hours wore away, could no more than
resign herself to passing events, was startled from her reveries
by the rustling of footsteps, and the sound of a human voice.
At the same instant she saw the Master running precipitously
across the woods, and crying out, “Bear, Bear! Ursa
major, Ursæ minores”—his arms extended, his cane dropped,
his hat and wig fallen off, his big coat tearing itself to tatters
in the brush, himself stumbling over roots and bestriding
daddocks in extremest consternation. Close at his heels was
the bear with her young, running with similar velocity, but
more afraid of her pursuers than the Master was of her, and
whose track she pursued only for the instant that it happened
to identify itself with the direct course to her lair, whither the
animal betook herself, while the Master, thinking he had
dodged her fury, disappeared among the distant trees; and all

this before Margaret, who called to him, could make herself
heard. But in the same moment men and boys appeared
storming and rattling through the brush, with uplifted axes,
clubs and stones, in wild hue and cry after the bear, whom
happening to alight upon, they had given chase to, and drove
to her retreat. Their shouts after the bear were changed into
exclamations of a very different character when they beheld the
child. They sprang forward to Margaret, caught her in their
arms, and asked her a thousand questions. Speedily the horns
were blown, and presently there came up from hill and hommoc,
wood and bosket, rock and dingle, all around an answering
volley. A loud trine reciprocating blast conveyed the
glad intelligence wherever there were those interested to hear
it. The Master at length ventured forward. What were his
emotions or his manners at finding the lost one alive, we will
not detail. To show feeling before folks mortified him greatly;
the received mode of expression he did not follow; nor were
his contradictions performed by any rule that would enable us
to describe them. “We have found the child, let us now kill
the bear,” became the cry; — the animal in the mean time
having slunk, trembling to the death, under the low dark
eaves of her den.

“No, no!” was the urgent response of Margaret, and she
recounted again the passages between herself and the animal.

“Wal,” said the boys, “if she has been so good to the gal,
we won't touch her.”

It was a question how the child should be got home. For
her to walk was impossible. Some proposed carrying her in
their arms, but the general voice was for a litter, which, of
poles and green boughs, was quickly made, and borne by four
men. The hat and wig of the Master were replaced, and his
tattered garments mended by some of the women, who, leaving
their homes in haste, carried away scissors, wax, thread and
needle, in their pockets. Their best course to the Pond was
through Breakneck, and so down the Brandon road by No. 4.
A fearful gorge, terminating, however, in a rich bottom, gave
the name Breakneck to what was in reality a pleasant neighborhood,
consisting of the three families before mentioned,
the Orffs, Joys and Whistons, who were all substantial farmers.
Joseph Whiston conducted the people and bearers of
the child directly to his father's. Margaret was carried into
the house, laid on a bed, where Mistress Whiston and the
other ladies examined and dressed her wounds, and had some
toast made for her, and a cup of tea, adding also quince preserves.

Refreshments were also sent out to the people, who
in addition received liberal supplies from the other houses.
While Margaret was resting, the young men busied themselves
in putting together a more convenient carriage than the litter,
and Paulina Whiston brought thick comfortables to cover it
with, and pillows and bolsters to put under the child's head.
On this Margaret was placed, reclining, and borne off, as before,
on the shoulders of four young men. For the Master, we would
remark, a horse was kindly provided. They entered the high-way,
and went down the hill through the woods; the boys
and younger portion of the company whooping, capering,
and sounding their horns. Passing the side-path that led to
Joyce Dooly the Fortune-teller's, there, at the entrance of the
woods, on a high rock, stood the mysterious woman herself,
holding by strings her five cats. At sight of her the people
were silent. She enacted sundry grimaces, uttered mumming
sentences, declared she foresaw the day previous the loss and
recovery of the child, pronounced over her some mystic congratulations,
waved her hand and departed, and the people renewed
their shouts. Over fences, through the woods, up from
ravines, came others who had been hunting in different directions,
and when the party reached No. 4, its numbers were
swelled to more than a hundred. Here they found another
large collection of people, some of whom came up at a later
hour from the village, and others were just returned from the
search. Here also were desolating marks of the storm, in roofs,
chimneys, windows, trees, fences, fields. Deacon Ramsdill,
lame as he was, with his wife, had walked from their home
beyond the Green. Parson Welles and the Preacher were
engaged in familiar conversation, the first time they had ever
spoken together. “The Lord be praised!” ejaculated the
Preacher.” “We see the Scripture fulfilled,” said the Parson.
“There is more joy over one that is brought back, than
over the ninety and nine that went not astray.” “Amen,”
responded the Preacher.

“You come pretty near having considerable of a tough
time, didn't you, dear?” said deacon Ramsdill, advancing and
shaking Margaret's hand; “but like to never killed but one
man, and he died a laughin. It'll do you good, it is the best
thing in the world for calves to lie out of nights when the dew
is on.”

“Our best hog was killed in the pen,” said Mistress Gubtail;
“but here's some salve, if it'll be of any service to the
child.”

“Salve!” retorted the Widow Wright, indignantly, and
elbowing her way through the crowd. “Here's the Nommernisstortumbug,
none of your twaddle, the gennewine tippee, caustic
and expectorant, good for bruises and ails in the vitals.”

“I've got some plums that Siah picked under the tree that
blowd down in the storm,” said Mistress Hatch; “I guess the
gal would like them, and if any body else would eat, they are
welcome.”

“Bring um along, Dorothy,” said Mistress Tapley to her
little daughter. “A platter of nutcakes. The chimney tumbled
in while I was frying um, and they is a little sutty, but if
the gal is hungry, they'll eat well.”

Provisions of a different description were furnished from
the Tavern, of which the multitude partook freely. People
from the village also sent up quantities of fruit, cakes, &c.
But they could not tarry, they must hasten to the child's
home. They went up the hill, Margaret erected on the shoulders
of the young men, escorted as it would seem by half the
town, all wild with joy. Pluck was in transports; Obed
laughed and cried together all the way up the hill; Hash was
so much delighted, that he drank himself nearly drunk at the
Tavern. When they came in sight of the house, a new
flourish of the horns was made, three cheers given, hats and
green twigs swung. Chilion, whom the good news had already
reached, was seated in a chair outside the door; Bull,
unable to move, lay on the grass, wagging his joy with his tail;
Brown Moll took to spinning flax as hard as she could spin, to
keep her sensations within due bounds; the little Isabel leaped
up and down spatting her hands. Margaret was conveyed to
her mother's bed. Dr. Spoor examined her wounds, and pronounced
them not serious, and all the women came in and examined
them and gave the same decision. Parson Welles
suggested to the Preacher the opportuneness of a prayer of
thanksgiving, which the latter offered in a becoming manner.
A general collation was had in which the family who had
tasted of nothing since the noon before, were made glad participants.
Chilion, to express his own transport, or to embody
and respond to the delight of the people, called for his violin.
Playing, he wrought that effect in which he took evident pleasure,
moving the parties in a kind of subservient unison, and
gliding into a familiar reel, he soon had them all dancing.
On the grass before the house, old and young, grave and gay,
they danced exuberantly. Parson Welles, the Preacher and
Deacon Hadlock looked on smilingly. Deacon Ramsdill's

wife declared Margaret must see what was going on, had her
taken from the bed, and held her in her lap on the door-sill.
There had been clouds over the sun all day, and mists in the
atmosphere, nor did the sun yet appear, only below it, while it
was now about an hour high, along the horizon, cleared away
a long narrow strip of sky flushing with golden light. Above
the people's heads still hung grey clouds, about them were
green woods, underneath them the green grass, and within
them were bright joyous sensations, and through all things
streamed this soft colored light, and in all shone a pavonine
irradiancy, and their faces glowed more lustrously, and their
hearts beat more rapturously. Deacon Hadlock, stirred irresistibly,
gave out, as for years he had been accustomed to do in
Church, the lines of the Doxology —
which Chilion pitching on his violin and leading off, they sung
with great emphasis. When they were about breaking up,
Deacon Ramsdill said, “Shan't we have a collection? We
have had pretty nice times, but strippins arter all is the best
milk, and I guess they'll like it as well as any thing now.
We shall have to feather this creeter's nest, or the bird will
be off agin. Here's my hat if some of these lads will pass it
round.”

