University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

“Emily,” said Mr. Sewell, “did you ever take much
notice of that little Mara Lincoln?”

“No, brother; why?”

“Because I think her a very uncommon child.”

“She is a pretty little creature,” said Miss Emily; “but
that is all I know; modest — blushing to her eyes when a
stranger speaks to her.”

“She has wonderful eyes,” said Mr. Sewell; “when she
gets excited, they grow so large and so bright, it seems almost
unnatural.”

“Dear me! has she?” said Miss Emily, in the tone of
one who had been called upon to do something about it.
“Well?” she added, inquiringly.

“That little thing is only seven years old,” said Mr. Sewell;
“and she is thinking and feeling herself all into mere
spirit — brain and nerves all active, and her little body so
frail. She reads incessantly, and thinks over and over what
she reads.”

“Well?” said Miss Emily, winding very swiftly on a
skein of black silk, and giving a little twitch, every now and
then, to a knot to make it subservient.

It was commonly the way, when Mr. Sewell began to talk
with Miss Emily, that she constantly answered him with the
manner of one who expects some immediate, practical proposition
to flow from every train of thought. Now Mr.

Sewell was one of the reflecting kind of men, whose thoughts
have a thousand meandering paths, that lead nowhere in
particular. His sister's brisk little “Well's?” and “Ah's!”
and “Indeed's!” were sometimes the least bit in the world
annoying.

“What is to be done?” said Miss Emily; “shall we
speak to Mrs. Pennel?”

“Mrs. Pennel would know nothing about her.”

“How strangely you talk! — who should, if she does n't?”

“I mean, she would n't understand the dangers of her
case.”

“Dangers! Do you think she has any disease? She
seems to be a healthy child enough, I 'm sure. She has a
lovely color in her cheeks.”

Mr. Sewell seemed suddenly to become immersed in a
book he was reading.

“There now,” said Miss Emily, with a little tone of pique,
“that 's the way you always do. You begin to talk with me,
and just as I get interested in the conversation, you take up
a book. It 's too bad.”

“Emily,” said Mr. Sewell, laying down his book, “I
think I shall begin to give Moses Pennel Latin lessons this
winter.”

“Why, what do you undertake that for?” said Miss
Emily. “You have enough to do without that, I 'm
sure.”

“He is an uncommonly bright boy, and he interests
me.”

“Now, brother, you need n't tell me; there is some mystery
about the interest you take in that child, you know there
is.”

“I am fond of children,” said Mr. Sewell, dryly.

“Well, but you don't take as much interest in other boys.
I never heard of your teaching any of them Latin before.”

“Well, Emily, he is an uncommonly interesting child, and
the providential circumstances under which he came into
our neighborhood.” —

“Providential fiddlesticks!” said Miss Emily, with
heightened color. “I believe you knew that boy's mother.”

This sudden thrust brought a vivid color into Mr. Sewell's
cheeks. To be interrupted so unceremoniously, in the
midst of so very proper and ministerial a remark, was
rather provoking, and he answered, with some asperity, —

“And suppose I had, Emily, and supposing there were
any painful subject connected with this past event, you
might have sufficient forbearance not to try to make me
speak on what I do not wish to talk of.”

Mr. Sewell was one of your gentle, dignified men, from
whom Heaven deliver an inquisitive female friend! If
such people would only get angry, and blow some unbecoming
blast, one might make something of them; but speaking,
as they always do, from the serene heights of immaculate
propriety, one gets in the wrong before one knows it, and
has nothing for it but to beg pardon.

Miss Emily had, however, a feminine resource: she began
to cry — wisely confining herself to the simple eloquence of
tears and sobs. Mr. Sewell sat as awkwardly as if he had
trodden on a kitten's toe, or brushed down a china cup, feeling
as if he were a great, horrid, clumsy boor, and his poor
little sister a martyr.

“Come, Emily,” he said, in a softer tone, when the sobs
subsided a little.

But Emily did n't “come,” but went at it with a fresh
burst.

