University of Virginia Library

51. LI.

IN those days to which our narrative has now reached,
the Doctor was far more feeble than when we first
met him. His pace has slackened, and there is an occasional
totter in his step. There are those among his
parishioners who say that his memory is failing. On
one or two Sabbaths of the winter he has preached
sermons scarce two years old. There are acute listeners
who are sure of it. And the spinster has been horrified
on learning that, once or twice, the old gentleman
— escaping her eye — has taken his walk to the
post-office, unwittingly wearing his best cloak wrong-side
out; as if — for so good a man — the green baize
were not as proper a covering as the brown camlet!

The parson is himself conscious of these short comings,
and speaks with resignation of the growing infirmities
which, as he modestly hints, will compel him
shortly to give place to some younger and more zealous
expounder of the faith. His parochial visits grow
more and more rare. All other failings could be more
easily pardoned than this; but in a country parish like
Ashfield, it was quite imperative that the old chaise

should keep up its familiar rounds, and the occasional
tea-fights in the out-lying houses be honored by the
gray head of the Doctor or by his evening benediction.
Two hour-long sermons a week and a Wednesday evening
discourse were very well in their way, but by no
means met all the requirements of those steadfast old
ladies whose socialities were both exhaustive and exacting.
Indeed, it is doubtful if there do not exist even
now, in most country parishes of New England, a few
most excellent and notable women, who delight in an
overworked parson, for the pleasure they take in recommending
their teas, and plasters, and nostrums. The
more frail and attenuated the teacher, the more he
takes hold upon their pity; and in losing the vigor of
the flesh, he seems to their compassionate eyes to grow
into the spiritualities they pine for. But he must not
give over his visitings; that hair-cloth shirt of penance
he must wear to the end, if he would achieve saintship.

Now, just at this crisis, it happens that there is a
tall, thin, pale young man — Rev. Theophilus Catesby
by name, and nephew of the late Deacon Simmons (now
unhappily deceased) — who has preached in Ashfield
on several occasions to the “great acceptance” of the
people. Talk is imminent of naming him colleague to
Dr. Johns. The matter is discussed, at first, (agreeably
to custom,) in the sewing-circle of the town. After
this, it comes informally before the church brethren.

The duty to the Doctor and to the parish is plain
enough. The practical question is, how cheaply can
the matter be accomplished?

The salary of the good Doctor has grown, by progressive
increase, to be at this date some seven hundred
dollars a year, — a very considerable stipend for a
country parish in that day. It was understood that
the proposed colleague would expect six hundred.
The two joined made a somewhat appalling sum for the
people of Ashfield. They tried to combat it in a variety
of ways, — over tea-tables and barn-yard gates, as
well as in their formal conclaves; earnest for a good
thing in the way of preaching, but earnest for a good
bargain, too.

“I say, Huldy,” said the Deacon, in discussion of the
affair over his wife's fireside, “I would n't wonder if
the Doctor 'ad put up somethin' handsome between the
French girl's boardin', and odds and ends.”

“What if he ha'n't, Tourtelot? Miss Johns 's got
property, and what 's she goin' to do with it, I want to
know?”

“On this hint the Deacon spoke, in his next encounter
with the Squire upon the street, with more
boldness.

“It 's my opinion, Squire, the Doctor's folks are
pooty well off, now; and if we make a trade with the
new minister, so 's he 'll take the biggest half o' the

hard work of the parish, I think the old Doctor 'ud
worry along tol'able well on three or four hundred a
year; heh, Squire?”

“Well Deacon, I don't know about that; — don't
know. Butcher's meat is always butcher's meat, Deacon.”

“So it is, Squire; and not so dreadful high, nuther.
I 've got a likely two-year-old in the yard, that 'll dress
abaout a hundred to a quarter, and I don't pretend to
ask but twenty-five dollars; know any body that wants
such a critter, Squire?”

With very much of the same relevancy of observation
the affair is bandied about for a week or more in
the discussions at the society-meetings, with danger of
never coming to any practical issue, when a wiry little
man — in a black Sunday coat, whose tall collar chafes
the back of his head near to the middle — rises from a
corner where he has grown vexed with the delay, and
bursts upon the solemn conclave in this style: —