A contribution was made, and thus the night of the morning
became a morning at night to the Pond and the people of
Livingston.

17. CHAPTER XVII.
WINTER,

An event common in New-England, is at its height. It is
snowing, and has been for a whole day and night, with a
strong north-east wind. Let us take a moment when the
storm intermits, and look in at Margaret's and see how
they do. But we cannot approach the place by any of the

ordinary methods of travel; the roads, lanes and by-paths are
blocked up: no horse or ox could make his way through
those deep drifts, immense mounds and broad plateaus of
snow. If we are disposed to adopt the means of conveyance
formerly so much in vogue, whether snow-shoes or magic, we
may possibly get there. The house or hut is half sunk in a
snow bank; the waters of the Pond are covered with a solid
enamel as of ivory; the oxen and the cow in the barn-yard,
look like great horned sheep, in their fleeces of snow. All is
silence, and lifelessness, and if you please to say, desolation.
Hens there are none, nor turkeys, nor ducks, nor birds, nor
Bull, nor Margaret. If you see any signs of a human being,
it is the dark form of Hash, mounted on snow-shoes, going
from the house to the barn. Yet there are the green hemlocks
and pines, and firs, green as in summer, some growing along
the flank of the hill that runs north from the Indian's Head,
looking like the real snow-balls, blossoming in mid-winter, and
nodding with large white flowers. But there is one token of
life, the smoke coming from the low grey chimney, which, if
you regard it as one, resembles a large, elongated, transparent
baloon; or if you look at it by piece-meal, it is a beautiful
current of bluish-white vapor, flowing upward unendingly;
and prettily is it striped and particolored, as it passes successively
the green trees, the bare rocks, and white crown of the hill behind;
nor does its interest cease, even when it disappears
among the clouds. Some would dwell a good while on that
smoke, and see in it manifold out-shows and denotements of
spiritualities; others would say, the house is buried so deep, it
must come up from the hot mischief-hatching heart of the
earth; others still would fancy the whole Pond laid in its winding-sheet,
and that if they looked in, they would behold the dead
faces of their friends. Our own sentiment is, that that smoke
comes from a great fire in the great fire-place, and that if we
should go into the house, we should find the family as usual
there; a fact which, as the storm begins to renew itself, we
shall do well to take the opportunity to verify.

Flourishing in the centre of these high-rising and broad-spreading
snows, unmoved amid the fiercest onsets of the storm,
comfortable in the extremity of winter, the family are all gathered
in the kitchen, and occupied as may be. In the cavernous
fire-place burns a great fire, composed of a huge green
back-log, a large green forestick, and a high cob-work of
crooked and knotty refuse-wood, ivy, hornbeam and beech.
Through this the yellow flame leaps and forks, and the bluish-grey

smoke flows up the ample sluice-way of the chimney.
From the ends of the wood the sap fries and drips on the sizzling
coals below, and flies off in angry steam. Under the forestick
great red coals roll out, sparkle a semibrief, lose their grosser
substance, indicate a more ethereal essence in prototypal
forms of white, down-like cinders, and then fall away into brown
ashes. To a stranger the room has a sombre aspect rather
heightened than relieved by the light of the fire burning so
brightly at mid-day. The only connection with the external
air is by the south window-shutter being left entirely open,
forming an aperture through the logs of about two feet square;
yet when the outer light is so obscured by a storm, the bright
fire within must anywhere be pleasant. In one corner of the
room sits Pluck, in a red flannel shirt and leather apron, at
work on his kit mending a shoe; with long and patient vibration
and equipoise he draws the threads, and interludes the
strokes with snatches of songs, banter and laughter. The
apartment seems converted into a workshop, for next the shoe-maker
stands the shingle-maker, Hash, who with froe in one
hand and mallet in the other, by dint of smart percussion, is endeavoring
to rive a three-cornered billet of hemlock, on a block.
In the centre of the room sits Brown Moll, with still bristling
and grizzly hair, pipe in her mouth, in a yellow woollen long-short
and black petticoat, winding a ball of yarn from a windle.
Nearer the fire, are Chilion and Margaret, the latter also
dressed in woollen, with the Orbis Pictus, or World displayed,
a book of Latin and English, adorned with cuts, which the
Master lent her; the former with his violin, endeavoring to
describe the notes in Dr. Byles's Collection of Sacred Music,
also a loan of the Master's, and at intervals trailing on the lead
of his father in some popular air. We shall also see that one
of Chilion's feet is raised on a stool, bandaged, and apparently
disabled. Bull, the dog, lies rounded on the hearth, his nose
between his paws, fast asleep. Dick, the grey squirel, sits
swinging listlessly in his wire wheel, like a duck on a wave.
Robin, the bird, in its cage, perched on its roost, shrugs and
folds itself into its feathers, as if it were night. Over the fire-place,
on the rough stones that compose the chimney, which
day and night through all the long winter are ever warm,
where Chilion has fixed some shelves, are Margaret's flowers;
a blood-root in the marble pot Rufus Palmer gave her, and in
wooden moss-covered boxes, pinks, violets and buttercups,
green and flowering. Here also, as a sort of manteltree ornament,
sits the marble kitten which Rufus made, under a cedar
twig. At one end of the crane in the vacant side of the fire-place
hang rings of pumpkin rinds drying for beer. On the
walls are suspended strings of dried apples, bunches of yarn,
and the customary fixtures of coats, hats, knapsacks, &c. On
the sleepers above is a chain-work of cobwebs, loaded and
knapped with dust, quivering and gleaming in the wind that
courses with little or no obstruction through all parts of the
house. Near Hash stands the draw-horse, on which he smooths
and squares his shingles; underneath it and about lies a pile of
fresh, sweet-scented, white shavings and splinters. Through
the yawns of the back door, and sundry rents in the logs of
the house, filter in, unweariedly, fine particles of snow,
and thus along the sides of the room rise little cone-shaped,
marble-like pilasters. Between Hash and his father, elevated
on blocks, is the cider barrel. These are some of the appendages,
inmates and circumstances of the room. Within doors
is a mixed noise of lapstone, mallet, swifts, fiddle, fire; without
is the rushing of the storm. Pluck snipsnaps with his wife,
cracks on Hash, shows his white teeth to Margaret; Chilion
asks his sister to sing after his playing; Hash orders her to
bring a coal to light his pipe; her mother gets her to pick a
snarl out of the yarn she is winding. She climbs upon a stool
and looks out of the window. The scene is obscured by the
storm; the thick driving flakes throw a brownish mizzly shade
over all things, air, trees, hills and every avenue the eye has
been wont to traverse. The light tufts of snow hiss like arrows
as they shoot by. The leafless Butternut, whereon the whippoorwill
used to sing, and the yellow warbler make its nest,
sprawls its naked arms, and moans pitifully in the blast; the
snow that for a moment is amassed upon it, falls to the ground
like a harvest of alabaster fruit. The Peach-tree, that bears
Margaret's own name, and is of her own age, seems to be
drowning in the snow. Water drops from the eaves occasioned
by the snow melting about the hot chimney.

