University of Virginia Library

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9. CHAPTER IX.
HOW THE TOAD GRINS UPON THE ALTAR.

Shall we go the rounds with our pastor? Shall we
look in upon him at Mrs. Thackeray's, while, obeying the
suggestion of the widow Cooper, he purges her library of
twenty volumes, casting out the devils and setting up the
true gods? It is scarcely necessary. Enough to know
that, under his expurgatorial finger, our beloved and bosom
friend, William Shakespeare, was the first to suffer. Plays!
The one word was enough. Some lying histories were permitted
to escape. The name of history saved them! Robinson
Crusoe was preserved as a true narrative; and Swift's
Tale of a Tub escaped, as it was assumed (there being no
time to read any of the books, and in this respect John
Cross showed himself much more of a professional critic
than he conjectured) to be a treatise on one branch of the
cooperage business, and so, important to domestic mechanics
in a new country. The reader will remember the manner
in which the library of the knight of La Mancha was
disposed of. He would err, however, if he supposed that
John Cross dismissed the books from the window, or did
anything farther than simply to open the eyes of Mrs. Thackeray
to the bad quality of some of the company she kept.
That sagacious lady did not think it worth while to dispute
the ipse dixit of a teacher so single-minded, if not sagacious.
She bowed respectfully to all his suggestions, promised no
longer to bestow her smiles on the underserving — a promise

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Under the paternal wing of John Cross, Alfred Stevens
obtained the desired entrée into the bosom of the flock.
He was everywhere admitted with gladness — everywhere
welcomed as to a home; and the unsophisticated old teacher
by whose agency this was effected, congratulated his congregation
and himself, on leaving the village, that he had
left in it a person so full of grace, and one who, with the
blessing of God, was so likely to bring about the birth of
grace in others. The good old man bestowed long and
repeated counsels upon his neophyte. The course of study
which he prescribed was very simple. The Bible was the
Alpha and the Omega — it was the essential whole. It
would be well to read other books if they could be had —
Clarke and Wesley were, of course, spoken of — but they
could be done without. The word of God was in the one
volume, and it needed no help from commentators to win
its way and suffice the hungering and thirsting soul.

“If you could lay hands upon the book of sermons written
by Brother Peter Cummins, which his wife had printed,
I'm thinking it would serve, next to God's own blessed
word, to put you in the right way. It's been a great helping
to me, Alfred Stevens, that same book of sermons; and
I reckon it's because it's so good a book that it's not printed
now. I don't see it much about. But I'll get you one
if I can, and bring or send it to you, soon enough to help
you to the wisdom that you're a seeking after. If it only
wakes the spirit in you as it did in me — if it only stirs you
up with the spirit of divine love — you'll find it easy enough
to understand the teachings of the holy volume. All things
become clear in that blessed light. By its help you read,
and by its working you inwardly digest all the needful

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“Amen!” was the solemn response of the hypocrite, but
we need not say what an irreverent and unholy thought lay
at the bottom of his mind in making this ejaculation.

Before the departure of John Cross, the latter had made
terms with Squire Hinkley for the board and lodging of
Brother Stevens and his horse. Hinkley would have preferred
taking nothing, considering the praiseworthy purpose
of the supposed theological student; but Stevens
shrunk from receiving such an obligation with a feeling of
pride, which yet had no scruples at practising so wretched
an imposture. He insisted upon making compensation, or
upon leaving the house; and, not to incur this risk, Hinkley
consented to receive a weekly sum in payment; but the
charge was considerably smaller, as we may suppose, than
it would have been had the lodger simply appeared as an
inoffensive traveller, practising no fraud and making no
professions of religion.

Having effected all these arrangements, to his own satisfaction
and seemingly that of all others, John Cross departed
once more into the wilderness on his single-hearted
ministry of love. A sturdy and an honest worker was he
in the tabernacle, with a right mind if not a very wise one;
and doing more good in his generation, and after the fashion
of his strength, than is often permitted to the stall-fed
doctors of his vocation.

