University of Virginia Library

3. PART III.
WOMANHOOD.

EXTRACT FROM ROSE TO EDWARD.

Mr. Evelyn has come! The effect, I am sure, was not
small on Margaret. The night before, she did not sleep a

wink, for she kept me awake till morning. Pa and Ma, as
I call her father and mother, were for fixing up a little, but
she would allow no change. She half smiled and half cried
by turns; her face went through all the variations of the
prism. Mr. Evelyn had forwarded a kind note, saying he
would like to see her alone. She took me with her down
the Delectable Way to an old haunt of her's, where she
first encountered him. I would have withdrawn, but she
held me fast. We heard his horse coming up the hill.
“This is a strange feeling,” said she; “is this what you
you mean by love, Rose?” She never looked more beautiful.
Her heron's wreath set off her rich dark curls; she
wore a simple muslin; her expression might have ravished
an angel. Mr. Evelyn left his horse and came forward.
Hardly could she articulate my name in the introduction
By an instantaneous and almost invisible act, their hearts
so long one, sealed the unison. I had anticipated something,
but I was excited and enchanted. Margaret has fair, womanly
proportions; Mr. Evelyn is tall, and of so noble a
carriage;—to see them in that pure embrace, and with such
an inter-penetration of soul and spirit, quite overpowered
me. Deacon Ramsdill came limping along with one of his
queerest of all smiles—“Sheer nater; just so when I was a
youngster,” said he, and so diverted us from a fit of crying
into which I am sure I should have fallen. Mr. Evelyn
was then introduced to Pa, Ma, and Hash. He made inquiries
after Chilion, which we could only answer with
our tears.

We have sometimes wondered that he never wrote Margaret,
but he says his letters were lost on the way. She
showed him some autumnal leaves and flowers she gathered
and has kept in remembrance of him. These were
her letters to him, dumb signals, that she preserved in the

garret! She has loved him, I do insist; but that lively pain
of love we girls are so wont to indulge perhaps she has
not felt. This may be partly owing—such is my solution
—to the strange, rapid, distressing scenes she has been
through since she first saw him.

Mr. Evelyn has taken the spare room at Aunt Wright's.
There is a cause of sorrow in that family, which, I fear, will
not soon be removed. Aunt has long had her heart set on
Margaret for cousin Obed. This interest did not abate on
Margaret's accession to fortune. Though I believe Obed
had, if not his hopes damped, at least his ideas of things
very much chastened by his trip abroad. The world is so
large, and there are so many men in it, I think he had relinquished
whatever thoughts he may have entertained of
Margaret. In addition, her connection with Chilion has of
late inspired him with a secret dread of her. But none
of these things availed with his mother, who has rendered
herself positively annoying by urging the fulfilment of certain
promises she says Margaret made in years gone by.
However, the matter is settled now, and Aunt, who always
taught that a bird in hand was better than two in the bush,
freely consented to admit to her house the rival of its prospects,
when she found he would pay handsomely for his
board.

EXTRACT FROM ROSE TO WINIFRED JONES.

The marriage came off last night. The service was done
by Parson Welles, who really seemed to be as happy as
the rest of us. How delighted we were to have Edward
and Anna here! There were also present a few other of
the select friends of the family. We assembled in the
kitchen. It was my office to light up the great fireplace;

Edward was master of ceremonies. Mrs. Weeks sent the
cake; there was wine for our friends; we ourselves have
eschewed spirituous drinks. I need not say how some of us
were reminded of another night and other scenes. It was to
my own eye a scene within a scene, beauty, love and life,
haunted by profanity, revelry and death. Deacon Ramsdill
was almost beside himself with joy, and Master Elliman
with joy and wine. Mr. Girardeau seems to be very
much pleased with the disposition Margaret has made of
herself, and Mrs. Wiswall and Bertha think there is nobody
like Mr. Evelyn; so do I, excepting, of course, Edward.

What can I say of your dear brother, and now my own
love? He is all I wished—wished? all I needed. I shall
begin to believe, with Margaret, that love is more powerful
than all evil. He risks much in taking me; not that I am
much, but that I am mean. He promises to sustain all my
feebleness, and repair my defects. He bears me in his own
arms to the Infinite arms. Through him streams upon my
soul the long hidden light of God. The Christ whom he
preaches I begin to love and adore. He does understand
my heart, and composing with, uplifts my whole nature into
serenity and peace.

Margaret and Mr. Evelyn are going on a journey; in
the mean time, we clear out the workshop, and fit it up for
their return.

MARGARET TO ANNA.

Our excursion was rich and blest indeed. In New York,
we saw the room where I was born, and the bed, even,
whereon my father and mother died. Nimrod was with us
and showed us every thing. The clergyman who married
my dear parents is dead, but in Baltimore we found his

daughter, who bore me to her father's, and nourished me like
a mother. My grandfather's abode, the shop where my
mother tended, the room where she slept, were all entered,
In one of the cemeteries their graves were shown to us
near that of my grandmother; the monument bore the
names, Gottfried Brückmann, and Jane Girardeau.
My grandfather, when he knew not where I was, became
sorrowful on his daughter's account, and had her remains
removed where they now lie. My dear, dear mother!
The inscription says she was twenty years old; so near her
poor orphan daughter's age! New fountains of grief are
opened in my soul. I am persuaded the pale beautiful
lady of my childhood dreams was none other than my
mother. She has watched over her child, she has blessed
the earth-wanderer!—We went up the Hudson, whither
Nimrod and Ben Bolter carried me; we stopped at the
same landing-place; we found the Irish woman who nursed
me, and I was glad to be able to repay her kindness. We
went to Windenboro,' Rose's native town, but found little to
relieve the impressions that may have occupied us. To
our inquiries about their old minister, we received but few
warm-hearted replies. The successor of Mr. Elphiston,
while he preaches a milder form of dogma, exhibits less
benignity of feeling. I hesitated about speaking of these
things to Rose; but she said she could bear any thing, that
that part of herself once devoted to these painful reminiscences,
through successive processes of anguish, remorse
and penitence, had become hollow.

We have a manuscript life of my father, done in English,
with my mother's correction; also, in various forms, my
mother's handwriting. We possess likewise several
letters from Margaret Bruneau to Gottfried Brückmann,
and some of his to her, which Mr. Evelyn found in Rubillaud.

The clothes of my father and mother, his flute,
violin, and several other little things are here. Mr. Evelyn
visited the grave of Margaret Bruneau, which he found
covered with flowers. Her letters are full of sweet simplicity
and holy love. All whom he saw extolled her
virtues. In Pyrmont, he found a brother of my father's,
whom we hope to be able to persuade to come to America.
Withal, in our travels we heard of a German soldier in the
interior of Pennsylvania who served in the same corps
with my father. Him also we visited.

I have been travelling in search of my childhood! An
unknown history opens to me. I have been living here
how unconsciously with Ma, who is the cousin of my mother.
Yet she has treated me as her own child. I was confided
especially to the care of Chilion, whom Nimrod told my
mother about. How well he executed his charge! The
change in my grandfather's name, and that of Nimrod,
prevented all recognizances for many years. I know not
that Ma ever understood the relation subsisting between
us. This past, how precious to me! Hidden events
scattered over many years, and many countries, become a
part of my biography. It has taken a whole century to
give me birth! Time, like Mother Carey's chickens, bides
the blast, rocks on the gulfy wave, bearing her eggs under
her wings, which she deposits at length on the broody
shore. In me shall these transactions be cherished into
life! Do I deprecate the evil that has befallen me and
mine; that shed itself on these by-gone years? Dust
sometimes falls with the purest snow, discoloring the face of
Winter, but it enriches the growth and enhances the beauty
of Spring. Shall I become be er as a new season of
existence opens to me?

Our house is begun, but it must necessarily move on
slowly. We hope to be able to go into it, or some part of
it, in the course of twelve or fourteen months. It stands
on the Delectable Way, near the Eastern margin of the
Pond. It will command a more extensive Western view
than we now enjoy, taking in the whole length of the Pond,
the Brandon Hills, and Umkiddin Through avenues that
we shall cut in the Maples will be seen the Village, the
River, the Meadows, the champagne country, and mountains
beyond. At the South will be opened the valley of
Mill Brook and the neighboring highlands. The space
between the house and Butternut is to be converted into a
garden. It is to be constructed of granite, of which an
abundance, and that of the finest quality, is found in the
neighborhood. We have an architect from New York;
Mr. Palmer from the Ledge is master workman. Of the
style I shall say but little, nor repeat the discussions we
have had on the subject, nor tell what a world of ideas has
burst like a revelation on a rustic girl's mind in the shape
of buttresses, wings, bow-windows, verandas, views here,
effects there, good old Queen Bess, and what not. Mr.
Evelyn knew more of the world, and it was right I should
yield to him. His travels abroad have tinged, and perhaps
moulded, his taste. It will have, I fancy, a slightly castellated
appearance; so at least it looks on paper. It is to
be ample in all its appointments. Mr. Evelyn talks of
effect, the high grounds, woods, and all that; entire
simplicity he objects to. Without ever giving any reflection
to the matter, I found Master Elliman had in fact
indoctrinated me with a love of the plain Grecian. But
not as a dwelling-house, and here, Mr. Evelyn says, only
as a Temple or Church. We are to have a room for
Music and Art, one for Natural History and Philosophy, a

Library, Conservatory, Aviary, and all that, and a plenty
of rooms for our friends. There are also extensive barns
and outhouses.

We have gained a title to the whole of Mons Christi, by
purchasing the complete environs of the Pond, and a
square mile of territory on the North and West. We are
clearing away woods, and bringing many acres of excellent
soil under cultivation. There are nearly one hundred
men employed in all departments, and, if you will believe
it, I do not think they consume more than three gallons of
spirit a day. We are widening and grading the Delectable
Way into a carriage road. Pa and Hash have both left
off drinking, and are busy and happy as need be. Hash
and Sibyl Radney will be married as soon as we shall have
finished their house. Hash superintends the farm; Nimrod
and Rhody are anxious to remove here; it is his
ambitition to take care of the barn and horses. He has
become our jockey, and went out lately and made us a
purchase of some beautiful Narragansetts, with draught and
carriage horses. Master Elliman comes up, stares about,
applies his red handkerchief to his nostrils, and the other
day frankly confessed there were realities in the universe.
People from the Village, Avernus, and all parts, visit us
and gaze wonderingly upon our works. Joyce Dooly, the
Fortune-teller, was here the other day, with her black cats.
Mounting a rock she harangued the people, or, rather,
clackered her own merit. She said she had brought about
this change, had foretold it all, and seen it in her cats.
Rufus Palmer, who is really a genius, is engaged on
statuary, from plates Mr. Evelyn brought from Europe.

Side by side, in the midst of the noise of hammers and
the shouting of teamsters, on the beach, in funeral silence
lie my canoe and Chilion's fish-boat. His viol hangs in our

room; unlike St. Dunstan's, it makes no music! In Nova
Zembla, it is reported, men's words are wont to be frozen
in the air, and at the thaw may be heard. In a cold grave,
and colder world, are all Chilion's sweet melodies frozen.
Will they ever be heard again?

They are building a Church in the village. We furnished
the balance of the subscription for that purpose, and
they have adopted a model suggested by Mr. Evelyn.
The Church will suit me; it is pure, that is to say, elegant,
Grecian. It is now decided to form a new society, and one
with which Mr. Evelyn has connected himself. It is called
Christ Church. The house stands on the east side of the
Green, under two stately elms, and forms a prominent
object from our dwelling. The Free Masons, in full
company and costume, laid the corner stone. Deacon
Hadlock, the main pillar of the old Church, is inconsolable
and inapproachable. Mr. Evelyn went to see him, but he
would not be persuaded. We offered them a sum of
money towards rebuilding the old Meeting-house, but it
was rejected. I need not tell you all the gossip that is
afloat between the two societies, or write how our people
say the others are endeavoring things to their prejudice.
There is probably some wrong feeling on both sides. The
Master was here to-day, and said they had several meetings
of the old Church, reported grievances, appointed
committees, and ordered an examination of the derelicts;
and finally excommunicated Deacon Ramsdill and Esq.
Weeks, and suspended Judge Morgridge and Esq. Beach.
He laughed himself into a perfect dry convulsion fit when
he told me. “That android sanctissimus,” said he, referring
to the Rev. Dr. Brimmerly of Kidderminster, “is
moving. That gentleman,” he said, “had held several

private conferences with Parson Wells.” Reports unfavorable
to the reputation of Mrs. Wiswall, who has taken a
house in town, of Bertha, and of Rose, too, have reached
here, and we are called a harboring place of unprincipled
persons, a community of —

Deacon Ramsdill was here this afternoon; he has not
been deprived of his good cheer. “They have picked us
out,” said he, “and thrown us to the hogs. But arter all,”
he added, “rotten apples are the sweetest.”

MARGARET TO ANNA.

What shall you think of Edward being our Minister,
and Rose our Minister's wife! On the election, there
could have been but one sentiment, as you know there was
but one voice. His views and feelings, and the character
of his discourses, precluded much disputation. We had
some difficulty in the Ordination. A council of Clerical
and Lay Delegates, from the County, assembled, examined
the candidate and rejected him. Parson Welles, I believe,
was at first disposed to have Edward for a colleague, and
retain a pastoral connection with Christ Church; but he
was diverted by causes which I do not understand. The
Church was reduced to the necessity of adopting other
measures. The Rev. Mr. Freeman, of your city, was sent
for, and the Rev. Mr. Lovers, of Brandon, who had expressed
a willingness to aid us. Mr Lovers preached the
sermon, and the ordaining prayer, with the imposition of
hands, was made by Mr. Freeman. Thus, Mr. Evelyn
says, though Dr. Freeman, who was himself Episcopally
ordained, and derives his authority from a succession said
to remount to the first ages of the Church, we have an

Apostolic Bishop ordained over this Diocese of Livingston!
The new spacious house was filled, and many came in from
abroad. At the close, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper
was administered to the congregation. I joined in the
participation. With what sensations I cannot now relate.
Springs of new water welled within me, the soul of Jesus
oppressed and charmed my soul. Poor Rose sat by me
trembling like a leaf.—We have ordered an Organ from
London, and I suppose it will fall to me and Rose to play
it, for the present at least. Tony, the Barber, plays the
violin for us. He has not touched his instrument before
since Chilion's death. How we miss Chilion at every
step!

Edward and Rose are boarding at Esquire Bowker's;
a Parsonage I suppose will be built for them next year, on
Grove Street. Rose says the only feeling she has, or of
which she is at present capable, is humility; and that
whether she estimates her duties to the world at large, or
reflects on the favors received in her own soul. She relies
on Edward, who will nourish, renovate and guide her. If
she can at all embody the graces, or disseminate the love
of Christ, in whom her faith is confirmed, she says she
shall be satisfied. She says she is like those trees which fall
over on the banks of rivers, and grow root upwards; but if
she only grows, she does not care how. She is fair almost
to fragility; she has at times a most mysteriously spiritual
look, like the moon shining through white window curtains.
There are those in the Church who truly love her, and
will tenderly treat her. In Mrs. Bowker and Isabel
Weeks she finds a most according friendship. To Edward
she is all in all. How good and great in him to love her
so! Her unnaturalness has gradually subsided, and the
sweetness and freshness of her youth begin rapidly to unfold.

Christ, that makes us all children, Edward says, has
reproduced the morning of her childhood, and she advances
to beautiful perfection.—She had often been to the Communion
before, she says, but never with such feelings. She
never before realized what our new Bishop said it was, an
inter-communing with the soul of Jesus. She is succulent
as the Widow's house leek, and would thrive I believe if
she were only attached to the shingles of Christ Church.
Like the dodder, her rooting in the old world is destroyed,
and she now winds about goodness and mercy, which she is
destined, I think, ever to adorn. Dear Rose, she has been
to me a child, a sister, a lover. She will always be near
me—can we be too happy? For all, how much are we
indebted to Edward and Mr. Evelyn! The friendship so
long subsisting between our husbands, how delightfully it is
consummated!

MARGARET TO ANNA.