“Something of a storm, an't it, Molly?” said Pluck, looking
up, at the same time strapping his knife on the edge of the kit.

“As much as you are a cobbler,” rejoined Brown Moll,
“keep us wet the whole time;—can't step out but our shoes
let in all the snow that falls and all the water that makes.”

“Glad to hear you speak of water,” said her husband. “It
reminds me that I am getting very dry. — Who did the Master
tell you was the God of Shoemakers?” he asked, addressing
himself to Margaret.

“St. Crispin,” replied the child.

“Guess I'll pay him a little attention,” said the man, leaving
his bench and going to the rum bottle that stood by the chimney.
“I feel some interest in these things, and I think I have
some reason to indulge a hope that I am among the elect.”

“He wouldn't own you,” said his wife tartly.

“Why so?” inquired Pluck.

“Because you are not a man; you are not the thrum or rag
of a man. Scrape you all up, and we shouldn't get lint
enough to put on Chilion's foot.”

“Look at that,” said her husband, exposing his bare arm,
flabby and swollen; “what do you think of that?”

“Garbage!” replied the woman. “Grand grease, try you
up, run you into cakes, make a present of you to your divinity
to rub into his boots. The fire is getting down, Meg, can't
you bring in some wood?”

“You are a woman really!” retorted Pluck, “to send the
child out in such a storm, when it would take three men to
hold one's head on.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed out Brown Moll, withdrawing her pipe
to spit. “You must have stitched your own on; I don't wonder
you are afraid.—That is the way you lost your ear, trying to
hold on your head in a snow-storm, ha ha!”

“Well,” rejoined Pluck, “you think your are equal to three
men in wit, learning, providing, don't you?”

“Mayhaps so.”

“And weaving, spinning, coloring, reeling, twisting, cooking,
clinching, hen-pecking?—Well I guess you are. Can you
tell, dearest Maria, what is Latin for the Widow's Obed's red
hair?”

“No. But I can for the maggot that makes powder-post of
our whole family, Didymus Hart.”

“Well done!” said Pluck with a laugh, and staggered towards
his bench.

“I knew we should have a storm,” said his wife, “after
such a cold spell; I saw a Bull's Eye towards night; my corns
have been pricking more than usual; a flight of snow-birds
went by day before yesterday. And it won't hold up till after
the full, and that's to-night.”

“And I thought as much too,” answered Pluck. “Bottle
has emptied fast, glums been growing darker in the face, windle
spun faster, cold potatoes for dinner, hot tongue for supper.”

“You shall fetch some wood, Meg, or I'll warm your back

with a shingle,” said her mother, flinging out a threat which
she had no intention of executing. “Hash is good for something,
that he is.”

“Yes, Maharshalalhashbaz, my second born,” interjected
Pluck, “sell your shingles to the women; they'll give you
more than Deacon Penrose; it is such a nice thing for heating
a family with.—We shan't need any more roofs to our houses—
always excepting of course, your dear and much honored
mother, who is a warming-pan in herself, good as a Bath
Stove.”

Hash, spurred on by this double shot, plied his mallet the
harder, and declared with an oath that he would not get the
wood, that they might freeze first; adding that he hauled and
cut it, and that was his part.

Chilion whispered his sister, and she went out for the purpose
in question. It was not excessively cold, since the weather
moderated as the storm increased, and she might have taken
some interest in that tempestuous outer world. Her hens,
turkeys and ducks, who were all packed together, the former
on their roost under the shed, the latter in one corner, also required
feeding; and she went in and got boiled potatoes, which
they seemed glad to make a meal of. The wind blazed and
racketed through the narrow space between the house and the
hill. Above, the flakes shaded and mottled the sky, and fell
twirling, pitching, skimble-scamble, and anon, slowly and more
regularly, as in a minuet; and as they came nearer the ground,
they were caught up by the current, and borne in a horizontal
line, like long, quick spun, silver threads, afar over the white
fields. There was but little snow in the shed, although entirely
open on the south side; the storm seeming to devote itself to
building up a drift in front. This drift had now reached a
height of seven or eight feet. It sloped up like the roof of a
pyramid, and on the top was an appendage like a horn, or a
plume, or a marble jet d'eau, or a frozen flame of fire; and
the elements in all their violence, the eddies that veered about
the corner of the house, the occasional side-blasts, still dallied,
and stopped to mould it, and finish it; and it became thinner,
and more tapering, and spiral; each singular flake adjusting
itself to the very tip, with instinctive nicety; till at last it broke
off by its own weight—then a new one went on to be formed.
Under this drift lay the wood Margaret was after, and she hesitated
to demolish the pretty structure. The cistern was over-run
with ice; the water fell from the spout in an ice tube, the

half barrel was rimmed about with a broad round moulding of
ice, and where the water flowed off, it had formed a wavy cascade
of ice, and under the cold snows the clear cold water
could be heard babbling and singing as if it no whit cared for
winter. Her great summer gobbling turkey attempted to
mount the edge of the cistern to drink, but the wind blew, his
feet slipped, and back he fell. She took a dish and watered
her poultry. From the corner of the house the snow fretted
and spirted, in a continuous stream of spray. While she looked
at this, she saw a flock of snow-birds borne on by the winds,
endeavoring to tack their course, and run in under the shelter
of the house, but the remorseless elements drifted them on,
and they were apparently dashed against the woods beyond.
One of the birds was seen to drop, and Margaret darted out,
waded through the snow, caught the luckless or lucky wanderer,
and amid the butting winds, sharp snow-rack, and
smothering sheets of spray, carried it into the house. In her
Book of Birds, she found it was a snow-bunting, that it was
hatched in a nest of rein deer's hair near the North Pole,
that it had sported among eternal solitudes of rocks and ice,
and come thousands of miles. It was purely white, while
others of the species receive some darker shades. She put it
in the cage with Robin, who welcomed the travelled stranger
with due respect.

That day and all that night the snow continued to fall, and
the wind raged. When Margaret went to her loft, she
found her bed covered with a pile of snow that had trickled
through the roof. She shook the coverlid, undressed,
laid herself on her thistle-down pallet — such a one had
she been able to collect and make — to her sleep. The
wind surged, swelled, puffed, hissed, whistled, shrieked, thundered,
sighed, howled, by turns. The house jarred and
creaked; her bed rocked under her; loose boards on the roof
clappered and rattled; the snow pelted her window-shutter.
In such a din and tustle of the elements lay the child. She
had no sister to nestle with her, and snug her up; no gentle
mother to fold the sheets about her neck, and tuck in the
bed; no watchful father to come with a light, and see that she
slept safe. Alone and in darkness she climbed into her
chamber, alone and in darkness she wrapt herself in the bed.
In the fearfulness of that night she sung or said to herself
some words of the Master's, which he, however, must have
given her for a different purpose—for of needs must a stark
child's nature in such a crisis appeal to something above and

