 | CHAPTER IV.
THEOLOGICAL TEA. The minister's wooing |  |
4. CHAPTER IV.
THEOLOGICAL TEA.
At the call of her mother, Mary hurried into
the “best room,” with a strange discomposure of
spirit she had never felt before. From childhood,
her love for James had been so deep, equable, and
intense, that it had never disturbed her with thrills
and yearnings; it had grown up in sisterly calmness,
and, quietly expanding, had taken possession
of her whole nature, without her once dreaming
of its power. But this last interview seemed to
have struck some great nerve of her being, — and
calm as she usually was, from habit, principle, and
good health, she shivered and trembled, as she
heard his retreating footsteps, and saw the orchard-grass
fly back from under his feet. It was as if
each step trod on a nerve, — as if the very sound
of the rustling grass was stirring something living
and sensitive in her soul. And, strangest of all, a
vague impression of guilt hovered over her. Had
she done anything wrong? She did not ask him
there; she had not spoken love to him; no, she
would give hers for his, — oh, so willingly! — and
that was not love; it was only what Dr. Hopkins
said Christians must always feel.
“Child, what have you been doing?” said Aunt
Katy, who sat in full flowing chintz petticoat and
spotless dimity short-gown, with her company knitting-work
in her hands; “your cheeks are as red
as peonies. Have you been crying? What's the
matter?”
“There is the Deacon's wife, mother,” said Mary,
turning confusedly, and darting to the entry-door.
Enter Mrs. Twitchel, — a soft, pillowy little elderly
lady, whose whole air and dress reminded
one of a sack of feathers tied in the middle with
a string. A large, comfortable pocket, hung upon
the side, disclosed her knitting-work ready for operation;
and she zealously cleansed herself with a
checked handkerchief from the dust which had
accumulated during her ride in the old “one-hoss
shay,” answering the hospitable salutation of Katy
Scudder in that plaintive, motherly voice which
belongs to certain nice old ladies, who appear to
live in a state of mild chronic compassion for the
sins and sorrows of this mortal life generally.
“Why, yes, Miss Scudder, I'm pretty tol'able.
I keep goin', and goin'. That's my way. I's
a-tellin' the Deacon, this mornin', I didn't see how
I was to come here this afternoon; but then I did
that precious sermon, Sunday. How is the Doctor?
blessed man! Well, his reward must be great
in heaven, if not on earth, as I was a-tellin' the
Deacon; and he says to me, says he, `Polly, we
mustn't be man-worshippers.' There, dear,” (to
Mary,) “don't trouble yourself about my bonnet;
it a'n't my Sunday one, but I thought 'twould do.
Says I to Cerinthy Ann, `Miss Scudder won't
mind, 'cause her heart's set on better things.' I
always like to drop a word in season to Cerinthy
Ann, 'cause she's clean took up with vanity and
dress. Oh, dear! oh, dear me! so different from
your blessed daughter, Miss Scudder! Well, it's
a great blessin' to be called in one's youth, like
Samuel and Timothy; but then we doesn't know
the Lord's ways. Sometimes I gets clean discouraged
with my children, — but then ag'in I don't
know; none on us does. Cerinthy Ann is one of
the most master hands to turn off work; she takes
hold and goes along like a woman, and nobody
never knows when that gal finds the time to do
all she does do; and I don't know nothin' what
I should do without her. Deacon was saying, if
ever she was called, she'd be a Martha, and not a
Mary; but then she's dreadful opposed to the doctrines.
Oh, dear me! oh, dear me! Somehow they
seem to rile her all up; and she was a-tellin' me
yesterday, when she was a-hangin' out clothes, that
'Lection, 'cause she can't see, if things is certain,
how folks is to help 'emselves. Says I, `Cerinthy
Ann, folks a'n't to help themselves; they's to submit
unconditional.' And she jest slammed down
the clothes-basket and went into the house.”
When Mrs. Twitchel began to talk, it flowed a
steady stream, as when one turns a faucet, that
never ceases running till some hand turns it back
again; and the occasion that cut the flood short
at present was the entrance of Mrs. Brown.
Mr. Simeon Brown was a thriving ship-owner of
Newport, who lived in a large house, owned several
negro-servants and a span of horses, and affected
some state and style in his worldly appearance.