The reader will suppose that the old man has been already
gone some seven days. Meanwhile, the young student
has fairly made himself at home in Charlemont. He
has a snug room, entirely to himself, at Squire Hinkley's,
and, by the excellent care of the worthy dame, it is provided
with the best bedding and the finest furniture. Her
own hands sweep it clean, morning, and night, for the incipient
parson; she makes up the bed, and, in customary
phrase, puts it in all respects to rights. His wants are anticipated,

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This, indeed, seemed very likely to be the case. A good
young man in the sight of the ladies is always a more attractive
person than a good old man. Dame Hinkley,
though no longer young herself, remembered that she had
been so, and preserved all her sympathies, in consequence,
for young people. She thought Alfred Stevens so handsome,
and he smiled so sweetly, and he spoke so gently,
and, in short, so great had been his progress in the affections
of his hostess in the brief space of a single week, that
we are constrained to confess ourselves rejoiced that she
herself was an old woman, as well on her own account as
on that of her worthy spouse.

Her good man was very well satisfied, whether from confidence
or indifference, that such should be the case. Her
attentions to the young stranger probably diverted them
from himself. But not so with William Hinkley — the son.
We have already had some glimpses of the character of
this young man. We may now add that the short week's
residence of Stevens in Charlemont had increased the soreness
at his heart. In that week he had seen fairly established
that intimacy between his rival and the lady of his
love which seemed to give the death-blow to any pretensions
of his. He had seen them meet; had seen them go
forth together; beheld their mutual eyes, and, turning his
own inward, saw how deeply his heart was concerned in
the probable sympathies of theirs. Then, to turn to his
own habitation, and to behold that, mother and all, devoted
to the same absolute stranger; to pass unheeded in the
presence of those whom he best loved — over whom natural
ties gave him inalienable rights; to feel himself put aside
for one only known of yesterday; to look with yearning,

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Our adventurer was snugly seated in the little but select
chamber which had been given him in the house of Squire
Hinkley. A table, neatly spread with a cotton cover, stood
before him: a travelling-portfolio was opened beneath his
hand, with a broad sheet of paper, already well written
over, and waiting nothing but his signature, and perhaps
the postscript. He was absorbed unusually in his cogitations,
and nibbled into bits the feathery end of the gray
goosequill of which he had been making such excellent use.
While he meditates, unseeing, we will use the liberty of an
old acquaintance to scan the letter — for such it is — which
he has been writing. Perhaps we shall gather from it some
matters which it may concern us yet to know:—

“Dear Barnabas: The strangest adventure — positively
the very strangest — that ever happened to a son of Murkey's,
will keep me from the embraces of the brethren a few weeks
longer. I am benighted, bewildered, taken with art-magic,
transmuted, transmogrified, not myself nor yet another, but,
as they say in Mississippi, `a sort of betweenity.' Fancy
me suddenly become a convert to the bluest presbyterianism,
as our late excellent brother Woodford became, when
he found that he could not get Moll Parkinson on any other
terms — and your guess will not be very far from the true
one. I am suddenly touched with conviction. I have seen
a light on my way from Tarsus. The scales have fallen
from my eyes. I have seen the wickedness of my ways,
and yours too, you dog; and, having resolved on my own
repentance, I am taking lessons which shall enable me to
effect yours. Precious deal of salt will it need for that!
Salt river will fall, while its value rises. But the glory of
the thing — think of that, my boy! What a triumph it will

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be to revolutionize Murkey's! — to turn out the drinkers,
and smokers, and money-changers; to say, `Hem! my
brethren, let us pay no more taxes to sin in this place!'
There shall be no more cakes and ale. Ginger shall have
no heat i' the mouth there; and, in place of smoking meats
and tobacco, give you nothing but smoking methodism!
Won't that be a sight and a triumph which shall stir the
dry bones in our valley — ay, and bones not so dry? There
shall be a quaking of the flesh in sundry places. Flam will
perish in the first fit of consternation; and if Joe Burke's
sides do not run into sop and jelly, through the mere humor
of the thing, then prophecy is out of its element quite.

“Seriously, you dog, I have become a theological student!
Don't you see proofs of my progress in my unctuous
phraseology. I was taken suddenly upon the highway
— a brand plucked from the burning — and to be stuck
up on high, still lighted, however, as a sort of lantern and
lighthouse to other wayfarers — wandering rogues like
yourself, who need some better lights than your own if it
only be to show you how to sin decently. I am professedly
a convert to the true faith, though which that is, I think,
has not well been determined among you at Murkey's, or,
indeed, anywhere else. I believe the vox populi, vox Dei,
still comprises the only wholesome decision which has yet
been made on the subject. The popular vote here declares
it to be methodism; with you it is baptism or presbyterianism
— which? I am a flexible student, however, and
when I meet you again at Murkey's, shall be prepared to
concur with the majority.