Our house is finished, and what has been a long story to
us, I shall make a short one to you; which can be done the
more readily, since I hope you will soon come and see all
things for yourself. The expense within and without, Mr.
Evelyn says, has not been less than one hundred thousand
dollars. We have imported some things, not that Mr.
Evelyn would not have preferred domestic articles, but
many we could not find. Besides, what matters it? I am
made up of all nations, German, French, English, American;
and it is only dealing with my countrymen, trade with
whomsoever I may. You should not have introduced me
to your house unless you supposed I was more or less than
human. Our plate certainly does not equal yours; our

linen is home made; our curtains and hangings are very
beautiful, thanks to your good taste. Mr. Evelyn brought
from Europe a valuable library, fine maps and engravings,
and a few choice pieces of sculpture. We have since
ordered more of these articles. In addition, Rufus Palmer
has been engaged on statuary for us these two years. He
is now in Europe, and when he returns, we have promised
him, in exchange for his productions, our Isabel; that is, if
they will consent to take up their residence at Mons Christi.
We have busts of the old philosophers, a copy of the Venus
de Medici, Apollo Belvidere, Antinöus, Belisarius, a Psyche
and Butterfly, a Prometheus and others, and some excellent
paintings; we have a parlor organ, and guitar; also an
excellent set of chemical, philosophical and astronomical
instruments.

At the head of the Delectable Way stand statues of
Peace and Truth; under the trees in front of the house
are Faith, Hope, Love and Beauty. Near the Tree-bridge,
in the Via Dolorosa, we design to put Penitence and
Fortitude. On the Via Salutaris is Humanity. A Ceres
has been set up in our cornfield. In Diana's Walk is her
own Ladyship with the Golden Bow. My Pantheon, that
Mr. Evelyn used to banter me about, still remains, and my
bubbles have taken marble forms. Between the Butternut
and the old house is a broad opening conducting to the foot
of Mons Christi, which we call The Avenue of the Beautiful.
In this is Temperance, pouring water from a goblet
into a marble trough. It is supplied from the same spring-head
that has so long furnished the water of our cistern,
and is designed both for man and beast. On it hangs Pa's
silver tankard, which he himself put there, the only relic of
his former prosperity, and which he is glad to have diverted
from its customary use. This water, always a copious

stream coming down from the highlands above, serves for
a fountain in the garden, where its jet and spray may be
perpetually seen, and flows thence to our house and barn in
quantity sufficient for all needs.

When we formerly made our escape from Mons Christi
to the Ledge, Rufus showed me a figure on which he had
been hammering at his leisure, designed to represent me
as I was when I found the water; this he has since completed.
It is a perfect Molly Hart, in short gown, pinafore
and gypsy hat. Ma wanted it put in the old house, but
there seemed to be no room for it. We have it in our
drawing-room; and near it are the cherry plate, bowl and
spoon I used to eat bread and cider and bean porridge with,
and also the wolf's bone knife and fork Chilion made me.

The old Chestnuts, which were already in decay, have
been cut down, and the bounds of the Mowing enlarged.
North of the Mowing is an extensive young orchard of
various kinds of choice apples, pears, quinces and peaches.
Our Aviary, which is large and well furnished with shrubbery,
we intend to stock with native birds. In the Conservatory
we have some foreign plants, and shall experiment
more with the domestic. We have a room called the
Prophet's Chamber, which our Bishop frequently occupies,
and where he writes some of his sermons. In the garden
is a large Bee-range. The old house remains as it was,
saving repairs. There Pa and Ma live. The loom and
wheels have been restored to the workshop, and there sits
Ma, in her short gown and naked arms, smoking and
weaving us blankets. She cannot be induced to forego any
of her old habits. Pa, who never suffered from what the
Master would call a cacoethes laboris loves and enjoys his
ease. He has made us stout walking shoes, which is the
most he has done for a year. On the chimney are my

marble kitten and flower-pot. About the house still grow
my beans, hops, virgin's bower, eye-brights, blood-roots, and
other flowers Chilion helped me rear. Chilion's clothes,
fishing tackle, gun, powder-horn, shot-bag, occupy their old
places on the walls of the kitchen. The suit in which he
died, his violin, a partly-finished basket with some partly,
finished spools of his, hang in the work shop; Ma will not
allow them to be touched. Some of his hair she has
wrought into a finger-ring. Margaret, my peach tree, is
dead, but a young Margaret is growing in the same spot.
Dick, my squirrel, and my birds are dead, their empty
cages hang in the old place. Bull, whose heart, as well as
his leg, was broke, when Chilion died, totters backwards
and forwards from house to house. So have perished some
of the dear fellow-fixtures and comrades of my life! Beyond
Pa's, stands Nimrod's house, and a little farther up
the way, live Hash and Sibyl. Grandfather, who is exceedingly
interested, and I believe pleased, in all we do, divides
his time between us and Aunt Wiswall. Judah Weeks has
promised marriage to Cousin Bertha. Speaking of this,
reminds me to tell you, that Obed has married Beulah Ann
Orff. Mrs. Evelyn, the good mother of Charles, has also
come to Livingston, and lives with us for the present.

You inquire what our household arrangements are to be.
Our regular family is composed of Mr. Evelyn, myself,
Sylvina Pottle and Dorothy Tapley. Then we have more
or less of our friends with us a good deal of the time. Mr.
Pottle has a large number of children, and at Mr. Tapley's
they are very poor, and those people were anxious their
daughters should live with us and earn something. Our
food is simple; I never had any other, and what is bred in
the bone will never be out of the flesh, as Deacon Ramsdill

says; and Mr. Evelyn is not particular. I still enjoy
a dish of bean porridge with Molly. I always got up early,
and could not easily be taught new tricks. Then I have
been out in the air so much I must still be out. We have
prayers every morning, and Mr. Evelyn explains the
Scriptures to us. We have breakfasted this Summer at
six and a half o'clock, dined at twelve, and take tea at five.
So we are doing at present. Our hired men board with
Nimrod and Hash. Ma has woven a working suit for Mr.
Evelyn. We have both had our hands full getting the
house in order. I look for leisure this winter to read more,
and practise music more.

MARGARET TO ANNA.

I must tell you of a delightful change that has come over
No. 4. You remember how the place looked the first time
you were through it. The people were notorious for their
indolence and dissipation; and their estates were mortgaged
to Mr. Smith, who held the inhabitants in fealty and sometimes
harassed them. Mr. Evelyn had their houses
repaired and painted, sent men to help clear out their intervals,
planted a row of trees along the street, and had a
beautiful statue of Diligence set up at the corner. He then
assumed their debts, and said he would give them no
trouble for three years, provided they would pay the
interest punctually. He also contributed to a School-house
that was erected half way between No. 4 and Breakneck.
In six months the Gubtails, with what work they did for us,
and hay they brought us, cleared themselves. Mrs. Tapley
and Mrs. Hatch wove for us, and Mr. Hatch and Isaiah
made our iron work. Old Mr. Tapley, a very sot, has
labored unremittingly on his farm. When they had new

door-yards, the girls began to ornament them with flowers
and shrubs. We let Dorothy go into the woods two days
for this purpose; and that hamlet has now a truly picturesque
appearance. The people, I think, do not drink any
ardent spirits. The Still, that Mr. Smith undertook to
rebuild, Mr. Evelyn purchased for a barn, which those
people found they needed. Mr. Smith himself, I am told,
has amended his habits; he has at least renovated the
exterior of his house. Avernus should rather be called
Elysium; God made it a beautiful spot, and man has
restored its fallen image. Nor is this effect confined to
No. 4; it has reached the village, and is more or less
distributed into every part of the town. Our Bishop says
Temperance is a Christian grace, and has preached strongly
against the Sin of Intemperance. In this he is also joined
by Parson Welles, who still preaches in the Town-house.
Many have abandoned drinking, and four distilleries have
stopped. Mr. Readfield, our new merchant, keeps no
ardent spirits, and Deacon Penrose must have found his
sales materially lessened. Esquires Beach and Bowker
both say their duties, as Justices of the Peace, have greatly
abated. Mr. Stillwater has converted his new bar-room
into a reading-room, and says his profits are nearly equal to
what they were before. On Sunday you will see the No.
4's flocking down to Meeting with a constancy only
equalled by their former negligence, in which they were
quite of a sort with ourselves.

At the time they were upon rebuilding the Jail, Mr.
Evelyn proposed to the Commissioners if they would
consent to an establishment on an enlarged scale, with
rooms more commodious, windows more numerous, and
better conveniences for warmth in winter, he would bear
the additional cost. Judge Morgridge, Esq. Bowker and

others, thought it would be an excellent plan; and it was
consented to. The building stands a little back from the
old site. Each room Mr. Evelyn furnished with a good
bed, books, lights, looking-glass, washstand and flower vase.
The windows have green blinds, which by a simple contrivance
the prisoners can open and shut at their pleasure.
The horrors and discomforts of the old Jail I have myself
too sensibly realized. A new keeper has been appointed
in place of Mr. Shocks. At the last Town Meeting the
Selectmen were instructed to look after the moral condition
of the prisoners. What with the site of the old Meeting-house
smoothed and grassed, the burnt woods improved by
Mrs. Wiswall's house and grounds, a new School-house,
new Court-house, Tavern and Jail, the Green has reassumed
some of its former beauty.

Christ Church have made choice of three Deacons,
Esquire Bowker, Joseph Whiston and Comfort Pottle.
Deacon Ramsdill was getting old, and Judge Morgridge and
Esquire Beach, who have served in that office, thought
they had better choose some young men.

You would sometimes have tempted me to live in your
City. But, dear Anna, do you not come under the jurisdiction
of Master Elliman's Puppetdom? Are you not,
measurably, simulacra hominum feminarumque? Are you
foot-free, tongue-free, soul-free? The personation of the
Theatre seemed to me to be carried through the City; all
were acting, not themselves, but their parts. Perhaps I
judge wrongfully. You, I know, are natural and real.
But what will you say of Mr. Squarely, Mrs. Modim, the
Misses Euphony, and others whom I saw at your house?
I would not do them injustice, and I know I am incompetent
to give an opinion, but how could I live among such

people? I remember once looking at the sea near the
wharves, in January. The water and the cold were in
deadly combat. The waves winced, bellowed and agonized.
But the cold kept steadily at work, as a spider, and with
threads of ice, the Borean monster glued and entangled
the whole surface, and soon it lay a sullen, ghastly, adamantine
heap. Such seemed to me to be the strife between
fashion and nature; and such, alas! it is, Mr. Evelyn
says, the world over. Give me leave to yawn when I am
tired, wonder at what is admirable, knock off chestnuts with
a pole, and wear a shoe that fits my foot. I fear the
Cacoethes Feminarum is a deeper disease than Obed's
elder blows will cure, aud that you will have to take a
good many boxes of his nostrum before you are well quit
of plague in the vitals. “The whole world belike,” says
the Father from whom I learn all my wisdom, “should be
new-moulded, and turned inside out, as we do hay-cocks,
top to bottom, bottom to top.” For the present I am contented
to keep away, not from you, Anna, but from what is
about you; and if you push upon me, I shall run as far as
there is land-room on the Continent; and if worse comes to
worst, I shall make my expiration in the words of one of
old:—

Have we not here what his grace the Duke of Devonshire
might envy? pleasure-grounds, rich meadows, the
embellishment of a full-grown plantation, beautiful lawns,
many a paddock. We are in the midst of a royal hunting-ground,
packs of hounds are in the neighborhood; we have
plenty of game, and an unlimited right of common, in
which, in their season, are excellent wild turkey and gray
squirrel shooting; admirable fox-chases; a full command
of the view, up and down; a capital kitchen garden; our

estate is well watered; gravel walks intersect our grounds,
and lead in all directions. We see live Hippiades every
day; we have a perpetual advowson to the living of Mons
Christi, and are subject to no ground rent. For rustic
ruins, I can show you an abundance of reverend stumps,
garnished with grape vines, and studded with fungus. In
Italy are palaces ventilated by windmills; we resort to no
contrivances of that sort. Guianerius, out of my author,
recommends the air to be moistened with sweet herb water,
and the floor sprinkled with rose-vinegar. We take the
air as it comes, wet or dry, hot or cold, and find that blowing
across Mons Christi to be always exhilarating and salubrious.
In Summer it is charged with the freshness of the
earth, the aroma of woods, the music of birds. In Winter
it glitters with health and life.—Then we all work, not take
exercise, but work. “The Turks,” so says Democritus,
Junior, “enjoin all men, of whatsoever degree, to be of
some trade or other; the Grand Seignior himself is not
excused. Mahomet, he that conquered Greece, at that
very time when he heard ambassadors of other princes, did
carve spoons.” There is some difference, peradventure,
between Turks and Christians! “Through idleness,” continues
my authority, “it is come to pass, that in city and
country, so many grievances of body and mind, and this
ferall disease of melancholy so frequently rageth, and now
domineers almost all over Europe, amongst our great
ones.” The ancient Germans plunged idlers into the
thickest marshes, leaving them to perish by a death that
resembled their own dispositions. Without executioners
to expedite the matter, all of that class do so perish now-a-days,
nilly willy. Friction is recommended. Think of
our farmers, stimulating their skins with flesh-brushes to
keep up a circulation! Nay, verily, we must work. Fowls
do not appear ready spitted, Deacon Ramsdill says, and we
must work for them too. The Lacedemonians had such an
idea of liberty, they could not reconcile it with any
manual labor. One of them, returning from Athens, said,
“I come from a City where nothing is dishonorable.”
Work shall be no disgrace at Mons Christi.

We have our sports too, hawking, fowling, fishing, riding,
berrying. “To walk amongst orchards, gardens, mounts,
thickets, lawns and such like pleasant places, like that Antiochan
Daphne, brooks, pools, ponds, betwixt wood and water,
by a fair river side, ubi variæ avium cantationes, florum colores,
pratorum frutices, to disport in some pleasant plain, run
up a steep hill sometimes, sit in a shady seat,” must needs
be, as my benevolent author observes, “a delectable recreation.”
This is ours. Then there are our in door diversions,
music, dancing, chess and various games. In winter,
we sleigh-ride, coast, skate, snowball. No, Anna, let me
stay here while I may.

MARGARET TO ANNA.

We have a new Cemetery. It lies back of Grove Street,
south of Deacon Hadlock's Pasture; is intersected by the
Brook Kedron, and covers part of the wooded slope on the
descent of Mons Christi. It possesses a variety of surface
and of trees, and the ornaments of walks and shrubbery
On either side of the Brook is a willow-shaded gravel path.

When Mr. Evelyn was in Europe he visited the Cemeteries
of Naples, Pisa, and Pére la Chaise at Paris, and here he
would reproduce the effect. We cannot imitate all architectural
and princely forms, but we can do that which
pleases ourselves. Several of the citizens have already
put up tasteful monuments. Rufus Palmer helps us in this,
as in other things, and he has two young men studying and
practising with him; one of whom, Socrates Hadlock,
gives excellent artistical promise. Mr. Girardeau has a lot,
and to it have been brought the remains of his wife, my
own father and mother, his sister Marie, and Raxman.
Rose also intends to remove here her father and mother,
and sister. The kind Arab wish, “May you die among
your kindred,” we shall in some sense realize. We have
been concerned about Chilion, his dying request we supposed
it impossible ever to execute, and had kept it graven
on our own memories. At last, however, we ventured to
speak of the matter to the people, and at a full town meeting
it was asked if they would consent to the carrying out
of Chilion's wishes. All who spoke answered affirmatively,
and if there were any dissenters they kept silence. The
plain marble shaft Mr. Palmer first made now stands over
his new grave; on it is his name, Chilion, and underneath
are these words, “Here lies one who tried to love his
fellow-men,”—words I know that were near his heart, and
are now gone forth to the world. Mr. Smith, when the
transfer of graves was made, allowed that Solomon's
monument, on which has so long stood the dreadful word
“murdered,” should be changed for another. The old
burial-ground remains; the ancient headstones, those
which are identified, as the spot itself is, with the early history
of Livingston, keep their primitive places. The Cemetery
seems to us mournful and attractive; an iron fence
surrounds it, but its gates are always unlocked. With
dove-like, Pleiadian melody, the Brook Kedron flows
through it. Mr Evelyn has striven to diffuse a taste that
prevails in Europe, and already are many of the mounds
and lots blooming with flowers. People walk there a
great deal, and on the Sabbath it is thronged. It shears
death of its terrors, spiritualizes life, and hallows affection.

There is a Fountain reaching from Mons Chisti to our
Common! It is fed by the Brook Kedron, and rises in
the centre of the Green. It springs by graceful impulses,
and breaks into beautiful attenuations. The Green is
encircled by great elms, and here is a liquid elm in the
midst of them. Mr. Stillwater has changed his Tavern to
the Cross and Crown.

