University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
PRE-RAILROAD TIMES.

Mrs. Katy Scudder had invited Mrs. Brown, and
Mrs. Jones, and Deacon Twitchel's wife to take tea
with her on the afternoon of June second, A. D. 17 —.

When one has a story to tell, one is always puzzled
which end of it to begin at. You have a whole
corps of people to introduce that you know and your
reader doesn't; and one thing so presupposes another,
that, whichever way you turn your patchwork,
the figures still seem ill-arranged. The small item
which I have given will do as well as any other to
begin with, as it certainly will lead you to ask,
“Pray, who was Mrs. Katy Scudder?” — and this
will start me systematically on my story.

You must understand that in the then small seaport-town
of Newport, at that time unconscious of its
present fashion and fame, there lived nobody in those
days who did not know “the Widow Scudder.”

In New England settlements a custon has obtained,
which is wholesome and touching, of ennobling
the woman whom God has made desolate, by a sort
of brevet rank which continually speaks for her as a
claim on the respect and consideration of the community.
The Widow Jones, or Brown, or Smith, is
one of the fixed institutions of every New England
village, — and doubtless the designation acts as a
continual plea for one whom bereavement, like the
lightning of heaven, has made sacred.

The Widow Scudder, however, was one of the
sort of women who reign queens in whatever society
they move; nobody was more quoted, more
deferred to, or enjoyed more unquestioned position
than she. She was not rich, — a small farm, with a
modest, “gambrel-roofed,” one-story cottage, was her
sole domain; but she was one of the much-admired
class who, in the speech of New England, are said
to have “faculty,” — a gift which, among that shrewd
people, commands more esteem than beauty, riches,
learning, or any other worldly endowment. Faculty
is Yankee for savoir faire, and the opposite virtue
to shiftlessness. Faculty is the greatest virtue, and
shiftlessness the greatest vice, of Yankee man and
woman. To her who has faculty nothing shall be
impossible. She shall scrub floors, wash, wring,
bake, brew, and yet her hands shall be small and
white; she shall have no perceptible income, yet
always be handsomely dressed; she shall have not a

servant in her house, — with a dairy to manage, hired
men to feed, a boarder or two to care for, unheard-of
pickling and preserving to do, — and yet you commonly
see her every afternoon sitting at her shady
parlor-window behind the lilacs, cool and easy, hemming
muslin cap-strings, or reading the last new
book. She who hath faculty is never in a hurry,
never behindhand. She can always step over to
distressed Mrs. Smith, whose jelly won't come, —
and stop to show Mrs. Jones how she makes her
pickles so green, — and be ready to watch with
poor old Mrs. Simpkins, who is down with the
rheumatism.

Of this genus was the Widow Scudder, — or, as
the neighbors would have said of her, she that was
Katy Stephens. Katy was the only daughter of a
shipmaster, sailing from Newport harbor, who was
wrecked off the coast one cold December night, and
left small fortune to his widow and only child.
Katy grew up, however, a tall, straight, black-eyed
girl, with eyebrows drawn true as a bow, a foot
arched like a Spanish woman's, and a little hand
which never saw the thing it could not do, — quick
of speech, ready of wit, and, as such girls have a
right to be, somewhat positive withal. Katy could
harness a chaise, or row a boat; she could saddle
and ride any horse in the neighborhood; she could
cut any garment that ever was seen or thought of,
make cake, jelly, and wine, from her earliest years,

in most precocious style; — all without seeming to
derange a sort of trim, well-kept air of ladyhood
that sat jauntily on her.

Of course, being young and lively, she had her
admirers, and some well-to-do in worldly affairs laid
their lands and houses at Katy's feet; but, to the
wonder of all, she would not even pick them up to
look at them. People shook their heads, and wondered
whom Katy Stephens expected to get, and
talked about going through the wood to pick up a
crooked stick, — till one day she astonished her
world by marrying a man that nobody ever thought
of her taking.

George Scudder was a grave, thoughtful young
man, — not given to talking, and silent in the
society of women, with that kind of reverential
bashfulness which sometimes shows a pure, unworldly
nature. How Katy came to fancy him
everybody wondered, — for he never talked to her,
never so much as picked up her glove when it fell,
never asked her to ride or sail; in short, everybody
said she must have wanted him from sheer wilfulness,
because he of all the young men of the neighborhood
never courted her. But Katy, having very
sharp eyes, saw some things that nobody else saw.
For example, you must know she discovered by
mere accident that George Scudder always was
looking at her. wherever she moved, though he
looked away in a moment, if discovered, — and that

an accidental touch of her hand or brush of her
dress would send the blood into his cheek like the
spirit in the tube of a thermometer; and so, as
women are curious, you know, Katy amused herself
with investigating the causes of these little
phenomena, and, before she knew it, got her foot
caught in a cobweb that held her fast, and constrained
her, whether she would or no, to marry
a poor man that nobody cared much for but
herself.