A passion for metaphysical Orthodoxy had drawn
Simeon to the congregation of Dr. Hopkins, and
his wife of course stood by right in a high place
there. She was a tall, angular, somewhat hard-favored
body, dressed in a style rather above the
simple habits of her neighbors, and her whole air
spoke the great woman, who in right of her thousands
expected to have her say in all that was
going on in the world, whether she understood it
or not.
On her entrance, mild little Mrs. Twitchel fled
from the cushioned rocking-chair, and stood with
the quivering air of one who feels she has no business
to be anywhere in the world, until Mrs.
when Mrs. Twitchel subsided into a corner and
rattled her knitting-needles to conceal her emotion.
New England has been called the land of equality;
but what land upon earth is wholly so? Even
the mites in a bit of cheese, naturalists say, have
great tumblings and strivings about position and
rank; he who has ten pounds will always be a
nobleman to him who has but one, let him strive
as manfully as he may; and therefore let us forgive
meek little Mrs. Twitchel for melting into
nothing in her own eyes when Mrs. Brown came
in, and let us forgive Mrs. Brown that she sat
down in the rocking-chair with an easy grandeur,
as one who thought it her duty to be affable and
meant to be. It was, however, rather difficult for
Mrs. Brown, with her money, house, negroes, and
all, to patronize Mrs. Katy Scudder, who was one
of those women whose natures seem to sit on
thrones, and who dispense patronage and favor by
an inborn right and aptitude, whatever be their
social advantages. It was one of Mrs. Brown's
trials of life, this secret, strange quality in her
neighbor, who stood apparently so far below her
in worldly goods. Even the quiet, positive style
of Mrs. Katy's knitting made her nervous; it was
an implication of independence of her sway; and
though on the present occasion every customary
courtesy was bestowed, she still felt, as she always
She mentally contrasted the neat little parlor, with
its white sanded floor and muslin curtains, with
her own grand front-room, which boasted the then
uncommon luxuries of Turkey carpet and Persian
rug, and wondered if Mrs. Katy did really feel as
cool and easy in receiving her as she appeared.
You must not understand that this was what
Mrs. Brown supposed herself to be thinking about;
oh, no! by no means! All the little, mean work
of our nature is generally done in a small dark
closet just a little back of the subject we are
talking about, on which subject we suppose ourselves
of course to be thinking; — of course we
are thinking of it; how else could we talk about
it?
The subject in discussion, and what Mrs. Brown
supposed to be in her own thoughts, was the last
Sunday's sermon on the doctrine of entire Disinterested
Benevolence, in which good Doctor Hopkins
had proclaimed to the citizens of Newport
their duty of being so wholly absorbed in the general
good of the universe as even to acquiesce in
their own final and eternal destruction, if the
greater good of the whole might thereby be accomplished.
“Well, now, dear me!” said Mrs. Twitchel,
while her knitting-needles trotted contentedly to
the mournful tone of her voice, — “I was tellin'
I think I get a little way, — but then ag'in
I don't know; but the Deacon he's quite down, —
he don't see no evidences in himself. Sometimes
he says he don't feel as if he ought to keep his
place in the church, — but then ag'in he don't know.
He keeps a-turnin' and turnin' on't over in his
mind, and a-tryin' himself this way and that way;
and he says he don't see nothin' but what's selfish,
no way.
“'Member one night last winter, after the Deacon
got warm in bed, there come a rap at the
door; and who should it be but old Beulah Ward,
wantin' to see the Deacon? — 'twas her boy she sent,
and he said Beulah was sick and hadn't no more
wood nor candles. Now I know'd the Deacon had
carried that crittur half a cord of wood, if he had
one stick, since Thanksgivin', and I'd sent her two
o' my best moulds of candles, — nice ones that
Cerinthy Ann run when we killed a crittur; but
nothin' would do but the Deacon must get right
out his warm bed and dress himself, and hitch up
his team to carry over some wood to Beulah.
Says I, `Father, you know you'll be down with
the rheumatis for this; besides, Beulah is real
aggravatin'. I know she trades off what we send
her to the store for rum, and you never get no
thanks. She expects, 'cause we has done for her,
we always must; and more we do more we may
way we sarves the Lord, Polly; and what if He
shouldn't hear us when we call on Him in our
troubles?' So I shet up; and the next day he
was down with the rheumatis. And Cerinthy Ann,
says she, `Well, father, now I hope you'll own
you have got some disinterested benevolence,' says
she; and the Deacon he thought it over a spell,
and then he says, `I'm 'fraid it's all selfish. I'm
jest a-makin' a righteousness of it.' And Cerinthy
Ann she come out, declarin' that the best folks
never had no comfort in religion; and for her part
she didn't mean to trouble her head about it, but
have jest as good a time as she could while she's
young, 'cause if she was 'lected to be saved she
should be, and if she wa'n't she couldn't help it,
any how.”
