 | The snow-image |  |
MAIN-STREET.
A respectable-looking individual makes his bow,
and addresses the public. In my daily walks along the
principal street of my native town, it has often occurred
to me, that, if its growth from infancy upward, and
the vicissitude of characteristic scenes that have passed
along this thoroughfare during the more than two
centuries of its existence, could be presented to the
eye in a shifting panorama, it would be an exceedingly
effective method of illustrating the march of time. Acting
on this idea, I have contrived a certain pictorial
exhibition, somewhat in the nature of a puppet-show, by
means of which I propose to call up the multiform and
many-colored Past before the spectator, and show him the
ghosts of his forefathers, amid a succession of historic
incidents, with no greater trouble than the turning of a
crank. Be pleased, therefore, my indulgent patrons, to
walk into the show-room, and take your seats before
yonder mysterious curtain. The little wheels and springs
of my machinery have been well oiled; a multitude of
puppets are dressed in character, representing all varieties
of fashion, from the Puritan cloak and jerkin to the
latest Oak Hall coat; the lamps are trimmed, and shall
brighten into noontide sunshine, or fade away in moonlight,
or muffle their brilliancy in a November cloud, as
the nature of the scene may require; and, in short, the
should go wrong, — as, for instance, the misplacing
of a picture, whereby the people and events of one century
might be thrust into the middle of another; or the
breaking of a wire, which would bring the course of
time to a sudden period, — barring, I say, the casualties
to which such a complicated piece of mechanism is liable,
— I flatter myself, ladies and gentlemen, that the
performance will elicit your generous approbation.
Ting-a-ting-ting! goes the bell; the curtain rises; and
we behold — not, indeed, the Main-street — but the track
of leaf-strewn forest-land over which its dusty pavement
is hereafter to extend.
You perceive, at a glance, that this is the ancient and
primitive wood,— the ever-youthful and venerably old,—
verdant with new twigs, yet hoary, as it were, with the
snowfall of innumerable years, that have accumulated
upon its intermingled branches. The white man's axe
has never smitten a single tree; his footstep has never
crumpled a single one of the withered leaves, which all
the autumns since the flood have been harvesting beneath.
Yet, see! along through the vista of impending boughs,
there is already a faintly-traced path, running nearly
east and west, as if a prophecy or foreboding of the future
street had stolen into the heart of the solemn old wood.
Onward goes this hardly perceptible track, now ascending
over a natural swell of land, now subsiding gently
into a hollow; traversed here by a little streamlet, which
glitters like a snake through the gleam of sunshine, and
quickly hides itself among the underbrush, in its quest
for the neighboring cove; and impeded there by the
massy corpse of a giant of the forest, which had lived
mere old age, and lies buried in the new vegetation that
is born of its decay. What footsteps can have worn
this half-seen path? Hark! Do we not hear them now
rustling softly over the leaves? We discern an Indian
woman, — a majestic and queenly woman, or else her
spectral image does not represent her truly, — for this is
the great Squaw Sachem, whose rule, with that of her
sons, extends from Mystic to Agawam. That red chief,
who stalks by her side, is Wappacowet, her second husband,
the priest and magician, whose incantations shall
hereafter affright the pale-faced settlers with grisly phantoms,
dancing and shrieking in the woods, at midnight.
But greater would be the affright of the Indian necromancer,
if, mirrored in the pool of water at his feet, he
could catch a prophetic glimpse of the noon-day marvels
which the white man is destined to achieve; if he could
see, as in a dream, the stone-front of the stately hall,
which will cast its shadow over this very spot; if he
could be aware that the future edifice will contain a noble
Museum, where, among countless curiosities of earth and
sea, a few Indian arrow-heads shall be treasured up as
memorials of a vanished race!
No such forebodings disturb the Squaw Sachem and
Wappacowet. They pass on, beneath the tangled shade,
holding high talk on matters of state and religion, and
imagine, doubtless, that their own system of affairs will
endure forever. Meanwhile, how full of its own proper
life is the scene that lies around them! The gray
squirrel runs up the trees, and rustles among the upper
branches. Was not that the leap of a deer? And there
is the whirr of a partridge! Methinks, too, I catch the
yonder impervious density of underbrush. So, there,
amid the murmur of boughs, go the Indian queen and
the Indian priest; while the gloom of the broad wilderness
impends over them, and its sombre mystery invests
them as with something preternatural; and only momentary
streaks of quivering sunlight, once in a great
while, find their way down, and glimmer among the
feathers in their dusky hair. Can it be that the thronged
street of a city will ever pass into this twilight solitude,
— over those soft heaps of the decaying tree-trunks,
and through the swampy places, green with water-moss,
and penetrate that hopeless entanglement of great
trees, which have been uprooted and tossed together by
a whirlwind? It has been a wilderness from the creation.
Must it not be a wilderness forever?
Here an acidulous-looking gentleman in blue glasses,
with bows of Berlin steel, who has taken a seat at the
extremity of the front row, begins, at this early stage of
the exhibition, to criticize.
“The whole affair is a manifest catch-penny!” observes
he, scarcely under his breath. “The trees look more
like weeds in a garden than a promitive forest; the
Squaw Sachem and Wappacowet are stiff in their paste-board
joints; and the squirrels, the deer, and the wolf,
move with all the grace of a child's wooden monkey,
sliding up and down a stick.”
“I am obliged to you, sir, for the candor of your
remarks,” replies the showman, with a bow. “Perhaps
they are just. Human art has its limits, and we must
now and then ask a little aid from the spectator's imagination.”
“You will get no such aid from mine,” responds the
critic. “I make it a point to see things precisely as they
are. But come! go ahead! the stage is waiting!”
The showman proceeds.
Casting our eyes again over the scene, we perceive
that strangers have found their way into the solitary
place. In more than one spot, among the trees, an
upheaved axe is glittering in the sunshine. Roger
Conant, the first settler in Naumkeag, has built his
dwelling, months ago, on the border of the forest-path;
and at this moment he comes eastward through the vista
of woods, with his gun over his shoulder, bringing home
the choice portions of a deer. His stalwart figure, clad
in a leathern jerkin and breeches of the same, strides
sturdily onward, with such an air of physical force and
energy that we might almost expect the very trees to
stand aside, and give him room to pass. And so, indeed,
they must; for, humble as is his name in history, Roger
Conant still is of that class of men who do not merely
find, but make, their place in the system of human
affairs; a man of thoughtful strength, he has planted
the germ of a city. There stands his habitation, showing
in its rough architecture some features of the Indian
wigwam, and some of the log cabin, and somewhat, too,
of the straw-thatched cottage in Old England, where this
good yeoman had his birth and breeding. The dwelling
is surrounded by a cleared space of a few acres, where
Indian corn grows thrivingly among the stumps of the
trees; while the dark forest hems it in, and seems to
gaze silently and solemnly, as if wondering at the
breadth of sunshine which the white man spreads around
gazing and wondering too.