Col. Welch, who left here during the War, has returned.
He addressed a letter to Judge Morgridge, the brother of
Mrs. Welch, intimating a wish to come back and end his
days among his old town's people. At a meeting of the
citizens, the subject was considered, and they declared
unanimously for his request, and voted moreover to reimburse
his expenses hither, repair his house and renovate
his grounds. Col. Welch's, the Poorhouse, the Pockhouse,
or whatever it be, is ineffaceably associated with my first
knowledge of Mr. Evelyn, and with a morbific career of no
uncertain character. Mr. Evelyn has said he did not know
as he should have ever married me, if he had not first
given me the Small Pox. (?) Col. Welch's is a commanding
situation, and one of the finest on the Green. His
family of sons and daughters, becomes a great acquisition
to our circle of friends.

You are acquisitive of news, Anna, and I must tell you,
Cæsar Morgridge and Phillis Welch, Tony Washington and

Mom Dill, are married; and Master Elliman is betrothed
to Miss Amy! How this last was brought about I can
hardly say; only it was natural that a matter of thirty
years' standing should come to a head at last. He told me,
laughing, that he was now heir apparent to the tottering
throne of Puppetdom, in Livingston. He has long occupied
the sacerdotal office of Parish-clerk, he says, and now
aspires to higher degrees in Anagogics. But, soberly, I
think my good, fast, tender-hearted, queer old friend has
changed somewhat—not in his dress, for he wears the same
nankeen breeches, shovel hat, fringed vest, tye-wig, as of
yore—but in his feelings, and interior self. He consents
to reality and nature more; he exhibits a cordial interest
in life, men and manners. I am under irredeemable obligations
to him. He instructed me largely in the form, but
kept me away from the heart of things, the common heart
I mean; and left me wholly to find a heart for myself, or
make such a one as I could. This, Mr. Evelyn says, was
a great service.

Training-days have provoked a good deal of talk. Their
innumerable evils we all felt. Pa, himself, was brought
home drunk from a recent muster-field! The question
took a serious form among the people. Parson Welles,
sensible of the growing scepticism, preached to his, now so
small, congregation, in behalf of the practice. This had
the effect to deepen inquiry in the general mind. Christ
Church members went one day in solemn, mournful procession,
men, women and children, to their Oracle, the
Gospels—for such they emphatically are;—they went with
as much perturbation of curiosity and weight of concern as
ever Athenians did to the Delphian Tripod. “Christ forbids
us to kill our enemies,” responded the Bishop, at
whose house they met.

The next training-day, Capt. Tuck, with a speech quite in
his vein, threw up his commission. The subaltern officers
followed the example of their captain, the soldiers went into
no balloting, and the Livingston Company was not. Capt.
Hoag said also that his mind had changed. Deacons Penrose
and Hadlock, with some others, sought to re-organize a
band; but they were too old for such a purpose themselves,
and they could not find young men enough even to form an
Irish company. General Kingsland, of Dunwich, ordered
our people to attach themselves to the Dunwich Company.
One or two muster-days passed, and nothing was done.
At last the General sent in an armed body, of fifty or a
hundred men, to take our people to Dunwich, without fail.
In workshops, mills, farms, offices, the citizens continued
their ordinary pursuits. These soldiers dispersed themselves
in all parts of the town. I was riding in the
Meadows, when they came there. Several of our people
were at work, and among them Judah Weeks, who was
mowing. “Don't you intend to go with us?” said the soldiers.
“I am very busy,” replied Judah, “I could not
possibly go to-day, neither do I care to at any time.” “I
am empowered to force you,” said one of the troop. “Very
well,” replied Judah, and continued his work. The soldier
seized him by the collar, but Judah, who is very strong,
still kept his scythe swinging, until he had drawn the other
one or two rods into the grass. “I will shoot you if you
don't obey.” “That is it, hey?” answered Judah.
“If I am to die, I wish to do so with my wife and child.
Call Bertha, some of you,” he said to the people who began
to flock around. His wife and child were brought. “Now
I am ready,” said he. The soldier raised his musket, and
lowered it. I know not that he had any intentions of
shooting. The soldiers went off, and Judah resumed his

labors. We next encountered them carrying a young fellow
who proved to be my old pupil, Consider Gisborne.
Four of them had him by his arms and feet. He kicked
lustily, and got away.

An affair occurred at the Mill, of which there have
been several accounts. I will give you the version we
received from Captain Tuck himself. General Kingsland,
in person, a Captain and Lieutenant, all in field costume,
went to the Mill, and sent in a message that they had
express business with Capt. Tuck. The Captain, going to
the door, told them he was much hurried, that all his stones
were running, and several people were waiting for their
grists; and politely asked them in. However loath, they
dismounted, entered the building, and followed the Captain,
who was actively employed, from hopper to hopper. The
place was swarming with meal-dust, which presently found
lodgment on their plumes, blue coats and sashes. The
General became uneasy and urgent, the Captain replied
that he was very busy, and at the same time demonstrated
the nature of his engagement by emptying a meal-bag, from
which fumed up any quantity of the fine white effluvium.
Whereupon, in the words of Captain Tuck, “the General
and his forces made a precipitate retreat.” Sprinkled
with flower from crest to spur, they mounted their horses,
and by most private ways withdrew from Livingston, The
Captain vaunts himself much on what he calls his ruse de
guerre; and declares that meal-powder is more effective
than gunpowder.

We are menaced with fines, but our people say they had
better pay them than train. Indeed, a levy was made,
some property put up at auction, but no bidders appeared.
However, the whole matter is to be carried before the

State Legislature, and we are looking forward to their
action with no small solicitude.

The world rattles about us, like woodpeckers in the forest.
If any thing rotten or defective can be discovered,
well for us, we will have it cut down. I have certified myself
of the meaning of that very anagogical word, “world;”
it signifies any thing that is not Livingston, or out of Christ
Church, or below Mons Christi. We, means us, and they,
them. How very pleasant to be brought plump up against
the fence of the not-you! By being ourselves, we have
developed another being, quite as long and as broad, and
inclined to pugilism withal. I used not to be, and nobody
else was. Mr. Evelyn first scared me with this idea of
“the world.” But our world grows larger every day,
and I lack not for company, though there grows pari passu.
How will either come out in the end?

Some of our people walk carefully as birds on ice.
Soon, I trust, they will find the earth, or wings wherewithal
to leave it. How good a thing it is, in all our doubt and
uncertainty, that we have an oracle to which we can
appeal, I mean the Gospels. In the wreck of so much that
is excellent, why have they not perished also? When the
Persians destroyed the Temples of Greece, they did not
dare touch that of the Isle of Delos, it was so sacred. Has
the extreme value of these books saved them from pillage?
Therein, through the vices of men let me discern their
virtues.

MARGARET TO ANNA.

Our Sabbaths are delightful days; they always were to
me, because I did not go to Meeting; now, because I do
go. They were ever liberty, rest, and recreation to me,

now they bring a higher spiritual enjoyment. We go to
Church, forenoon and afternoon, and sometimes dine in the
Village at the Bishop's, or elsewhere. In summer we
walk, in winter ride. We all go, Pa, Ma, Hash and Nimrod,
with their families, and whoever is living with us.
There is a mellowness about the sky and air, that day,
which is all the difference I perceive. People tell me what
a drearily solemn day the Sabbath used to be. “It was a
despit pinched up sort of a time,” said Mrs. Whiston to me
a while since, “as if God was asleep and we had to go tip-toe
all day, and couldn't speak above our breath for fear
of waking him.” We all carry flowers to Church, not
quite so extravagant a bunch as I once got a rebuke for.

The death of Deacon Hadlock, and the infirmities of Parson
Welles, have quite thinned off the old society, and Christ
Church includes almost the whole town. Indeed, the old
parson himself, with such of his flock as chose to accompany
him, was at our Church a few Sabbaths since. Zenus Joy
is our chorister, and Dorothy Tapley, who has fine musical
powers, plays the organ. One half of the hymns are sung
by the whole congregation; this, Deacon Ramsdill says, is
as it used to be, and so the old folks are pleased, and the
young ones too. The Feast of the Lord's Supper occurs
every month.

Our Communion days are so Christ-giving, so abounding
in what some are wont to call soul-food, so contributory to
the Divine Atonement, they seem almost the best days.
We all eat that bread and drink that wine whereby we
mean to show the Lord's death until he come; that is, as
the Bishop instructs us, until Christ perfectly comes in our
souls, and over the earth. Many of the children are communionists;
the excellent teaching of the Sunday school
prepares them for this higher Church order. At noon, the

people go into the Cemetery and eat their dinner on the
seats near the Brook Kedron. At night, scores, and some
times hundreds, come to Mons Christi, visit the Cross, walk
about the grounds; sometimes they come into our drawing-room,
where we have religious conversation, and sing
hymns. How much there is in the religion of Christ to talk
about, and I have become as sanctiloquent as any of them.
That word Love, of which St. John says he who has it
dwells in God and God in him, how much there is in it!
It has already given us a new Heaven and a new Earth,
and goes on creating stars, nebulæ and milky ways, without
number. It would astonish you, Anna, to hear some
whom you would consider most jejune and sterile, talk.
The graces of the Spirit, joy, love, peace, goodness, have
thrown up tropical islands in these wastes of brine.

I shall have many things to tell you, more than I can
write.—Last Sunday, Obed brought his child to be baptized.
It received the name of Bartholomew Elliman!
The Master and the Widow, I understand, have made
peace, or suspended hostilities. The Master promised an
annuity to the child if it should be called after him. Frankly,
Anna, I must confess, the Widow is the most purely
selfish woman I have ever heard of. Some would get
drunk, some were bigots, they were fanatical or intolerant,
but all had a spice of honesty at the bottom. But she is a
hypocrite at the core. She has given me some trouble, and
done me some good, perhaps; for which all thanks. An
ambitious avarice has been her ruling passion. Will you
believe it, the day of the erection of the Cross, when we
were having the sacrament in the woods, she was there,
so they say, her pockets filled with the Nommernisstortumbug,
and endeavoring to truck with people. Nimrod never
could endure her; he always said she followed church-going

the same as blackbirds do the plough, to pick up the
worms. The Bishop has had a sober talk with her, as
every good Christian should do. And this admonishes me,
that I, perhaps, am somewhat at fault in what I say. I
have dealt too roundly with her. Words do so cover the
whole field of our vision while the object shall go half
naked. He says she has some in corrupt nature, that she is
not wholly dead in the old Adam, sin; and declares that
Christ may yet make her live. He says Christ and the
Gospels are sufficient to destroy any amount, and any inveteracy
of evil in the heart. If the Leech can be touched,
we must all believe so too.

The Bishop says the Gospel must find something in our
natures similar to itself before it can take effect; the roots
feel their way into the earth in search of nutriment, homogeneous
and corresponding, each root for itself, that of
wheat for one substance, and that of sorrel for another; so
he says the Gospel feels its way into the heart. As music
addresses and develops the musical sentiment, so evangelical
love and truth address and develop the sentiments of
love and truth. In this way he acts; he gains access to
the heart, makes sure that the floor will hold him; then
commences an onslaught on the unclean spirits, drives
them out, with old Adam at their head; brushes away the
dust and cobwebs of meanness; opens the shutters, and lets
in the light of God and the clear shining of the Sun of
Righteousness. Such are many of the wonders God hath
wrought by him in Livingston! Can he succeed with the
Widow? In all countries moss grows, the ice-bolstered
rocks of the Arctic are green and soft with it. There
the merganser spends its summer, the snowbird rears its
young, and our own robin sings. Shall we despair, then,
of these temperate regions? When our troops went to the

attack of Louisburg, Whitfield gave them this motto: “Nil
desperandum, Christo Duce;” an admirable one for our
own flag.

I am forgetting, like many other sinners, the Sabbath.
It is the Lords day to us; in the most exalted sense, it is
Christ's own day. All days are holy, this seems to be the
cream of the week. On the spiritual river where we would
ever sail, the Sabbath opens into clearer water, and broader
bay; and we can rest on our oars to get a distincter view
of the blue heavenly hills whither we tend. Is it not a good
thing, this hebdomadal renovation of the skin and clothes?
You know the old saw: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”
Our Bishop preaches on cleanliness, carnal and spiritual;
and if it be a true sign, I think you would count us a very
godly people. Houses, rooms, yards, fences, streets, as well
as persons, in all parts of the town, look wonderfully clean,
neat, tidy; No. 4 would grace Hyde Park. You would also
see, on the Sabbath conspicuously, greater simplicity in
dress; there is taste and some ornament; but “gaudy apparel”
has almost entirely disappeared, “as unbecoming
those who profess Godliness.” That transition in fashion
with which a foreign connection so afflicts your city, is here
neither frequent nor abrupt. In an intermixture of styles
from one season to another, the variety is not sufficiently
marked to prevent our wearing out the old without disquiet,
or adopting the new at convenience.

The other night, at a party at our house, Deacon Bowker
danced with Miss Amy, I should say, Mrs. Elliman; a
thing she never consented to before in her life. Col. Welch
said he was falling into his second childhood, by renewing
his youth, sooner than he anticipated. A dance on cold
water he pronounced strange, but excellent. Deacon

Ramsdill declared that he should live an hundred years.
“It's sheer nater,” said he, “it is just like soap, the longer
you keep it, the better it grows.” If Chilion could only
play for us! William Beach proves a first-rate violinist,
so does Abiah Tapley.

We make much of music, and it does well by us. I wish
to see unfolded and imbodied the entire musical capability
of the town. We have an instrumental company, called
The Chilion Band. They play on the Green, Summer
evenings, and in the Cemetery; they have gone to Breakneck,
Shakehill, and all parts of the town. They frequently
come to Mons Christi, play in our groves, and on the
Head. The effect of this last is indescribable. It reaches
the village, and the inspiring melodies, like morning
light, irradiate over wood, valley and mountain. Mr.
Evelyn has written some Christian Hymns, very beautiful,
and combining some lyric fire. These hymns you will
hear in many a house, in the fields, and the children sing
them at school.

Our schools are doing well. There were formerly but
two in town, we have now six. Hancock Welles, grandson
of the Parson, after he left College, was engaged for a
permanent teacher in the Grammar School, for which a
new and commodious house was erected on the Green, in
place of the one that was burnt.

MARGARET TO ANNA.

We have digested and adopted a system of Christ
Church Festivals. Mr. Evelyn observed the extent and
influence of these things in the Old World, and, after due
sortings and shiftings, we thought something of the kind
might be produced in the New. The idea, he insists, is a

good one, but the manner in which the thing has been
managed is open to reprehension. Festivals, he says,
have been instituted by Kings and Popes, for Machiavellian
purposes, or any other than Christian or human; that
they have never been the offspring of a free and enlightened
mind, but either the enforcements of arbitrary power,
or the expedients of priestly art. Christ-Church Festivals
have at least this merit; the people were cognizant of their
incipiency, assisted in each step of their progress, and gave
their suffrages to the entire plan. Ecclesiastical Holidays,
Mr. Evelyn says, are also open to exception in their subjects.
Why should we observe the Purification of the
Virgin Mary, St. Michael's day, or Ash Wednesday? Or
why, neglecting more affecting and spiritual events, should
we make use of the Circumcision of Christ? We cannot,
of course, with the English Church, keep the Gunpowder
Plot, and King Charles's Martyrdom. Our Festivals are
twelve in number, one for each month of the year. Three
of them are such as have already become national, or at
least New England, the Spring Fast, Independence and
the Autumnal Thanksgsving; three more are founded on
the Beatitudes, and are named as follows: the Festival of
the Poor in Spirit, of the Peacemakers, and of the
Pure in Heart. There is the Festival of Charity, or
Christian Love, from 1 Cor. xiii. Then from the life of
Christ are Christmas, drawn from his birth, etc; Childmas,
which refers to his holy Boyhood and Youth; the
Festival of the Crucifixion, which comprises his strong crying
and tears in the flesh, his temptation, his bearing his
Cross, his agony in the garden, and his death; that of the
Resurrection, which includes his transfiguration, his spiritual
anastasis, his being the Life of the soul, and his rising
from the dead. Then we have the Festival of Universal
Brotherhood, taken from Christ's interview with the
Samaritan woman, and the Declaration of Paul, that in
Christ all are one. We have also twelve other Festivals,
in the monthly recurrence of the holy Communion. Our
Bishop has also prepared a system of Sabbaths, which he
pursues with tolerable regularity. He has given us, Baptismal
Sunday, founded on Christ's Baptism; Children's
Sunday,—his blessing the little children; Unity Sunday;
Atonement Sunday—“that they may be one in us;” Regeneration
Sunday—“except a man be born again;” Repentance
Sunday, etc., etc.