“Mr. Brown says he came on to Dr. Hopkins's
ground years ago,” said Mrs. Brown, giving a nervous
twitch to her yarn, and speaking in a sharp,
hard, didatic voice, which made little Mrs. Twitchel
give a gentle quiver, and look humble and apologetic.
“Mr. Brown's a master thinker; there's
nothing pleases that man better than a hard doctrine;
he says you can't get 'em too hard for him.
He don't find any difficulty in bringing his mind
up; he just reasons it out all plain; and he says,
people have no need to be in the dark; and that's
my opinion. `If folks know they ought to come
say so too.”
“Mr. Scudder used to say that it took great
afflictions to bring his mind to that place,” said
Mrs. Katy. “He used to say that an old papermaker
told him once, that paper that was shaken
only one way in the making would tear across the
other, and the best paper had to be shaken every
way; and so he said we couldn't tell, till we had
been turned and shaken and tried every way,
where we should tear.”
Mrs. Twitchel responded to this sentiment with
a gentle series of groans, such as were her general
expression of approbation, swaying herself backward
and forward; while Mrs. Brown gave a sort
of toss and snort, and said that for her part she
always thought people knew what they did know,
— but she guessed she was mistaken.
The conversation was here interrupted by the
civilities attendant on the reception of Mrs. Jones,
— a broad, buxom, hearty soul, who had come on
horseback from a farm about three miles distant.
Smiling with rosy content, she presented Mrs.
Katy a small pot of golden butter, — the result of
her forenoon's churning.
There are some people so evidently broadly and
heartily of this world, that their coming into a
room always materializes the conversation. We
wish to be understood that we mean no disparaging
necessary to make up a world as cabbages to make
up a garden; the great healthy principles of cheerfulness
and animal life seem to exist in them in
the gross; they are wedges and ingots of solid,
contented vitality. Certain kinds of virtues and
Christian graces thrive in such people as the first
crop of corn does in the bottom-lands of the Ohio
Mrs. Jones was a church-member, a regular churchgoer,
and planted her comely person plump in
front of Dr. Hopkins every Sunday, and listened
to his searching and discriminating sermons with
broad, honest smiles of satisfaction. Those keen
distinctions as to motives, those awful warnings
and urgent expostulations, which made poor Deacon
Twitchel weep, she listened to with great,
round, satisfied eyes, making to all, and after all,
the same remark, — that it was good, and she liked
it, and the Doctor was a good man; and on the
present occasion, she announced her pot of butter
as one fruit of her reflections after the last discourse.
“You see,” she said, “as I was a-settin' in the
spring-house, this mornin', a-workin' my butter, I
says to Dinah, — `I'm goin' to carry a pot of this
down to Miss Scudder for the Doctor, — I got so
much good out of his Sunday's sermon.' And
Dinah she says to me, says she, — `Laws, Miss
Jones, I thought you was asleep, for sartin!'
in the mornin', and so I kinder missed it;
you know it 'livens one up. But I never lost
myself so but what I kinder heerd him goin' on,
on, sort o' like, — and it sounded all sort o' good;
and so I thought of the Doctor to-day.”
“Well, I'm sure,” said Aunt Katy, “this will be
a treat; we all know about your butter, Mrs. Jones.
I sha'n't think of putting any of mine on table
to-night, I'm sure.”
“Law, now don't!” said Mrs. Jones. “Why,
you re'lly make me ashamed, Miss Scudder. To
be sure, folks does like our butter, and it always
fetches a pretty good price, — he's very proud on't.
I tell him he oughtn't to be, — we oughtn't to be
proud of anything.”
And now Mrs. Katy, giving a look at the old
clock, told Mary it was time to set the tea-table;
and forthwith there was a gentle movement of
expectancy. The little mahogany tea-table opened
its brown wings, and from a drawer came forth
the snowy damask covering. It was etiquette, on
such occasions, to compliment every article of the
establishment successively, as it appeared; so the
Deacon's wife began at the table-cloth.
