 | CHAPTER XII.
MISS PRISSY. The minister's wooing |  |
12. CHAPTER XII.
MISS PRISSY.
Will our little Mary really fall in love with
the Doctor? — The question reaches us in anxious
tones from all the circle of our readers; and what
especially shocks us is, that grave doctors of divinity,
and serious, stocking-knitting matrons seem
to be the class who are particularly set against
the success of our excellent orthodox hero, and
bent on reminding us of the claims of that unregenerate
James, whom we have sent to sea on
purpose that our heroine may recover herself of
that foolish partiality for him which all the Christian
world seems bent on perpetuating.
“Now, really,” says the Rev. Mrs. Q., looking
up from her bundle of Sewing-Society work, “you
are not going to let Mary marry the Doctor?”
My dear Madam, is not that just what you did,
yourself, after having turned off three or four fascinating
young sinners as good as James any day?
Don't make us believe that you are sorry for it
now!
“Is it possible,” says Dr. Theophrastus, who is
himself a stanch Hopkinsian divine, and who is at
present recovering from his last grand effort on Natural
and Moral Ability, — “is it possible that you
are going to let Mary forget that poor young man
and marry Dr. Hopkins? That will never do in
the world!”
Dear Doctor, consider what would have become
of you, if some lady at a certain time had not had
the sense and discernment to fall in love with the
man who came to her disguised as a theologian.
“But he's so old!” says Aunt Maria.
Not at all. Old? What do you mean? Forty
is the very season of ripeness, — the very meridian
of manly lustre and splendor.
“But he wears a wig.”
My dear Madam, so did Sir Charles Grandison,
and Lovelace, and all the other fine fellows of those
days; the wig was the distinguishing mark of a
gentleman.
No, — spite of all you may say and declare, we
do insist that our Doctor is a very proper and probable
subject for a young lady to fall in love with.
If women have one weakness more marked than
another, it is towards veneration. They are born
worshippers, — makers of silver shrines for some
divinity or other, which, of course, they always
think fell straight down from heaven.
The first step towards their falling in love with
with all manner of real or fancied superiority; and
having made him up, they worship him.
Now a truly great man, a man really grand and
noble in heart and intellect, has this advantage
with women, that he is an idol ready-made to hand;
and so that very painstaking and ingenious sex
have less labor in getting him up, and can be ready
to worship him on shorter notice.
In particular is this the case where a sacred profession
and a moral supremacy are added to the
intellectual. Just think of the career of celebrated
preachers and divines in all ages. Have they not
stood like the image that “Nebuchadnezzar the
king set up,” and all womankind, coquettes and
flirts not excepted, been ready to fall down and
worship, even before the sound of cornet, flute,
harp, sackbut, and so forth? Is not the faithful
Paula, with her beautiful face, prostrate in reverence
before poor, old, lean, haggard, dying St.
Jerome, in the most splendid painting of the world,
an emblem and sign of woman's eternal power of
self-sacrifice to what she deems noblest in man?
Does not old Richard Baxter tell us, with delightful
single-heartedness, how his wife fell in love with
him first, spite of his long, pale face, — and how
she confessed, dear soul, after many years of married
life, that she had found him less sour and bitter
than she had expected?
The fact is, women are burdened with fealty
faith, reverence, more than they know what to do
with; they stand like a hedge of sweet-peas, throwing
out fluttering tendrils everywhere for something
high and strong to climb by, — and when they find
it, be it ever so rough in the bark, they catch upon
it. And instances are not wanting of those who
have turned away from the flattery of admirers to
prostrate themselves at the feet of a genuine hero
who never wooed them, except by heroic deeds and
the rhetoric of a noble life.
Never was there a distinguished man whose greatness
could sustain the test of minute domestic inspection
better than our Doctor. Strong in a single-hearted
humility, a perfect unconsciousness of self
an honest and sincere absorption in high and holy
themes and objects, there was in him what we so
seldom see, — a perfect logic of life; his minutest
deeds were the true results of his sublimest principles.
His whole nature, moral, physical and intellectual,
was simple, pure, and cleanly. He was
temperate as an anchorite in all matters of living,
— avoiding, from a healthy instinct, all those intoxicating
stimuli then common among the clergy.