superior to itself, and she had taken a floating impression that
the Higher Agencies, whatever they might be, existed in
Latin:—
As she slept amid the passion of the storm, softly did the snow
from the roof distil upon her feet, and sweetly did dreams
from heaven descend into her soul. In her dream she was
walking in a large, high, self-illuminated, marble Hall, having
flowers, statues and columns on either side. The top or roof
of the Hall was neither covered nor open, but seemed ceiled in
a sort of opaline-colored invisibility. The statues, of clear
white marble, large as life, and the flowers in marble vases,
alternated with each other between the columns, whose ornamented
capitals merged in the shadows above. There was no
distinct articulate voice, but a kind of low murmuring of the
air, a sort of musical pulsation, in the place, which she heard.
The statues seemed to be for the most part marble embodiments
of pictures she had seen in the Master's books. There
were the Venus de Medicis; the Apollo Belvidere; Diana,
with her golden bow; Ceres, with poppies and ears of corn;
Humanity, “with sweet and lovely countenance;” Fortitude,
with her hand on a pillar; Temperance, pouring water from
a pitcher; Diligence, with a sickle and sheaf; Peace, and
her crown of olives; Truth, with “her looks serene, pleasant,
courteous, cheerful and yet modest.” The flowers were such
as she had sometimes seen about the houses in the village,
but of great size and rare beauty;—cactuses, purple dahlias,
moss-roses, carnations, high nodding geraniums, large pink
hydrangeas, white japonicas, calla lilies and others. Their
shadows waved on the white walls, and it seemed to her
as if the music she heard issued from their cups. She
went on till she came to a marble arch, or door-way,
handsomely sculptured, and supported on caryatides. This
opened to a large rotunda, where she saw nine beautiful
female figures swimming in a circle in the air. These
strewed on her as she passed, leaves and flowers, of amaranth,
angelica, myrtle, rose, thyme, white jasmin, white
poppy, bluebell, bittersweet nightshade, acacia and eglantine;
and spun round and round in silken silence. By a
similar arch, she went into another rotunda, in the centre of
which was a marble monument or sarcophagus, arising from
which were two marble youths with wings, and also above
them she saw two butterflies with iris-colored wings, flying
away. Through another door-way she entered a larger space,
opening to the heavens. In this she saw a woman, the same
woman she had before seen in her dreams, with long black
hair, and a pale beautiful face, who stood silently pointing to
a figure far off on the rose-colored clouds. It was Christ,
whom she recognized. A little distance from him, on the
round top of a purple cloud, having the blue distant sky for a
back-ground, was the milk-white Cross, twined with ever-greens;
about it, folding one another's hands, she saw moving
as in a dance, four beautiful female figures, clothed in white
robes. These she remembered as the ones she saw in her
dream at the Still, and she now knew them to be Faith, Hope,
Love, and their sister, who was yet of their own creation,
Beauty. She tried to speak, but could not. Then she returned
through the Rotundas and Hall, and at the door she
found a large green bull-frog, with great goggle eyes, having
a pond-lily saddled to his back. She seated herself in the
cup, held by the gold threads as a pomel, and the frog leaped
with her clear into the next morning, in her own little dark
chamber. When she awoke the wind and noise without had
ceased. A perfect cone of pure white snow lay piled up over
her feet, and she attributed her dream partly to that. She
opened the window-shutter; it was even then snowing in
large, quiet, moist flakes, which showed that the storm was
nearly at an end; and in the east, near the sun-rising, she saw
the clouds bundling up, ready to go away. She went below;
Pluck and his wife were just out of bed; a dim, dreary light
came in from the window; Chilion, who unable to go up the
ladder to his chamber had a bunk spread for him of the pelts
of wild beasts, near the fire, still lay there. Under a bank of
ashes and cinders, smoked and sweltered the remains of the
great back-log. Bull rose and stretched at her feet; Dick
pawed round his tread-mill in fresh morning glee; Robin
chirruped faintly and winterishly. Little heaps of snow
that had blown in during the night, and other rubbish about
the room, her mother set her to sweeping out with the green
spruce-twig broom. Pluck with the slice raked open the
ashes, drew forward the charred log, which cracked and crumbled
in large deep crimson, fine-grained, glowing coals, throwing
a ruddy glare over the room. He dug away the ashes, as
if he were laying a cellar-wall, and with the aid of his wife
and Margaret and divers pryings and pushings, he rolled in a
fresh green log, at least four feet long, and nearly two thick.
Hash came lumbering down the ladder, thrusting out one
arm then the other hustling on his coat, and calling the
name of God over Margaret, for hitting his saw with the
froe—a kind of family prayer she was quite accustomed to—
and then putting on his snow-shoes he went to the barn. Mistress
Hart went about getting breakfast, not putting on the tea-kettle,
for she had none, and only at rare intervals did they
drink tea or coffee—but a pot of potatoes, which served alike
for family, hens and the pig. After breakfast Margaret
opened the front door to look out. Here was raised a straight
and sheer breast-work of snow five feet or more in height,
nicely scarfing the door and lintels. Pluck could just see
over it, but for this purpose Margaret was obliged to use a
chair. The old gentleman, in a fit of we shall not say uncommon
good feeling, declared he would dig through it. He
went round by the back-door, waded through the snow breast-deep
to a spot in front of the house, where the whiffling
winds had left the earth nearly bare, and commenced with a
shovel his subnivean work. Margaret saw him disappear
under the snow, which he threw behind him like a rabbit.
She waited in greatest frolicksomeness imaginable his coming
in sight at the door, hallooed to him, and threatened to set
the dog on him as a thief. Pluck made some gruff unusual
sound, beat the earth with his shovel; the dog growled, and
thrust violently at the snow; Margaret laughed. Soon this
mole of a man poked his shovel through, and straightway followed
with himself, all in a sweat, and the snow melting like
rain from his hot red face. Thus was opened a snow-tunnel,
as good to Margaret as the Thames, two or three rods long,
and three or four feet high. Through this she went to the
hollow beyond. The storm had died away; the sun was
struggling through the clouds as if itself in search of heat
from what showed us the white, radiant, warm face of the
earth; there were blue breaks in the sky over head; and far
off, above the snow-strown western hills, lay violet-fringed
cloud-drifts. A bank of snow, reaching in some places quite
to the eaves, covered the front of the house, and buried
many feet deep the grass, mallows, dandelions, rosebushes,
flowerbeds, hencoops.

The Chesnuts shone in the sun with their polished, shivering,
cragged limbs, a spectacle both to pity and admire. The
evergreens and other trees drooped under their burdens like

full-blown sunflowers. The top of Indian's Head was nearly
bare; its bleak and wild summit being scathed and polled by
the storm, and the peeled and naked old hemlock or Feather
stood up a sullen and derisive monument of the desolation of
the race to which it was fancifully supposed to appertain.
The dark, leafless boughs and twigs of the taller trees around
looked like bold delicate netting or linear embroidery on the
blue sky, or as if the trees, interrupted in their usual method
of growth, were taking root in mid-winter up among the
warm transparent heavens. Pluck came out and began playing
with Margaret, throwing great armsful of snow that burst
and scattered over her like rocks of down, then suffering
himself to be fired at in turn. He set her astride the dog who
romped and flounced, and pitched her into a drift whence her
father drew her by her ankles. As he was going in, stooping
under the tunnel, a pile of snow that had formed itself on the
house and jutted over, fell, and breaking in the roof of the
frail passage-way, completely buried the old man in the ruins.
He gasped, floundered and thrust up his arms through the
superincumbent mass, like a drowning man. Margaret leaped
with laughter, and Brown Moll herself coming to the door
was so moved by the drollery of the scene as to be obliged to
withdraw her pipe to laugh also. Bull was ordered to the
rescue, who, doing the best he could under the circumstances,
wallowing belly-deep in the snow, seized with his teeth the
woollen shirt-sleeve of his master, and tugged away, till he
raised the old man's head above the drift. Pluck, unchilled
in his humor by the coolness of the drench, stood, sunk to his
chin in the snow, and laughed as heartily as any of them, his
shining bald pate and whelky red face streaming with moisture
and shaking with merriment. At length both father and
child got into the house and dried themselves by the fire.