“Well, I do declare, Miss Scudder beats us all
in her table-cloths,” she said, taking up a corner
of the damask, admiringly; and Mrs. Jones forth
with jumped up and seized the other corner.
“Why, this 'ere must have come from the Old
Country. It's 'most the beautiflest thing I ever
did see.”
“It's my own spinning,” replied Mrs. Katy, with
conscious dignity. “There was an Irish weaver
came to Newport the year before I was married,
who wove beautifully, — just the Old-Country patterns,
— and I'd been spinning some uncommonly
fine flax then. I remember Mr. Scudder used to
read to me while I was spinning,” — and Aunt
Katy looked afar, as one whose thoughts are in
the past, and dropped out the last words with a
little sigh, unconsciously, as if speaking to herself.
“Well, now, I must say,” said Mrs. Jones, “this
goes quite beyond me. I thought I could spin
some; but I sha'n't never dare to show mine.”
“I'm sure, Mrs. Jones, your towels that you had
out bleaching, this spring, were wonderful,” said
Aunt Katy. “But I don't pretend to do much
now,” she continued, straightening her trim figure.
“I'm getting old, you know; we must let the
young folks take up these things. Mary spins
better now than I ever did. Mary, hand out those
napkins.”
And so Mary's napkins passed from hand to
hand.
“Well, well,” said Mrs. Twitchel to Mary, “it's
easy to see that your linen-chest will be pretty full
by the time he comes along; won't it, Miss Jones?”
as elderly ladies generally do, when suggesting
such possibilities to younger ones.
Mary was vexed to feel the blood boil up in
her cheeks in a most unexpected and provoking
way at the suggestion; whereat Mrs. Twitchel
nodded knowingly at Mrs. Jones, and whispered
something in a mysterious aside, to which plump
Mrs. Jones answered, — “Why, do tell! now I
never!”
“It's strange,” said Mrs. Twitchel, taking up her
parable again, in such a plaintive tone that all
knew something pathetic was coming, “what mistakes
some folks will make, a-fetchin' up girls.
Now there's your Mary, Miss Scudder, — why, there
a'n't nothin' she can't do; but law, I was down to
Miss Skinner's, last week, a-watchin' with her, and
re'lly it 'most broke my heart to see her. Her
mother was a most amazin' smart woman; but
she brought Suky up, for all the world, as if she'd
been a wax doll, to be kept in the drawer, — and
sure enough, she was a pretty creetur, — and now
she's married, what is she? She ha'n't no more
idee how to take hold than nothin'. The poor
child means well enough, and she works so hard
she most kills herself; but then she is in the suds
from mornin' till night, — she's one the sort whose
work's never done, — and poor George Skinner's
clean discouraged.”
“There's everything in knowing how,” said Mrs
Katy. “Nobody ought to be always working; it's
a bad sign. I tell Mary, — `Always do up your
work in the forenoon.' Girls must learn that. I
never work afternoons, after my dinner-dishes are
got away; I never did and never would.”
“Nor I, neither,” chimed in Mrs. Jones and Mrs.
Twitchel, — both anxious to show themselves clear
on this leading point of New England housekeeping.
“There's another thing I always tell Mary,” said
Mrs. Katy, impressively. “`Never say there isn't
time for a thing that ought to be done. If a thing
is necessary, why, life is long enough to find a
place for it. That's my doctrine. When anybody
tells me they can't find time for this or that, I
don't think much of 'em. I think they don't know
how to work, — that's all.'”
Here Mrs. Twitchel looked up from her knitting,
with an apologetic giggle, at Mrs. Brown.
“Law, now, there's Miss Brown, she don't know
nothin' about it, 'cause she's got her servants to
every turn. I s'pose she thinks it queer to hear
us talkin' about our work. Miss Brown must have
her time all to herself. I was tellin' the Deacon
the other day that she was a privileged woman.”
“I'm sure, those that have servants find work
enough following 'em 'round,” said Mrs. Brown, —
who, like all other human beings, resented the
her neighbors. “As to getting the work done up
in the forenoon, that's a thing I never can teach
'em; they'd rather not. Chloe likes to keep her
work 'round, and do it by snacks, any time, day
or night, when the notion takes her.”
“And it was just for that reason I never would
have one of those creatures 'round,” said Mrs.