In his early youth, indeed, he had formed an attachment
to the almost universal clerical pipe, —
but, observing a delicate woman once nauseated
by coming into the atmosphere which he and his
brethren had polluted, he set himself gravely to reflect
must needs be uncomely and unworthy a Christian
man; wherefore he laid his pipe on the mantel-piece,
and never afterwards resumed the indulgence.
In all his relations with womanhood he was delicate
and reverential, forming his manners by that
old precept, “The elder women entreat as mothers,
the younger as sisters,” — which rule, short and simple
as it is, is, nevertheless, the most perfect résumé
of all true gentlemanliness. Then, as for person,
the Doctor was not handsome, to be sure; but he
was what sometimes serves with woman better, —
majestic and manly; and, when animated by thought
and feeling, having even a commanding grandeur
of mien. Add to all this, that our valiant hero is
now on the straight road to bring him into that
situation most likely to engage the warm partisanship
of a true woman, — namely, that of a man
unjustly abused for right-doing, — and one may
see that it is ten to one our Mary may fall in love
with him yet before she knows it.
If it were not for this mysterious selfness-and-sameness
which makes this wild, wandering, uncanonical
sailor, James Marvyn, so intimate and internal,
— if his thread were not knit up with the
thread of her life, — were it not for the old habit
of feeling for him, thinking for him, praying for
him, hoping for him, fearing for him, which — wo
— if it were not for that fatal something which
neither judgment, nor wishes, nor reason, nor common
sense shows any great skill in unravelling, —
we are quite sure that Mary would be in love with
the Doctor within the next six months; as it is,
we leave you all to infer from your own heart
and consciousness what his chances are.
A new sort of scene is about to open on our
heroine, and we shall show her to you, for an
evening at least, in new associations, and with a
different background from that homely and rural
one in which she has fluttered as a white dove
amid leafy and congenial surroundings.
As we have before intimated, Newport presented
a résumé of many different phases of society, all
brought upon a social level by the then universally
admitted principle of equality.
There were scattered about in the settlement
lordly mansions, whose owners rolled in emblazoned
carriages, and whose wide halls were the
scenes of a showy and almost princely hospitality.
By her husband's side, Mrs. Katy Scudder was
allied to one of these families of wealthy planters,
and often recognized the connection with a quiet
undertone of satisfaction, as a dignified and self-respecting
woman should. She liked, once in a
while, quietly to let people know, that, although
they lived in the plain little cottage, and made no
— that Mr. Scudder's mother was a Wilcox, and
that the Wilcoxes were, she supposed, as high as
anybody, — generally ending the remark with the
observation, that “all these things, to be sure, were
matters of small consequence, since at last it would
be of far more importance to have been a true
Christian than to have been connected with the
highest families of the land.”
Nevertheless, Mrs. Scudder was not a little pleased
to have in her possession a card of invitation
to a splendid wedding-party that was going to be
given, on Friday, at the Wilcox Manor. She
thought it a very becoming mark of respect to the
deceased Mr. Scudder that his widow and daughter
should be brought to mind, — so becoming and
praiseworthy, in fact, that, “though an old woman,”
as she said, with a complacent straightening of her
tall, lithe figure, she really thought she must make
an effort to go.
Accordingly, early one morning, after all domestic
duties had been fulfilled, and the clock, loudly
ticking through the empty rooms, told that all
needful bustle had died down to silence, Mrs.
Katy, Mary, and Miss Prissy Diamond, the dress-maker,
might have been observed sitting in solemn
senate around the camphor-wood trunk, before
spoken of, and which exhaled vague foreign and
Indian perfumes of silk and sandal-wood.
You may have heard of dignitaries, my good
reader, — but, I assure you, you know very little
of a situation of trust or importance compared to
that of the dressmaker in a small New England
town.
What important interests does she hold in her
hands! How is she besieged, courted, deferred to!
Three months beforehand, all her days and nights
are spoken for; and the simple statement, that
only on that day you can have Miss Clippers, is
of itself an apology for any omission of attention
elsewhere, — it strikes home at once to the deepest
consciousness of every woman, married or single.