Within the door of the cottage you discern the wife,
with her ruddy English cheek. She is singing, doubtless,
a psalm tune, at her household work; or, perhaps
she sighs at the remembrance of the cheerful gossip, and
all the merry social life, of her native village beyond the
vast and melancholy sea. Yet the next moment she
laughs, with sympathetic glee, at the sports of her little
tribe of children; and soon turns round, with the homelook
in her face, as her husband's foot is heard approaching
the rough-hewn threshold. How sweet must it be
for those who have an Eden in their hearts, like Roger
Conant and his wife, to find a new world to project it
into, as they have, instead of dwelling among old haunts
of men, where so many household fires have been kindled
and burnt out, that the very glow of happiness has
something dreary in it! Not that this pair are alone in
their wild Eden, for here comes Goodwife Massey, the
young spouse of Jeffrey Massey, from her home hard by,
with an infant at her breast. Dame Conant has another
of like age; and it shall hereafter be one of the disputed
points of history which of these two babies was the first
town-born child.
But see! Roger Conant has other neighbors within
view. Peter Palfrey likewise has built himself a house,
and so has Balch, and Norman, and Woodbury. Their
dwellings, indeed, — such is the ingenious contrivance
of this piece of pictorial mechanism, — seem to have
arisen, at various points of the scene, even while we
have been looking at it. The forest-track, trodden more
and more by the hob-nailed shoes of these sturdy and
never could have acquired from the light tread of a hundred
times as many Indian moccasins. It will be a
street, anon. As we observe it now, it goes onward
from one clearing to another, here plunging into a
shadowy strip of woods, there open to the sunshine, but
everywhere showing a decided line, along which human
interests have begun to hold their career. Over yonder
swampy spot, two trees have been felled, and laid side
by side, to make a causeway. In another place, the axe
has cleared away a confused intricacy of fallen trees and
clustered boughs, which had been tossed together by a
hurricane. So now the little children, just beginning
to run alone, may trip along the path, and not often
stumble over an impediment, unless they stray from it
to gather wood-berries beneath the trees. And, besides
the feet of grown people and children, there are the
cloven hoofs of a small herd of cows, who seek their
subsistence from the native grasses, and help to deepen
the track of the future thoroughfare. Goats also browse
along it, and nibble at the twigs that thrust themselves
across the way. Not seldom, in its more secluded portions,
where the black shadow of the forest strives to
hide the trace of human footsteps, stalks a gaunt wolf,
on the watch for a kid or a young calf; or fixes his
hungry gaze on the group of children gathering berries,
and can hardly forbear to rush upon them. And the
Indians, coming from their distant wigwams to view the
white man's settlement, marvel at the deep track which
he makes, and perhaps are saddened by a flitting presentiment
that this heavy tread will find its way over
all the land; and that the wild woods, the wild wolf,
Even so shall it be. The pavements of the Main-street
must be laid over the red man's grave.
Behold! here is a spectacle which should be ushered
in by the peal of trumpets, if Naumkeag had ever yet
heard that cheery music, and by the roar of cannon,
echoing among the woods. A procession, — for, by its
dignity, as marking an epoch in the history of the street,
it deserves that name, — a procession advances along
the pathway. The good ship Abigail has arrived from
England, bringing wares and merchandise, for the comfort
of the inhabitants, and traffic with the Indians;
bringing passengers too, and, more important than all, a
governor for the new settlement. Roger Conant and
Peter Palfrey, with their companions, have been to the
shore to welcome him; and now, with such honor and
triumph as their rude way of life permits, are escorting
the sea-flushed voyagers to their habitations. At the
point where Endicott enters upon the scene, two venerable
trees unite their branches high above his head;
thus forming a triumphal arch of living verdure, beneath
which he pauses, with his wife leaning on his arm, to
catch the first impression of their new-found home. The
old settlers gaze not less earnestly at him, than he at the
hoary woods and the rough surface of the clearings.
They like his bearded face, under the shadow of the
broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned Puritan hat; — a
visage resolute, grave, and thoughtful, yet apt to kindle
with that glow of a cheerful spirit by which men of
strong character are enabled to go joyfully on their
proper tasks. His form, too, as you see it, in a doublet
and hose of sad-colored cloth, is of a manly make, fit for
hangs from his leathern belt. His aspect is a better
warrant for the ruler's office than the parchment commission
which he bears, however fortified it may be with
the broad seal of the London council. Peter Palfrey
nods to Roger Conant. “The worshipful Court of
Assistants have done wisely,” say they between themselves.
“They have chosen for our governor a man
out of a thousand.” Then they toss up their hats, —
they, and all the uncouth figures of their company, most
of whom are clad in skins, inasmuch as their old kersey
and linsey-woolsey garments have been torn and tattered
by many a long month's wear, — they all toss up their
hats, and salute their new governor and captain with a
hearty English shout of welcome. We seem to hear it
with our own ears, so perfectly is the action represented
in this life-like, this almost magic picture!
But have you observed the lady who leans upon the
arm of Endicott? — a rose of beauty from an English
garden, now to be transplanted to a fresher soil. It may
be that, long years — centuries, indeed — after this fair
flower shall have decayed, other flowers of the same race
will appear in the same soil, and gladden other generations
with hereditary beauty. Does not the vision
haunt us yet? Has not Nature kept the mould
unbroken, deeming it a pity that the idea should vanish
from mortal sight forever, after only once assuming
earthly substance? Do we not recognize, in that fair
woman's face, the model of features which still beam, at
happy moments, on what was then the woodland pathway,
but has long since grown into a busy street?
“This is too ridiculous! — positively insufferable!”
disapprobation. “Here is a pasteboard figure, such as a
child would cut out of a card, with a pair of very dull
scissors; and the fellow modestly requests us to see in
it the prototype of hereditary beauty!”
“But, sir, you have not the proper point of view,”
remarks the showman. “You sit altogether too near to
get the best effect of my pictorial exhibition. Pray,
oblige me by removing to this other bench, and I venture
to assure you the proper light and shadow will
transform the spectacle into quite another thing.”
“Pshaw!” replies the critic: “I want no other light
and shade. I have already told you that it is my business
to see things just as they are.”
“I would suggest to the author of this ingenious
exhibition,” observes a gentlemanly person, who has
shown signs of being much interested, “I would suggest,
that Anna Gower, the first wife of Governor Endicott,
and who came with him from England, left no posterity;
and that, consequently, we cannot be indebted to that
honorable lady for any specimens of feminine loveliness
now extant among us.”
Having nothing to allege against this genealogical
objection, the showman points again to the scene.