Christmas, if you please, leads the signs in our Evangelical
Circle, is the beginning of the Christian year; this
falls in September; the Pure in Heart, in October;
Thanksgiving, in November; the Festival of the Universal
Brotherhood, which also includes All Saints, is given to
December. In January is the Peacemakers, when we
decorate the Church with evergreens, have the Lion and
Lamb symbolized, and make our endeavors for private and
universal Peace. We seek forgiveness and proffer restitution.
To February, the Poor in Spirit is assigned; the
Crucifixion to March; and in April is Fast. May gives us
Childmas, which is peculiarly for the children; June, the
Festival of Love; July, Independence, social, political
mental, religious; this is also the Anniversary of the
Erection of the Cross. The year closes in August, with
the Resurrection.

The time of Christmas was changed for the following
reasons;—that the month and season of our Saviour's birth
are not known; that the 25th of December, the Calendar
day, is of Gentile origin, not an insuperable objection, provided
it were recommended by any intrinsic propriety. But
this is not the case. The Festival to which that day refers,

obtaining among Northern nations, is only adapted to a
Northern latitude. The sun's annual return, which they
were wont to celebrate, gave them a cause of gratulation at
the expense of their trans-equatorial brethren, who at the
same moment were mourning its withdrawal. Such an
arrangement would not be cosmopolitan and universal
enough for Christ-Church. Therefore we selected an
equinoctial point, when it shines with the same strength on
all portions of the globe. So far as Livingston is concerned,
there were few or no preexisting Ecclesiastical prejudices
to be affected, and the people were at full liberty to select
what time they chose. This Festival with us is not taken
up solely with the Birth of Christ, it contemplates in addition
his Second Coming, i. e. his spiritual revelation in
the hearts and lives of his disciples. So looking both
backward and forward, it may well occupy some central
point. On most of our Festivals, there is a short religious
exercise in the Church. The Poor in Spirit is a season of
sober introspection, humility and prayer. The Crucifixion
has for its objects to effect within us a crucifixion to the
world and of the world to us. We become truly partakers
of the sufferings of Christ, his temptation, his reproach, his
cross-bearing, his dying. Childmas, in May, gives several
holidays to the children. They have a May-pole, May-dances,
and a Queen of May. They go into the woods for
evergreens and flowers. In the evening the Band play for
them, and they dance with their parents on the Green.
You will see them going down in the morning, from
Breakneck and Snakehill, blithe as the birds; the girls
dressed in white, and the boys in blue-checked linen. This
Festival is also devoted by the people at large to ornamenting
the streets, replenishing the flowers of the Cemetery,
and planting shrubbery about their houses. Independence
day, the 4th of July, we have an Oration, a rural
dinner and a dance in the evening at the Masonic Hall.
This is a superb room, over the Town House, which the
Masons have freely relinquished to our use whenever we
want it. They always unite with us in keeping this
Festival. The Resurrection, in August, seeks to realize
for us that spiritual resurrection from sin which St. Paul
strove to attain, and which Christ so perfectly enjoyed. It
also looks to the final elimination of the spirit from the body.
The Festival of Love in June would advance us in that
love which thinketh no evil, beareth all things, is the bond
of perfection, the seal of our being born of God, and fulfils
the law. The Pure in Heart, among other things, is devoted
to a general School visitation. The School-houses
are filled with parents and friends; the scholars examined,
and addresses made. The election of the May Queen is
made to turn somewhat on these examinations. She who
received the crown this year was Delinda, daughter of
Zenas Joy. Peacemaker's day, coming the first of January,
is supplied with whatever of interest attaches to that epoch.
Thanksgiving is observed agreeably to immemorial New
England usages, bating the Turkey-shoot at No. 4, and
Horse-racing; the Ball at Mr. Smith's has been supplanted
by a general dance at the Masonic Hall. Our Festivals
are not put by for Sunday, but when they fall on that day,
which not infrequently happens, the Bishop prepares discourses
accordingly. Thus is the whole year interwoven
and girded about by these beautiful occasions; some of them
exceedingly joyous and gay, others more sedate and reflective.
What Herbert says of them I dare not;—
Yet we do love them, and that, because we love God and
Happiness.

The sectaries have sought to introduce themselves among
us. Our Bishop freely offered them his pulpit, but they
refused to occupy it; he proposed exchanges that were
declined. They would not join in our Communion, although
the emblems are tendered to all who love the Lord
Jesus Christ. They kept aloof from our festivals. We
have all been baptized, and nearly two hundred the Bishop
has immersed. What could they want! They came one
night, nearly forty of them, preachers and all, from Dunwich
to Snakekill. The superintendent of the Schools in
that District had orders to open the School-house to them.
The Bishop, Mr. Evelyn, Deacon Bowker and several went
up; the room was full. The Bishop remarked we should
be glad to hear any thing they had to say, and hoped they
would express themselves freely. One began to speak but
he appeared embarrassed and stopped. Then one of their
leaders fell upon his knees saying, “Let us pray,” and pray
he did, nearly half an hour, and with stentorian voice.
Such a prayer may it never be my lot to hear again! He
argued with us, philippized us, denounced us, and as
Nimrod said, “whipped us over the Almighty's back!”
Has the Prince of Puppetdom in reserve a more horrid
piece of drollery? Deacon Whiston could not contain himself;
like Elijah of old he mocked them, and said, “Cry
aloud, for he is a god; either he is deaf, or is talking, or is
on a journey.” “There is no voice, nor any that answereth,”
added the Bishop. The effect was irresistible. The
meeting was broken up, and those most misguided people
mounting their horses made all haste to depart.

They would convert us from what? Christ himself!
To what, in the name of all that is good? To John
Wesley, or John Calvin! They would save our souls.

These are already saved, or at least Christ is doing that
work for us hour by hour. They have been in various
parts of the town endeavoring to ply the ridiculous enginery
of God's wrath and eternal damnation. They are eighteen
hundred years behind the age, our Christian age at least.
As Nimrod says, they “are barking up the wrong tree.”
I have no grudge against these people. Some of them
have excellent private qualities. Whatever there is of the
Christian in them I like, and there we and they agree, and
that ought to be a common foundation broad enough for us
all to stand upon. But the Ism is the difficulty. This
governs their action, this they would thrust upon us. Their
Ismaticalness conceals and extrudes the Christian. We
meet them as Christians, they meet us as Ismatics. It is
Christ versus Isms. Which shall prevail?

Lycurgus forbade the entrance of strangers into Laconia,
and the departure of his subjects. He was afraid of contamination.
The gates of Livingston are ever open, come
in, go out, who will. “The Lord encampeth round about
them that fear him,” was our Bishop's text last Sunday.
We have thus far been delivered from serious evil. We
are not afraid of the world, only the world must expect to
get most condignly meal-powdered, if it undertakes mischief
against us. We have in Livingston, nine hundred members
of Christ-Church, bold hearts, true hearts, completely clad
in the armor of God, ready for any battles of the Lord; and
equally ready to die at the stake, if needs be. “If the
Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a
burnt-offering at our hands, and showed us all these
things,” our Bishop says. “Cursed cows have short
horns,” Deacon Ramsdill says. And plantain thrives best
when it is most trod upon, that I know. Pray for us that
we may be able to go safely through all fiery trials.

It is related that the Cyclops for their savageness and
cruelty were condemned to Tartarus; but that Tellus, the
Goddess of the Earth, persuaded Jupiter it would be for
his interest to employ them in forging thunder-bolts, and
other instruments of terror with a frightful and continued
din of the anvil. When I call to mind certain kinds of
preaching I remember to have heard, and which I am told
every where abound, I reflect that Christ banished all such
things from his kingdom; but the gods of this lower world
have persuaded themselves it would be for the interest of
the Supreme to have these Cyclops recalled, and our
pulpits are full of their din! Where, alas! where is the
sweet, gentle, loving voice of Jesus, a voice that would not
lift itself up, nor cry, but did sometimes weep?

The Preacher, he whom I first heard in the words some
years ago, acts singularly. He hovered about Livingston,
peeping in upon us, and then running away. He said he
believed the Latter Days were come; then he hid himself
in the woods, and nobody heard from him for a long time.
At last he came to the village, is now an attentive waiter on
our Bishop's ministrations, and says he is resolved to become
a Missionary, and disseminate the principles of Christ
Church in the world.

We have had various sorts of people among us within
two or three years, and with an equal variety of motives;
Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics,
Armenians, Russians, Greeks, Jews, Mohammedans, Hindoos.
The latter were foreigners, gentlemen travelling the
world in pursuit of knowledge. We had most of them at
our house. What should happen one Sunday, but that a
venerable Presbyterian Doctor of Divinity, a Jew, and a
Mohammedan, sat in the same pew in Christ-Church, and

as it was Communion day, they all partook of the Sacrament
together, and after service, came to Mons Christi in
company! The Doctor remarked he had always preached
faith in Christ, and the regeneration of our natures, “but I
declare,” said he, “I never understood these things before,
or saw them so happily exemplified.” The Jew said,
laughing, if it were not for our pig-pen, he believed he
should be a Christian. The Mohammedan published an
account of his travels, and from Teheran, in Persia, I
received a copy done in Arabic. We taxed our wits, and
at the same time gratified our vanities, in translating it.
The chapter on Livington would amuse you. The author has
even given a description of me! This is a precious tidbit,
and I shall not endanger it by committing it to the post-rider.
You shall see it, when you visit us. One of the
Hindoos—there were two of them in company, and Brahmins,
I believe—said he would leave with us words from
their sacred books; as follows. “Truth, contentment,
patience, mercy, belong to great minds.” “A man of
excellent qualities is like a flower, which whether found
among weeds, or worn on the head, still preserves its
fragrance.” An Episcopal Bishop was here, and he said
that sooner than deny the Apostolic authority of our
Bishop, he would forego his own. He said this to us, but
whether he wished it to go abroad to the world, is more
than I know. Such are some of the pleasant records of
visits we have had. That other things of a very different
nature have been said and done, I cannot deny. But I
should tire you by reporting all the evil there is in the
world, or the want of love which many betray who come
here. “Father, forgive them, they know not what they
do!” What a prayer was that! Let us aspire to it.

Here is another affair for you. One day there came to

our house a gentleman with a letter from his Holiness Pope
Pius VII. addressed to us as his dear children, and recommending
to our care the bearer and his objects. The
bearer was a Roman Cardinal, and his objects thus appeared.
He said the Pope had learned that we had erected
the Cross, and that he hoped to find us obedient children of
the Holy Catholic Church. We told him we belonged to
that Church. He said he hoped to effect our affiliation
with the Roman Catholic Church. We told him that we
fellowshipped all churches in which was the spirit of Christ,
and that so far as the Roman Church possessed that, we
were happy to belong to it. He then said something about
allegiance. “What,” said Mr. Evelyn, “to Pope Pius?”
“Not exactly that,” replied the gentleman. “To the
Council of Trent?” persisted Mr. Evelyn. “I perceive I
have made a mistake,” said the gentleman, and making a
very polite apology started to leave. “Give our sincere
respects to the Pope,” said Mr. Evelyn, “tell him we pay
him the allegiance due to him, that contained in the
Apostolic direction to honor all men. If he should come
this way we hope he will give us a call.” The Cardinal
had not reached the door when an Armenian Prelate was
announced from Syria. He said he understood we were
Monophysites, and wished to ascertain if we were not a lost
branch of their Church established in this country centuries
ago. While he was yet speaking a Patriarch of the Greek
Church came in. He said he had been told we denied the
Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, and hoped to
find us identified with his order. Presently we had them
all three seated and pleasantly talking together. We sent
for our Bishop, and they all dined with us. The Greek
made the sign of the cross with three fingers, the Armenian
with two, and the Catholic with his hand indiscriminately.
We took them in our carriage to the village and about the
town. They passed the night at our house. Having other
friends with us, we could not give them each a room; and
the Roman Cardinal and Greek Patriarch slept in the same
bed; an event, Mr. Evelyn said, that had probably not
happened since the year 1054, when Pope Leo X. and the
Patriarch Cerularius excommunicated each other. At
devotions in the morning, the Greek read the hymn, the
Armenian read the Scripture, and the Catholic made the
prayer. They left us, and we have heard nothing from
them since. I hope when these gentlemen reach home
they will not suffer, as did that Timagorus; who, sent on
an embassy to Persia and conforming to some of the usages
of that Court, at his return was put to death by the Athenians,
who thought the dignity of their city compromised by
his conduct.

MARGARET TO ANNA.

We have had a more considerable alarm, the causes and
course of which I will speak of. Livingston you know has
been the subject of public remark, and perhaps some
scandal. The conduct of our people in military matters
has gone abroad to their prejudice; in addition, Judge
Morgridge has been accused of remissness in duty; it was
said that he had not sent so many convicts to the State
Prison as formerly, and that he shortened the term of such
as were committed to the Jail. It was intimated that we
had rendered ourselves obnoxious to Legislative severity,
and some punitive action on the part of the government was
apprehended. A memorial to the General Court was got
up, and signed by nearly a thousand of our people, men,
women and children, setting forth our condition and most

earnest wishes. Deacon Bowker was our representative
at the time; he read the memorial, but added nothing, only
took his seat, and as he said, prayed God to aid the issue.
The Legislature, in a manner that does credit equally to
their prudence and humanity, ordered an investigation of
the case; and a Committee was raised to visit Livingston
and report at the next session. Two gentlemen with
plenipotentiary powers of inspection came amongst us.
They were here frequently, and in fact spent several weeks
of the year on their object. We sought neither to meal-powder
nor gold-blind them, but showed them the civilities
due to all, and maintained the uniformity due to ourselves.
They tell the story of a young painter, who being very
poor was reduced to the necessity of converting one of his
pictures into lining for his jacket; and thus exposed his
genius by wearing it on his back. Livingston wears its
virtues on its back—and in its heart too—where they can
be seen at a glance:—but to my story.

The Committee made up their report which, having been
printed, swells into a large pamphlet. I will give you a
syllabus of it. They say our roads are in fine order, in
fact none are better in the State; that the whole town has
a striking aspect of neatness and thrift; that during all the
time of their visit they saw not one drunken man, while in
most towns such characters appeared without looking for
them; that the consumption of intoxicating drinks has
diminished from six or eight thousand gallons annually to a
few scores; that the amount paid for schools has risen
from three or four hundred dollars to two thousand; that
all taxes laid by the State and County have been promptly
paid; that our poor have lessened three-quarters; they say
also that the value of real estate in Livingston has advanced
twenty per cent., and that wholly exclusive of the

improvements on Mons Christi; and that the mania for
removing to the West, which prevails all over New England,
has here subsided.

On the charges preferred against Judge Morgridge, so
far as his connection with this town and vicinity are concerned,
they report in the first place that fewer criminal
actions have been brought before him than formerly, and
those of a less malefic nature; and that the number of
prisoners in the Jail has fallen from forty or fifty to eight
or ten, and only one of these belonged to Livingston.
They next inquire if these facts are to be attributed to the
official negligence of the Judge, or to an actual decrease of
crime. On this point, which is elaborated with considerable
care, thanks to those gentlemen, I will give you the
results of their observation. They say that during the last
four years since the enlargement of the Jail, the addition
to the comfort of the inmates, and the practice here adopted
of visiting them frequently, and attending to their moral
condition, the recommitments have almost entirely ceased;
whereas in former times these constituted nearly one half
of the subjects of prosecution; and they consent that our
mode tends really to reform the prisoner, and restore him a
useful citizen to the State; and they say they see not
cause for censuring the Judge who sends convicts rather to
the Jail, where their morals and manners are amended,
than to the State Prison where the reverse is wont to befall.
The Committee came evidently possessed with the
suspicion, which some have taken the pains to create in the
public mind, that we shielded our criminals and tried to
snatch them from justice. They say they have canvassed
the whole town, explored by-places, gone into private
dwellings, watched about taverns, traversed the streets by
night, and cannot find any criminals; that the people appear

to be industrious, time-saving, minders-of-their-ownbusiness,
and free from the ordinary tokens of guilt.
They speak also of the absence of petty offences, which
exist almost everywhere; and we could tell them once
flourished here, such as unhinging gates, hanging cartwheels
on trees, plundering hen-roosts, shearing horses,
etc., etc. They add, pleasantly enough, that, while they
have been in a hundred houses, at all hours of the day, they
have not heard a woman speak scandal, or scold her
children. They remark that a petition for divorce from
Hopestill Cutts and his wife, formerly pending before the
Legislature, has been withdrawn; and here, as all along,
apprehensive of some collusion, they declare they made
such an investigation as perfectly satisfied them these
people were living in harmony and love.