How thoughtfully is everything arranged, weeks
beforehand, for the golden, important season when
Miss Clippers can come! On that day, there is
to be no extra sweeping, dusting, cleaning, cooking,
no visiting, no receiving, no reading or writing,
but all with one heart and soul are to wait
upon her, intent to forward the great work which
she graciously affords a day's leisure to direct.
Seated in her chair of state, with her well-worn
cushion bristling with pins and needles at her side,
her ready roll of patterns and her scissors, she
hears, judges, and decides ex cathedrá on the possible
or not possible, in that important art on
which depends the right of presentation of the floral
part of Nature's great horticultural show. She
alone is competent to say whether there is any
dress, — whether the fatal spot by any magical
hocus-pocus can be cut out from the fulness, or
turned up and smothered from view in the gathers,
or concealed by some new fashion of trimming
falling with generous appropriateness exactly across
the fatal weak point. She can tell you whether
that remnant of velvet will make you a basque, —
whether Mamma's old silk can reappear in juvenile
grace for Miss Lucy. What marvels follow
her, wherever she goes! What wonderful results
does she contrive from the most unlikely materials,
as everybody after her departure wonders to see
old things become so much better than new!
Among the most influential and happy of her
class was Miss Prissy Diamond, — a little, dapper,
doll-like body, quick in her motions and nimble in
her tongue, whose delicate complexion, flaxen curls,
merry flow of spirits, and ready abundance of
gayety, song, and story, apart from her professional
accomplishments, made her a welcome guest
in every family in the neighborhood. Miss Prissy
laughingly boasted being past forty, sure that the
avowal would always draw down on her quite a
storm of compliments, on the freshness of her
sweet-pea complexion and the brightness of her
merry blue eyes. She was well pleased to hear
dawning girls wondering why, with so many advantages,
she had never married. At such remarks
that she had always had such a string of engagements
with the women that she never found half
an hour to listen to what any man living would
say to her, supposing she could stop to hear him.
“Besides, if I were to get married, nobody else
could,” she would say. “What would become of
all the wedding-clothes for everybody else?” But
sometimes, when Miss Prissy felt extremely gracious,
she would draw out of her little chest just
the faintest tip-end of a sigh, and tell some young
lady, in a confidential undertone, that one of these
days she would tell her something, — and then there
would come a wink of her blue eyes and a fluttering
of the pink ribbons in her cap quite stimulating
to youthful inquisitiveness, though we have
never been able to learn by any of our antiquarian
researches that the expectations thus excited
were ever gratified.
In her professional prowess she felt a pardonable
pride. What feats could she relate of wonderful
dresses got out of impossibly small patterns
of silk! what marvels of silks turned that could
not be told from new! what reclaimings of waists
that other dressmakers had hopelessly spoiled. Had
not Mrs. General Wilcox once been obliged to call
in her aid on a dress sent to her from Paris? and
did not Miss Prissy work three days and nights
on that dress, and make every stitch of that trimming
be seen? And when Mrs. Governor Dexter's best
silver-gray brocade was spoiled by Miss Pimlico,
and there wasn't another scrap to pattern it with,
didn't she make a new waist out of the cape and
piece one of the sleeves twenty-nine times, and
yet nobody would ever have known tht there was
a joining in it?
In fact, though Miss Prissy enjoyed the fair
average plain-sailing of her work, she might be
said to revel in difficulties. A full pattern with
trimming, all ample and ready, awoke a moderate
enjoyment; but the resurrection of anything half-worn
or imperfectly made, the brilliant success,
when, after turning, twisting, piecing, contriving,
and, by unheard-of inventions of trimming, a dress
faded and defaced was restored to more than pristine
splendor, — that was a triumph worth enjoying.