George was, in truth, one of the sort who evidently
have made some mistake in coming into this
world at all, as their internal furniture is in no way
suited to its general courses and currents. He was
of the order of dumb poets, — most wretched when
put to the grind of the hard and actual; for if he
who would utter poetry stretches out his hand to a
gainsaying world, he is worse off still who is possessed
with the desire of living it. Especially is
this the case, if he be born poor, and with a dire
necessity upon him of making immediate efforts
in the hard and actual. George had a helpless
invalid mother to support; so, though he loved
reading and silent thought above all things, he put
to instant use the only convertible worldly talent
he possessed, which was a mechanical genius, and
shipped at sixteen as a ship-carpenter. He studied
navigation in the forecastle, and found in its calm
diagrams and tranquil eternal signs food for his

thoughtful nature, and a refuge from the brutality
and coarseness of sea-life. He had a healthful,
kindly animal nature, and so his inwardness did
not ferment and turn to Byronic sourness and
bitterness; nor did he needlessly parade to everybody
in his vicinity the great gulf which lay between
him and them. He was called a good
fellow, — only a little lumpish, — and as he was
brave and faithful, he rose in time to be a shipmaster.
But when came the business of making
money, the aptitude for accumulating, George found
himself distanced by many a one with not half his
general powers.

What shall a man do with a sublime tier of
moral faculties, when the most profitable business
out of his port is the slave-trade? So it was in
Newport in those days. George's first voyage was
on a slaver, and he wished himself dead many a
time before it was over, — and ever after would
talk like a man beside himself, if the subject was
named. He declared that the gold made in it was
distilled from human blood, from mothers' tears,
from the agonies and dying groans of gasping,
suffocating men and women, and that it would sear
and blister the soul of him that touched it; in short,
he talked as whole-souled, unpractical fellows are
apt to talk about what respectable people sometimes
do. Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship,
with a procession of expectant sharks in its

wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed
heathens are brought over to enjoy the light
of the gospel.

So, though George was acknowledged to be a
good fellow, and honest as the noon-mark on the
kitchen floor, he let slip so many chances of making
money as seriously to compromise his reputation
among thriving folks. He was wastefully generous,
— insisted on treating every poor dog that
came in his way, in any foreign port, as a brother,
— absolutely refused to be party in cheating or
deceiving the heathen on any shore, or in skin of
any color, — and also took pains, as far as in him
lay, to spoil any bargains which any of his subordinates
founded on the ignorance or weakness of
his fellow-men. So he made voyage after voyage,
and gained only his wages and the reputation
among his employers of an incorruptibly honest
fellow.

To be sure, it was said that he carried out books
in his ship, and read and studied, and wrote observations
on all the countries he saw, which Parson
Smith told Miss Dolly Persimmon would really do
credit to a printed book; but then they never were
printed, or, as Miss Dolly remarked of them, they
never seemed to come to anything, — and coming
to anything, as she understood it, meant standing
in definite relations to bread and butter.

George never cared, however, for money. He

made enough to keep his mother comfortable, and
that was enough for him, till he fell in love with
Katy Stephens. He looked at her through those
glasses which such men carry in their souls, and
she was a mortal woman no longer, but a transfigured,
glorified creature, — an object of awe and
wonder. He was actually afraid of her; her glove,
her shoe, her needle, thread, and thimble, her bonnet-string,
everything, in short, she wore or touched, became
invested with a mysterious charm. He wondered
at the impudence of men that could walk up
and talk to her, — that could ask her to dance with
such an assured air. Now he wished he were rich;
he dreamed impossible chances of his coming home
a millionnaire to lay unknown wealth at Katy's feet;
and when Miss Persimmon, the ambulatory dress-maker
of the neighborhood, in making up a new
black gown for his mother, recounted how Captain
Blatherem had sent Katy Stephens “'most the
splendidest India shawl that ever she did see,” he
was ready to tear his hair at the thought of his
poverty. But even in that hour of temptation he
did not repent that he had refused all part and lot
in the ship by which Captain Blatherem's money
was made, for he knew every timber of it to be
seasoned by the groans and saturated with the
sweat of human agony. True love is a natural
sacrament; and if ever a young man thanks God
for having saved what is noble and manly in his
soul, it is when he thinks of offering it to the
woman he loves. Nevertheless, the India-shawl
story cost him a night's rest; nor was it till Miss
Persimmon had ascertained, by a private confabulation
with Katy's mother, that she had indignantly
rejected it, and that she treated the Captain
“real ridiculous,” that he began to take heart.
“He ought not,” he said, “to stand in her way
now, when he had nothing to offer. No, he would
leave Katy free to do better, if she could; he would
try his luck; and if, when he came home from the
next voyage, Katy was disengaged, why, then he
would lay all at her feet.”

And so George was going to sea with a secret
shrine in his soul, at which he was to burn unsuspected
incense.