During this little interruption, you perceive that the
Anglo-Saxon energy — as the phrase now goes — has
been at work in the spectacle before us. So many
chimneys now send up their smoke, that it begins to
have the aspect of a village street; although everything
is so inartificial and inceptive, that it seems as if one
returning wave of the wild nature might overwhelm it
all. But the one edifice which gives the pledge of permanence
of the picture. There stands the meeting-house, a
small structure, low-roofed, without a spire, and built of
rough timber, newly hewn, with the sap still in the
logs, and here and there a strip of bark adhering to
them. A meaner temple was never consecrated to the
worship of the Deity. With the alternative of kneeling
beneath the awful vault of the firmament, it is strange
that men should creep into this pent-up nook, and expect
God's presence there. Such, at least, one would
imagine, might be the feeling of these forest-settlers,
accustomed, as they had been, to stand under the dim
arches of vast cathedrals, and to offer up their hereditary
worship in the old, ivy-covered churches of rural
England, around which lay the bones of many generations
of their forefathers. How could they dispense
with the carved altar-work? — how, with the pictured
windows, where the light of common day was hallowed
by being transmitted through the glorified figures of
saints? — how, with the lofty roof, imbued, as it must
have been, with the prayers that had gone upward for
centuries? — how, with the rich peal of the solemn
organ, rolling along the aisles, pervading the whole
church, and sweeping the soul away on a flood of
audible religion? They needed nothing of all this.
Their house of worship, like their ceremonial, was
naked, simple, and severe. But the zeal of a recovered
faith burned like a lamp within their hearts, enriching
everything around them with its radiance; making of
these new walls, and this narrow compass, its own cathedral;
and being, in itself, that spiritual mystery and
experience, of which sacred architecture, pictured windows,
imperfect symbols. All was well, so long as their lamps
were freshly kindled at the heavenly flame. After a
while, however, whether in their time or their children's,
these lamps began to burn more dimly, or with a less
genuine lustre; and then it might be seen how hard,
cold and confined, was their system, — how like an iron
cage was that which they called Liberty.
Too much of this. Look again at the picture, and
observe how the aforesaid Anglo-Saxon energy is now
trampling along the street, and raising a positive cloud
of dust beneath its sturdy footsteps. For there the
carpenters are building a new house, the frame of which
was hewn and fitted in England, of English oak, and
sent hither on shipboard; and here a blacksmith makes
huge clang and clatter on his anvil, shaping out tools and
weapons; and yonder a wheelwright, who boasts himself
a London workman, regularly bred to his handicraft,
is fashioning a set of wagon-wheels, the track of
which shall soon be visible. The wild forest is shrinking
back; the street has lost the aromatic odor of the
pine-trees, and of the sweet fern that grew beneath them.
The tender and modest wild-flowers, those gentle children
of savage nature that grew pale beneath the ever-brooding
shade, have shrunk away and disappeared, like stars
that vanish in the breadth of light. Gardens are fenced
in, and display pumpkin-beds and rows of cabbages and
beans; and, though the governor and the minister both
view them with a disapproving eye, plants of broadleaved
tobacco, which the cultivators are enjoined to use
privily, or not at all. No wolf, for a year past, has
been heard to bark, or known to range among the dwellings,
plash of blood beneath it, is now affixed to the portal of
the meeting-house. The partridge has ceased to run
across the too-frequented path. Of all the wild life that
used to throng here, only the Indians still come into the
settlement, bringing the skins of beaver and otter, bear
and elk, which they sell to Endicott for the wares of
England. And there is little John Massey, the son of
Jeffrey Massey and first-born of Naumkeag, playing beside
his father's threshold, a child of six or seven years old.
Which is the better-grown infant, — the town or the boy?
The red men have become aware that the street is no
longer free to them, save by the sufferance and permission
of the settlers. Often, to impress them with an
awe of English power, there is a muster and training
of the town-forces, and a stately march of the mail-clad
band, like this which we now see advancing up the
street. There they come, fifty of them, or more; all
with their iron breastplates and steel caps well burnished,
and glimmering bravely against the sun; their ponderous
muskets on their shoulders, their bandaliers about
their waists, their lighted matches in their hands, and
the drum and fife playing cheerily before them. See!
do they not step like martial men? Do they not
manœuvre like soldiers who have seen stricken fields?
And well they may; for this band is composed of precisely
such materials as those with which Cromwell is
preparing to beat down the strength of a kingdom; and
his famous regiment of Ironsides might be recruited from
just such men. In everything, at this period, New England
was the essential spirit and flower of that which
was about to become uppermost in the mother-country.
have accrued to him in English history, by crossing the
Atlantic with our forefathers. Many a valiant captain,
who might have been foremost at Marston Moor or
Naseby, exhausted his martial ardor in the command of
a log-built fortress, like that which you observe on the
gently rising ground at the right of the pathway, — its
banner fluttering in the breeze, and the culverins and
sakers showing their deadly muzzles over the rampart.
A multitude of people were now thronging to New
England: some, because the ancient and ponderous
frame-work of Church and State threatened to crumble
down upon their heads; others, because they despaired
of such a downfall. Among those who came to Naumkeag
were men of history and legend, whose feet leave
a track of brightness along any pathway which they
have trodden. You shall behold their life-like images,
— their spectres, if you choose so to call them, — passing,
encountering with a familiar nod, stopping to converse
together, praying, bearing weapons, laboring or
resting from their labors, in the Main-street. Here,
now, comes Hugh Peters, an earnest, restless man,
walking swiftly, as being impelled by that fiery activity of
nature which shall hereafter thrust him into the conflict
of dangerous affairs, make him the chaplain and counsellor
of Cromwell, and finally bring him to a bloody
end. He pauses, by the meeting-house, to exchange a
greeting with Roger Williams, whose face indicates,
methinks, a gentler spirit, kinder and more expansive,
than that of Peters; yet not less active for what he discerns
to be the will of God, or the welfare of mankind.
And look! here is a guest for Endicott, coming forth out
Boston, and which, with its rude branches, has caught
hold of his attire, and has wet his feet with its swamps
and streams. Still there is something in his mild and
venerable, though not aged presence, — a propriety, an
equilibrium, in Governor Winthrop's nature, — that causes
the disarray of his costume to be unnoticed, and gives
us the same impression as if he were clad in such grave
and rich attire as we may suppose him to have worn in
the Council-chamber of the colony. Is not this characteristic
wonderfully perceptible in our spectral representative
of his person? But what dignitary is this
crossing from the other side to greet the governor? A
stately personage, in a dark velvet cloak, with a hoary
beard, and a gold chain across his breast; he has the
authoritative port of one who has filled the highest civic
station in the first of cities. Of all men in the world,
we should least expect to meet the Lord Mayor of London
— as Sir Richard Saltonstall has been, once and
again — in a forest-bordered settlement of the western
wilderness.