Margaret took her book to study, but her mother called her
away, and set her to picking over butternut, peach and
sumach leaves, and other coloring stuff. Chilion likewise
demanded attention; his foot pained him; it grew swollen
and inflamed. Margaret bathed it in rum; a poultice was
applied, and she held it in her lap, and soothed it with her
hand. A preparation of the Widow's was suggested. Hash
would not go for it, Pluck and his wife could not, and Margaret
must go. Bull could not go with her, and she must go
alone. She was wrapped in a hood, mittens, and martin-skin
tippet; her snow-shoes, a pair that she had often gone on
the snows with, were fastened to her feet. She mounted the

high, white, fuffy plain; a dead and unbounded waste lay all
about her. She went on with a soft, yielding, yet light step,
almost noiseless as if she were walking the clouds. There
was no road or path, no guide but the trees; ruts, gullies,
holes, ditches by the way-side, knolls, stones, were all one
uniform level. She saw here and there a slightly raised
mound, indicating some large rock she clambered over in
summer. The beautiful bordering of wild flowers on either
side of the road was invisible; and the ever smelling and universally
diffused aroma of the sweet fern was smothered and
blighted. Here and there appeared above the snows the black
dead spikes and seed-heads of the golden-rod, mullein, tall
aster and wild sunflower. The shrubs, ivies, alders, sumachs,
the grape-vines running over thorn-bushes and witch-hazles,
seem to have been contending with the storm, and both to
have yielded at the same moment, the snow hanging upon
them in broken bunches and tatters, and their branches bending
down stiffened, motionless. About the trunk of some of
the large trees was a hollow pit reaching quite to the ground,
as if the snow had waltzed round and round the tree and laid
itself back to rest; or as if the flakes had been caught in a
maelstrom and been devoured as they fell. Wherever there
was a fence, pile of brush or heap of stones, thither had the
storm betaken itself with full flooding force, and around,
above and alongside, were erected mountain-like embankments,
impenetrable dikes, and inaccessible bluffs. As she
entered the thicker woods that lay between her house and the
Widow's, Margaret saw the deep, unalloyed beauty of the
storm; the large moist flakes that fell in the morning, had
dressed, furred, mossed over every limb and twig, each minute
process and filament, each aglet and thread, as if the white
spirits of the air had undertaken to frost the trees for the
marriage festival of their Prince; or as if an ocean of pure
foam had suddenly subsided in the region. The slender
white-birches with silver bark and ebon boughs that grew
along the path, were bent over; their arms met intertwiningly;
and thus was formed a perfect arch, snow-wreathed, voluptuous,
dream-like, glittering, under which she went. There
was the clear bright shining of the sun, its light both softened
and heightened, spread and reflected through all the wood.
All was silent as the Moon; there was no sound of birds, or
cows, sheep, dinner-horns, axes, or wind. There was no life,
but only this white, shining, still-life wrought in snow-marble.
No life? From the dusky woods darted out those birds that
bide a New England winter; dove-colored nuthatches, she
suddenly heard, quank quanking among the hemlocks; a whole
troop of titmice and woodpeckers came bustling and whirring
across the way, shaking a shower of fine tiny raylets of
snow on her head; she saw the graceful snow-birds, our common
bird, with ivory bill, slate-colored back and white breast,
flying about and perching themselves on the dead tops of the
mulleins and other flowers, and pecking out the seeds. Above
all, far above the forest and the snow-capped hills, caw cawed
the great black crow. All at once too, as she was going
along, directly in front of her, by the side of the road, came
up through the snow a little red squirrel, who sat bolt-upright
on his hind legs, gravely folded his paws, surveyed her for a
moment, as much as to say, “How do you do?” and in a
trice with a squeak shot back into his hole.

She found the brook, Cedron, like everything else buried
in snow, bridge and water alike indistinguishable, only she
could hear the gurgling of the latter as in an abyss below.
Approaching the Widow's, she crossed the Porta Salutaris and
all the scrawls of the stump fence, without touching them,
on a mound of snow that extended across the garden, half
covering the side of the house, wholly hiding beds of sage,
saffron, hyssop, and what not, and nearly enveloping the bee-hive,
where, on the paradoxical idea that snow keeps out cold,
the bees must have been very cozy and warm. Reaching the
door, she stooped down to find the handle, but Obed, who
espied her coming, was already on the spot, opened to her,
and handed her down from the snow as he would from the
back of a horse. The Goddess of the Temple very cordially
received her in her adytum, that is to say, the kitchen. She
was divested of snow-shoes, hood, &c., and sat down to take
breath and warmth, by the fire. The Widow was all attention,
and her son all humility. What with the deep snow-banks
without, the great fire within, and the deft and accurate
habits of the lady of the house, they were neat, snug and comfortable
as heart could wish. A kettle over the fire simmered
like the live-long singing of crickets in a bed of brakes in
August, and there was a pleasant garden perfume from
numerous herbs dispersed through the room. On the walls
and ceiling hung various kinds of medicinal plants; and on
boards and the hearth were spread out roots, stalks, leaves,
berries and flowers, drying. In a corner of the room, tier
upon tier, were piled small wooden boxes. On the table were
an iron pestle and mortar, graters and a pair of scales.

The Widow asked her son to read sundry scraps of writing
she had, for Margaret's particular edification. “You see,”
she said, “he's as smart and perlite as any on um. His
nat'ral parts is equal to the Master's, and he only needs a
little eddecation teu be a great man. There's a good deal in the
way of bringing children up, Peggy, you'll know when you
have been a mother as long as I have. He won't play the
back-game teu nobody, the Lord knows he won't; they don't
put their hooks into his gills, not by a great sight. There has
been a pooty consid'rable mullin goin on 'mong the doctors
ever sen the Nommernisstortumbug come out; Dr. Spoor
looked dismal as snakes the first time he seed me. I am goin
teu put up the price teu and penny happence a box. It's
worth it. It's none of your slush, it's gennewine sientifikals,
it cures people. They'll pay for't teu, and they ort teu. The
more you ax the sooner it'll cure. And it's a downright
gospel marcy teu hitch on a good price. How many have I
sold, think, sen the Master was here? Nigh forty boxes.”

After having sufficiently enlightened Margaret in these
matters, she promised her some salve of which she was in
quest, provided she would help Obed awhile in pasting labels
on the boxes. These she had sent to Kidderminster to be
printed, black type on a red ground.

