Hagar :: :: University of Virginia Library

Two or three days had passed. The rain was
over, and the atmosphere was clear and cool. Here
and there a belt of cloud darkened the horizon, or
whitened among the towering treetops like a ragged
fleece; but for the most part the sky was purely
and coldly blue, as if the late storm had swept it
to its furthest depths. Bird cages were set in the
southern windows, but the ruffled inmates sat
sullenly on their perches, or made at best but now
and then a quick and restless chirp, or low and
mournful twitter. Vines, with their leaves reddening,
but scarcely yet falling away, clung close to
the walls, and under the southern windows, and in
sheltered dooryards, some of the hardier flowers
were still in bloom. People were moving busily
to and fro; dense crowds filled the great thoroughfares;

carts, stages, and coaches, ladies in gay
attire, drawn forth by pleasure, and beggars in
their rags, to ask alms, and shivering barefooted
children, bearing great bundles, jostled aside by
the hurrying steps of the stout men of business.
Over the magnificent bay towered a forest of masts,
and traffic and her votaries blocked up the wharves.
But one great commercial city is very much like
another, and New York, at the time of which I
write, was not materially different from the New
York of to-day.

Before one of the most imposing residences of
the then fashionable quarter, were drawn up a long
row of mourning coaches. The closed blinds and
the open door of the hall, about which silently
hovered some half-dozen men with serious faces,
and the hearse, heavily draped with black cloth,
intimated to the careless passer his own mortality.

Within, the friends of the deceased were gathered
in silent decorum—not many, nor very sorrowful:
in truth, the melancholy pall threw its terrible
shadow only upon one heart—a heart that real
sorrow had touched for the first time—a heart
breaking with thoughts of the reproaches which
the white lips of the dead had never spoken. The
Catharine of whom the young man spoke in the
village tavern, she whose dying prayer was for
Frederick, lay beneath this customary solemn

pageantry, and the mourner whose arm rested
heavily but fondly on the coffin, was tormented
with the most painful memories of wrongs or of
neglected duties.

“Oh! if I had loved her better—if I had done
more to please and gratify her—if I had but returned
to stand by her bedside, to take our child in
my arms!” But these reflections were all too late,
and about the widowed husband closed the fixed
reality which shut away the light: silence—perpetual,
torturing silence. At the further end of the
room, and opposite the dead and the bereaved,
white hands unclosed the golden clasp of a Bible,
and a voice unspeakably sweet and soothing read,
“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be
afraid.”

Hastily the young man turned in the direction
of the speaker, and an expression of surprise came
over his countenance. The pastor of the church
of which his wife had been a member, and whom
he had never seen, had been sent for to perform
these last offices, and he was at once recognized as
the strange clergyman seen at midnight in the
village where we first encountered him.

A little distrustfully Frederick Wurth listened
at first, but when the fervent eloquence of the
minister's prayer fell on his heart, like oil on
troubled waves, prejudice was more and more subdued

till it was gone; for when the heart is very
sorrowful we are not often casuists, nor in the
presence of death, and of immortality, apt to be
infidels of the love of God. The eyes of the
preacher were full of mild pity; tears moistened
them more than once, and more than once his thin
lips trembled as he spoke of the inevitable end
of human life, and the resurrection, and the judgment
to come. The power of a most fine intelligence
was in all he said, and his own spirit
seemed impressed with a melancholy regret at the
loss of a friend, and with solemn awe at the thought
that she was yet near, purified of all earthly ill; and
among his hearers, who had hearts, was felt an
awakening thrill as he described her gentleness and
grace, and obedience to the heavenly will—and
their utter desolation, into which no comfort can
come, who have parted from dear friends who have
gone into the dark without faith, or any assurance
of rest.

Leaning against a door which led from the hall
into a room wherein the service was being performed,
stood Joseph Arnold, his eyes downcast, and
his arms folded across his bosom. Sometimes he
looked inquiringly at the preacher, knitting his
brows, and biting his lips, as one puzzled with
doubt; and then—at some tenderer or more daring
flight of eloquence—the expression of a serious interest

came over his face, and he stood as if bound
with a spell, in spite of his previously formed convictions
in regard to the preacher.

“A man of fine talents,” whispered a little plethoric
person to Arnold, fanning himself with his
hat as he withdrew from peering into the dim parlor.
“A man of fine talents: I know of no one
among us who gives greater promise of eminence.”

“Who is he?” asked the person addressed, calmly
raising his eyes, and surveying the satin vest of the
very rotund little communicative gentleman.

“Ah, sir! don't you know?” and the tone indicated,
in spite of the polite manner, that in his
opinion the inquirer was much behind the times, at
least in matters ecclesiastical.

“No, I don't know him,” replied Arnold; a half
smile stealing over his face, for he felt that he could
afford to smile, and also acknowledge ignorance;
and though he might have elevated himself in the
eyes of his new friend by adding that he was a
stranger in the city, he forebore to avail himself of
such an advantage, or to offer any further observation.

“Pardon me,” said the little man, somewhat disconcerted,
“I supposed every one had heard of the
famous preacher Mr. Warburton.”

“Nathan Warburton of the Blank street church?”
asked Arnold; “I have heard of him.”

“Never seen him, then? Humph!”

“Yes, I have seen him before.”

“Very remarkable that having once seen you
should forget him; he is not a person to forget, sir,
I fancy.”

“You are quite correct; I think he is not a
person to forget;” and folding his arms, the young
man looked toward the preacher, seeming no way
inclined to continue the conversation. Having
learned his name, he turned to listen with a new
interest.