“But, in sober fact, I am a professor — actually recognised
by my neighbors as one of the elect — set apart to
be and do mighty things. How I came so, will call for a
long story, which I defer to another occasion. Enough to
tell you that an accidental rencontre with a silly old
preacher (whose gullet I filled with raw brandy, which I
recommended to him, under another name, as a sovereign

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remedy against flatulence, and which nearly strangled him,
he took such a premeditated swallow), brought me into
one of the loveliest little villages in all this western country,
and there I saw many things — among others — a
woman! —

“A woman! — that one word, you dog, will explain the
mystery — will show you why I am thus transmuted, transmogrified,
and in `a state of betweenity.' Nothing less, I
assure you, could make me disguise myself after the present
fashion; wear the sanctimonious and sour phiz which
the common law of modern religion prescribes, and keep
me much longer from the pleasanter communion of such
glorious imps, as I suppose, are, even now, beginning to
gather in the dingy smoke-room of our sovereign Murkey.
But this woman, you will ask. Ay, ay, but you shall have
no answer yet. It shall be enough for you that she is a
queen of Sheba, after her own fashion. A proud, imperious,
passionate creature — tall, really beautiful — and so
majestic! You should see the flashing of her eyes to know
what sort of a thing is moral lightning. Her face kindles
up in an instant. She is an intensifier, and like most such,
cursedly smart. Young too — scarce eighteen, I think;
queer too — almost tyrannical at times — but full of blood,
of unregulated passions, moody, capricious, and, of course,
easy game, if the sportsman knows anything of the habits
of the bird. She is a country-girl, but no hoyden. Her
intensity of character, her pride and great self-esteem, have
made her a solitary. Unsophisticated in some respects, she
is yet not to be surprised. In solitude, and a taste for it,
she has acquired a sort of moral composure which makes
her secure against surprise. I am really taken with the
girl, and could love her, I tell you — nay, do love her — so
long as love can keep himself — out of a state of bondage!
I do not think, at this moment, that I shall violate any of
the laws of the conventicle, like small-witted Brother
Woodford; though, so far as the woman is concerned, I

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should leave it without argument to the free vote of all the
Lads of Fancy that ever gather round Murkey's round
table, if my justification for turning traitor, would not prove
immeasurably more complete than his.

“So! so! There are bones enough for you to crunch,
you professional bandog. I had not meant to tell you half
so much. There is some danger that one may lose his game
altogether, if he suffers his nose to point unnecessarily to
the cover where it lies. I know what keen scents are in
the club, some of which would be on my track in no time
if they knew where to find me; but I shall baffle you, you
villains. My post-town is fifty miles from the place where
I pursue my theological studies; you are too wise to attempt
a wild-goose chase. You may smack your chaps, Barney,
with envy; bite them too if you please, and it will only
whet my own sense of pleasure to fancy your confusion,
and your hopeless denunciations in the club. I shall be
back in time for term — meanwhile get the papers in readiness.
Write to me at the post-town of Ellisland, and remember
to address me as Alfred Stevens — nay, perhaps,
you may even say, `Rev. Alfred Stevens,' it will grace the
externals of the document with a more unctuous aspect,
and secure the recipient a more wholesome degree of respect.
Send all my letters to this town under envelope
with this direction. I wrote you twice from Somerville.
Did I tell you that old Hunks has been deused liberal? I
can laugh at the small terms, yet go to Murkey's and shine
through the smoke with the best of you. I solicit the
prayers of the Round Table.

“Faithfully, yours, &c.”

So far our profligate had written to his brother profligate,
when a tap was heard at the entrance of his chamber.
Thrusting the written papers into his portfolio, he rose, and
opening the door discovered his hostess at the entrance.

“I came, Brother Stevens,” said the old lady, “if you

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“Not too busy, Mrs. Hinkley, to oblige you in this or in
any other respect,” replied the guest with suitable suavity
of expression — “shall I attend you down stairs.”

“Oh! no! it won't need,” said she. “I'll take a seat
with you awhile. We shall be less liable to interruption
here.”

Stevens scarcely repressed his smile, but the seniority
of the old lady made her proceedings very innocent, however
much they might have been adverse to the rules. He
threw wide the door, and without more hesitation she followed
him at once into the chamber.