Regarding the nature and extent of the penalty, they say
Judge Morgridge has generally adopted the minimum point
of the law, which he thinks has proved itself to be adequate
both for the protection of the community and the punishment
of the offender. They report a visit to the Jail,
where they say they found what appeared to be a radical
change going on in the minds and hearts of the convicts.
The fact that few are recommitted indicates, they say, that
the accommodations of the Prison do not offer a premium
on crime. Another circumstance which demonstrates to
their minds the actual cessation of offences, is the abolition
of the use of intoxicating drinks. The able-bodied poor,
who used to waste their time and aggravate their indolence
by liquors, they found soberly working and wisely economizing.
Our merchants also told them the people traded
as liberally and paid more punctually than ever, and that
they had less occasion for prosecutions. Thus, in various
ways, the Committee profess themselves satisfied that there

is a diminution both in the causes and the sum of criminality;
and they report a resolve which entirely exonerates
the Judge from the charge of infidelity to the laws, and
carelessness of the good of the State.

As regards military drills, our people made a solemn
exhibit to the Committee of what formerly existed here, the
intoxication, profanity, gambling, horse-racing, brawling,
dissipation of time, wreck of morals, etc., the offsprings of
those occasions; and furthermore, they protested, that as
members of Christ-Church, as Christians, as believers in
the Gospel, they could not conscientiously engage in taking,
or preparing to take, the lives of their fellow-beings, in
premeditated battle. “I lost my all in one war,” said
Captain Tuck, “and am prepared to do the same in
another. Take our property, consign us to dungeons, load
us with chains, but do not compel us to violate our consciences.
I am under orders from the Lord Almighty,
Jesus Christ is my Commander-in-Chief, in their service I
deem it my highest honor to live, or to die.” Our people
affirmed, in addition, that the military expenses of the town,
taking the matter in all ways, had not been less than one
thousand dollars a year; some said two thousand; and that
they needed the money for other purposes. They added
that they were willing to pay such taxes as the government
imposed, and only sought the ability to pay. These facts
the Committee reported without comment. They were
present at several of our Festivals, at Christ-Church on the
Sabbath, at our Town Meetings, and dances, and expressed
a general satisfaction in what they saw.

And now what is the good news I have to tell you?—
this, that in the ultimate decision of the Legislature, it was
voted nearly unanimously by both houses, that Judge
Morgridge should not be disturbed in his office, and that the

Town of Livingston should be exempt from all Military
duty! It was the Summer Session, when the resolve was
finally passed, and Deacon Bowker arrived with the glad
intelligence Independence day; our fears took flight in
raptures, and our ordinary good cheer creamed like a
tankard of beer. Master Elliman's toast was quite characteristic;
“Our Legislature, a convert from Thomas Aquinas
to Duns Scotus.”

There has been a multiplication of travel hither, and the
influx of strangers is incessant and great. One advantage
the people say they begin to realize from their mode of
life; that is money. Mr. Stillwater says his tavern profits
exceed by far those of other years. The people generally
speak of increased sales, on this score. Many orchards,
formerly miserable rum-lots, have been converted into productive
fruiteries. We have imported grafts, and new
seed, and now they raise choice apples, pears and peaches,
that find a ready market any where. Some of the people,
who cannot confine themselves wholly to cold water, make
cider, by an improved process, which Mr. Evelyn says, is
equal to the purest wines of France.

Dr. Johnson tells a story of Steele, to this effect. The
essayist having one day invited to his house several persons
of quality, they were surprised at the number of liveries
that surrounded the table. One of the guests inquired
of Steele, how such a train of domestics could be consistent
with his fortune, for he was known to be poor. He frankly
confessed they were fellows of whom he would very willingly
be rid; but declared they were bailiffs, who had
introduced themselves with an execution, and whom, since
he could not send them away, he had found it convenient to
embellish with liveries, that they might do him credit while
they did stay. How much of the equipage, the appointments,

the furniture, the dress, of the world, is a sort of liveried
bailiff, who, as soon as the feast is over, will take
every thing from you! Whatever decorations Livingstonians
exhibit, are their own, their debts are paid.

Mr. Evelyn has accomplished a good deal with the somewhat
rugged soil of Mons Christi. Last year he sold, in
New York, four hundred bushels of apples, at an average
of seventy-five cents per bushel. He raised also six hundred
bushels of rye, corn and oats, potatoes, and other
things as many as we want. We have six cows, and such
cream, butter, cheese—did you ever taste better? Our
sheep, hogs, turkeys, ducks, hens, are innumerable. In the
Saw-mill, at the Outlet, we have put a run of stone, and
grind our own grain. The Notch through the hill from the
Via Salutaris to the Outlet is now a fine road, and a fine
drive; and that wild and superb scenery back of the highlands
is accessible to all. Balboa, he that discovered the
Pacific Ocean, when he came in sight of it, fell on his
knees and thanked God; then plunging into the water up
to his waist, with his sword and buckler, took possession in
the name of his sovereign. We have just reached the edge
of this illimitable, whale-bearing, sky-cleaving Nature; with
hoe and axe, microscope and alembic, love and health, we
take possession of it, in the name of God and Christ, amen.
The Chinese carry their gardens and rice-fields to the tops
of their mountains. What may yet become of New England?
The Indians indeed are gone; what do we in their
stead? This suggests to me that the remains of Pakanawket
and his grandchild, after reposing so long in the depths
of the Pond, at last rose to the surface. We had them buried
in the woods which he pointed out as the home of his
grandfather; and over them we put an antique monument
of red sand-stone, on which are sculptured their effigies

in the style of the Middle Ages. In the darkest woods
they lie, but their shrine has as many visitors as that of
Thomas a Becket. What more, what better could we do?

MR. EVELYN TO ANNA.

From the tone of your letters, I gather that Margaret in
what she writes you, treats of her own agency in these
matters Livingstonian in a manner somewhat obscure. I
shall take the liberty to elucidate this point briefly. I do
not intend to overtax her modesty or involve her singleness
of heart, beyond what is meet; but in truth I must declare,
the first person in her letters would be more fitting and exact
than any second; it is she herself, and not we, who is,
under God and in Christ, the soul of all that which we
now behold. This may be as frankly avowed as it is sincerely
felt. Nor do I fear inducing a dispute with my dear
wife by saying as much. She knows that I know it, and if
she has not confidence enough in herself to confess the fact,
she has in me to yield to it. If she has not a consciousness
of her own strength, it is because it is so absolutely and
plenarily great she lacks the contentions and annoyances of
weakness which reveal to most of us the little strength we
do possess. Wherein she is conscious of her strength, she
so expends it in action as to leave no carking and petted
residuum to be troubled with. Her self-consciousness is
not, what we sometimes behold, a crying infant, but a
grown-up sister; it resides quite as much with her industry
as in her heart, and she is not obliged to quit her work and
rock the cradle of herself. She thus escapes a morbid tendency
on the one hand, and a heedless one on the other;
she can be self-forgetful and self-moved; she can love and

she can labor. She will not charge me with any adroit
humility that seeks to hide itself under her laurels.

You have known, Anna, that I had some vis in my composition,
but of that kind which the books call mortua, more
than the description viva; in other words, that I was sluggish
and lazy. I saw, and thought, and speculated enough.
I attained many correct conclusions; but never did anything.
When I left College, I soon convinced myself, that
like many other rare geniuses, I was doomed to be the victim
of circumstances. I was not poverty-stricken, but man-stricken.
The forms and the spirit of error and evil had
distorted the face of the globe; but why should I attempt
to remove mountains, or change the beds of rivers? Let
me travel over the one, and sail on the other. I would not
perish where so many of my kith and kin had come to their
end, that is to say, in contention. I essayed poetry, but
soon learned, that I had not only to make verses, but remodel
the standards of taste; that if I would succeed, I
must first put all the critics to death, as the Emperor
Hadrian did Apollodorus, for blaming the proportions of a
Temple he had erected. Of the Professions, Theology I
could not, Law and Medicine I would not; and then, as a
last resort, I concluded to fall in love with a very pretty
and very poor girl, here in Livingston. I knew I could
live with her, whereas I must die in all the world besides.
Well for me that I had sense enough to understand her, or
heart enough to love her. I could always philosophize, but
lacked the energy of execution. In place of hastening the
better day, I was disposed to yield most implicit obedience
to that direction of the Apostle, “Wait until the Lord
come.” Margaret's energy has inspired all my capabilities,
and given motion to my will. But more than this, for example,
I could sit with Phidias in his studio, and out of

ideal gold and ivory make a Jupiter, with all suitable enrichments.
She takes the veritable materials, and the
statue is done. Thus is our whole history; I have been
able to impart a certain fanciful existence to Ideality; she
perpetually reduces the same to the Actual. Nor does she
seem to study her plan, with most artists, and then go
to work; she goes to work, and the plan and the result
are both before you. She seems to be only embodying
herself in what is about her, her profuse and impulsive being
creates life in all things, her own going forth is the signal
for the appearance of Beauty and Virtue; she translates
Nature to Man; and Man to himself. I talk like a doting
husband, but this is what I am, and what she has made me.

She was reared on bread and cider, and bean porridge;
she slept in a cold chamber, she hardened her constitution
among snow-banks; her mind, never overloaded, was
always occupied; her nature would neither endure, nor did
it ever receive, the fetters of fashion, conventionality, dogma,
or world-fear. Without education, in the common
sense of the term, her faculties were matured; without instruction
she was wise; and having never heard of Mr.
Nash, she became graceful and polite.

Christianity she was unembarrassed to receive, and in
that alone has she found a master. For this indeed she
was somewhat prepared by her night-visions; but when it
came, it overpowered and aggrandized her. I never could
have imagined so perfect an incarnation of Christ as she
is; and that without parting with any of her proper individuality.
She drinks in Christ as the oaks do the dews,
to replenish herself in greater proportion and beauty thereby.
The bread from Heaven, designed for the aliment,
development, and ripening of all souls, she feeds daily
upon.

I know not that she is a Philosopher, save that she acts
philosophically. Our Philosophers, for the most part, by
an industrious collation of many facts, like travellers with
heavy packs on their shoulders, fare slowly up the hill of
their conclusions. On a few facts her conclusions rest;
one fact stands with her for many facts, and this from a
certain comprehensive and nice power of analogy she possesses.
That law by which all facts in the physical, moral
and religious world gravitate towards a common centre,
and coalesce in one, she has an intuitive perception of.
Or rather the soul of all things, the Truth and Love, of
which facts are but the signs, she understands by the correspondence
of her own soul therewith. Hence is her logic
rapid and correct, and her action perfect and sure. She has
perhaps, more Philosophy than a Philosopher; and if, as
has been observed, History be Philosophy teaching by
example, Nature is Margaret teaching by practice.—
She also possesses much of the Universal Heart; a variety
of hearts enter into the ingredients of hers. Hence,
occupying the stand-point of the many, her sight is extensive,
her projects are feasible, and her success certain.

When I first saw her, she was more purely in a state of
nature than any civilized person I ever encountered. To
this, partly, I attribute the power of the Gospel on her.—
Neither internal sin nor external evil had deformed or diseased
her, and she was prepared, like a new-born babe, to
breathe the atmosphere here of Christ the moment she came in
contact with it, and to drink the sincere milk of the word.
I once wholly despaired of seeing Christian; she is one!
I might say, I more than despaired of fulfilling my ideal in
myself; she has aided me to do it! Christ pervades every
corner and cranny of her being; she is filled with the fullness
of God.

And yet she loves me with a most devout and child-like
love. “And yet?” Why should she not? In pursuing
her objects in town, she is no dry, hoarse-voiced, arrow-speeding,
denunciatory, crochetty, monomaniac; she gushes
up like a fountain, and having supplied her home, has
enough wherewithal to overflow and run down the hill.
She is meek and lowly of heart in an uncommon degree.
Whatever manly qualities she exhibits, it is without masculineness,
and she is a woman without effeminacy. She has
no bitterness of spirit; the only person in the world whom
she was disposed to view as thoroughly and hopelessly depraved,
was the Widow Wright; but I believe she has got
the better of that judgment. She has no blur in her own
eyes when she would remove that of her brother.

But of her connection with the Livingstonian re-Christianization—I
say, she may report to you what she does,
more than what we do. This is a palpable truth. For
instance, our Festivals; I had witnessed their workings in
the Old World, I was convinced of their utility; I could
relate their history, distinguish their errors and defects;
while I was speaking on the subject, she had elaborated the
system we now enjoy. Is it my doings or hers? At the
same time, standing as she does in the common heart, corresponding
with so many minds, it seemed to emanate as
much from the people as from herself. The hierophancy
that exists in all souls needed only to be awakened to
make every one a practical interpreter of Nature. This,
you will recollect, was after the extraneous habits and factitious
modes of the people had somewhat worn away, and
they were prepared to act on an original native sense of
things. How this superincrustation, hardened by many
years' duration, and even converted into the commonest uses
of life, became removed, would puzzle a greater philosopher

than she thinks I am, to tell. Its disappearance was
gradual, and yet perceptible. The Spirit of God entered
into men's souls, and these dead forms were uplifted, the
oppressive bands were broken asunder. Truth and Love,
here as everywhere, like that Nebuchadnezzarean tree, had
their branches cut off, and its leaves shaken off, but the
stump of the roots was in the earth, and needed but to be
wet with the dew of Heaven, to shoot forth in primeval,
paradisean vigor and bloom. Humanity, like a buried
giant, heaved off its superincumbence, and rose to life; Religion
cast aside her Harlequin robes.

Margaret ever courted alliance with an imperishable
Nature. The sentiments of Deacon Ramsdill, sound as
they are homely, must have assisted her. From breast to
breast an electric fire spread itself. She subsidized all my
strength, she drew your brother into the field; she had
also most serviceable coadjutors in many other wise and
valiant men and women. Her knowledge of human nature
would strike you as very great. She says Jesus Christ
taught her this knowledge; that since she has been a
Christian, and a student of the gospels, this intuition, or
experience, has been singularly developed in her. Our
taking up our abode at Mons Christi was, on the whole,
her own suggestion; what we did for the No. 4's, and particularly
the setting up of the Statue, was, for the most
part, a plan of hers. A pink she saw once in one of their
houses seemed to suggest the Statue; and a beautiful
image of Diligence she felt would carry a varied impression
to the hearts of those gross people, that should work their
complete reformation. And the result did not disappoint
her. Many, many things about our house, grounds, ways,
and in the town, are purely her own inventions. All our
superb statues are chiefly hers. I would not applaud her

at the expense of any others. I shall not write myself
altogether a “puppet;” your brother has done a great
work for us. He came with purposes, possibly not fully
ripe, but with talents of the first order, and a heart glowing
with Christ-like ambition. There is a host besides, of
whom, if not the world, Livingston is worthy.

Of Margaret I was speaking. I have translated to her
the whole of the New Testament; and she, I must concede,
understands it better than I do. She has a most accurate
perception of the general sense, she detects hidden springs
of beauty, she harmonizes varving passages and contradictory
language, she gathers what may be termed the
manner of Christ, his accents and emphases, his moods and
feelings; she is not constrained by those unnatural prominences
which to those of us who have been long accustomed
to hear particular topics discussed, and particular texts
dwelt upon, occur every where in the Bible. A parable, a
trope, an hyperbole, never embarrasses her. There may
be a reason for this, in the fact that she understands Christ
so well; she is, if I may so say, so much in his vein. She
goes deeper than the partial, varying human letter, even
into the spirit of Jesus, and comes up full of his meaning.
Then she brings to the Gospel so fresh and pure a nature.
Do the best I can, I still find myself stumbling upon certain
passages that have been detached from their proper place
in the sacred text, inwrought into some human system, and
invested with a sense wholly remote from the original. She
has been troubled by no systems, and these passages, to her,
all melt down, and flow on in harmony with the great
stream of Gospel truth.

My dearest wife! I see her now on the Pond. She
comes from the Islands; and our little Gottfried is with
her. Her head is wreathed with evergreens, and the boy

has a cincture of the same. With featest stroke she drives
forward her canoe, firmly the child clutches the seat.
Happy husband and father of so good a wife, so good a
child am I! Fresh and warm is she in heart and complexion,
as when I with her first looked on these beautiful
waters. Yearly does my love for her increase, with every
holy deed our souls are knitted more closely together. She
leaps upon the beach, she runs along the grass, the little
Gottfried chases his mother. I must go and meet them,
for I am made young and agile too. She will bide what I
have written; she never blushes at truth, but only when I
love her.

MARGARET TO ANNA.