The slant rays of the sinking sun fell on the
coffin, as it was removed to the hearse; the stricken
husband was assisted into the first carriage, accompanied
by an elderly female relative, and his
friend Joseph Arnold; and men and women hastily
climbed into the remaining coaches; some from a
sense of duty, and some for the sake of a ride in
the country; while, folding his arms, and lowering
his hat above his brows, the young clergyman gazed
on the preparations for the procession, and without
lifting his eyes to the many who waited for the
pressure of his hand and his smile, at length, with
his habitual light and stealthy tread, entered the
beautiful but simple black phaeton in which he was
to leave the scene. In a few moments, with decent
solemnity, every one had departed.

Suddenly the window of an upper chamber was

opened, the curtain drawn aside, and Araminta
Crum, holding the little orphan in her arms, looked
out.

“Poor thing!” she said, “she is better off, for this
is a world of trouble.” And in a moment she
added, “Poor Mrs. Wurth! if she had taken my
advice and procured another physician, she might
be alive and well. I never did like that doctor.
But, after all, he may be as good as any other doctor,
or any other man, for all I know—they are all
wicked tyrants.”

“Why, Miss Crum!” exclaimed Mrs. Goodell, in
a sort of sweet surprise, as she rummaged through
a bureau, and took thence every article belonging
to the late Mrs. Wurth.

Mrs. Goodell was the upper domestic, and on the
decease of her mistress she stepped at once into a
new position. The sound of the funeral carriages
was not yet still when she gave orders for the preparation
of supper, and bringing two huge trunks
from a dusty closet, began to dispose of the effects
of the departed.

“There is no knowing,” she said, “into whose
hands they may fall;” and she was determined to
secure for the baby, when she should be grown, one
good black silk dress, and certain other things
which she specified, including a portion of the
family silver that was in her keeping.

“Really,” said Miss Crum, “I don't see how you
can feel such an interest in the welfare of this child;
likely enough she will have a stepmother that will
teach her to hate you.”

“Why, Miss Crum!” said the astonished Mrs.
Goodell, heaping up a column of napkins. “These
must be marked in the baby's name,” she said,
counting them by touching each one with the fore-finger
of her left hand. “I wonder what her name
will be?”

“I am sure I don't care whether she has any
name at all or not,” replied the nurse, rocking listlessly
to and fro.

“Why, Miss Crum! you want the baby to have
a pretty name, surely?”

But Miss Crum insisted that she cared not a fig
whether it had any name, ugly or beautiful, adding
that she was no less indifferent to any thing else or
to every body else; and in the conclusion of the
sentence there seemed a bitter meaning.

“Why, Miss Crum! I am afraid you are a going
to have a spell of sickness!” and the provident
Mrs. Goodell snapped the lock of the trunk she had
been filling, and the black silk dress was secured
for the baby.

“Oh dear me!” said the venerable maiden, hitching
her chair from a streak of sunshine, “the day
will never end; it is a good long hour to twilight.”

“My dear child,” said the housekeeper, who, by
the way, was much younger than the nurse, “you
are certainly going to have a spell of sickness. One
hour is no longer than another: it all depends on
the mind. But you must drink a strong cup of tea,
and have a good night's rest, and to-morrow you
will feel like another person. A cup of tea is my
cure-all, Miss Crum.”

But the nurse insisted that tea would only make
her feel worse, and that in fact she did n't care if
she was a going to have a spell of sickness; she
would as soon be out of the world as in it. It was
a weary, dreary place at best, she said, and for her
it had no charms.

“Why, Miss Crum!” and the housekeeper pressed
her hand to her forehead for a moment, as if trying
to recall something; and leaving the open trunk
from which she had blown the dust, she slipped
away to her own room, whence she presently returned
with a dingy little pamphlet, the cover of
which was gone, and the leaves curled, indicating
long usage. Turning over page after page, she at
length paused, and bending her eyes close upon the
book, apparently read, with the deepest interest.

“I knew it,” she said directly, “I knew it.”

“What did you know?” asked the nurse, taking
both the baby's feet in one hand, and calling it a
“precious little toad.”

“I knew you would be sick,” the housekeeper
replied; “I had such a strange dream last night.”

“What was it—about me?” and the nurse looked
frightened.

“No, not about you; it was about cows. And,”
continued the housekeeper, “I have known this
book to tell so many things that come out true!
This book,” she said, reopening it, “was formerly
the property of Bonaparte, was consulted by him
every day, and his success in life is said to have
been mainly caused by it. It can be neither given
away nor lent, but must be either bought or sold.”

“But the dream, the dream,” said the nurse, “and
my sickness; I think I feel a touch of vertigo.”

“Well, I dreamed of seeing a great many cows,”
said the housekeeper, seating herself on the carpet
in the midst of frocks, bonnets, shoes, perfumes,
gloves, thimbles, and cushions; “and the book says
to dream of cows, if they be milch cows, sleek and
fat, is a good sign, indicating that some relative
will shortly leave you money; but if they be poor
and lean—”

The return of the funeral carriages interrupted
her, and hastily going below, Miss Crum warded
off her approaching illness, and it may be even
death, with melancholy, pleasing reveries. It was
a bad world, it was—and men were growing more
and more heartless and absurd, and the apprecitation

of excellence, in ladies, seemed to her
quite obsolete; nothing could please the men any
more but the unmeaning faces of young girls—
mere children; it was not so once—but now, she
had no doubt that that ridiculous and starched up
doctor — She paused, and a gentler emotion was
betrayed by a relaxing of the fixed expression of
her lips; there was at least one more widower in
the world! and widowers —