It was true, Miss Prissy, like most of her nomadic
compeers, was a little given to gossip; but,
after all, it was innocent gossip, — not a bit of
malice in it; it was only all the particulars about
Mrs. Thus-and-So's wardrobe, — all the statistics
of Mrs. That-and-T'other's china-closet, — all the
minute items of Miss Simkins's wedding-clothes, —
and how her mother cried, the morning of the
wedding, and said that she didn't know anything
how she could spare Louisa Jane, only that Edward
was such a good boy that she felt she could
it seemed that the very ring that was put into the
bride-loaf was the one that he gave her when he
first went to sea, when she wouldn't be engaged
to him because she thought she loved Thomas
Strickland better, but that was only because she
hadn't found him out, you know, — and so forth,
and so forth. Sometimes, too, her narrations assumed
a solemn cast, and brought to mind the
hush of funerals, and told the words spoken in
faint whispers, when hands were clasped for the
last time, — and of utterances crushed out from
hearts, when the hammer of a great sorrow strikes
out sparks of the divine, even from common stone;
and there would be real tears in the little blue
eyes, and the pink bows would flutter tremulously,
like the last three leaves on a bare scarlet maple
in autumn. In fact, dear reader, gossip, like romance,
has its noble side to it. How can you
love your neighbor as yourself and not feel a little
curiosity as to how he fares, what he wears, where
he goes, and how he takes the great life tragicomedy
at which you and he are both more than
spectators? Show me a person who lives in a
country village absolutely without curiosity or interest
on these subjects, and I will show you a
cold, fat oyster, to whom the tide-mud of propriety
is the whole of existence.
As one of our esteemed collaborators in the At
neither theatre nor circus nor opera, must have
some excitement, and the real tragedy and comedy
of life must come in place of the second-hand.
Hence the noted gossiping propensities of country-places,
which, so long as they are not poisoned by
envy or ill-will, have a respectable and picturesque
side to them, — an undoubted leave to be, as probably
has almost everything, which obstinately and
always insists on being, except sin!”
As it is, it must be confessed that the arrival
of Miss Prissy in a family was much like the setting
up of a domestic show-case, through which
you could look into all the families of the neighborhood,
and see the never-ending drama of life, —
births, marriages, deaths, — joy of new-made mothers,
whose babes weighed just eight pounds and
three quarters, and had hair that would part with
a comb, — and tears of Rachels who wept for their
children, and would not be comforted because they
were not. Was there a tragedy, a mystery, in all
Newport, whose secret closet had not been unlocked
by Miss Prissy? She thought not; and you
always wondered, with an uncertain curiosity, what
those things might be over which she gravely shook
her head, declaring, with such a look, — “Oh, if
you only could know!” — and ending with a general
sigh and lamentation, like the confidential
chorus of a Greek tragedy.
We have been thus minute in sketching Miss
Prissy's portrait, because we rather like her. She
has great power, we admit; and were she a sourfaced,
angular, energetic body, with a heart whose
secretions had all become acrid by disappointment
and dyspepsia, she might be a fearful gnome,
against whose family visitations one ought to
watch and pray. As it was, she came into the
house rather like one of those breezy days of
spring, which burst all the blossoms, set all the
doors and windows open, make the hens cackle
and the turtles peep, — filling a solemn Puritan
dwelling with as much bustle and chatter as if
a box of martins were setting up housekeeping
in it.
Let us now introduce you to the sanctuary of
Mrs. Scudder's own private bedroom, where the
committee of exigencies, with Miss Prissy at their
head, are seated in solemn session around the
camphor-wood trunk.
“Dress, you know, is of some importance, after
all,” said Mrs. Scudder, in that apologetic way in
which sensible people generally acknowledge a
secret leaning towards anything so very mundane.
While the good lady spoke, she was reverentially
unpinning and shaking out of their fragrant folds
creamy crape shawls of rich Chinese embroidery,
— India muslin, scarfs, and aprons; and already
her hands were undoing the pins of a silvery
wedding-dress. “I have always told Mary,” she
continued, “that, though our hearts ought not to
be set on these things, yet they had their importance.”
“Certainly, certainly, Ma'am,” chimed in Miss
Prissy. “I was saying to Miss General Wilcox,
the other day, I didn't see how we could `consider
the lilies of the field,' without seeing the
importance of looking pretty. I've got a flower-de-luce
in my garden now, from one of the new
roots that old Major Seaforth brought over from
France, which is just the most beautiful thing
you ever did see; and I was thinking, as I looked
at it to-day, that, if women's dresses only grew
on 'em as handsome and well-fitting as that, why,
there wouldn't be any need of me; but as it is,
why, we must think, if we want to look well.