Further down the street, we see Emanuel Downing, a
grave and worthy citizen, with his son George, a stripling
who has a career before him; his shrewd and quick
capacity and pliant conscience shall not only exalt him
high, but secure him from a downfall. Here is another
figure, on whose characteristic make and expressive
action I will stake the credit of my pictorial puppet-show.
Have you not already detected a quaint, sly
humor in that face, — an eccentricity in the manner, —
a certain indescribable waywardness, — all the marks, in
short, of an original man, unmistakably impressed, yet
Nathaniel Ward, the minister of Ipswich, but better
remembered as the simple cobbler of Agawam. He
hammered his sole so faithfully, and stitched his upper-leather
so well, that the shoe is hardly yet worn out,
though thrown aside for some two centuries past. And
next, among these Puritans and Roundheads, we observe
the very model of a Cavalier, with the curling lovelock,
the fantastically trimmed beard, the embroidery, the
ornamented rapier, the gilded dagger, and all other
foppishnesses that distinguished the wild gallants who
rode headlong to their overthrow in the cause of King
Charles. This is Morton of Merry Mount, who has
come hither to hold a council with Endicott, but will
shortly be his prisoner. Yonder pale, decaying figure
of a white-robed woman, who glides slowly along the
street, is the Lady Arabella, looking for her own grave
in the virgin soil. That other female form, who seems
to be talking — we might almost say preaching or
expounding — in the centre of a group of profoundly
attentive auditors, is Ann Hutchinson. And here comes
Vane. —
“But, my dear sir,” interrupts the same gentleman
who before questioned the showman's genealogical accuracy,
“allow me to observe that these historical person-ages
could not possibly have met together in the Main-street.
They might, and probably did, all visit our old
town, at one time or another, but not simultaneously;
and you have fallen into anachronisms that I positively
shudder to think of!”
“The fellow,” adds the scarcely civil critic, “has
learned a bead-roll of historic names, whom he lugs into
without caring whether they were contemporaries or not,
— and sets them all by the ears together. But was
there ever such a fund of impudence? To hear his
running commentary, you would suppose that these
miserable slips of painted pasteboard, with hardly the
remotest outlines of the human figure, had all the character
and expression of Michael Angelo's pictures.
Well! go on, sir!”
“Sir, you break the illusion of the scene,” mildly
remonstrates the showman.
“Illusion! What illusion?” rejoins the critic, with a
contemptuous snort. “On the word of a gentleman, I
see nothing illusive in the wretchedly bedaubed sheet of
canvas that forms your back-ground, or in these paste-board
slips that hitch and jerk along the front. The
only illusion, permit me to say, is in the puppet-showman's
tongue, — and that but a wretched one, into the
bargain!”
“We public men,” replies the showman, meekly,
“must lay our account, sometimes, to meet an uncandid
severity of criticism. But — merely for your own pleasure,
sir — let me entreat you to take another point of
view. Sit further back, by that young lady, in whose
face I have watched the reflection of every changing
scene; only oblige me by sitting there; and, take my
word for it, the slips of pasteboard shall assume spiritual
life, and the bedaubed canvas become an airy and
changeable reflex of what it purports to represent.”
“I know better,” retorts the critic, settling himself in
his seat, with sullen but self-complacent immovableness.
remaining precisely where I am.”
The showman bows, and waves his hand; and, at the
signal, as if time and vicissitude had been awaiting his
permission to move onward, the mimic street becomes
alive again.
Years have rolled over our scene, and converted the
forest-track into a dusty thoroughfare, which, being
intersected with lanes and cross-paths, may fairly be
designated as the Main-street. On the ground-sites of
many of the log-built sheds, into which the first settlers
crept for shelter, houses of quaint architecture have now
risen. These later edifices are built, as you see, in one
generally accordant style, though with such subordinate
variety as keeps the beholder's curiosity excited, and
causes each structure, like its owner's character, to produce
its own peculiar impression. Most of them have
one huge chimney in the centre, with flues so vast that
it must have been easy for the witches to fly out of
them, as they were wont to do, when bound on an aërial
visit to the Black Man in the forest. Around this great
chimney the wooden house clusters itself, in a whole
community of gable-ends, each ascending into its own
separate peak; the second story, with its lattice-windows,
projecting over the first; and the door, which is perhaps
arched, provided on the outside with an iron hammer,
wherewith the visiter's hand may give a thundering rat-a-tat.
The timber frame-work of these houses, as
compared with those of recent date, is like the skeleton
of an old giant, beside the frail bones of a modern man
of fashion. Many of them, by the vast strength and
soundness of their oaken substance, have been preserved
stability of brick and stone; so that, in all the progressive
decay and continual reconstruction of the street,
down to our own days, we shall still behold these old
edifices occupying their long-accustomed sites. For
instance, on the upper corner of that green lane which
shall hereafter be North-street, we see the Curwen
House, newly built, with the carpenters still at work on
the roof, nailing down the last sheaf of shingles. On
the lower corner stands another dwelling, — destined, at
some period of its existence, to be the abode of an
unsuccessful alchemist, — which shall likewise survive
to our own generation, and perhaps long outlive it.
Thus, through the medium of these patriarchal edifices,
we have now established a sort of kindred and hereditary
acquaintance with the Main-street.
Great as is the transformation produced by a short
term of years, each single day creeps through the Puritan
settlement sluggishly enough. It shall pass before
your eyes, condensed into the space of a few moments.
The gray light of early morning is slowly diffusing
itself over the scene; and the bellman, whose office it is
to cry the hour at the street-corners, rings the last peal
upon his hand-bell, and goes wearily homewards, with the
owls, the bats, and other creatures of the night. Lattices
are thrust back on their hinges, as if the town were
opening its eyes, in the summer morning. Forth stumbles
the still drowsy cow-herd, with his horn; putting
which to his lips, it emits a bellowing bray, impossible to
be represented in the picture, but which reaches the
pricked-up ears of every cow in the settlement, and tells
her that the dewy pasture-hour is come. House after
chimney, like frosty breath from living nostrils; and as
those white wreaths of smoke, though impregnated with
earthy admixtures, climb skyward, so, from each dwelling,
does the morning worship — its spiritual essence
bearing up its human imperfection — find its way to the
heavenly Father's throne.