Katy. “Mr. Scudder was principled against buying
negroes, — but if he had not been, I should not
have wanted any of their work. I know what's
to be done, and most help is no help to me. I
want people to stand out of my way and let me
get done. I've tried keeping a girl once or twice,
and I never worked so hard in my life. When
Mary and I do all ourselves, we can calculate everything
to a minute; and we get our time to sew
and read and spin and visit, and live just as we
want to.”
Here, again, Mrs. Brown looked uneasy. To
what use was it that she was rich and owned
servants, when this Mordecai in her gate utterly
despised her prosperity? In her secret heart she
thought Mrs. Katy must be envious, and rather
comforted herself on this view of the subject, —
sweetly unconscious of any inconsistency in the
feeling with her views of utter self-abnegation just
announced.
Meanwhile the tea-table had been silently gathering
golden butter, the loaf of faultless cake, a plate of
crullers or wonders, as a sort of sweet fried cake
was commonly called, — tea-rusks, light as a puff,
and shining on top with a varnish of egg, — jellies
of apple and quince quivering in amber clearness,
— whitest and purest honey in the comb, — in short,
everything that could go to the getting-up of a
most faultless tea.
“I don't see,” said Mrs. Jones, resuming the
gentle pæans of the occasion, “how Miss Scudder's
loaf-cake always comes out jest so. It don't rise
neither to one side nor t'other, but jest even all
'round; and it a'n't white one side and burnt the
other, but jest a good brown all over; and it don't
have no heavy streak in it.”
“Jest what Cerinthy Ann was sayin', the other
day,” said Mrs. Twitchel. “She says she can't
never be sure how hers is a-comin' out. Do what
she can, it will be either too much or too little;
but Miss Scudder's is always jest so. `Law,' says
I, `Cerinthy Ann, it's faculty, — that's it; — them
that has it has it, and them that hasn't — why,
they've got to work hard, and not do half so well,
neither.'”
Mrs. Katy took all these praises as matter of
course. Since she was thirteen years old, she had
never put her hand to anything that she had not
been held to do better than other folks, and therefore
and serenity of assured reputation; though, of course,
she used the usual polite disclaimers of “Oh, it's
nothing, nothing at all; I'm sure I don't know how
I do it, and was not aware it was so good,” — and
so on. All which things are proper for gentlewomen
to observe in like cases, in every walk of
life.
“Do you think the Deacon will be along soon?”
said Mrs. Katy, when Mary, returning from the
kitchen, announced the important fact, that the
tea-kettle was boiling.
“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Twitchel. “I'm a-lookin'
for him every minute. He told me, that he and
the men should be plantin' up to the eight-acre
lot, but he'd keep the colt up there to come down
on; and so I laid him out a clean shirt, and says
I, `Now, Father, you be sure and be there by five,
so that Miss Scudder may know when to put her
tea a-drawin'.' — There he is, I believe,” she added,
as a horse's tramp was heard without, and, after
a few moments, the desired Deacon entered.
He was a gentle, soft-spoken man, low, sinewy,
thin, with black hair showing lines and patches of
silver. His keen, thoughtful, dark eye marked the
nervous and melancholic temperament. A mild and
pensive humility of manner seemed to brood over
him, like the shadow of a cloud. Everything in
his dress, air, and motions indicated punctilious
of nervous anxiety.
Immediately after the bustle of his entrance had
subsided, Mr. Simeon Brown followed. He was a
tall, lank individual, with high cheek-bones, thin,
sharp features, small, keen, hard eyes, and large
hands and feet.
Simeon was, as we have before remarked, a
keen theologian, and had the scent of a hound for
a metaphysical distinction. True, he was a man
of business, being a thriving trader to the coast
of Africa, whence he imported negroes for the
American market; and no man was held to understand
that branch of traffic better, — he having,
in his earlier days, commanded ships in the business,
and thus learned it from the root. In his
private life, Simeon was severe and dictatorial.
He was one of that class of people who, of a
freezing day, will plant themselves directly between
you and the fire, and there stand and argue to
prove that selfishness is the root of all moral evil.
Simeon said he always had thought so; and his
neighbors sometimes supposed that nobody could
enjoy better experimental advantages for understanding
the subject. He was one of those men
who suppose themselves submissive to the Divine
will, to the uttermost extent demanded by the
extreme theology of that day, simply because they
have no nerves to feel, no imagination to conceive
deal therefore with the great question of the salvation
or damnation of myriads as a problem of
theological algebra, to be worked out by their inevitable
x, y, z
But we must not spend too much time with our
analysis of character, for matters at the tea-table
are drawing to a crisis. Mrs. Jones has announced
that she does not think “he” can come this afternoon,
by which significant mode of expression she
conveyed the dutiful idea that there was for her
but one male person in the world. And now Mrs.