Now, peach-trees, I s'pose, might bear just as
good peaches without the pink blows, but then
who would want 'em to? Miss Deacon Twitchel,
when I was up there the other day, kept kind o'
sighin' 'cause Cerintha Ann is getting a new pink
silk made up, 'cause she said it was such a dying
world it didn't seem right to call off our attention:
but I told her it wasn't any pinker than
the apple-blossoms; and what with robins and
blue-birds and one thing or another, the Lord is
always calling off our attention; and I think we
from 'em.”
“Yes, you are quite right,” said Mrs. Scudder,
rising and shaking out a splendid white brocade,
on which bunches of moss-roses were looped to
bunches of violets by graceful fillets of blue ribbons.
“This was my wedding-dress,” she said.
Little Miss Prissy sprang up and clapped her
hands in an ecstasy.
“Well, now, Miss Scudder, really! — did I ever
see anything more beautiful? It really goes beyond
anything I ever saw. I don't think, in all
the brocades I ever made up, I ever saw so pretty
a pattern as this.”
“Mr. Scudder chose it for me, himself, at the
silk-factory in Lyons,” said Mrs. Scudder, with
pardonable pride, “and I want it tried on to
Mary.”
“Really, Miss Scudder, this ought to be kept
for her wedding-dress,” said Miss Prissy, as she
delightedly bustled about the congenial task. “I
was up to Miss Marvyn's, a-working, last week,”
she said, as she threw the dress over Mary's head,
“and she said that James expected to make his
fortune in that voyage, and come home and settle
down.”
Mary's fair head emerged from the rustling folds
of the brocade, her cheeks crimson as one of the
moss-roses, — while her mother's face assumed a
James had been much pleased with Jane Spencer,
and that, for her part, she should be very glad,
when he came home, if he could marry such a
steady, sensible girl, and settle down to a useful,
Christian life.
“Ah, yes, — just so, — a very excellent idea, certainly,”
said Miss Prissy. “It wants a little taken
in here on the shoulders, and a little under the
arms. The biases are all right; the sleeves will
want altering, Miss Scudder. I hope you will
have a hot iron ready for pressing.”
Mrs. Scudder rose immediately, to see the command
obeyed; and as her back was turned, Miss
Prissy went on in a low tone, —
“Now, I, for my part, don't think there's a word
of truth in that story about James Marvyn and
Jane Spencer; for I was down there at work one
day when he called, and I know there couldn't
have been anything between them, — besides, Miss
Spencer, her mother, told me there wasn't. — There,
Miss Scudder, you see that is a good fit. It's
astonishing how near it comes to fitting, just as
it was. I didn't think Mary was so near what
you were, when you were a girl, Miss Scudder.
The other day, when I was up to General Wilcox's,
the General he was in the room when I
was a-trying on Miss Wilcox's cherry velvet, and
she was asking couldn't I come this week for her,
and the General says he, — `I used to know her
when she was a girl. I tell you, she was one
of the handsomest girls in Newport, by George!'
says he. And says I, — `General, you ought to
see her daughter.' And the General, — you know
his jolly way, — he laughed, and says he, — `If she
is as handsome as her mother was, I don't want
to see her,' says he. `I tell you, wife,' says he,
`I but just missed falling in love with Katy Stephens.'”
“I could have told her more than that,” said
Mrs. Scudder, with a flash of her old coquette girlhood
for a moment lighting her eyes and straightening
her lithe form. “I guess, if I should show
a letter he wrote me once — But what am I
talking about?” she said, suddenly stiffening back
into a sensible woman. “Miss Prissy, do you
think it will be necessary to cut it off at the bottom?
It seems a pity to cut such rich silk.”
“So it does, I declare. Well, I believe it will
do to turn it up.”
“I depend on you to put it a little into modern
fashion, you know,” said Mrs. Scudder. “It
is many a year, you know, since it was made.”
“Oh, never you fear! You leave all that to
me,” said Miss Prissy. “Now, there never was
anything so lucky as, that, just before all these
wedding-dresses had to be fixed, I got a letter
families of Boston. And Martha she is really unusually
privileged, because she works for Miss
Cranch, and Miss Cranch gets letters from Miss
Adams, — you know Mr. Adams is Ambassador
now at the Court of St. James, and Miss Adams
writes home all the particulars about the court-dresses;
and Martha she heard one of the letters
read, and she told Miss Cranch that she would
give the best five-pound-note she had, if she could
just copy that description to send to Prissy. Well,
Miss Cranch let her do it, and I've got a copy of
the letter here in my work-pocket. I read it up to
Miss General Wilcox's, and to Major Seaforth's,
and I'll read it to you.”