The breakfast-hour being passed, the inhabitants do
not, as usual, go to their fields or workshops, but remain
within doors; or perhaps walk the street, with a grave
sobriety, yet a disengaged and unburthened aspect, that
belongs neither to a holiday nor a Sabbath. And,
indeed, this passing day is neither, nor is it a common
week-day, although partaking of all the three. It is the
Thursday Lecture; an institution which New England
has long ago relinquished, and almost forgotten, yet
which it would have been better to retain, as bearing
relations to both the spiritual and ordinary life, and
bringing each acquainted with the other. The tokens
of its observance, however, which here meet our eyes,
are of rather a questionable cast. It is, in one sense, a
day of public shame; the day on which transgressors,
who have made themselves liable to the minor severities
of the Puritan law, receive their reward of ignominy.
At this very moment, the constable has bound an idle
fellow to the whipping-post, and is giving him his
deserts with a cat-o'-nine-tails. Ever since sunrise,
Daniel Fairfield has been standing on the steps of the
meeting-house, with a halter about his neck, which he is
condemned to wear visibly throughout his lifetime;
Dorothy Talby is chained to a post at the corner of
Prison-lane, with the hot sun blazing on her matronly
against her husband; while, through the bars of that
great wooden cage, in the centre of the scene, we discern
either a human being or a wild beast, or both in one,
whom this public infamy causes to roar, and gnash his
teeth, and shake the strong oaken bars, as if he would
break forth, and tear in pieces the little children who
have been peeping at him. Such are the profitable
sights that serve the good people to while away the
earlier part of lecture-day. Betimes in the forenoon, a
traveller — the first traveller that has come hitherward
this morning — rides slowly into the street, on his patient
steed. He seems a clergyman; and, as he draws near,
we recognize the minister of Lynn, who was preengaged
to lecture here, and has been revolving his
discourse, as he rode through the hoary wilderness.
Behold, now, the whole town thronging into the meeting-house,
mostly with such sombre visages that the
sunshine becomes little better than a shadow when it
falls upon them. There go the Thirteen Men, grim
rulers of a grim community! There goes John Massey,
the first town-born child, now a youth of twenty, whose
eye wanders with peculiar interest towards that buxom
damsel who comes up the steps at the same instant.
There hobbles Goody Foster, a sour and bitter old
beldam, looking as if she went to curse, and not to pray,
and whom many of her neighbors suspect of taking an
occasional airing on a broomstick. There, too, slinking
shamefacedly in, you observe that same poor do-nothing
and good-for-nothing whom we saw castigated just now
at the whipping-post. Last of all, there goes the tithing-man,
lugging in a couple of small boys, whom he has
lane. What native of Naumkeag, whose recollections
go back more than thirty years, does not still shudder at
that dark ogre of his infancy, who perhaps had long
ceased to have an actual existence, but still lived in his
childish belief, in a horrible idea, and in the nurse's
threat, as the Tidy Man!
It will be hardly worth our while to wait two, or it
may be three, turnings of the hour-glass, for the conclusion
of the lecture. Therefore, by my control over light
and darkness, I cause the dusk, and then the starless
night, to brood over the street; and summon forth again
the bellman, with his lantern casting a gleam about his
footsteps, to pace wearily from corner to corner, and
shout drowsily the hour to drowsy or dreaming ears.
Happy are we, if for nothing else, yet because we did
not live in those days. In truth, when the first novelty
and stir of spirit had subsided, — when the new settlement,
between the forest-border and the sea, had become
actually a little town, — its daily life must have trudged
onward with hardly anything to diversify and enliven
it, while also its rigidity could not fail to cause miserable
distortions of the moral nature. Such a life was sinister
to the intellect, and sinister to the heart; especially
when one generation had bequeathed its religious gloom,
and the counterfeit of its religious ardor, to the next;
for these characteristics, as was inevitable, assumed the
form both of hypocrisy and exaggeration, by being
inherited from the example and precept of other human
beings, and not from an original and spiritual source.
The sons and grandchildren of the first settlers were a
race of lower and narrower souls than their progenitors
not superstitious, not even fanatical; and endowed, if
any men of that age were, with a far-seeing worldly
sagacity. But it was impossible for the succeeding race
to grow up, in heaven's freedom, beneath the discipline
which their gloomy energy of character had established;
nor, it may be, have we even yet thrown off all the
unfavorable influences which, among many good ones,
were bequeathed to us by our Puritan forefathers. Let
us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and
let each successive generation thank him, not less fervently,
for being one step further from them in the march
of ages.
“What is all this?” cries the critic. “A sermon? If
so, it is not in the bill.”
“Very true,” replies the showman; “and I ask pardon
of the audience.”
Look now at the street, and observe a strange people
entering it. Their garments are torn and disordered,
their faces haggard, their figures emaciated; for they
have made their way hither through pathless deserts,
suffering hunger and hardship, with no other shelter than
a hollow tree, the lair of a wild beast, or an Indian wigwam.
Nor, in the most inhospitable and dangerous of
such lodging-places, was there half the peril that awaits
them in this thoroughfare of Christian men, with those
secure dwellings and warm hearths on either side of it,
and yonder meeting-house as the central object of the
scene. These wanderers have received from Heaven a
gift that, in all epochs of the world, has brought with it
the penalties of mortal suffering and persecution, scorn,
enmity, and death itself;—a gift that, thus terrible to its
since its very existence seems to threaten the overthrow
of whatever else the toilsome ages have built up; — the
gift of a new idea. You can discern it in them, illuminating
their faces — their whole persons, indeed, however
earthly and cloddish — with a light that inevitably shines
through, and makes the startled community aware that
these men are not as they themselves are, — not brethren
nor neighbors of their thought. Forthwith, it is as if
an earthquake rumbled through the town, making its
vibrations felt at every hearthstone, and especially causing
the spire of the meeting-house to totter. The
Quakers have come. We are in peril! See! they
trample upon our wise and well-established laws in the
person of our chief magistrate; for Governor Endicott
is passing, now an aged man, and dignified with long
habits of authority, — and not one of the irreverent
vagabonds has moved his hat. Did you note the ominous
frown of the white-bearded Puritan governor, as he
turned himself about, and, in his anger, half uplifted the
staff that has become a needful support to his old age?
Here comes old Mr. Norris, our venerable minister.
Will they doff their hats, and pay reverence to him?
No: their hats stick fast to their ungracious heads, as if
they grew there; and — impious varlets that they are,
and worse than the heathen Indians! — they eye our
reverend pastor with a peculiar scorn, distrust, unbelief,
and utter denial of his sanctified pretensions, of which
he himself immediately becomes conscious; the more
bitterly conscious, as he never knew nor dreamed of the
like before.
But look yonder! Can we believe our eyes? A
head, has mounted the steps of the meeting-house. She
addresses the people in a wild, shrill voice, — wild and
shrill it must be, to suit such a figure, — which makes
them tremble and turn pale, although they crowd open-mouthed
to hear her. She is bold against established
authority; she denounces the priest and his steeple-house.