Katy says, “Mary, dear, knock at the Doctor's
door and tell him that tea is ready.”
The Doctor was sitting in his shady study, in
the room on the other side of the little entry.
The windows were dark and fragrant with the
shade and perfume of blossoming lilacs, whose
tremulous shadow, mingled with spots of afternoon
sunlight, danced on the scattered papers of a great
writing-table covered with pamphlets and heavily-bound
volumes of theology, where the Doctor was
sitting.
A man of gigantic proportions, over six feet in
height, and built every way with an amplitude
corresponding to his height, he bent over his writing,
so absorbed that he did not hear the gentle
sound of Mary's entrance.
“Doctor,” said the maiden, gently, “tea is ready.”
No motion, no sound, except the quick racing
of the pen over the paper.
“Doctor! Doctor!” — a little louder, and with
another step into the apartment, — “tea is ready.”
The Doctor stretched his head forward to a paper
which lay before him, and responded in a low
murmuring voice, as reading something.
“Firstly, — if underived virtue be peculiar to the
Deity, can it be the duty of a creature to have
it?”
Here a little waxen hand came with a very
gentle tap on his huge shoulder, and “Doctor, tea
is ready,” penetrated drowsily to the nerve of his
ear, as a sound heard in sleep. He rose suddenly
with a start, opened a pair of great blue eyes
which shone abstractedly under the dome of a
capacious and lofty forehead, and fixed them on
the maiden, who by this time was looking up
rather archly, and yet with an attitude of the most
profound respect, while her venerated friend was
assembling together his earthly faculties.
“Tea is ready, if you please. Mother wished
me to call you.”
“Oh! — ah! — yes! — indeed!” he said, looking
confusedly about, and starting for the door, in his
study-gown.
“If you please, Sir,” said Mary, standing in his
way, “would you not like to put on your coat
and wig?”
The Doctor gave a hurried glance at his study-gown,
put his hand to his head, which, in place
of the ample curls of his full-bottomed wig, was
decked only with a very ordinary cap, and seemed
to come at once to full comprehension. He smiled
a kind of conscious, benignant smile, which adorned
his high cheek-bones and hard features as sunshine
adorns the side of a rock, and said, kindly, “Ah,
well, child, I understand now; I'll be out in a
moment.”
And Mary, sure that he was now on the right
track, went back to the tea-room with the announcement
that the Doctor was coming.
In a few moments he entered, majestic and
proper, in all the dignity of full-bottomed, powdered
wig, full, flowing coat, with ample cuffs, silver
knee- and shoe-buckles, as became the gravity
and majesty of the minister of those days.
He saluted all the company with a benignity
which had a touch of the majestic, and also of
the rustic in it; for at heart the Doctor was a
bashful man, — that is, he had somewhere in his
mental camp that treacherous fellow whom John
Bunyan anathematizes under the name of Shame.
The company rose on his entrance; the men bowed
and the women curtsied, and all remained standing
while he addressed to each with punctilious
decorum those inquiries in regard to health and
well-being which preface a social in erview. Then,
to the table, and, all following his example, stood,
while, with one hand uplifted, he went through a
devotional exercise which, for length, more resembled
a prayer than a grace, — after which the company
were seated.
“Well, Doctor,” said Mr. Brown, who, as a
householder of substance, felt a conscious right to
be first to open conversation with the minister,
“people are beginning to make a noise about your
views. I was talking with Deacon Timmins the
other day down on the wharf, and he said Dr.
Stiles said that it was entirely new doctrine, —
entirely so, — and for his part he wanted the good
old ways.”
“They say so, do they?” said the Doctor, kindling
up from an abstraction into which he seemed
to be gradually subsiding. “Well, let them. I
had rather publish new divinity than any other,
and the more of it the better, — if it be but true.
I should think it hardly worth while to write, if I
had nothing new to say.”