Mr. Sewell had a vision like that which drowning men
are said to have, in which all Miss Emily's sisterly devotions,
stocking-darnings, account-keepings, nursings and tendings,
and infinite self-sacrifices, rose up before him: and
there she was — crying!

“I 'm sorry I spoke harshly, Emily. Come, come; that 's
a good girl.”

“I 'm a silly fool,” said Miss Emily, lifting her head, and
wiping the tears from her merry little eyes, as she went on
winding her silk.

“Perhaps he will tell me now,” she thought, as she
wound.

But he did n't.

“What I was going to say, Emily,” said her brother,
“was, that I thought it would be a good plan for little
Mara to come sometimes with Moses; and then, by observing
her more particularly, you might be of use to
her; her little, active mind needs good practical guidance
like yours.”

Mr. Sewell spoke in a gentle, flattering tone, and Miss
Emily was flattered; but she soon saw that she had gained
nothing by the whole breeze, except a little kind of dread,
which made her inwardly resolve never to touch the knocker
of his fortress again. But she entered into her brother's
scheme with the facile alacrity with which she usually seconded
any schemes of his proposing.

“I might teach her painting and embroidery,” said Miss
Emily, glancing, with a satisfied air, at a framed piece of
her own work which hung over the mantel-piece, revealing
the state of the fine arts in this country, as exhibited in the
performances of well-instructed young ladies of that period.
Miss Emily had performed it under the tuition of a celebrated

teacher of female accomplishments. It represented a
white marble obelisk, which an inscription, in legible India-ink
letters, stated to be “Sacred to the memory of Theophilus
Sewell,” &c. This obelisk stood in the midst of a
ground made very green by an embroidery of different
shades of chenille and silk, and was overshadowed by an
embroidered weeping-willow. Leaning on it, with her face
concealed in a plentiful flow of white handkerchief, was a
female figure in deep mourning, designed to represent the
desolate widow. A young girl, in a very black dress, knelt
in front of it, and a very lugubrious-looking young man,
standing bolt upright on the other side, seemed to hold in
his hand one end of a wreath of roses, which the girl was
presenting, as an appropriate decoration for the tomb. The
girl and gentleman were, of course, the young Theophilus
and Miss Emily, and the appalling grief conveyed by the
expression of their faces was a triumph of the pictorial
art.

Miss Emily had in her bedroom a similar funeral trophy,
sacred to the memory of her deceased mother, — besides
which there were, framed and glazed, in the little sitting-room
two embroidered shepherdesses standing with rueful
faces, in charge of certain animals of an uncertain breed
between sheep and pigs. The poor little soul had mentally
resolved to make Mara the heiress of all the skill and knowledge
of the arts by which she had been enabled to consummate
these marvels.

“She is naturally a lady-like little thing,” she said to herself,
“and if I know anything of accomplishments, she shall
have them.”

Just about the time that Miss Emily came to this resolution,
had she been clairvoyant, she might have seen Mara

sitting very quietly, busy in the solitude of her own room
with a little sprig of partridge-berry before her, whose round
green leaves and brilliant scarlet berries she had been for
hours trying to imitate, as appeared from the scattered
sketches and fragments around her. In fact, before Zephaniah
started on his spring fishing, he had caught her one
day very busy at work of the same kind, with bits of charcoal,
and some colors compounded out of wild berries; and
so out of his capacious pocket, after his return, he drew a
little box of water-colors and a lead-pencil and square of
india-rubber, which he had bought for her in Portland on
his way home.

Hour after hour the child works, so still, so fervent,
so earnest, — going over and over, time after time, her
simple, ignorant methods to make it “look like,” and stopping,
at times, to give the true artist's sigh, as the little
green and scarlet fragment lies there hopelessly, unapproachably
perfect. Ignorantly to herself, the hands of the little
pilgrim are knocking at the very door where Giotto and
Cimabue knocked in the innocent child-life of Italian art.

“Why won't it look round?” she said to Moses, who had
come in behind her.

“Why, Mara, did you do these?” said Moses, astonished;
“why, how well they are done! I should know in a minute
what they were meant for.”