Many of her hearers are appalled; some weep;
and others listen with a rapt attention, as if a living
truth had now, for the first time, forced its way through
the crust of habit, reached their hearts, and awakened
them to life. This matter must be looked to; else we
have brought our faith across the seas with us in vain;
and it had been better that the old forest were still
standing here, waving its tangled boughs, and murmuring
to the sky out of its desolate recesses, instead of this
goodly street, if such blasphemies be spoken in it.
So thought the old Puritans. What was their mode
of action may be partly judged from the spectacles
which now pass before your eyes. Joshua Buffum is
standing in the pillory. Cassandra Southwick is led to
prison. And there a woman, — it is Ann Coleman, —
naked from the waist upward, and bound to the tail of a
cart, is dragged through the Main-street at the pace of a
brisk walk, while the constable follows with a whip of
knotted cords. A strong-armed fellow is that constable;
and each time that he flourishes his lash in the air, you
see a frown wrinkling and twisting his brow, and, at the
same instant, a smile upon his lips. He loves his business,
faithful officer that he is, and puts his soul into
every stroke, zealous to fulfil the injunction of Major
Hawthrone's warrant, in the spirit and to the letter.
such stripes are to be given in Salem, ten in Boston, and
ten in Dedham; and, with those thirty stripes of blood
upon her, she is to be driven into the forest. The crimson
trail goes wavering along the Main-street; but
Heaven grant that, as the rain of so many years has
wept upon it, time after time, and washed it all away,
so there may have been a dew of mercy, to cleanse this
cruel blood-stain out of the record of the persecutor's
life!
Pass on, thou spectral constable, and betake thee to
thine own place of torment. Meanwhile, by the silent
operation of the mechanism behind the scenes, a considerable
space of time would seem to have lapsed over
the street. The older dwellings now begin to look
weather-beaten, through the effect of the many eastern
storms that have moistened their unpainted shingles and
clapboards, for not less than forty years. Such is the
age we would assign to the town, judging by the aspect
of John Massey, the first town-born child, whom his
neighbors now call Goodman Massey, and whom we see
yonder, a grave, almost autumnal-looking man, with
children of his own about him. To the patriarchs of
the settlement, no doubt, the Main-street is still but an
affair of yesterday, hardly more antique, even if destined
to be more permanent, than a path shovelled through the
snow. But to the middle-aged and elderly men who
came hither in childhood or early youth, it presents the
aspect of a long and well-established work, on which
they have expended the strength and ardor of their life.
And the younger people, native to the street, whose
earliest recollections are of creeping over the paternal
look at it as one of the perdurable things of our mortal
state, — as old as the hills of the great pasture, or the
headland at the harbor's mouth. Their fathers and
grandsires tell them how, within a few years past, the
forest stood here, with but a lonely track beneath its
tangled shade. Vain legend! They cannot make it
true and real to their conceptions. With them, moreover,
the Main-street is a street indeed, worthy to hold
its way with the thronged and stately avenues of cities
beyond the sea. The old Puritans tell them of the
crowds that hurry along Cheapside and Fleet-street and
the Strand, and of the rush of tumultuous life at Temple
Bar. They describe London Bridge, itself a street, with
a row of houses on each side. They speak of the vast
structure of the Tower, and the solemn grandeur of
Westminster Abbey. The children listen, and still
inquire if the streets of London are longer and broader
than the one before their father's door; if the Tower is
bigger than the jail in Prison-lane; if the old Abbey
will hold a larger congregation than our meeting-house.
Nothing impresses them, except their own experience.
It seems all a fable, too, that wolves have ever
prowled here; and not less so, that the Squaw Sachem,
and the Sagamore her son, once ruled over this region,
and treated as sovereign potentates with the English
settlers, then so few and storm-beaten, now so powerful.
There stand some school-boys, you observe, in a little
group around a drunken Indian, himself a prince of the
Squaw Sachem's lineage. He brought hither some
beaver-skins for sale, and has already swallowed the
larger portion of their price, in deadly draughts of fire-water.
and does it not go far towards telling the whole story of
the vast growth and prosperity of one race, and the fated
decay of another? — the children of the stranger making
game of the great Squaw Sachem's grandson!
But the whole race of red men have not vanished
with that wild princess and her posterity. This march
of soldiers along the street betokens the breaking out of
King Philip's war; and these young men, the flower of
Essex, are on their way to defend the villages on the
Connecticut; where, at Bloody Brook, a terrible blow
shall be smitten, and hardly one of that gallant band be
left alive. And there, at that stately mansion, with its
three peaks in front, and its two little peaked towers,
one on either side of the door, we see brave Captain
Gardner issuing forth, clad in his embroidered buff-coat,
and his plumed cap upon his head. His trusty sword,
in its steel scabbard, strikes clanking on the door-step.
See how the people throng to their doors and windows,
as the cavalier rides past, reining his mettled steed so
gallantly, and looking so like the very soul and emblem
of martial achievement, — destined, too, to meet a warrior's
fate, at the desperate assault on the fortress of the
Narragansetts!
“The mettled steed looks like a pig,” interrupts the
critic, “and Captain Gardner himself like the devil,
though a very tame one, and on a most diminutive
scale.”
“Sir, sir!” cries the persecuted showman, losing all
patience, — for, indeed, he had particularly prided himself
on these figures of Captain Gardner and his horse,
— “I see that there is no hope of pleasing you. Pray,
“Not I!” answers the unconscionable critic. “I am
just beginning to get interested in the matter. Come!
turn your crank, and grind out a few more of these fooleries!”
The showman rubs his brow impulsively, whisks the
little rod with which he points out the notabilities of the
scene, — but, finally, with the inevitable acquiescence of
all public servants, resumes his composure, and goes on.
Pass onward, onward, Time! Build up new houses
here, and tear down thy works of yesterday, that have
already the rusty moss upon them! Summon forth the
minister to the abode of the young maiden, and bid him
unite her to the joyful bridegroom! Let the youthful
parents carry their first-born to the meeting-house, to
receive the baptismal rite! Knock at the door, whence
the sable line of the funeral is next to issue! Provide
other successive generations of men, to trade, talk, quarrel,
or walk in friendly intercourse along the street, as
their fathers did before them! Do all thy daily and
accustomed business, Father Time, in this thoroughfare,
which thy footsteps, for so many years, have now made
dusty! But here, at last, thou leadest along a procession
which, once witnessed, shall appear no more, and be
remembered only as a hideous dream of thine, or a
frenzy of thy old brain.
“Turn your crank, I say,” bellows the remorseless
critic, “and grind it out, whatever it be, without further
preface!”
The showman deems it best to comply.
Then, here cames the worshipful Captain Curwen,
guard, escorting a company of condemned prisoners from
the jail to their place of execution on Gallows Hill.