But, after all, the mortal maiden whom he adored
suspected this private arrangement, and contrived —
as women will — to get her own key into the lock
of his secret temple; because, as girls say, “she
was determined to know what was there.” So, one
night, she met him quite accidentally on the seasands,
struck up a little conversation, and begged
him in such a pretty way to bring her a spotted
shell from the South Sea, like the one on his
mother's mantel-piece, and looked so simple and
childlike in saying it, that our young man very
imprudently committed himself by remarking, that,
“When people had rich friends to bring them all

the world from foreign parts, he never dreamed of
her wanting so trivial a thing.”

Of course Katy “didn't know what he meant, —
she hadn't heard of any rich friends.” And then
came something about Captain Blatherem; and
Katy tossed her head, and said, “If anybody
wanted to insult her, they might talk to her about
Captain Blatherem,” — and then followed this, that,
and the other, till finally, as you might expect, out
came all that never was to have been said; and
Katy was almost frightened at the terrible earnestness
of the spirit she had evoked. She tried to
laugh, and ended by crying, and saying she hardly
knew what; but when she came to herself in her
own room at home, she found on her finger a ring of
African gold that George had put there, which she
did not send back like Captain Blatherem's presents.

Katy was like many intensely matter-of-fact and
practical women, who have not in themselves a bit
of poetry or a particle of ideality, but who yet worship
these qualities in others with the homage which
the Indians paid to the unknown tongue of the
first whites. They are secretly weary of a certain
conscious dryness of nature in themselves, and this
weariness predisposes them to idolize the man who
brings them this unknown gift. Naturalists say that
every defect of organization has its compensation,
and men of ideal natures find in the favor of women
the equivalent for their disabilities among men.

Do you remember, at Niagara, a little cataract on
the American side, which throws its silver sheeny
veil over a cave called the Grot of Rainbows?
Whoever stands on a rock in that grotto sees himself
in the centre of a rainbow-circle, above, below,
around. In like manner, merry, chatty, positive,
busy, housewifely, Katy saw herself standing in a
rainbow-shrine in her lover's inner soul, and liked to
see herself so. A woman, by-the-by, must be very
insensible, who is not moved to come upon a higher
plane of being, herself, by seeing how undoubtingly
she is insphered in the heart of a good and noble
man. A good man's faith in you, fair lady, if you
ever have it, will make you better and nobler even
before you know it.

Katy made an excellent wife; she took home her
husband's old mother and nursed her with a dutifulness
and energy worthy of all praise, and made her
own keen outward faculties and deft handiness a
compensation for the defects in worldly estate.
Nothing would make Katy's black eyes flash
quicker than any reflections on her husband's
want of luck in the material line. “She didn't
know whose business it was, if she was satisfied.
She hated these sharp, gimlet, gouging sort of men
that would put a screw between body and soul for
money. George had that in him that nobody understood.
She would rather be his wife on bread
and water than to take Captain Blatherem's house

carriages, and horses, and all, — and she might have
had 'em fast enough, dear knows. She was sick of
making money when she saw what sort of men
could make it,” — and so on. All which talk did
her infinite credit, because after all she did care,
and was naturally as proud and ambitious a little
minx as ever breathed, and was thoroughly grieved
at heart at George's want of worldly success; but,
like a nice little Robin Redbreast, she covered up
the grave of her worldliness with the leaves of true
love, and sung a “Who cares for that?” above it.

Her thrifty management of the money her husband
brought her soon bought a snug little farm
and put up the little brown gambrel-roofed cottage
to which we directed your attention in the first of
our story. Children were born to them; and George
found, in short intervals between voyages, his home
an earthly paradise. He was still sailing, with the
fond illusion, in every voyage, of making enough to
remain at home, — when the yellow fever smote him
under the line, and the ship returned to Newport
without its captain.

George was a Christian man; — he had been one
of the first to attach himself to the unpopular and
unworldly ministry of the celebrated Dr. Hopkins,
and to appreciate the sublime ideality and unselfishness
of those teachings which then were awakening
new sensations in the theological mind of New England.
Katy, too, had become a professor with her

husband in the same church, and her husband's
death in the midst of life deepened the power of her
religious impressions. She became absorbed in religion,
after the fashion of New England, where
devotion is doctrinal, not ritual. As she grew older,
her energy of character, her vigor and good judgment,
caused her to be regarded as a mother in
Israel; the minister boarded at her house, and it
was she who was first to be consulted in all matters
relating to the well-being of the church. No woman
could more manfully breast a long sermon, or bring
a more determined faith to the reception of a difficult
doctrine. To say the truth, there lay at the bottom
of her doctrinal system this stable corner-stone, —
“Mr. Scudder used to believe it, — I will.” And
after all that is said about independent thought, isn't
the fact, that a just and good soul has thus or thus
believed, a more respectable argument than many
that often are adduced? If it be not, more's the
pity, — since two thirds of the faith in the world is
built on no better foundation.

In time, George's old mother was gathered to her
son, and two sons and a daughter followed their
father to the invisible, — one only remaining of the
flock, and she a person with whom you and I, good
reader, have joint concern in the further unfolding
of our story