“Brethren, I ha'n't been home to chore-time in the
last three days, and my wife is gittin' worked up abaout
it. Here we 've bin a-settin' and a-talkin' night arter
night, and arternoon arter arternoon for more 'n a
week, and 'pears to me it 's abaout time as tho' somethin'
o' ruther ought to be done. There 's nobody got
nothin' agin the Doctor that I 've heerd of. He 's a
smart old gentleman, and he 's a clever old gentleman,

and he preaches what I call good, stiff doctrine; but
we don't feel much like payin' for light work same as
what we paid when the work was heavy, — 'specially
if we git a new minister on our hands. But then,
brethren, I don't for one feel like turnin' an old hoss
that 's done good sarvice, when he gits stiff in the j'ints,
into slim pastur', and I don't feel like stuffin' on 'em
with bog hay in the winter. There 's folks that dooz;
but I don't. Now, brethren, I motion that we continner
to give as much as five hundred dollars to the old
Doctor, and make the best dicker we can with the new
minister; and I 'll clap ten dollars on to my pew-rent;
and the Deacon there, if he 's any thing of a man, 'll do
as much agin. I know he 's able to.”

Let no one smile. The halting prudence, the inevitable
calculating process through which the small
country New-Englander arrives at his charities, is but
the growth of his associations. He gets hardly; and
what he gets hardly he must bestow with self-questionings.
If he lives “in the small,” he cannot give “in
the large.” His pennies, by the necessities of his toil,
are each as big as pounds; yet his charities, in nine
cases out of ten, bear as large a proportion to his revenue
as the charities of those who count gains by tens
of thousands. Liberality is, after all, comparative, and
is exceptionally great only when its sources are exceptionally
small. That “widow's mite” — the only charity

ever specially commended by the great Master of
charities — will tinkle pleasantly on the ear of humanity
ages hence, when the clinking millions of cities are
forgotten.

The new arrangement all comes to the ear of Reuben,
who writes back in a very brusk way to the
Doctor: “Why on earth, father, don't you cut all connection
with the parish? You 've surely done your
part in that service. Don't let the `minister's pay' be
any hindrance to you, for I am getting on swimmingly
in my business ventures, — thanks to Mr. Brindlock
I enclose a check for two hundred dollars, and can
send you one of equal amount every quarter, without
feeling it. Why should n't a man of your years have
rest?”

And the Doctor, in his reply, says: “My rest, Reuben,
is God's work. I am deeply grateful to you, and
only wish that your generosity were hallowed by a
deeper trust in His providence and mercy. O Reuben!
Reuben! a night cometh, when no man can
work! You seem to imagine, my son, that some slight
has been put upon me by recent arrangements in the
parish. It is not so; and I am sure that none has
been intended. A servant of Christ can receive no
reproach at the hands of his people, save this, — that
he has failed to warn them of the judgment to come,
and to point out to them the ark of safety.”

Correspondence between the father and son is not
infrequent in these days; for, since Reuben has slipped
away from home control utterly, — being now well past
one and twenty, — the Doctor has forborne that magisterial
tone which, in his old-fashioned way, it was his
wont to employ, while yet the son was subject to his
legal authority. Under these conditions, Reuben is
won into more communicativeness, — even upon those
religious topics which are always prominent in the
Doctor's letters; indeed, it would seem that the son
rather enjoyed a little logical fence with the old gentleman,
and a passing lunge, now and then, at his severities;
still weltering in his unbelief, but wearing it more
lightly (as the father saw with pain) by reason of the
great crowd of sympathizers at his back.

“It is so rare,” he writes, “to fall in with one who
earnestly and heartily seems to believe what he says he
believes. And if you meet him in a preacher at a
street-corner, declaiming with a mad fervor, people cry
out, `A fanatic!' Why should n't he be? I can't, for
my life, see. Why should n't every fervent believer of
the truths he teaches rush through the streets to divert
the great crowd, with voice and hand, from the inevitable
doom? I see the honesty of your faith, father,
though there seems a strained harshness in it when I
think of the complacency with which you must needs
contemplate the irremediable perdition of such hosts of

outcasts. In Adèle, too, there seems a beautiful singleness
of trust; but I suppose God made the birds to
live in the sky.

“You need not fear my falling into what you call the
Pantheism of the moralists; it is every way too cold
for my hot blood. It seems to me that the moral icicles
with which their doctrine is fringed (and the fringe is
the beauty of it) must needs melt under any passionate
human clasp, — such clasp as I should want to give (if
I gave any) to a great hope for the future. I should
feel more like groping my way into such hope by the
light of the golden candlesticks of Rome even. But
do not be disturbed, father; I fear I should make, just
now, no better Papist than Presbyterian.”

The Doctor reads such letters in a maze. Can it
indeed be a son of his own loins who thus bandies
language about the solemn truths of Christianity?
“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim! How shall I
set thee as Zeboim!”