The witches! There is no mistaking them! The
witches! As they approach up Prison-lane, and turn
into the Main-street, let us watch their faces, as if we
made a part of the pale crowd that presses so eagerly
about them, yet shrinks back with such shuddering
dread, leaving an open passage betwixt a dense throng
on either side. Listen to what the people say.
There is old George Jacobs, known hereabouts, these
sixty years, as a man whom we thought upright in all
his way of life, quiet, blameless, a good husband before
his pious wife was summoned from the evil to come, and
a good father to the children whom she left him. Ah!
but when that blessed woman went to heaven, George
Jacobs' heart was empty, his hearth lonely, his life
broken up; his children were married, and betook themselves
to habitations of their own; and Satan, in his
wanderings up and down, beheld this forlorn old man, to
whom life was a sameness and a weariness, and found
the way to tempt him. So the miserable sinner was
prevailed with to mount into the air, and career among
the clouds; and he is proved to have been present at a
witch-meeting as far off as Falmouth, on the very same
night that his next neighbors saw him, with his rheumatic
stoop, going in at his own door. There is John
Willard, too; an honest man we thought him, and so
shrewd and active in his business, so practical, so intent
on every-day affairs, so constant at his little place of
trade, where he bartered English goods for Indian corn
and all kinds of country produce! How could such a
leave his proper calling, and become a wizard? It is
a mystery, unless the Black Man tempted him with
great heaps of gold. See that aged couple, — a sad
sight, truly, — John Proctor, and his wife Elizabeth. If
there were two old people in all the County of Essex
who seemed to have led a true Christian life, and to be
treading hopefully the little remnant of their earthly
path, it was this very pair. Yet have we heard it
sworn, to the satisfaction of the worshipful Chief-justice
Sewell, and all the court and jury, that Proctor and his
wife have shown their withered faces at children's bed-sides,
mocking, making mouths, and affrighting the poor
little innocents in the night-time. They, or their spectral
appearances, have stuck pins into the afflicted ones,
and thrown them into deadly fainting-fits with a touch, or
but a look. And, while we supposed the old man to be
reading the Bible to his old wife, — she meanwhile knitting
in the chimney-corner, — the pair of hoary reprobates
have whisked up the chimney, both on one broomstick,
and flown away to a witch-communion, far into the depths
of the chill, dark forest. How foolish! Were it only
for fear of rheumatic pains in their old bones, they had
better have stayed at home. But away they went; and
the laughter of their decayed, cackling voices has been
heard at midnight, aloft in the air. Now, in the sunny
noontide, as they go tottering to the gallows, it is the
devil's turn to laugh.
Behind these two, — who help another along, and
seem to be comforting and encouraging each other, in a
manner truly pitiful, if it were not a sin to pity the old
witch and wizard, — behind them comes a woman, with
that is still majestic. Do you know her? It is Martha
Carrier, whom the devil found in a humble cottage, and
looked into her discontented heart, and saw pride there,
and tempted her with his promise that she should be
Queen of Hell. And now, with that lofty demeanor,
she is passing to her kingdom, and, by her unquenchable
pride, transforms this escort of shame into a triumphal
procession, that shall attend her to the gates of her infernal
palace, and seat her upon the fiery throne. Within
this hour, she shall assume her royal dignity.
Last of the miserable train comes a man clad in black,
of small stature and a dark complexion, with a clerical
band about his neck. Many a time, in the years gone
by, that face has been uplifted heavenward from the pulpit
of the East Meeting-house, when the Rev. Mr. Burroughs
seemed to worship God. What! — he? The
holy man! — the learned! — the wise! How has the
devil tempted him? His fellow-criminals, for the most
part, are obtuse, uncultivated creatures, some of them
scarcely half-witted by nature, and others greatly
decayed in their intellects through age. They were an
easy prey for the destroyer. Not so with this George
Burroughs, as we judge by the inward light which glows
through his dark countenance, and, we might almost
say, glorifies his figure, in spite of the soil and haggardness
of long imprisonment, — in spite of the heavy
shadow that must fall on him, while death is walking
by his side. What bribe could Satan offer, rich enough
to tempt and overcome this man? Alas! it may have
been in the very strength of his high and searching
intellect, that the Tempter found the weakness which
groping onward into a world of mystery; at first, as the
witnesses have sworn, he summoned up the ghosts of his
two dead wives, and talked with them of matters beyond
the grave; and, when their responses failed to satisfy the
intense and sinful craving of his spirit, he called on
Satan, and was heard. Yet, — to look at him, — who,
that had not known the proof, could believe him guilty?
Who would not say, while we see him offering comfort
to the weak and aged partners of his horrible crime, —
while we hear his ejaculations of prayer, that seem to
bubble up out of the depths of his heart, and fly heaven-ward,
unawares, — while we behold a radiance brightening
on his features as from the other world, which is but
a few steps off, — who would not say, that, over the
dusty track of the Main-street, a Christian saint is now
going to a martyr's death? May not the Arch Fiend
have been too subtle for the court and jury, and betrayed
them — laughing in his sleeve, the while — into the
awful error of pouring out sanctified blood as an acceptable
sacrifice upon God's altar? Ah! no; for listen to
wise Cotton Mather, who, as he sits there on his horse,
speaks comfortably to the perplexed multitude, and tells
them that all has been religiously and justly done, and
that Satan's power shall this day receive its death-blow
in New England.
Heaven grant it be so! — the great scholar must be
right so lead the poor creatures to their death! Do
you see that group of children and half-grown girls, and,
among them, an old, hag-like Indian woman, Tituba by
name? Those are the Afflicted Ones. Behold, at this
very instant, a proof of Satan's power and malice!
by a flash of Martha Carrier's eye, and falls down in
the street, writhing with horrible spasms and foaming at
the mouth, like the possessed one spoken of in Scripture.
Hurry on the accursed witches to the gallows, ere they
do more mischief! — ere they fling out their withered
arms, and scatter pestilence by handfuls among the
crowd! — ere, as their parting legacy, they cast a blight
over the land, so that henceforth it may bear no fruit
nor blade of grass, and be fit for nothing but a sepulchre
for their unhallowed carcasses! So, on they go; and
old George Jacobs has stumbled, by reason of his infirmity;
but Goodman Proctor and his wife lean on one
another, and walk at a reasonably steady pace, considering
their age. Mr. Burroughs seems to administer
counsel to Martha Carrier, whose face and mien, methinks,
are milder and humbler than they were. Among
the multitude, meanwhile, there is horror, fear, and distrust;
and friend looks askance at friend, and the husband
at his wife, and the wife at him, and even the mother at
her little child; as if, in every creature that God has
made, they suspected a witch, or dreaded an accuser.
Never, never again, whether in this or any other shape,
may Universal Madness riot in the Main-street!