From the same fountain flow tears and smiles! How
curiously we are made. My cheeks tingle, my heart goes
pit-a-pat. Mr. Evelyn would not send off his letter without
showing it to me. All the world may speak well or ill
of me; I take it, as Nimrod says a horse does the bit, very
coolly. His censure or approbation quite undoes me.
What is he not to me? When other things are so much, how
much is he! God, Christ, and Mr. Evelyn; the Infinite
and the Finite, in triune, golden chain encircle me, in one
sweet heaven embosom me. Man is that wind-harp, through
which the breath of God sounds so softly, as in the thick
pines. Mr. Evelyn revealed Christ to me, Christ revealed
God to him. Dear, dear, thrice dear Mr. Evelyn. Does
he not know how much my strength is nourished from him,
as well as from bean porridge? He has not told you how
I watched him when he was asleep; nor how I vibrate to
his voice when he calls me in the garden; nor how I wait

upon his words, his opinions, his judgments. When he was
gone so long, and so far away, I cherished him, as a
hidden birth in my soul, which his coming alone brought
into life. Did I not tell you, Anna, how much I loved
him? Yet you understood something of me, and more of
him, and you could not be surprised that I did love him.
But when he left for Europe, I knew not that I should ever
see him again, and he did not write me. What under
these circumstances could a girl like me do? Why, love
in silence, the same as fishes swim. You are a woman, and
you know what that is; and we are women, Rose says, and
we are but women, I allow. It never occurred to me that
I was poor, or that I was bred in “the orful wicked ways
of the Pond,” as the Leech said. Yet how did I love Mr.
Evelyn? His letter, if it does not recall me to myself,
does certainly recall all my life to me. And if I have not
always answered all your questions, dear Anna, it was
because I was more apt to fill out my sheet with what was
then on my hands, than with what had slid off into my
memory.

But I must first settle certain preliminaries as to what a
woman is. You would sometimes seem to admonish me
lest I become a partaker of a vague somewhat unwomanly.
Yet in theory I always agreed with you, and our differences,
if there were any, only contemplated the details of practice.
And here what I have to say is formed, not from any
considerable stress of logic, but out of what lies all around
me. To say “We are women,” means no more at Mons
Christi, than to say, “We are men,” and just as much.
There is the same difference, I think, between a man and a
woman, as between a black birch and a white one. The
character of woman has risen a hundred fold in Livingston,
yet are we all women still. The girls are not boys, neither

are the ladies lords. We have no Amazons or hybirds,
unless I except the Goddess of Health. Man and woman,
we are both united and elevated by the common tie of
respect and esteem, mutual deference and good will, love
and honor. We are boys and girls, wives and husbands,
men and women still. Man is less exclusive and despotic,
woman is less slavish and tame. Our Festivals, our
dances, the general diffusion of Christianity in town,
have had the effect to abrade many prejudices, correct
many diversities, raise the women in their proper scale, and
restore the just order and equitable arrangements of society.
It seems after all to be a question of beards and breeches,
and since nature has not furnished us the first, why should
we be anxious to supply ourselves with the last? “Don't
be afraid of Livingston!” Captain Tuck says, and in this
matter, so say I.

Now, being a woman, how should, or how did I love Mr.
Evelyn? They tell of two yew trees that fell in love, but
being separated by a large forest, could not speak to each
other. Cherishing their love in concealment, they at
length grew so tall, they could overlook the intervening
trees; they saw each other, their love was consummated.
We did love, we were separated, we at last met, and our
love was consummated. But the growing tall, how was
that? Were we prepared for a perfect love at the first?
Did we need each other? Were we of proportionate moral
stature? Were there no distances even in ourselves
requiring that we should first grow tall before we could
overlook them? Does not one need a certain amount of
self-subsistence, before he or she can subsist another? We
are capable of loving, long before we are capable of
being loved; I mean capable of supporting the love of
another. “A solemn thing is love,” said Isabel, when

Rufus offered her his heart. Mr. Evelyn, as I recollect,
when I first saw him, imparted to me something of a
tremor. But what if he had then proposed to marry me?
That would have made me tremble worse and more hopelessly.
His love for me must first become a subjective
part of my own existence, it must grow up in me, it must
mould me somewhat into his image; and so too must mine
for him act upon him; then when we meet, our diversities
will have vanished, we shall be like each other, we shall be
ready to live together always. Perhaps you will say this
is rather the record of my own experience, than the establishment
of any principle; and what is worse, it may indicate
a very dull and unsavory process. I do believe in
falling in love, spontaneously, ardently, as much as Rose
does, but I do not believe in falling into a quagmire. I
cannot approve of those marrying who have no points in
common. I confess indeed to the power of love in diminishing
differences, and uprooting antipathetic tendencies.
But should not their general tastes, sentiments, views, feelings,
be accordant? Let love set the mill a-going, but how
can we expect any good results from cogs that never fit, or
from a wheel-band running on the barrel of a watch?—
Yet, are we not Pythagorean half-souls? Men or women,
do we not all need our mates? Do we not float through
the world, like loose planets, till we are caught in the
attraction of some other orb? I must have Mr. Evelyn,
Rose must have Frank, Rhody must have Nimrod, Sybil
Hash, Isabel Rufus, you Mr. Watson; and so, vice versa.
This at least is Rose's doctrine, and I leave it with her to
carry on the discussion.

Marriage is proposed as the cure of love; “Get them
husbands betimes,” says my oracle. We find marriage the
sustentation and enrichment of love. When did I love Mr.

Evelyn more than to-day? That we have diversities is certain;
but what shall we do with them? Wink them out
of sight; agree to disagree; bear with one another in
silent, consuming pain? No. Let them be thrown into
the common crucible of our affection, and fused together
into some teritum quid, some new homogeneous form. We
have been married seven years. Twice,—for they say I
have an excellent memory, and I cannot very well forget
the time,—twice he has distressed me, agonized my heart
beyond description; I could have died. I thought—I cannot
tell what—it is past now. Only I fancied he did not do
me justice—it was a little thing—it was not that I was a
woman and he a man, for he has never failed not only to
love but even to honor me. It was two souls becoming
dark to each other, veiling their faces. We were hidden
only a short time; the dew of sadness that was upon our
windows became beautiful, and then vanished. Yet when
he chided me, he loved me. You look from a well-lighted
room through a window when it is pitch dark abroad, and
you see your own image out in the darkness. He was
dark, but in his soul was my image; he tenderly cherished
me, and I had to ask to be forgiven. The Apostle prays
that we be perfect in love. In love we go on to perfection,
in perfection we go on to love. “Are we not illimitable
and immortal only in love?” asks my father of my own
dear mother. “God dwelleth in him that dwelleth in
love.” He dwells in Mr. Evelyn and me. His Shekinah
is our house and our hearts. Our trees and our flowers
grow larger and more beautiful every year; so does our
love. God is the same forever, he never grows old, he is
never common place; nor is our love ever dull, having its
roots in the Infinite. To the eyes of love all things are
new.

I too am a mother, so is Rose, so are you. Gottfried
Brückmann is four years old, Jane Girardeau, two. Rose
has the prettiest little blossom you ever beheld; she daily
waxes more happy, more strong. How pleasant to multiply
the avenues into which the Divinity may pour itself! You
used, sometimes, to raise questions about miracles. Let us
cease wondering, and become wonder-workers. The ways
of nature are the true anagogics. Gottfried is brown as a
nut, and I see Jeannie rolling on the grass. They are
hale and hearty, and do not grow under a board; they eat
lustily three times a day, and sleep well o'nights. The
root called pie-plant, just before it shoots from the earth in
the Spring, is the most beautifully tinted thing you ever
beheld. Remove the soil, and there you have disclosed a
most exquisite rose flesh color, deepening into the purest
carmine, and alternating with vermilion and gold. Children
that germinate with plenty of mother earth about them,
come out in the fairest hues. Cloth, as Ma used to say, is
sometimes killed in coloring; but those are artificial dyes.
The tints of nature betoken vigor and heart.

Rhody has a son whom they call Chilion; Isabel a
daughter, Margaret hight. Rufus has built an elegant
marble Italian Villa on the north eastern brow of Mons
Christi. Thus we form an extensive community. I am
not afraid of our children becoming contaminated here.
Hash and Nimrod are really new men in Christ Jesus.
You would hardly believe they have daily prayers with
their households; which is nevertheless the fact. The
Bishop has urged the duty of family religion, and great is
the change in this respect, in all parts of the town. I can
hardly describe my astonishment, when, the other morning,
going into Pa's, to find that once blasphemous, atheistic old
man, soberly reading the Scriptures with Ma, and devoutly

praying! But what shall become of our children, in aftertimes,
and elsewhere? Livingston seems to us like Arranmore
to the Irish, where in clear weather they fancy they
can see Paradise. The world is dark and sinful, and how
can we adventure our children in it?

Pa takes a great liking to the little ones, and they often
run over there. The old man is still mercurial; but his
pot-valiantry is gone; cold water is his only fog-breaker;
for Anacreontics he sings Christian hymns. He only wishes
he had two ears. Ma says Jeannie looks like me. And I
was a child once. The other day I rowed across the Pond,
and leaped off into the water where I used to bathe and
chase the sand-pipers. The rocks, the shadows, the vines
were there, and I was there, in my little canoe. I forgot
the Universe, and my life, and my children, to be a child
once more. Presently Mr. Evelyn came, with Gottfried
and Jane, and we frolicked in the water together, and were
all children as one. How should a child punish a child?
I mean how should I punish my children? Are parents
never in the wrong? Are children never in the right?
“Nurses should not have pins about them,” said Deacon
Ramsdill. Do not parents, by their own pride and ignorance
often prick their children, and then whip them for
crying?

“The bones of an infant,” says Dr. Buchan, “are so soft
and cartilaginous, that they readily yield to the slightest
pressure, and easily assume a bad shape. Hence it is that
so many people appear with high shoulders, crooked spines
and flat breasts, having had the misfortune to be squeezed
out of shape by the application of stays and bandages from
their birth.” The world abounds in what Comenius calls
Deformed and Monstrous people, in both a physical and
moral aspect; all squeezed out of shape in their infancy.

Can you fail to understand how men become depraved?
“Laissez faire,” says Mr. Evelyn. We would encompass
our children by the influences of the Good and the Beautiful,
which is all they can, primordially, understand of God.
Let their characters have an imperceptible development,
like rose buds.

Mr. Evelyn would make you believe that I have been
personally interested in this rejuvenescence of the town; so
mote it be. After all, it is God's work; we are only his
subalterns. You are surprised at the result; I am not.
There are 2,304,000 pores in the human body; so many
avenues, I might say, has God to the heart; and if we
will but be co-workers with him, we can find access also.
God follows, or I should say, makes nature his mode of
entrance and influence; we have but to go in by the same
way, and work after the same pattern. Not but that there
have been difficulties; but the greatest one, after all, was
to find God's stand-point of Nature. What the people of
Livingston needed, I could but see; what they would receive,
may at times have admitted of some questioning.
Their vices were not indeed peculiar, they shared in the
common backsliding from God; their cisterns, drained of
water, held only sediment, for which they were ready, at
any moment, to do battle. I remembered the feeling that
prevailed here when I was lost in the woods; how good
every body was, self-sacrificing, and self-forgetful; I remembered
my dreams. There were the many things
Deacon Ramsdill told me; there was my experience with
the children when I kept the School, where I learned more
of the infinite susceptibilities, wants, tendencies of our nature,
than could in any other way have been presented to
me out of myself; there was what Chilion told me about

Music; there was the geode and its crystals. Ever too
was myself, I could but be sensible of my own wants, and
what would do me good. There was the revelation of
Christ to me, by Mr. Evelyn. There was the well at No.
4, of which he speaks, clear water, a subterranean Heaven
in that greasy, odious place, and along with it Dorothy's
pink, that seemed to me like another little Heaven in the
deep degradation of humanity. There was also a strong
conviction that the sin which I saw in the world was unnatural
and self-destructive, that much of the folly of men was
preposterous and remediable. So in many ways I was
taught the will of God. I know not that I was ever conscious
of any mission to this people; but after our house
was done, I could not be satisfied till something else was
doing. Our, or my, if you please, first experiment was at
No. 4, as he has told you. The effect was almost instantaneous
and quite magnificent; that the Scripture might be
fulfilled where it is written, “Though they have lain among
pots, they shall become as the wings of a dove covered
with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.”

I have a fortune indeed; and some would fain make
themselves believe that we have opened a battery of systematic
bribery, that we have got into the human heart, as
Philip did into the Athenian walled-towns, by our gold.
You would be surprised to know how little we have
bestowed in a mere eleemosynary manner. We gave
nothing to the No. 4's, except what took an ornamental
form. Their solid comfort and prosperity is wholly to be
attributed to themselves. It was not largesses they needed,
but industry, economy, temperance and love. We bought
them a barn, when their hay and corn began to increase;
but they have since repurchased it. I gave Abiah Tapley
a clarionet and Isaiah Batch a bugle, that they might join

our Band; Dorothy we have educated. In the town at
large we have done little for charity; our money indeed
has gone freely, but more in ways æsthetic and religious
than otherwise. It has aided in the erection of a Church
Cemetery, Fountain, School-house, remodelling the Jail,
planting trees, setting up Statues, etc., etc. To Judah
Weeks we made a loan, on an importation of sheep, cows,
fruits and seeds, he was making from England; but he has
repaid it. And, I believe, at this moment, I could receive
back principal and interest, all I have laid out. The pecuniary
ability of the people has kept pace with their moral
excellence. Land has advanced in price, strangers are
anxious to settle amongst us. The people have expended
a good deal, and they have made money. Abstinence from
ardent spirits, military duty, needless fashions, lawsuits,
have saved the town ten thousand dollars a year; so Judge
Morgridge said at our house the other night. Add to this
the recovery from idle habits, negligent dispositions and an
unproductive uniformity, and you will see our people are
able to expend much in other ways.

Waste lands have been redeemed; sundry improvements
in agricultural and mechanical arts adopted, whereby at
once is a saving, and a profit. Education, Literature,
Religion, Recreation, Beauty, Music, Art, Morality and
General Happiness, are things the people enjoy, and for
which they are able to pay. They have laid the foundation
for a building to serve a composite purpose, of Library,
Museum, Lecture Room, Reading Room. The Natural
History of the place some are beginning to develop and
illustrate; its insects, birds, fishes, rocks, and flowers.
Arthur Morgridge and Aurelius Orff spent the whole of
last year in examinations of this sort, and their book under
the superintendence of Master Elliman will be published,

and two hundred copies will be sold in Livingston. Hancock
Welles, the Principal of the Grammar School, spends
one whole day in the week with his scholars, studying the
world about them; I mean the Livingstonian world, of
wood, earth and water. Of our extraneous public taxes
some of the people complain a little. Mons Christi paid a
general tax last year of two thousand dollars. Mr. Evelyn
says the State has helped Livingston somewhat, and if
Livingston can help the State out of its difficulties, it will
be better for all in the end.

Do people speak of wealth?—Mr. Evelyn says our
country expends for military and warlike purposes, in all
ways, at the rate of 80,000,000 dollars a year, for intoxicating
drinks 50,000,000 more, and for vain and hurtful
customs enough to carry the tale to 200,000,000! What
if this sum could every where be devoted to Christ, Beauty
and Happiness; you would cease to wonder at what is done
in Livingston.

What time, what labor, what money is laid out in the
great world on what is known as Fashion! Vice is ugly,
and yet you embrace her; if she were beautiful, that might
be an excuse for your conduct. Can any thing exhibit a
more “hideous mien” than Fashion? The French Milliners
are a more dangerous foe to the race than French
arms. Madame Laponte threatens a worse evil than Napoleon.
She has actually invaded America, and thousands
of females have fallen victims to her arts. Your grandmother
said I should certainly lose my symmetry if I that
not wear a whalebone corset like one she showed me, and
would weight, I should think, three pounds. Your friend,
Mrs. Modim, declared I should lose caste if I did not carry
my waist up over my shoulders; long waists, she said,
were fast going out of fashion, or worn by the vulgar. Is

it not, after all, only a circular race between Tippee and
Twaddle? Tippee is now ahead, Twaddle soon overtakes
her, Tippee falls behind; so round and round they go;
which leads, or which is beaten, who can tell? Can that
be Beauty which lowers your corsage to-day, and raises it
to-morrow; which flaunts a furbelow one year and denounces
it the next? Your ladies seem to me more jiggered
than dressed; they are tasty, but not neat; they struggle
for good keeping, but attain no harmony; they are bespangled
without ornament, and fashionable without beauty.
Mr. Evelyn has a volume with plates illustrative of our
ancestral costumes; and I am persuaded that if the Indians
had appeared in an attire which has been the glory of
Christian belles, it would have been set down as the proper
accompaniment of Barbarism, and the Greeks in such
dresses would never have advanced beyond the woods of
Attica. One department of our Museum, devoted to Antiquities,
I recommend to have supplied with garments
showing the fashions of our own and other times; a suitable
relic to be transmitted to posterity. The Spartans forbade
all colors but purple. If we do not restrict ourselves to
that extent, we will at least become more moderate. A robe,
a la Grecque, has been introduced into town, is greatly
admired, and somewhat worn.—Alas for the persons of
quality who have wens on their necks! You contrive to
hide this deformity by your cardinal hoods. But what will
you do with the next person of quality, who has monstrous
ankles? The wen must then go bare! Our people have
got the good graces of the Quakers! four of whom have
come to reside here, with hands full of industry, and purses
full of money; and they are interested members of Christ-Church.