Mrs. Katy Scudder was a born subject of a
crown, and, though now a republican matron, had
not outlived the reverence, from childhood implanted,
for the high and stately doings of courts, lords,
ladies, queens, and princesses, and therefore it was
not without some awe that she saw Miss Prissy
produce from her little black work-bag the well-worn
epistle.
“Here it is,” said Miss Prissy, at last. “I only
copied out the parts about being presented at
Court. She says: —
“`One is obliged here to attend the circles of
the Queen, which are held once a fortnight; and
what renders it very expensive is, that you cannot
cannot make use of elsewhere. I directed my
mantua-maker to let my dress be elegant, but
plain as I could possibly appear with decency.
Accordingly, it is white lutestring, covered and
full-trimmed with white crape, festooned with lilac
ribbon and mock point-lace, over a hoop of enormous
size. There is only a narrow train, about
three yards in length to the gown-waist, which is
put into a ribbon on the left side, — the Queen
only having her train borne. Ruffled cuffs for married
ladies, — treble lace ruffles, a very dress cap
with long lace lappets, two white plumes, and a
blonde lace handkerchief. This is my rigging.'”
Miss Prissy here stopped to adjust her spectacles.
Her audience expressed a breathless interest.
“You see,” she said, “I used to know her when
she was Nabby Smith. She was Parson Smith's
daughter, at Weymouth, and as handsome a girl
as ever I wanted to see, — just as graceful as a
sweet-brier bush. I don't believe any of those English
ladies looked one bit better than she did. She
was always a master-hand at writing. Everything
she writes about, she puts it right before you.
You feel as if you'd been there. Now, here she
goes on to tell about her daughter's dress. She
says: —
“`My head is dressed for St. James's, and in
is undergoing the same operation, I set myself
down composedly to write you a few lines. Well,
methinks I hear Betsey and Lucy say, “What is
cousin's dress?” White, my dear girls, like your
aunt's, only differently trimmed and ornamented, —
her train being wholly of white crape, and trimmed
with white ribbon; the petticoat, which is
the most showy part of the dress, covered and
drawn up in what are called festoons, with light
wreaths of beautiful flowers; the sleeves, white
crape drawn over the silk, with a row of lace
round the sleeve near the shoulder, another half-way
down the arm, and a third upon the top of
the ruffle, — a little stuck between, — a kind of
hat-cap with three large feathers and a bunch of
flowers, — a wreath of flowers on the hair.'”
Miss Prissy concluded this relishing description
with a little smack of the lips, such as people
sometimes give when reading things that are particularly
to their taste.
“Now, I was a-thinking,” she added, “that it
would be an excellent way to trim Mary's sleeves,
— three rows of lace, with a sprig to each row.”
All this while, our Mary, with her white short-gown
and blue stuff-petticoat, her shining pale
brown hair and serious large blue eyes, sat innocently
looking first at her mother, then at Miss
Prissy, and then at the finery.
We do not claim for her any superhuman exemption
from girlish feelings. She was innocently
dazzled with the vision of courtly halls and princely
splendors, and thought Mrs. Adams's descriptions
almost a perfect realization of things she had
read in “Sir Charles Grandison.” If her mother
thought it right and proper she should be dressed
and made fine, she was glad of it; only there came
a heavy, leaden feeling in her little heart, which
she did not understand, but we who know womankind
will translate it for you; it was, that a certain
pair of dark eyes would not see her after she
was dressed; and so, after all, what was the use
of looking pretty?
“I wonder what James would think,” passed
through her head; for Mary had never changed a
ribbon, or altered the braid of her hair, or pinned
a flower in her bosom, that she had not quickly
seen the effect of the change mirrored in those
dark eyes. It was a pity, of course, now she had
found out that she ought not to think about him,
that so many thought-strings were twisted round
him.