When Margaret left for home, the sun had gone down, and
the moon rose full, to run its high circuit in these winter
heavens. The snow that had melted on the trees during the
day, as the cool air of evening came on, descended in long
wavy icicles from the branches, and the woods in their entire
perspective were tricked with these pendants. It was magic
land to the child, almost as beautiful as her dream, and she
looked for welcome faces up among the glittering trees, and
far off in the white clouds. It was still as her dream too, and
her own voice as she went singing along, echoing in the dark
forest, was all she could hear. The moon tinged the icicles
with a bright silver lustre, and the same pure radiancy, more
faint, shone from the snow. Anon she fell into the shade of
the Moon on her left; while at her right, through the dark
boughs of the evergreens, she saw the Planet Venus, large and
brilliant, set on the verge of the horizon in the impearled
pathway of the Sun. She thought of her other dream at the
Still, of Beauty, fair sister of three fair sisters, and she might
have gone off in waking-dreams among the fantasies of real
existence, when she was drawn back by the recollection of her
brother, to whose assistance she hastened. It was very cold,

her breath showed like smoke in the clear atmosphere,
and the dew from her mouth froze on her tippet; but the
snow settling, and her path becoming more compact and hard,
she trod on with an easier step. All at once there was a glare
of red light about her, the silver icicles were transformed to
rubies, and the snow-fields seemed to bloom with glowing sorrel
flowers. It was the Northern Lights that shot up their
shafts, snapped their sheets, unfurled their flaming penons,
and poured their rich crimson dies upon the white lustrous
earth. She thought the Winter and the World were beautiful,
her way became more bright, and she hurried on to Chilion—
for whom day by day, hour by hour, she labored and watched,
assiduously, tenderly; till his foot amended apace, though it
never got entirely well.

One morning Obed called for Margaret to go with him to
the village. There had been a rain the day before, followed
by a cold night, and the snow was glazed over with a smooth
hard incrustation. They both took sleds, Margaret her blue-painted
Humming Bird, which she received as a Thanksgiving
present awhile before. Obed wore a reddish butternut-colored
coat with very long and broad skirts, buck-skin breeches, grey
yarn stockings; and a bright red knit woollen cap, that came
down over his ears, and fitted close to his head, having a high
pointed top surmounted with a tassel. Under his shoes was
fastened a pair of dogs or creepers, a strap of iron armed with
points to prevent slipping. Margaret was guarded against the
ice by moccasins drawn over her shoes, and against the cold
by her hood, tippet and mittins; and wore her ordinary winter
dress, a yellow flannel short-gown, and skirt of the same
material. It was a clear bright morning, and the sun and the
earth seemed to be striving together which should shine with
the greatest strength; and they appeared to serve as mirrors
respectively in which to reflect one another's rays. As Margaret
and Obed went on, the light seemed to blow and glow
through the forest like a blacksmith's forge, and one almost
expected to be enveloped in hot flames as he advanced. Now
sliding down pitches, now dragging their sleds up acclivities,
they emerged so far from the woods as to overlook the village
and open country beyond. A steam-like vapor arose from the
frozen River, diffused itself through the atmosphere, and hung
like a blue thin veil over the snowy summit of the Mountain.
A long band of white mackerel-back clouds garnished the sky.
They came at length to Dea. Hadlock's Pasture. Here the
scattered trees were all foaming with ice, and the rain having

candied them over, trunk, branch and twig, they shone like so
many great candelabras; and the surface of the lot in all its
extent, burnt and glared in the singing sunbeams. Here also
they encountered a troop of boys and girls coasting. Some
were coming up the hill, goreing and scranching the crust with
their iron corks, others wheeling about and skimmering away
through the bright air, the ups and downs forming a perfect
line of revolution. Margaret and Obed, joining the current,
mounted their sleds, and scudded away down the smooth glassy
slope, with a rapidity that would almost take one's breath away.

At the foot of the hill and lower end of the Pasture, which
bordered on Grove Street, surmounting the fence, was a high
drift, or broad bank of snow; over which some of the sleds
passed into the road beyond, some came to the top and halted,
some with a graceful recurve turned off aslant, while others with
less momentum going up half way ran backwards, and striking
some obstruction, reared, and threw their riders heels over
head; and up they jumped for a fresh fling. Margaret, elevated
in feeling as she entered this scene flowing alike with joy
and light, made a bow on the drift, and mingled with the
moiling merry-hearted ups. There were trees scattered through
the lot, and small rocks just rounded off with snow, and larger
ones with a pitch in front, and diversities of soil that gave a
wavy hucklebacked character to the entire field. The boys
wore steeple-crowned caps like Obed's, some knit, some made
of strips of black and yellow cloth; the girls were dressed
both in short and long gowns. Their sleds had various names,
Washington, Napoleon, Spitfire, Racer, Swallow. The downs
whooped by, some dodging among the trees, some shot through
and dispersed the line of the ups, some sprang many feet off
the rocks. Some were astride their sleds, some lay on their
breasts with legs projecting behind guiding their course with
their toes, some knelt on one haunch, making a rudder of the
other foot. It was a youthful, exhilarating, cock-brained,
winter, New England dytharimb.

“This is music,” says one boy.

“Something of the broomstick order — a fellow gets
thwacked most to death,” says a second.

“There goes Judah Weeks, his trotters are getting up in
the world,” says a third.

“Old Had. is rather hard upon him,” rejoined the second
boy.

“He always is upon the boys, but dum him, we'll get some
fun out of him at any rate,” added the first.

“Spitfire is as skittish as the Deacon's sorrel colt; Jude
might have known he would have got cast,” interposed the
third.

“I declare, how they ache,” said Judah, blowing his red
snow-dripping fingers, as he joined the ups.

“Clear the coop!” cried all hands, “here comes a straddlebug.”
But the rider, it happened to he Obed, losing his
balance, his sled bolted directly in front of them, raking and
hackling the crust, and scattering the bright particles on every
side, and he rolled over at their feet.

“Hurt, Obed?” said Margaret.

“No,” replied he, picking up himself and his sled, and
joining the upward track; “but I shall take it knee-bump,
next time.”

“No, I wouldn't,” said one of the boys.

“Try bellygut, you'll like that better,” said another.

“Does your Marm know you are out?” asked one of the
large boys.

“Yes, she said I might come!”

“Do you know what will cure cold fingers?” said Judah.

“Take garlic and saffron blows, and bile um an hour and
drink it just as you are gittin' into bed, and it'll cure any cold
that ever was, Marm says,” replied Obed.

“There go Washington and Napoleon!” cried several
voices, “Old Bony 'll beat as true as guns; she's all-fired
swift.”

“Peggy's Hummin' Bird 'll beat anything,” said Obed. —
“She 'll go like nutcakes,” an allusion, we should remark, he
was in the habit of making founded on a favorite dish his
mother cooked for him every Saturday night.

“Guess Racer 'll give her a try, or anything there is on the
ground,” answered one of the larger boys, Seth Penrose, son
of the Deacon's. “Pox me! if these Injins put their tricks
on me as they do on daddy,”

“Sh'! sh'! Seth,” rejoined Judah, “you didn't talk so
when you was digging her out of the woods. We don't have
such a time as this every day. Let us all make the best of it.”