We have had the stanchest concurrence, a munificent

sympathy, and most effective aid. Names, which if it
could be, I should like to have publshed to the world, are
blazoned here on Livingston hills, and storied in Livingston
hearts; the Morgridges, Weekses, Palmers, Pottles, Dorothy,
and a host that are written in the Lamb's Book of
Life.

How has it been done? I will tell you. Dorothy Tapley,
you know, lived with us. She used frequently to be
in the room when I was playing the piano. She was not
long in disclosing a deep musical aptitude. I gave her
what little instruction I could, and sent her to your city to
be perfected. She is now, as we judge, a singer and player
of the first order, and has many pupils in town. Again,
one Sunday there came to our house, in company with
many others, a poor, ragged boy from the North Part of
the Town. Some of our paintings were shown to him.
Again he came, and sat a long while looking at them. In
a few days, he brought us some rude chalk imitations of a
Sir Joshua Reynolds. Of course we should assist him.
His name is Elam Dater; Julia Beach found him wandering
in the streets, took him to Church, and had him come
to Mons Christi. He has taken some portraits, but his
forte is Landscape and Design. He has furnished us several
fine views of Livingston, one of Mons Christi, as seen
from the Green, which I mean to send to you. He is now
engaged on an original work, the Beatitudes, to be executed
on one piece of canvas, having Christ with the green tree-cross
in the centre, and the several groups arranged about
him. It is to be purchased by Christ-Church members, and
put in the Church. So genius, as well as real estate, and
all good things, rise under the influence of an indomitable,
universal Christian Love. “When we love God and love
our fellow-men,” says our Bishop, “then and only then is

our insight clear, our judgment sound, our strength available,
and our resolve steadfast. Hereby alone are we filled
with Virtue, inspired by Beauty, and moved to Greatness.
The Spirit of Christ in a man does more enlarge the mind,
develop the capabilities, animate the will, than all other
things. In the new Heavens and the new Earth, wherein
dwelleth Righteousness, Art, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture,
taking new forms from the divine life of the soul, shall
offer to the world unexampled creations, and transcendent
grandeur.” This is the secret of what you behold in Livingston,
Anna; all contained in a nutshell.

Music I cherish for its own sake, for my dear brother
Chilion's sake, my dear dead father's sake, and for Christ's
sake. Some of the Ancients did not encourage music, lest
it should weaken the temper of the people. The object of
most nations, Mr. Evelyn says, has been to make the citizen
subservient to the State. Nor has it been sufficient to enslave
his strength and drain his products, they must also prevent
his proper moral growth. Ability to prosecute war has
been the test of a healthy national condition. Individuality
of character has been construed into rebellion, and simple
happiness stigmatized as effeminacy. To live for the State
became the chief end of man. We discern a higher end,
the glory of God. He made man musical; Music is a
Divine gift, and God works in it.—The more I reflect upon
Chilion, the more am I impressed with his greatness. His
conceptions, as I see them now, were magnificent, and his
execution powerful. But he was chaotic and undeveloped.
Only at the hour of his death did I understand the feelings
of his life. He came out, like the sun, at the close of a
cloudy day, glittered, and expired. His music always
thrilled me, as I have seen it blow many about, like leaves
in the wind. His violin was truly oracular, Orphean,

superhuman. Through it, I am sure, he would have communicated
much of the hidden mystery of the soul. Reserved
in manner, hesitating in speech, his instrument
became his confidence, his utterance, his communicable self.
An Inexplicability took him from us! Soul of Chilion,
descend into my soul! If tears were song, I would sing
thee over the world; when I have ceased to weep, I only
pray there may remain strength enough to sing. Yet like
an inapproachable star, his light descends to me from afar.
All Livingston has caught something of his spirit. There
were many, in whose hearts he silently sank, and upon
whom he scattered his wild but divine musical seeds.
Without speaking, he originated sensations in many a
breast; without putting forth a hand, his designs have been
moulded into the beautiful forms of Art. Many pieces
which he played extemporaneously and aboriginally, I
remember; Abiah Tapley is able to recall others; so that
our Band is in possession, not only of his name and ideal,
but many of his creations. He very early taught me the
use of the violin, and in this way I have been able to retain
and distribute more of him than I otherwise should. I did
not know how good Chilion's music was, until I discovered
how much poor music there is in the world! His frozen
words have thawed, and may be heard all over our Town.
Robert Bruce, since in his lifetime he could not go to the
Holy Land, at his death ordered his heart to be embalmed
and carried thither. Chilion could not come to this our
Holy Land, but we have his embalmed melodies.

Have you not reflected that Christ was a singer? At
the Last Supper, “they sang a hymn.” Mr. Evelyn says
he thinks it could not have been, what some suppose, the
Hillel of the Jews. David, he says, could not compose a
song for Christ. I think it was an extemporaneous swansong

of Jesus. His voice itself, as I have heard it, is
pure music. Are not the Beatitudes the highest kind of
Poetry? Or I should say, I do not think the highest kind
of Inspiration to be Poetry, I mean at least it is not rhyme.
In many of Christ's words are harmony and softness,
mellifluence and music. The Gospels seem to me truth
melodized. The best parts of the New Testament have
never been thrown into a lyric form; even by those whose
profession was scripture versification. Master Elliman has
a copy of Sternhold and Hopkins, and I had as lief use it
as Watts; notwithstanding the great distance between
them. Your Mr. Belknap is better, but he falls sadly
below the true Gospel Idea. The Gospel, if it were understood,
if with warm hearts they descended into the depths
of its spirit, our Poets, I am certain, could turn into rhyme
and beauty. Mr. Evelyn's volume, prepared for Christ-Church,
we like very much.—Nature is musical, and God in
Nature; the stars, the brooks; so must all things become,
Religion, Life, Society, Intercourse, Labor, Politics, Controversy,
Reform; so speaks my sprite. “My Peace I
leave with you,” said Jesus. The Peace of Jesus would
be the music of the world.

Beauty also has its own end and office. Beauty is
musical, music is beautiful. God made the trees of the
garden of Eden good to look upon, that is, beautiful.
Beauty is Truth's usher, whereby it is introduced to the
heart. No truth is received till it puts on a beautiful aspect.
The mind even seems to have the power of exorcising
Falsehood, expelling from it the spirit of Ugliness, and
transfusing it with that of Beauty. People tell me they
never used to make up their minds to believe Theological
errors until they were first presented in a beautiful form.
The widow Luce says she was first made to see some beauty

in the doctrine of Reprobation, before she assented to it!
The old Prophets had ideas of beauty that we have lost
sight of. “The Beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,”
says David. Then in the New Testament, Christ is called
the Beautiful Shepherd; of the woman who anointed him
he says, “She hath wrought a Beautiful work on me.”
St. Paul says, “Provide things Beautiful in the sight of all
men.” This secret sentiment of high moral Beauty,
a Beautiful Goodness, runs through the Gospels. God is
Beautiful, and Christ has ever seemed to me the Beautiful
One, beyond all created description or compare. His
Beautiful Goodness won my unconscious child's heart, and
when I knew it not, made me its own; and as it were
when I was asleep, impressed its image upon me, which reappeared
when I awoke, and still rises with my higher existence
of thought, and shall live with me forever.

The power of Beauty over what is known as the common
mind, our house and grounds, our statuary and paintings
furnish instances of, every day. “This is a beautiful spot,”
people say, when they come to Mons Christi. I remember
overhearing old Mr. Shooks, the former Jail keeper, the
flintiest, dryest, crossest man I ever saw, make that exclamation;
and he really looked pleased when he said it. His
heart was touched. Innocent gladness is one of the most
beautiful things under the sun; it is the roses and pansies
of humanity. Pa's gay humor, wicked though he was,
always impressed me as something beautiful.

How shall we account for this effect of Beauty? I know
of no better way than that given by my Author. “It gets
in at our eyes, pores, nostrils; engenders the same qualities
and affections in us as were in the party whence it came.
The rays sent from the object carry certain spiritual vapors
with them, and so infect the observer. Our spirits are inwardly

moved by the subtle influence.” In this connection,
Anna, read that what I shall call stupendous passage of St.
Paul, where speaking of Christ, he says, “Whom beholding,
we are changed into the same image, from glory to
glory.” If we only beheld Christ as we should, we should
be transformed into his Divinest Beauty; there would be
engendered in us the same qualities and affections as are
in him.

Mr. Evelyn says, Christ is not preached as any complete
whole, soul and body; not as a full-orb, deeply capacious
personal being; but only as one who, in a certain moment,
did something, as one who, at the end of his life, died to
execute a certain intention of God. Hence nobody is
changed into the real image of Christ, but all are casting
about to satisfy themselves as to the application of that
single executive stroke of his. So many paintings of a
merely dead Christ I do not fancy. That by Giotto, from
which it is said most of the famous paintings in Europe
are obtained, originated thus; the artist hired a man to
hang an hour on the cross, and at the expiration of the
time, instead of relieving him, stabbed him dead, and then
fell to drawing! Are we not more saved by a living, than
a dead Christ? Is there nothing in a living Christ for a
painter to draw from, and a Christian too?

Beauty, God's creation, is sinless and pure; and it helps
to make us good. In 1529, when the soldiery took Florence,
and entered a monastery for purposes of pillage,
where was a picture of the Last Supper by Andrea, they
were so struck with it, they retired without committing any
violence. Such is the power of a living Christ, such is
the power of simple Beauty!

The matter of Philosophy I shall leave wholly with Mr.
Evelyn. I think when we are Philosophers we shall have

Philosophy. Or if as he says, I am Philosophy, it is because
I am myself. Not being what we should be, our
speculations are buffoonery. Could we understand the
Philosophy of a single moment or atom, we should understand
the Philosophy of Infinity. “Who by searching
can find out God?” Could I understand God in the structure
of a head of fox-tail grass, I should know more than
all theosophists. Let me fall back and work the work of
Nature, so shall I work the work of God, and be above
all schools. Mr. Evelyn says the Germans will presently
surprise the age with the novelty of their views and grandeur
of their speculations. What avails speculation in
this slouched, vagabondish world? Eternity is made up of
moments, let me live the present moment well, and I shall
live forever well. Immensity is composed of square rods,
let me tread well where I now stand, and I shall always
have a good foothold. Christ was a true Philosopher, let
me be a Christian. Mr. Evelyn says I act philosophically;
I am only conscious of acting according to my nature. I
confess I am much less uneasy than I used to be; I am
quite a convert to the Master, and as he once told me,
like a cow I have learned to eat my grass quietly and
thankfully, asking no questions. “God,” says Job, “giveth
not account of any of his matters.” Be He monotheistic
or pantheistic, as some dispute, my duty is one, to live well.
God is and I am, God lives and I live, God works and I
work, in God I shall be; with this I am satisfied. A Universe
of beauty, love, joy and truth are before me, let me
press on. So at least I feel to-day, and the morrow shall
take care for the things of itself.

Another distinct and stringent law of God and Nature is
recreation. Of the many kinds afloat, we have been obliged
to use care in our choice. What would Christ approve?

what is best? we ask. In what can all ages and conditions
unite? What relaxes without weakening, is cheerful without
frivolity, and offers attractions without danger? Not
to the exclusion of other things, our election has fallen
on the Dance, a species of recreation enjoined in the Old
Testament, and recognized in the New; one practised in
every age and country, and recommended by the sanction
of the best and greatest of men. All these things our
people were soberly pondering, while I had got my lesson
years ago. It has Music and Beauty for its garniture and
strength. Its intrinsic value has won for it the approval of
almost every body. It is enjoyed in all families; parents
and children, husbands and wives dance together. It has
supplanted many ridiculous games, and extirpated cruel
sports. It has broken up drunken carousals and neutralized
the temptation to ardent spirits. Having once
entered upon it, we become straightway sensible of its
advantages. Whatever grace is needed in person, or
courtesy in manners, it operates to perfect. And surely,
as my authority observes, “it is pleasant to see those pretty
knots and swimming figures.” It brings the people together,
interests strangers, and diffuses a serene, whole-souled
harmony over the town. It has no boisterousness, and
much life. It embodies the recreative element in the
healthiest and holiest forms. Where all unite, there is no
excess. We praise God in the dances; it is a hymn written
with our feet. I would dance as I would pray, for its own
sake, and because it is well-pleasing to God. Fenelon,
when one of his curates complained to him that his
parishioners would dance after their religious services,
replied, “Let us leave those poor people to dance; their
hours of happiness are not too numerous.” This was kind
of the good Fenelon, but it indicates a bad state of society
when the greater part of life is a drudgery. We are
happy when we are at work, when we pray, as well as
when we dance.

We are great politicians, so at least President Jefferson
said. You will be amused. We were visited successively
by both the Presidents, Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson.
Mr. Adams's forte, Mr. Evelyn says, is the science of
government, on which topic he has written a book. Of
course he and Mr. Evelyn fell to talking politics. Said
he, “I have perused the history of every monarchy and
republic, the records of which have descended to our times.
Salonina, the most virtuous and distinguished empress that
ever adorned a Roman throne, promised the Philosopher
Plotinus, that she would rebuild a decayed city of Campania
and appoint him over it, that he might experimentally
know, while presiding over a colony of philosophers, the
validity and use of the ideal laws of the republic of Plato.
The history of that republic I have never seen, until through
the hospitality which has invited me to your house and the
attention that has taken me over your town, I seem to be
all at once transported into the bosom of it!” President
Jefferson has the reputation of being less of a theorist, and
more acquainted with men as they are. Said he, “You
are the very best politicians in the land; I wish the
country was full of such. You have freedom, competency,
virtue. I had rather be Mrs. Evelyn than William Pitt.
Don't you blench, though all danger menaces you. The
Government shall not molest you; the nation is honored
by having within its borders the town of Livingston!”

“Courage!” said Diogenes to a young man whom he
saw blushing. “That is the color of virtue.” One needed
courage to face this battery of applause. Epaminondas,
the day after his victory at Leuctra, came abroad in

squalid attire, and with an abject look, giving as a reason
that he was overmuch joyed the day before. I do not
understand that we need to put on sackcloth and ashes
because men are pleased with God's doings, nor behave
like a certain artist, somewhat whimsical he was, who, when
one praised a statue he was making, smote it with his hammer
and dashed it in pieces.

I recollect, when I was keeping school, overhearing at
Esq. Beach's one evening a sort of grave snip-snap about
Napoleon's return from Egypt, Russia seceding from the
Coalition, Tom Jefferson becoming President, and what not.
There were Esq. Beach on one side, Esq. Weeks on the
other, and Esq. Bowker, a sort of third party man. Indeed
you would have thought a new geological cataclysm was at
hand, and we were about to be submerged in some diplomatic
ocean, or swallowed by some Megalosaurian man.
These men are all on one side now, that of Christ and
Love. Our people have lost all fear of England or
France, and Mr. Jefferson has at heart, I think, some of the
noblest purposes that ever filled a human breast. If the
great Suwarrow comes amongst us and behaves discreetly,
he shall be welcome; but if he goes to playing his pranks,
we shall have to open our meal-bags upon him.

These Megalosaurian Men, O Anna! But in the New
Earth now in process of creation, we shall dig for their
remains, as we do for other fossils, and wonder, not how
they got in there, but how they could have subsisted. We
do not lean on an arm of flesh whereby we are cursed, but
on that of God; and what saith the Prophet? “Blessed
is the man that trusteth in the Lord; he shall be as a tree
planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by
the river, and shall see when heat cometh, but her leaf
shall be green.” “Who is he that will harm you, if ye be

followers of that which is good?” is the question of
Christianity. “Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's
good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” are the words of
Christ. What Atheistic, Anti-Christian fear pervades
Church and State! How much men pay, and do, to demonstrate
their infidelity.