Mara flushed up at being praised by Moses, but heaved a
deep sigh as she looked back.

“It 's so pretty, that sprig,” she said; “if I only could
make it just like” —

“Why, nobody expects that,” said Moses, “it 's like
enough, if people only know what you mean it for. But
come, now, get your bonnet, and come with me in the boat.

Captain Kittridge has just brought down our new one, and
I 'm going to take you over to Eagle Island, and we 'll take
our dinner and stay all day; mother says so.”

“Oh, how nice!” said the little girl, running cheerfully for
her sun-bonnet.

At the house-door they met Mrs. Pennel, with a little
closely-covered tin pail.

“Here 's your dinner, children; and, Moses, mind and
take good care of her.”

“Never fear me, mother, I 've been to the Banks; there
was n't a man there could manage a boat better than I
could.”

“Yes, grandmother,” said Mara, “you ought to see how
strong his arms are; I believe he will be like Samson one
of these days if he keeps on.”

So away they went. It was a glorious August forenoon,
and the sombre spruces and shaggy hemlocks that dipped
and rippled in the waters were penetrated to their deepest
recesses with the clear brilliancy of the sky, — a true northern
sky, without a cloud, without even a softening haze, defining
every outline, revealing every minute point, cutting
with sharp decision the form of every promontory and rock,
and distant island.

The blue of the sea and the blue of the sky were so much
the same, that when the children had rowed far out, the little
boat seemed to float midway, poised in the centre of an
azure sphere, with a firmament above and a firmament below.
Mara leaned dreamily over the side of the boat, and
drew her little hands through the waters as they rippled
along to the swift oars' strokes, and she saw as the waves
broke, and divided and shivered around the boat, a hundred
little faces, with brown eyes and golden hair, gleaming up

through the water, and dancing away over rippling waves,
and thought that so the sea-nymphs might look who
came up from the coral caves when they ring the knell
of drowned people. Moses sat opposite to her, with his
coat off, and his heavy black curls more wavy and glossy
than ever, as the exercise made them damp with perspiration.

Eagle Island lay on the blue sea, a tangled thicket of evergreens,
— white pine, spruce, arbor vitæ, and fragrant silver
firs. A little strip of white beach bound it, like a silver setting
to a gem. And there Moses at length moored his boat,
and the children landed. The island was wholly solitary, and
there is something to children quite delightful in feeling that
they have a little lonely world all to themselves. Childhood
is itself such an enchanted island, separated by mysterious
depths from the main-land of nature, life, and reality.

Moses had subsided a little from the glorious heights on
which he seemed to be in the first flush of his return, and
he and Mara, in consequence, were the friends of old time.
It is true he thought himself quite a man, but the manhood
of a boy is only a tiny masquerade, — a fantastic, dreamy
prevision of real manhood. It was curious that Mara, who
was by all odds the most precociously-developed of the two,
never thought of asserting herself a woman; in fact, she
seldom thought of herself at all, but dreamed and pondered
of almost everything else.

“I declare,” said Moses, looking up into a thick-branched,
rugged old hemlock, which stood all shaggy, with heavy
beards of gray moss drooping from its branches, “there 's
an eagle's nest up there; I mean to go and see.”

And up he went into the gloomy embrace of the old tree,
crackling the dead branches, wrenching off handfuls of gray

moss, rising higher and higher, every once in a while turning
and showing to Mara his glowing face and curly hair
through a dusky green frame of boughs, and then mounting
again. “I 'm coming to it,” he kept exclaiming.

Meanwhile his proceedings seemed to create a sensation
among the feathered house-keepers, one of whom rose and
sailed screaming away into the air. In a moment after
there was a swoop of wings, and two eagles returned and
began flapping and screaming about the head of the boy.

Mara, who stood at the foot of the tree, could not see
clearly what was going on, for the thickness of the boughs;
she only heard a great commotion and rattling of the
branches, the scream of the birds, and the swooping of their
wings, and Moses' valorous exclamations, as he seemed to
be laying about him with a branch which he had broken
off.