“Ho ho, hoop ho!” exclaimed all voices, as they reached
the top of the hill. “They are coming!” Below were seen
two large sleds, each drawn by five or six boys, coming up
the lot. “Now for a race.” “Hoora for the Old Confederation!”
shouted one party of the observers. “Hoora for the
Federal Constitution!” shouted the other, as the objects of
their attention drew near. These were sledges or pungs,

coarsely framed of split saplings, and surmounted with a
large crockery crate. The boys, in whom the strong political
feeling of the time could not well fail to develop itself, had
planned an adventure, and were about to test and signalize
their respective merits and capabilities, by a race with sleds,
named agreeably to the existing party distinctions. These
ark-like vehicles were turned round and loaded, the crates
filled with boys, and several seated in front to steer,
while others did the like office behind. They started off at
the same moment, those in the crates standing up, swinging
their caps, and echoing the cheers of the spectators. They
skewed, brustled and bumped along, the crates wabbled and
warped from side to side, the riders screamed, cross-bit,
frumped and hooted at each other; they lost control of their
course, their bows struck, they parted with a violent rebound;
one went giddying round and round, fraying and sputtering the
snow, and dashed against a tree; the other whirled into the
same line, plunged with its load headlong into the first. It
was a regular mish-mash; some of the boys were doused into
each other, some were jolled against the tree, some sent grabbling
on their faces down the hill, some plumped smack on
the ice, some whisked round and round, and left standing.
There was a shout from the top of the hill, and a smothered
response from below, then a clearer shout, and at last a fulltoned
hoora. None were seriously hurt; who was ever hurt
sliding down hill? Yet what with their lumbering gear staved
to atoms, splinters, nails, and the violence of the concussion,
it was a wonder some were not killed. The cry was now for
a single race, to which all parties agreed. The sleds were
drawn up in a line evenly as the nature of the ground would
permit, twenty or thirty of them, Margaret and Obed, and all
who cared to enter the lists. The fence at the foot of the
Pasture was the ordinary terminus of their slides; but they
sometimes went farther than this. Crossing Grove Street, and
the fence on the other side, passing through an orchard, and
emerging between the Court House and the Jail, they came
out on the Green; to gain, by methods unimpeachable, the
farthest point on which was the stake, and comprised a distance
of nearly half a mile. The girls sat with their skirts
trussed about their ankles, and the boys took postures as they
liked best. The signal was made, and they flushed away.
Soon separating, some went crankling, sheering, sidewise of
the hill; some were tossed in somersets from the rocks; some
ran into each other, and turning backwards channeled and
ripped their way through the hard crust; on, on they went,
skittering, bowling, sluice-like, wave-like; Margaret curvetted
about the mounds, she leaped the hollows, going on with a
ricochet motion, pulsating from swell to swell, humming, whizzing,
the fine grail glancing before her and fuzzing her face
and neck; her hood fell back over her shoulders, her hair
streamed bandrols in the wind; she reined her sled-rope as if
it had been the snaffle of a high-spirited horse; — she passed
the first fence, and the second — others were near her — some
lodged on the fences, some dropped in the street. Three or
four sleds were in full chase through the orchard, they gained
the Green, near the centre of which their speed exhausted
itself. Margaret was evidently foremost and farthest.

“You hitched,” said Seth Penrose, somewhat angrily.

“No I didn't,” said Margaret, somewhat excited.

“She didn't hitch,” said little Job Luce, who had been hovering
about the hill all the morning watching the sport, and
at the race, crept to the Green to see them come in.

“I thought Spitfire was up to anything,” said Judah Weeks,
jumping from his snow-bespattered sled; “but she is beat
now.”

Margaret had indeed won the race, and that without a
miracle. Chilion, her mechanical genie, had constructed her
sled in the best manner of the best materials, and shod it with
steel. In her earliest years, he inured her to the weather,
hauled her on the snows before she could walk, made her
coast as soon as she could sit a sled, graduated her starting
points up Indian's Head, so that she became equal to any
roughness or steepness, and could accomplish all possible
distances.

“Who beat? Who beat?” asked a score of breathless voices
rushing to the spot.

“Little Molly Hart,” roundly answered Judah.

“No, the wicked Injin didn't beat nuther,” rejoined Seth.

“Yes, she did beat teu,” interposed Obed, coming forward
among the late rear; “I know she did.”

“How do you know she did, Granny?” said Seth.

“Cause Hummin' Bird can beat anything, and I know she
did,” replied Obed.

“You are done for,” said one or another to Seth.

“No I an't done for — she hitched,” answered the sturdy
rival.

“I guess she didn't hitch,” said little Isabel Weeks, who
was of the number, cause Ma says good children don't cheat;

and she is good, cause Ma says good children helps their ma's,
and she helps her ma.”

“I know she didn't,” repeated Job, “cause I was here and
saw it.”

“Bawh! Ramshorn!” said the indignant Seth, thrashing
about and by a side-trick knocking Job on the hard crust.

“Come, pick him up,” said Isabel; “Jude, take hold of his
feet.”

“I'll help you,” said Margaret.

“Don't touch him!” exclaimed Obed, addressing Margaret.
“He's—he's—he'll kill you, he'll pizen you, he'll give you the
itch. He's a ghost.”

“No he won't hurt you,” replied Isabel, “its only little Job
Luce with a crook in his back, Ma says; and it's handy to
lift by. Up with him.”

They placed him on Margaret's sled, who with Isabel drew
him towards his home, leaving the rest of the company to
their own affairs. They went on the crust, with the road two or
three feet below them, straight and narrow, fluted through the
solid plane of the snow. Two or three sleighs or cutters passed
them, large and heavy, with high square backs like a settle,
and low square foot-boards; without buffalo, bear skin or
blanket, and painted red and green. They took Job to his
mother, who received her son with thankfulness toward the
girls, but without surprise as regarded the boy. Mistress
Luce, a wan, care-worn, ailing looking woman, yet having a
gentle and placid tone of voice, was binding shoes. The bright
sun-light streamed into the room, quite paling and quenching
flames and coals in the fire-place. A picture hung on the
walls, an embroidery, floss on white satin, representing a woman
leaning mourningly on an urn, and a willow drooping
over her. On a small round table, together with the shoes she
was at work upon, lay open-spread a bible. Job was seated
in a low armed rocking-chair on the hearth. He had always
been an object of sport to the boys, and not unfrequently sufered
from their wontonness.

“Poor boy!” ejaculated his mother with a sigh. “He
grows worse and worse — we did all we could for him.”

“Won't he grow straight and stout?” asked Margaret.

“No,” answered the woman. “A whippoorwill sung on
the willow over the brook four nights before he was born; —
we had him drawn through a split tree, but he never got
better.”

“Whippoorwills sing every night most at the Pond in the
summer,” said Margaret.

“I have heard them a great many times,” added Isabel.
“Ma says they won't hurt people if they are only good.”

“I know, I know,” responded the woman, with a quick
shuddering start.

“Ma says they only hurt wicked people,” continued Isabel.

“Ah, yes,” said the woman with a melancholy respiration,
“I always knew it was a judgment on account of my sins.”

“What have you done?” asked Margaret anxiously.

“Oh, I don't know,” answered the Widow, “only I am a
great sinner; if you could hear the Parson preach you would
think so too. I just read in my Bible what God says, `Because
you have sinned against the Lord, this is come upon
you.”'

“I saw Job at the Meeting one day,” said Margaret, “he
recited the catechism so well. Do you know what it meant?”
she continued, turning to the boy.

“No, I don't,” replied Job, “but Mammy does—but I know
the whippoorwill's song.”

“Do you?” asked Margaret; “can you say it?”

“No, only I hear it every night.”

“What, in the winter?”

“Yes, after I go to bed.”

“Do you have dreams?”

“I don't know what it is,” replied the boy, “only I hear
whippoorwill. It sings in the willow over the urn, and sings
in here,” he said, pointing to his breast. “I shall die of whippoorwill.”

“Oh dear, yes, O Father in Heaven!” sighed out his
mother strugglingly, yet with an air of resignation, “it is
just.”

“It sings,” added the boy, “in the moonshine, I hear it
in the brook in the summer, and among the flowers, and the
grasshoppers sing it to me when the sun goes down, and it
sings in the Bible. I shall die of whippoorwill.”