“Well,” said Deacon Twitchel, — his meek face
flushing with awe of his minister, — “Doctor, there's
all sorts of things said about you. Now the other
day I was at the mill with a load of corn, and
while I was a-waitin', Amariah Wadsworth came
along with his'n; and so while we were waitin'
he says to me, `Why they say your minister is
a-tellin' how old Ma'am Badger told him that
you interpreted some parts of Paul's Epistles clear
on the Arminian side. You know Ma'am Badger's
a master-hand at doctrines, and she's 'most
an uncommon Calvinist.”
“That does not frighten me at all,” said the
sturdy Doctor. “Supposing I do interpret some
texts like the Arminians. Can't Arminians have
anything right about them? Who wouldn't rather
go with the Arminians when they are right, than
with the Calvinists when they are wrong?”
“That's it, — you've hit it, Doctor,” said Simeon
Brown. “That's what I always say. I say,
`Don't he prove it? and how are you going to
answer him?' That gravels 'em.”
“Well,” said Deacon Twitchel, “Brother Seth,
— you know Brother Seth, — he says you deny
depravity. He's all for imputation of Adam's sin,
you know; and I have long talks with Seth about
it, every time he comes to see me; and he says,
that, if we did not sin in Adam, it's givin' up the
whole ground altogether; and then he insists you're
clean wrong about the unregenerate doings.”
“Not at all, — not in the least,” said the Doctor,
promptly.
“I wish Seth could talk with you sometime,
Doctor. Along in the spring, he was down helpin'
me to lay stone fence, — it was when we was
pretty nigh all day; and it re'lly did seem to me
that the longer we talked, the sotter Seth grew.
He's a master-hand at readin'; and when he heard
that your remarks on Dr. Mayhew had come out,
Seth tackled up o' purpose and come up to Newport
to get them, and spent all his time, last winter,
studyin' on it and makin' his remarks; and I
tell you, Sir, he's a tight fellow to argue with.
Why, that day, what with layin' stone wall and
what with arguin' with Seth, I come home quite
beat out, — Miss Twitchel will remember.”
“That he was!” said his helpmeet. “I 'member,
when he came home, says I, `Father, you seem
clean used up'; and I stirred 'round lively like,
to get him his tea. But he jest went into the
bedroom and laid down afore supper; and I says
to Cerinthy Ann, `That's a thing I ha'n't seen
your father do since he was took with the typhus.'
And Cerinthy Ann, she said she knew 'twa'n't anything
but them old doctrines, — that it was always
so when Uncle Seth come down. And after tea
Father was kinder chirked up a little, and he and
Seth sot by the fire, and was a-beginnin' it ag'in,
and I jest spoke out and said, — `Now, Seth, these
'ere things doesn't hurt you; but the Deacon is
weakly, and if he gets his mind riled after supper,
he don't sleep none all night. So,' says I, `you'd
better jest let matters stop where they be; 'cause,'
which on ye's got the right on't; — reckon the
Lord 'll go on his own way without you; and we
shall find out, by'm-by, what that is.'”
“Mr. Scudder used to think a great deal on
these points,” said Mrs. Katy, “and the last time
he was home he wrote out his views. I haven't
ever shown them to you, Doctor; but I should be
pleased to know what you think of them.”
“Mr. Scudder was a good man, with a clear
head,” said the Doctor; “and I should be much
pleased to see anything that he wrote.”
A flush of gratified feeling passed over Mrs.
Katy's face; — for one flower laid on the shrine
which we keep in our hearts for the dead, is worth
more than any gift to our living selves.
We will not now pursue our party further, lest
you, reader, get more theological tea than you
can drink. We will not recount the numerous
nice points raised by Mr. Simeon Brown and adjusted
by the Doctor, — and how Simeon invariably
declared, that that was the way in which he
disposed of them himself, and how he had thought
it out ten years ago.
We will not relate, either, too minutely, how
Mary changed color and grew pale and red in
quick succession, when Mr. Simeon Brown incidentally
remarked, that the “Monsoon” was going
to set sail that very afternoon, for her three-years'
— the sudden welling and ebbing of that one poor
little heart-fountain.
So we go, — so little knowing what we touch
and what touches us as we talk! We drop out
a common piece of news, — “Mr. So-and-so is
dead, — Miss Such-a-one is married, — such a ship
has sailed,” — and lo, on our right hand or our
left, some heart has sunk under the news silently,
— gone down in the great ocean of Fate, without
even a bubble rising to tell its drowning pang.
And this — God help us! — is what we call living!
| CHAPTER IV.
THEOLOGICAL TEA. The minister's wooing | |