I am writing a long, long letter. Like Elihu, the son of
Barachel, the Buzite, I could have answered and said, “I
am young, and ye are very old, wherefore I was afraid and
durst not show you mine opinion. But great men are not
always wise. Therefore I said, Hearken to me. I am full
of matter. I am ready to burst like new bottles. I will
speak, that I may be refreshed.” I am sensible, Anna,
that I have not told you every thing that your interest
relates to, and Mr. Evelyn urges me on to give you my
views and notions.

There are individual histories in town, each in itself
sufficient to make a book. We read accounts of conversions;
I could recite you some here equal to any you ever
heard of. When the Lives of our Saints and the Exploits
of our Champions shall be published, it will make a volume
superior to any that has issued from the press for a year or
two. I wish you could hear what is rehearsed at our house
every week, of battles won on the field of Evil, of temptations
endured from the world; the poor becoming rich in
grace; the bespotted finding their way up to virtue; the
fearful overcoming their dread; the persecuted blessing
their enemies; the proud humbling themselves, and such
things. There is a long story of Elam Dater; there is
Miss Arunah Shooks encountering inward foes, such as
might have intimidated St. George himself; there are the
trials of Hiram Ravel, in the North Part of the Town, that
would embellish a Book of Martyrs; there is the conviction

and conversion of John Weeks, reminding you of
George Fox; there are Isabel, Dorothy, Triandaphelda
Ada Hadlock, Sylvina Pottle, and others, whose biographies
ought to be written. But I leave them for the
present.

We are a united but not an identical population, Mr.
Evelyn wishes me to tell you. Striped grass planted with
other species, becomes of one color, an uniform green.—
For one, I wish to see no such loss of individuality and
absorption in the aggregate. Let each spear retain its own
lines, each man his own qualities, and why, as Deacon
Ramsdill says, can they not all live happily and perfectly
together in the same field, the same town? I do not wish
the people all to do as we do, only I do wish to see them
Beautiful, True, Happy, Christian. The town is eight
miles long by six broad; it contains two hundred farms,
three stores, two taverns, one Church, six school-houses,
three or four joiners' shops, a tannery, fulling-mill, gristmill,
blacksmith shops, et cetera. A right spirit prevails
with the major part of the inhabitants; that is our identity.
Each one eats his own meals, maintains his own family,
follows his own calling, thinks his own thoughts, dies his
own death; in this we are separated. Unity in variety is a
good motto. There are many common interests, our
Church, our Festivals, Roads, Cemetery, Dances, Library,
Schools, Music, Art, Love, Christ, Nature, God. The inhabitants
of ancient Cuma, were reputed stupid by their
neighbors; but it was found they owed this character to
their virtues. We are indifferent to some things that engage
and distract the world. But there is life, spirit and enterprise
among the people. Sour rivalries, envious association,
jostling activities, are not. To perfect ourselves, our institutions,
our Town, is a life-work. If there arises a dispute

there are trusty people to whom we are glad to refer the
matter. Nor can any one take advantage of our confidence.
The spirit of Christ is lynx-eyed; or as our Bishop says,
it penetrates the secret things of darkness, unmasks the
hypocrite, and reads the heart of the designing. “If we
should all become good,” you said, “there would nothing
remain whereby to keep philanthropy and benevolence
alive.” Love, like jeolousy, grows with that it feeds on;
thrives on itself. Like plants, the fruits of the Spirit
mature best in a soil where the elements are analogous.
Virtue grows on God, as the misletoe on oaks. Does God
ever decay?

Need I say any thing more of myself, or of my connection
with these things? Can a bee tell how it builds its
comb? Other people might give you a more satisfactory
account, but to me it seems to have grown up as corn grows.
Judge Morgridge is about publishing a little history of our
affairs, which I recommend to your friends. The leaves
of the five-finger draw together to shelter the flower when
it rains, and open when the sun comes out. So have I
done to my plans; can I tell how? The Widow Wright
taught me Utility; “Not looks, it's use, child,” was her
maxim. The hang bird taught me Caution. Mother
Goose's Melodies taught me not to cry when I could not
help a thing. But more than this, if we could but see it,
there is a waiting for Goodness and Truth in all souls.
“In every bone there is a marrow, and beneath every
jacket lives a man,” says the Arab proverb. Then through
the world wanders the spirit of love, though she be no more
than the chipping bird that builds a nest in the rose-bush,
or a butterfly that shimmers over a dirty pool.

Did I have dreams which others enjoyed not? Were
they mature and finished even beyond my experience?

In this also is not the Scripture fulfilled? “In a dream he
openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.”
Did Christ himself come very near to me and speak with
me? As the disciples after Christ's death understood many
sayings of their Master that were hidden before, so have I
in latter years come to understand the deep meanings of
Christ to me. I must live his childhood's life; I must
grow up in his image; “his life must be made manifest
in my mortal body,” as St. Paul has it. When I came to
compare the inward Christ of my soul with the historical
Christ, whom Mr. Evelyn made known to me, they flowed
together and mingled in one.

I had dreams too of Beauty and Art, a Classical Magician
waved over me his wand. Could I see the chain that
binds together Christianity, Æsthetics, Heroism! But in
me they are one, in the world they are at odds. I could
not rest till these things went forth in forms and life. In
purity and love have we genius; the Gospel gives beauty
to the eye, and holiness to the soul. Our Cross, not like
Constantine's which he bore at the head of his armies,
blossoms as the rose, and heals up the ravages of war.
Our Oriflamb of silver whiteness is such as the Apostle
John might have unfurled when he started on his mission
of love. I am dealing with great subjects and such as are
quite beyond my depth. I admire old Atlas, but I have
neither his thews nor his good nature, I cannot bear up the
world. I remember when Hash was driving a cart up a
hill, I used to trig the wheels for him. If any Demiurgic
Teamster is disposed to drive the Cart of Peace and Good
Will over the Earth, I stand ready to trig the wheels in all
the steep places; beyond this I cannot do. My hand aches
with writing, as your eyes must with reading. Wait till I

return—Rose is at the door on horseback; we are going to
take a ride.

We went full four miles to the North Part, and carried
supplies to a poor sick family there. How beautiful is our
town! No European village that I have heard of, no
American village that I have seen, is so beautiful. Here
are views that would, I will engage, match you with
Greenwich Tower, or St. Mark's Steeple in Venice;—the
Green with its majestic rim of elms, thanks to our forefathers,
and its central star, the Fountain; the Cemetery
with its white monuments under the green trees; the River
beyond the Village, the fine houses on Grove Street; Aunt
Wiswall's, whose house and ornamental grounds cover the
burnt forest; Col. Welch's, Mons Christi, our house, Rufus's
tasteful seat, and above all, the Cross. That Cross, seen at
sunset among the gorgeous clouds, is superb. Rose, who
used to be afraid of thunder-storms, says she looks to that
and grows quiet. In all the streets, and many of the by-ways
are ornamental trees, elms, maples, and others; the
houses of the town are painted in various pretty colors.
You meet such happy, loving faces, and such merry groups
of children; the old people seem so warm-hearted and
benevolent; the young men and women are easy and
polite. Esqs. Beach and Bowker we met; they had been
arbitrating on a case. This is now their principal business,
and they get ample pay for it. Even people come in from
other towns and great distances to employ them. They say
they can trust Livingston lawyers! Mr. Adolphus Hadlock
also we saw. He has twice sold out and moved from
town, and twice returned. No poor man was ever so
frightened. But the conversion of his Triandaphelda Ada
and the marriage of his son Socrates to Dorothy, seem to

have reconciled him; and he walks the streets now more
like a man than that “Aunt Dolphy.” The Jail, in which
are only two persons, is tenanted by a man with his
family, who was originally confined for murder; he was
converted through the instrumentality of the Bishop, pardoned
by the Governor, and now keeps an agricultural
seed and implement store. Old Alexis Robinson, who
became wholly insane, and was confined in the old Jail, has
recovered his senses, and is supported handsomely by the
town, and has a room in the new prison, dwelling-house, or
whatever it be. Master Elliman has dubbed Livingston
L.L.D., Laudabilis Locus Domini.

Holy and delightsome is the Earth! God saw that
every thing he had made was very good. I bless God for
the dandelions that bestar the green grass; I bless him for
the song-sparrow that sings out against my window; I
bless him for the little Jane Girardeau that is here playing
with the kitten. What an ecstasy were the golden fires
kindled as the Sun went down last night, and the polished
silver dawn I saw at four o'clock this morning, set with the
Mohmamedan's sign of worship, the crescent Moon. The
Spring, the Summer, the Autumn, the Winter, do feast and
ravish me. Not the anagogical Hebrew Oil, compounded
of stacte, onycha, galbanum, had so sweet a perfume as that
with which I am daily anointed, and which maketh my
face to shine in innumerable flowers that fill the woods and
ways all the season through. The best prayer I can offer
is to use all things well; my highest gratitude, enjoyment.
Sin, I cannot. All things are incense to me,—the brooks,
the fogs, the clouds, the sky; I will be incense to God;
like my dear Redeemer, a sweet smelling savor. Into me
the Universe flows, from me it turns back to its Maker.
If I cannot tell the cause of the flux and reflux, like Aristotle

on the banks of the Euripus, I will not get angry and
die.

How singularly are we situated! On one side you
approach Mons Christi, by the Delectable Way, on another,
by the Via Salutaris; the Eastern Avenue is the Via Dolorosa;
across the place runs the Brook Kedron! Names
taken up in stark caprice have become animated with the
deepest significance. Our Bishop had told the people
there was a street in Jerusalem called the Via Dolorosa,
through which Christ is said to have borne his Cross to
Calvary. One Sunday Miss Arunah Shooks, deeply impressed
with a sense of her sinfulness, as she said, in having
so often offended Christ and broken the laws of the
Gospel, came up that way, alone; she said she wanted to
bear her cross to Mons Christi. And what do you think
that cross was? This, she said, that she treated me so
rudely when I went to see Chilion in the Jail, and she
wanted to come and ask my forgiveness. She said she had
long struggled with her convictions, but after the confession,
she felt a load drop off. Livingston itself—a name
derived from a respectable American family—the Living
Stone, disallowed, it may be, of men, but chosen of God
and precious; the Stone cut out of a mountain without
hands—may it at least become a Mountain great enough to
fill its own place in the Earth!

I did not tell you that my old friend Ben Bolter is here.
One of his legs was shot off by the Tripolitans; he has
made a full-rigged miniature schooner for Gottfried, and
they sail together on the Pond. My boy may become a
sailor, after all. Ben Bolter exhibits gratifying tokens of
a renewed mind.

In the North part of the town, on the very spot where
the Gallows stood, and Chilion was hung, has been

erected a monumental piece, representing Moses kneeling
to Christ and surrendering the Book of the Hebrew Code;
Christ appears as it were closing the Book with his foot—
the action being partially veiled by drapery. It is exquisitly
done; Art is satisfied, Justice acquiesces, Humanity
triumphs.

We have a Library indeed, but how few good books! Is it
a dream; or has some one said it, or will some one say it,
or is it my sprite that says—“America has not fulfilled
the reasonable expectations of mankind. Men looked,
when all feudal straps and bandages were stripped asunder,
that Nature, too long the mother of dwarfs, would reimburse
herself in a brood of Titans, who should laugh and
leap in the continent, and run up the mountains of the West
with the errand of genius and love.” A very facetious
sprite is that, whoever he be. He reminds me of a certain
Talmudic God, that spent his time whittling sharp
sticks, wherewith he was wont at his leisure to prick the
sides of mortals and enjoy their grimaces. “We have a
thousand authors of all sorts,” says Father Burton, two
hundred years ago. But in truth I have found little to entertain
me more than “The Loves of Osmund and Duraxa,”
I saw in Boston some years since. So I must conclude
myself a mere block that is affected by none of them, according
to the writer aforesaid. As soon as Napoleon
finds his quietus, I hope the world will take breath again,
and somebody be moved to write a good book here in
America.

We have had our crosses frequent and severe, individual
and corporate, personal and social. The last the Town
was called to endure fell out in this wise. The following
appeared in the Kidderminster Chronicle:—

A convention of Clergy was soon called at Kidderminster,
before which the Rev. Mr. Lovers, of Brandon, the
gentleman alluded to, was summoned. He had made three
or four exchanges with the Bishop. His prosecutor was
the Rev. Mr. Orstead, of Windenboro', who wrote the
notice for the paper. The trial went on two or three days.
The council was divided on the question of withdrawing
fellowship from Mr. Lovers, suspending or deposing him.
But their meeting was brought to a conclusion in an unforeseen
way. While they were debating what to do, an
accuser appeared against Mr. Orstead, in the person of an
unmarried female, who charged upon him a child she had
recently borne. His guilt was so far proved, that he confessed
it. Mr. Lovers was saved, and Mr. Orstead degraded.
The unhappy man, despised at home, Edward went
to see, and invited him to Livingston, where he has spent
some months; and I hope has become a better man.

During the excitement this affair gave our people, Dr.

Freeman came to see us and renew those condolences and
sympathies he has so often expressed for us. While at our
house, he told me this story. When the Dutch in Albany,
some years since, would renew and enlarge their Church,
they suffered the old one to remain, and erected the new
one about it, completely enclosing it. Their worship continued
in the old place till the new house was nearly done.
They then tore the old Church to pieces, and carried the
fragments out of the door of the new one, into the finishing
of which they entered. “Great reforms,” continued the
Doctor, “must be gradual. It is easier to tear down than
to build up; easier to remove an error than supply a truth.
Rome was not built in a day. There are more Alarics
than Romuluses in the world.” This is a good story, and
you have it for what it is worth. “But I see,” said the
Doctor, “you have built up far more than you ever pulled
down.” I replied that we had not sought to pull down
any thing, but rather to put life into what was dead, and
reinstate Christ in his own Church. He agreed that it
was so.

As regards those who oppose us, could we, as did Nicholas
Sture, that Swede who, when he was stabbed by his
Sovereign, drew out the sword, kissed it, and returned it;
could we so meet all attacks, happy were we. “Tell me
how I may be revenged on my enemy?” said some one to
Diogenes. “By becoming more virtuous,” replied the
philosopher. We are charged with Infidelity! Will unkindness,
traducement, insinuation, bleardness, never cease?
Anaxagoras, the most religious of Philosophers, was persecuted
for profanity; Socrates was condemned for a
heretic; Christ himself was executed as a blasphemer,
impostor and insurgent! When Pyrrho, who professed
indifference to all evils, was reproached for driving off a

dog that flew at him, “Ah,” replied he, “it is difficult to
bear every thing!” So indeed it is; but as he added,
“We must try.” The Athenians constructed a statue from
the marble which the Persians brought to raise as a monument
to their victories. We will make no ovation out of
this signal defeat of our enemies; I feel disposed the rather
to weep over human follies.

What will become of us? If we trust in God, we have
his promise, that the waters shall not overflow us, or the
fire burn us. We abide under the shadow of his wing.
That a great work has been done here none can deny. It
is said that certain fish, when brought to the surface of the
water, sometimes burst from the rarefaction of the air.
Livingston has been raised from lowest depths. Yet it
seems to me so compact in all its proportions, that it cannot
fall asunder. The world may wholly leave us; but
the thrush sings sweetest in the loneliest woods, and we
will keep up our song in solitude. The Spartans were
forbidden to pursue a flying foe; we shall not follow our
retreating enemies with any intent to kill; nor shall we
turn our backs upon them if they rally again.

Orpheus has seemed to me a natural prophecy of Christ;
a part of the groaning of the creation after the Redemption.
By the sweetness of his music he drew the wild
beasts after him; he caused trees and rocks to move; his
strains subdued the rulers of Hell; through the charms of
his melody the wheel of Ixion stopped, and even the furies
relented. His music was at last drowned by a hoarse, discordant
horn. He was himself, too, torn in pieces, and the
river Helicon, sacred to him, hid itself under ground. Our
Pond I used to call the Lake of Orpheus, at the Master's
suggestion that here those waters had risen. I have since
called it the Lake of Christ. Such Orphean music was he!

He drew after him a whole age. He stilled the fury of
man and the malice of devils. Some hoarse, discordant
horn was raised in the Church; his music was quenched;
he was torn in pieces; his waters hid under the earth,
as I would fain fancy, have appeared on Mons Christi!
Whither now shall the Christian Helicon flow?