At last he descended victorious, with the eggs in his
pocket. Mara stood at the foot of the tree, with her sun-bonnet
blown back, her hair streaming, and her little arms
upstretched, as if to catch him if he fell.

“Oh, I was so afraid!” she said, as he set foot on the
ground.

“Afraid? Pooh! Who 's afraid? Why, you might
know the old eagles could n't beat me.”

“Ah, well, I know how strong you are; but, you know,
I could n't help it. But the poor birds, — do hear 'em
scream. Moses, don't you suppose they feel bad?”

“No, they 're only mad, to think they could n't beat me.
I beat them just as the Romans used to beat folks, — I
played their nest was a city, and I spoiled it.”

“I should n't want to spoil cities!” said Mara.

“That 's 'cause you are a girl, — I 'm a man, — and men

always like war; I 've taken one city this afternoon, and
mean to take a great many more.”

“But, Moses, do you think war is right?”

“Right? why, yes, to be sure; if it a'n't, it 's a pity; for
it 's all that has ever been done in this world. In the Bible,
or out, certainly it 's right. I wish I had a gun now, I 'd
stop those old eagles' screeching.”

“But, Moses, we should n't want any one to come and
steal all our things, and then shoot us.”

“How long you do think about things!” said Moses, impatient
at her pertinacity. “I am older than you, and when
I tell you a thing 's right, you ought to believe it. Besides,
don't you take hens' eggs every day, in the barn? How do
you suppose the hens like that?”

This was a home-thrust, and for the moment, threw the
little casuist off the track. She carefully folded up the idea,
and laid it away on the inner shelves of her mind, till she
could think more about it.

Pliable as she was to all outward appearances, the child
had her own still, interior world, where all her little notions
and opinions stood up crisp and fresh, like flowers that grow
in cool, shady places. If anybody too rudely assailed a
thought or suggestion she put forth, she drew it back again
into this quiet inner chamber, and went on. Reader, there
are some women of this habit; and there is no independence
and pertinacity of opinion like that of these seemingly soft,
quiet creatures, whom it is so easy to silence, and so difficult
to convince. Mara, little and unformed as she yet was, belonged
to the race of those spirits to whom is deputed the
office of the angel in the Apocalypse to whom was given
the golden rod which measured the New Jerusalem. Infant
though she was, she had ever in her hands that invisible

measuring rod, which she was laying to the foundations of
all actions and thoughts. There may, perhaps, come a time
when the saucy boy, who now steps so superbly, and predominates
so proudly in virtue of his physical strength and
daring, will learn to tremble at the golden measuring-rod,
held in the hand of a woman.

“Howbeit, that is not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural.” Moses is the type of the first unreflecting
stage of development, in which are only the out-reachings
of active faculties, the aspirations that tend toward
manly accomplishments.

Seldom do we meet sensitiveness of conscience or discriminating
reflection as the indigenous growth of a very
vigorous physical development.

Your true healthy boy has the breezy, hearty virtues of
a Newfoundland dog, — the wild fulness of life of the young
race-colt. Sentiment, sensibility, delicate perceptions, spiritual
aspirations, are plants of later growth.

But there are, both of men and women, beings born into
this world in whom from childhood the spiritual and the
reflective predominate over the physical. In relation to
other human beings, they seem to be organized much as
birds are in relation to other animals. They are the artists,
the poets, the unconscious seers, to whom the purer truths
of spiritual instruction are open. Surveying man merely
as an animal, these sensitively-organized beings, with their
feebler physical powers, are imperfect specimens of life.
Looking from the spiritual side, they seem to have a noble
strength, a divine force. The types of this latter class are
more commonly among women than among men. Multitudes
of them pass away in earlier years, and leave behind
in many hearts the anxious wonder, why they came so fair,

only to mock the love they kindled. They who live to
maturity are the priests and priestesses of the spiritual life,
ordained of God to keep the balance between the rude but
absolute necessities of physical life and the higher sphere to
which that must at length give place.