I perceive in your eyes, my indulgent spectators, the
criticism which you are too kind to utter. These
scenes, you think, are all too sombre. So, indeed, they
are; but the blame must rest on the sombre spirit of our
forefathers, who wove their web of life with hardly a
single thread of rose-color or gold, and not on me, who
have a tropic-love of sunshine, and would gladly gild all
the world with it, if I knew where to find so much.
class of scenes, so far as my investigation has taught me,
in which our ancestors were wont to steep their tough
old hearts in wine and strong drink, and indulge an out-break
of grisly jollity.
Here it comes, out of the same house whence we saw
brave Captain Gardner go forth to the wars. What!
A coffin, borne on men's shoulders, and six aged gentlemen
as pall-bearers, and a long train of mourners, with
black gloves and black hat-bands, and everything black,
save a white handkerchief in each mourner's hand, to
wipe away his tears withal. Now, my kind patrons,
you are angry with me. You were bidden to a bridal-dance,
and find yourselves walking in a funeral procession.
Even so; but look back through all the social
customs of New England, in the first century of her
existence, and read all her traits of character; and if
you find one occasion, other than a funeral feast, where
jollity was sanctioned by universal practice, I will set
fire to my puppet-show without another word. These
are the obsequies of old Governor Bradstreet, the patriarch
and survivor of the first settlers, who, having inter-married
with the Widow Gardner, is now resting from
his labors, at the great age of ninety-four. The white-bearded
corpse, which was his spirit's earthly garniture,
now lies beneath yonder coffin-lid. Many a cask of ale
and cider is on tap, and many a draught of spiced wine
and aqua-vitæ has been quaffed. Else why should the
bearers stagger, as they tremulously uphold the coffin?
— and the aged pall-bearers, too, as they strive to walk
solemnly beside it? — and wherefore do the mourners
tread on one another's heels? — and why, if we may ask
Noyes, through which he has just been delivering the
funeral discourse, glow like a ruddy coal of fire? Well,
well, old friends! Pass on, with your burthen of mortality,
and lay it in the tomb with jolly hearts. People
should be permitted to enjoy themselves in their own
fashion; every man to his taste; but New England
must have been a dismal abode for the man of pleasure,
when the only boon-companion was Death!
Under cover of a mist that has settled over the scene, a
few years flit by, and escape our notice. As the atmosphere
becomes transparent, we perceive a decrepit grand-sire,
hobbling along the street. Do you recognize him?
We saw him, first, as the baby in Goodwife Massey's
arms, when the primeval trees were flinging their shadow
over Roger Conant's cabin; we have seen him, as the
boy, the youth, the man, bearing his humble part in all
the successive scenes, and forming the index-figure
whereby to note the age of his coëval town. And here he
is, old Goodman Massey, taking his last walk, — often
pausing, — often leaning over his staff, — and calling to
mind whose dwelling stood at such and such a spot, and
whose field or garden occupied the site of those more
recent houses. He can render a reason for all the bends
and deviations of the thoroughfare, which, in its flexible
and plastic infancy, was made to swerve aside from a
straight line, in order to visit every settler's door. The
Main-street is still youthful; the coëval man is in his
latest age. Soon he will be gone, a patriarch of four-score,
yet shall retain a sort of infantine life in our local
history, as the first town-born child.
Behold here a change, wrought in the twinkling of an
observation has been fixed upon the scene. The Main-street
has vanished out of sight. In its stead appears a
wintry waste of snow, with the sun just peeping over it,
cold and bright, and tinging the white expanse with the
faintest and most ethereal rose-color. This is the Great
Snow of 1717, famous for the mountain-drifts in which
it buried the whole country. It would seem as if the
street, the growth of which we have noted so attentively,
following it from its first phase, as an Indian track, until
it reached the dignity of side-walks, were all at once
obliterated, and resolved into a drearier pathlessness
than when the forest covered it. The gigantic swells
and billows of the snow have swept over each man's
metes and bounds, and annihilated all the visible distinctions
of human property. So that now the traces of
former times and hitherto accomplished deeds being done
away, mankind should be at liberty to enter on new
paths, and guide themselves by other laws than heretofore;
if, indeed, the race be not extinct, and it be worth
our while to go on with the march of life, over the cold
and desolate expanse that lies before us. It may be,
however, that matters are not so desperate as they
appear. That vast icicle, glittering so cheerlessly in
the sunshine, must be the spire of the meeting-house,
incrusted with frozen sleet. Those great heaps, too,
which we mistook for drifts, are houses, buried up to their
eaves, and with their peaked roofs rounded by the depth
of snow upon them. There, now, comes a gush of
smoke from what I judge to be the chimney of the Ship
Tavern; — and another — another — and another — from
the chimneys of other dwellings, where fireside comfort,
of age, are living yet, in spite of the frozen crust above
them.
But it is time to change the scene. Its dreary monotony
shall not test your fortitude like one of our actual
New England winters, which leaves so large a blank —
so melancholy a death-spot — in lives so brief that they
ought to be all summer-time. Here, at least, I may
claim to be ruler of the seasons. One turn of the crank
shall melt away the snow from the Main-street, and
show the trees in their full foliage, the rose-bushes in
bloom, and a border of green grass along the side-walk.
There! But what! How! The scene will not move.
A wire is broken. The street continues buried beneath
the snow, and the fate of Herculaneum and Pompeii has
its parallel in this catastrophe.
Alas! my kind and gentle audience, you know not
the extent of your misfortune. The scenes to come
were far better than the past. The street itself would
have been more worthy of pictorial exhibition; the deeds
of its inhabitants, not less so. And how would your
interest have deepened, as, passing out of the cold
shadow of antiquity, in my long and weary course, I
should arrive within the limits of man's memory, and,
leading you at last into the sunshine of the present,
should give a reflex of the very life that is flitting past
us! Your own beauty, my fair townswomen, would
have beamed upon you, out of my scene. Not a gentleman
that walks the street but should have beheld his
own face and figure, his gait, the peculiar swing of his
arm, and the coat that he put on yesterday. Then, too,
—and it is what I chiefly regret,—I had expended a vast
street in its whole length, from Buffum's Corner down-ward,
on the night of the grand illumination for General
Taylor's triumph. Lastly, I should have given the
crank one other turn, and have brought out the future,
showing you who shall walk the Main-street to-morrow,
and, perchance, whose funeral shall pass through it!
But these, like most other human purposes, lie unaccomplished;
and I have only further to say, that any
lady or gentleman who may feel dissatisfied with the
evening's entertainment shall receive back the admission
fee at the door.
“Then give me mine,” cries the critic, stretching out
his palm. “I said that your exhibition would prove a
humbug, and so it has turned out. So, hand over my
quarter!”
| The snow-image | |