“How he talks!” said Isabel. “I guess Ma wouldn't like
to have me stay, only Job is a good boy, he says his prayers
every night, and don't kill the little birds, like the other boys,
and Ma says he will go to Heaven when he dies. I wish they
wouldn't teaze him so.” A horn was heard, and Isabel said it
was her dinner time, and Margaret must go with her.

“Good bye, Job,” said Margaret, “in the summer I will
come and see you again, and you must come up to the Pond,
I will show you my Bird-book, and you shall sail on the
water.”

Esq. Weeks, who lived nearly opposite the Widow Luce's,
was an extensive farmer. Mistress Weeks was the mother of
fourteen children, all born within twenty-three years, all still
living, and cherished under the same roof.

“A new one to dinner, hey, Miss Belle?” said her mother.
“So, so, just as your Pa always said, one more wouldn't make
any difference. Take your places—I don't know how to cut
the pudding downwise, crosswise—one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Eleven, where are they
all? Don't I count straight?”

“John, Nahum and the men have gone into the woods, Ma,”
said Bethia.

“I am sure I had fifteen plates put on,” said the mother.

“Washington hurt his hand, and Dolly you said wasn't old
enough to come yet,” said Bethia.

“Yes, yes,” answered the mother, “I forgot. I don't remember
anything since we had so many children. Lay to —”

“Mabel hasn't anything,” said Helen.

“What, can't I get it right?” said the mother. “Girls
I tell you all, study arithmetic. If I had known what a
family I was going to bring up, I should have learnt mine
better. Arithmetic is the best thing in a family, next to the
Bible.”

“And a good husband,” interposed Esq. Weeks.

“That's fair,” replied his wife. “But gals take to your
arithmetic, numeration, addition, subtraction, division and all
the compounds, practice, tare and trett, loss and gain. And
you've come all the way from the Pond, Miss Margery. How
is your Ma'am? I really forgot to ask. It's pretty cold weather,
good deal of snow, comes all in a bunch, just like children.
And you like to have been killed in the tornado? If it had
been our little Belle how we should have felt'

“And me too?” asked the littler Mabel.

“Yes, you too, can't spare any of you. Only be good
children, be good children, eat all you want. Zebulun is
crying, I forgot to nurse him —”

After dinner Margaret said she would go and see the Master,
and Isabel went with her. At the Widow Small's, the Master's
boarding house, they were told he was over the way, at the
Parson's; whither they directed their steps. The house of
Parson Welles stood on the corner, as you turned from South
Street up the Brandon, or No 4 road. Isabel leading the way,
they entered without knocking, and made directly for the
Parson's study. The Parson and the Master were sitting near

the fire, with their backs towards the door, smoking long
pipes, and engaged in earnest conversation, so much so that
the Master only nodded to the girls, and the Parson, who was
a little deaf, did not notice them at all. Isabel held her breath,
and made a low curtesy to the Parson's back, while Margaret
stood motionless, looking about the room, and at the persons
in it. The Parson, whose hair was shaved close to his head,
wore a red velvet cap, and had on in place of his public suit
of black, a long, bluish-brown linen dressing-gown, which his
wife had probably wove for him at some by-gone period. The
room had small windows, was wainscotted and painted a dark
green, and rendered still darker by tobacco smoke. There
were book-shelves about the apartment; on the walls hung
pictures in dark frames similar to those Margaret saw at the
Master's; the sand on the floor was streaked in whimsical
figures, and on a black stout-legged table lay paper, ink and
some manuscript sermons of the dimensions of four by six
inches.

“Touching objections, Master Elliman,” continued the
Parson, laying his pipe on his hand, “fourteenthly, it is
calumniously asserted by the opposers of divine truth that on
this hypothesis, God made men to damn them; but we say
God decreed to make man, and made man neither to damn
him nor to save him, but for his own glory, which end is answered
in them some way or another.”

“Whether they are damned or not?” said the Master.

“Yes,” said the Parson, “inasmuch as that is not the thing
considered, but the rather the executing of his own decrees,
and the expression of his proper sovereignty, who will be
glorified in all things. The real question is, whether man was
considered in the mind of God, as fallen or unfallen, as to be
created or creatable, or as created but not fallen. But the
idea of things in the Divine mind is not as in ours. God understands
all things per genesis, we understand them per
analysin. Hence going back into the Divine mind, aborigine,
we first seek the status quo of the idea. In that idea came up
a vast number of individuals of the human specie as creatible,
some as fallen, others as unfallen. He did not create them to
cause them to fall —”

“But he made them fall that they might be created —”

“Now this idea considered as an active volition is God's
decree, and this decree going into effect creates man on the
earth; some predestined to everlasting life, some to everlasting
death. And here the Universalists do greatly err, not perceiving

that God is equally glorified in the damnation as the salvation
of his creatures: so St. Paul to the Romans, ix. 17, 18, 19.
My pipe is out, and we must apply to King Solomon to help us
in this matter.”

“Yea, verily,” responded the Master.

This King Solomon, we should explain, was a large silver
snuff-box, with a mother-of-pearl lid, on which was carved the
interview of the Queen of Sheba and the afore-mentioned king,
which Parson Welles carried in his deep waistcoat pocket,
and of the contents of which he and the Master partook freely
in the intervals of smoking.

“Why should man reply against God?” continued the
Parson.

“That would in truth be very unreasonable,” interposed the
Master.

“The riches of God's mercy do alone save us from the infernal
designs of reprobate men. Those who oppose the
divine decrees would soon have Satan in our midst.”

The Master sensible that some attention was due his little
pupil, here broke from the Parson, called Margaret, and introduced
her.

“Margaret Hart, yes,” replied the Parson. “Of the Hart
family in Litchfield, I knew her grandfather well. He was an
able defender of the truth.”

“She is from the Pond, sir,” added the Master. “Didymus
Hart, alias Pluck's daughter.”

“Yes, yes, of the Ishmaelitish race,” responded the Parson,
laughing. “If she could be baptized and jine the catechizing
class; appinted means whereby the Atonement is made efficacious.
Isabel,” he continued, addressing the companion of
Margaret, “you are sprung of a godly ancestry, and the blood
of many holy persons runs in your veins. See that ye despise
not the Divine goodness.”

The Master took Margaret about the room, and showed her
some of the books and pictures. Of the former were the
writings of the most distinguished Divines on both Continents;
there were “Prey taken from the Strong, or an Account of a
Recovery from the Dangerous Errors of Quakerism;” Thatcher's
Sermons on “The Eternal Punishment of the Finally
Impenitent;” “An Arrow against Profane and Promiscuous
Dancing, drawn out of the Quiver of the Scriptures;” “Owen
on Sin;” Randolph's “Revision of Socinian Arguments;”
&c. &c. The latter were chiefly faces of the old clergy;
some in large wigs, some in long flowing curls, some in skull-caps,

some with moustaches and imperials, all in bands and
robes.

Parson Welles was the contemporary of Bellamy, Chauncey,
Langdon, Cooper, Byles, Eliot, Forbes, Franklin, Goodrich,
Hopkins, West, Styles and others; with some of whom he was
on terms of familiar acquaintance. He was a pupil of Edwards,
and afterwards the friend and correspondent of that
Divine. Whitfield and his labors, the latter especially, he never
brooked, and would not suffer him to preach in Livingston.

The Master presently returned with Margaret to his room,
where she accomplished her errand, that of getting his advice
respecting something she was studying; when she parted with
her little friend, went back to the Green, found Obed, and they
proceeded on together to their homes. And there for the present
we leave her.