So while Miss Prissy turned over her papers,
and read out of others extracts about Lord Caermarthen
and Sir Clement Cotterel Dormer and
the Princess Royal and Princess Augusta, in black
and silver, with a silver netting upon the coat, and
a head stuck full of diamond pins, — and Lady
Devonshire, and scarlet satin sacks and diamonds
and ostrich-plumes, and the King's kissing Mrs.
Adams, — little Mary's blue eyes grew larger and
larger, seeing far off on the salt green sea, and her
ears heard only the ripple and murmur of those
waters that carried her heart away, — till, by-and-by,
Miss Prissy gave her a smart little tap, which
awakened her to the fact that she was wanted
again to try on the dress which Miss Prissy's nimble
fingers had basted.
So passed the day, — Miss Prissy busily chattering,
clipping, basting, — Mary patiently trying on
to an unheard-of extent, — and Mrs. Scudder's neat
room whipped into a perfect froth and foam of
gauze, lace, artificial flowers, linings, and other
aids, accessories, and abetments.
At dinner, the Doctor, who had been all the
morning studying out his Treatise on the Millennium,
discoursed tranquilly as usual, innocently ignorant
of the unusual cares which were distracting
the minds of his listeners. What should he
know of dress-makers, good soul? Encouraged
by the respectful silence of his auditors, he calmly
expanded and soliloquized on his favorite topic,
the last golden age of Time, the Marriage-Supper
of the Lamb, when the purified Earth, like a repentant
Psyche, shall be restored to the long-lost
favor of a celestial Bridegroom, and glorified saints
among men.
“Sakes alive!” said little Miss Prissy, after dinner,
“did I ever hear any one go on like that
blessed man? — such a spiritual mind! Oh, Miss
Scudder, how you are privileged in having him
here! I do really think it is a shame such a
blessed man a'n't thought more of. Why, I could
just sit and hear him talk all day. Miss Scudder,
I wish sometimes you'd just let me make a ruffled
shirt for him, and do it all up myself, and put a
stitch in the hem that I learned from my sister
Martha, who learned it from a French young lady
who was educated in a convent; — nuns, you know,
poor things, can do some things right; and I think
I never saw such hemstitching as they do there;
— and I should like to hemstitch the Doctor's ruffles;
he is so spiritually-minded, it really makes
me love him. Why, hearing him talk put me in
mind of a real beautiful song of Mr. Watts, — I
don't know as I could remember the tune.”
And Miss Prissy, whose musical talent was one
of her special fortes, tuned her voice, a little cracked
and quavering, and sang, with a vigorous accent
on each accented syllable, —
That holy, happy place,
The New Jerusalem comes down,
A lorned with shining grace.
And the bright armies sing, —
`Mortals! behold the sacred seat
Of your descending King!'”
“Take care, Miss Scudder! — that silk must be
cut exactly on the bias”; and Miss Prissy, hastily
finishing her last quaver, caught the silk and the
scissors out of Mrs. Scudder's hand, and fell down
at once from the Millennium into a discourse on
her own particular way of covering piping-cord.
So we go, dear reader, — so long as we have a
body and a soul. Two worlds must mingle, — the
great and the little, the solemn and the trivial,
wreathing in and out, like the grotesque carvings
on a Gothic shrine; — only, did we know it
rightly, nothing is trivial; since the human soul,
with its awful shadow, makes all things sacred.
Have not ribbons, cast-off flowers, soiled bits of
gauze, trivial, trashy fragments of millinery, sometimes
had an awful meaning, a deadly power,
when they belonged to one who should wear them
no more, and whose beautiful form, frail and
crushed as they, is a hidden and a vanished thing
for all time? For so sacred and individual is a
human being, that, of all the million-peopled earth,
no one form ever restores another. The mould of
each mortal type is broken at the grave; and never,
never, though you look through all the faces
on earth, shall the exact form you mourn ever
life among trifles that one death-stroke may make
relics. One false step, one luckless accident, an
obstacle on the track of a train, the tangling of
the cord in shifting a sail, and the penknife, the
pen, the papers, the trivial articles of dress and
clothing, which to-day you toss idly and jestingly
from hand to hand, may become dread memorials
of that awful tragedy whose deep abyss ever underlies
our common life.
| CHAPTER XII.
MISS PRISSY. The minister's wooing | |