University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
SUNDRY MATTERS.

Another day found Mr. Evelyn at the Pond, and with
Margaret on the eminence now called Mons Christi.

“The name which this hill has commonly borne,” said
Mr. Evelyn, “together with the broad forest about, bring
strongly, I may say, mournfully to recollection, the original
population, the Indians, I mean.”

“What do you know about them?” asked Margaret.

“If we may rely on accounts written when they and the
whites first met as friends, befroe a mutual hostility exasperated
the judgment of the historian, and disordered the
conduct of the natives, we shall form a pleasing picture of
their character and condition. `These people,' the New
England Indians, say the first discoverers, `are exceeding
courteous, gentle of disposition, and well-conditioned; for
shape of body and lovely favor they excel all the people of
America; of stature much higher than we. They are
quick-eyed and steadfast in their looks, fearless of others'
harms, as intending none themselves; some of the meaner
sort given to filching. Their women are fat and well-favored,
and the men are very dutiful towards them. The
wholesomeness and temperature of the climate doth argue
them to be of a perfect constitution of body, active, strong,
healthful and very witty, as sundry toys of theirs, very
cunningly wrought, may easily witness.' A friendly
intercourse was had with them in those days, `and,' say the
whites, `in great love we parted.' They are universally

represented as kind-hearted, hospitable, grateful, truthful,
simple, chaste. Property was never more secure than
with them, bolts and bars they had none on their doors,
and one vice that gangrenes Christian nations was unknown
amongst them, they never offered indignity to woman; they
were also, in respect of drinks, a very temperate people.
They possessed more virtues and fewer vices than Christians.

But terrible wrongs were inflicted on them;—their young
men were pirated into slavery, their population was thinned
by the introduction of new, immedicable diseases, intemperance
shed its baneful influence, inflaming their passions
and corrupting their morals, the mercenariness of border
intercourse alternately cajoled and defrauded them, their
several sovereignties were forced into destructive collision,
and their entire strength became the game of a foreign and
unknown intrigue; moreover the disposition of the settlers
began to develop itself, the encroachment of a foreign and
malign jurisdiction alarmed them, and they awoke to a
sense of the value of what they had in their simplicity
surrendered; hence conflict, in which they were driven to
every resort, for the defence of their rights, the recovery of
empire, and the preservation of existence itself;—and now
they assume a new attitude, as all men do in similar
circumstances. They exhibit a melancholy instance of the
reflex, reciprocal action of evil, agreeably to a law that we
before talked about. And yet, if we would give to their
revenge the name of reprisals, call their subtlety and
cunning military manœuvres, their hatred patriotic pride,
if we would render their ferocity gallant behavior, record
their cruelties as vigorous measures for disarming an
enemy, and if, instead of distinguishing them as savages, we
should write them simply Americans, they would not
appear very unlike other people of the globe.”

“It is not so bad a thing for me to be called an Indian
after all,” said Margaret. “Yesterday I felt that I was a
Christian, I don't know but I had better remain an Indian.”

“I told you there was a difference between Ecclesiastical
Christians and Evangelical Christians.”

“I would call myself a Christoid, a Christman, or any
thing. I wanted to tell you how glad I was I persuaded
Nimrod, my brother, not to enlist, when they were about
awhile since after soldiers to go against the Indians on the
Ohio.”

“Poor Indians! We have driven them from their
reserves in the West, and they may at last be compelled to
take refuge in the forests of the Mississippi, or even to cross
its waters for defence.”

“I know one Indian,” said Margaret, “an old man, who
comes here every year, and has come ever since I can
remember. He lives in the blue yonder, on the sides of
Umkidden. He looks very old, as if he had seen a hundred
years. Yet he is tall and straight, has fine muscular
proportions, and passes the house with a taught, Junonian
step. He comes and sits up here. He makes his annual
visit in Autumn, when the frosts have fallen and the leaves
change and drop. He is silent almost as Jupiter himself,
and I cannot get much out of him. His expression is
majestically sad, a sort of Promethean look. He sometimes
brings a little girl with him, whom I have more than
once induced to play with me. She says he is her grandfather.
Here he sits in a sort of brown study, and muses
over the water and wood. His hair is tied in a knot behind,
and surmounted with a coronet of white heron's
feathers; he wears a robe of tambored deer-skin. I have
seen him stop and listen to Chilion's music, and once the
girl gave me a pair of beaded moccasons, in return, I suppose,
for my bread and cider.”

“He is probably a relic of the departed race, and comes
to look upon the home of his ancestors. He may have
lived hereabouts. A distinguished tribe of Indians formerly
occupied the borders of the River. They always
selected the most fertile and picturesque spots for their
residences. And truly this was a goodly heritage. The
Connecticut, the Merrimac, the Kennebec, the Penobscot
were their noble rivers. The early voyagers whom I have
quoted to you seem, in these aboriginal regions, to have
found the lost Eden. `This main,' say they, `is the goodliest
continent that we ever saw. The land is replenished with
fair fields, and in them fragrant flowers, also meadows,
and hedged in with stately groves, being furnished with
brooks of sweet water, and large rivers.' They raised
corn in their meadows, beans and melons in their gardens.
They had plums, cherries and grapes. The Indian
children gathered strawberries in the Spring and wortleberries
in the Fall. Their maidens found violets, lilies-of-the-valley,
and numerous flowers in the fields and forests
just as you do. God they called by various names,
Squanto, Kishton, Manito, Areouski.”

“What a pity they should not be here still; and I—I
would willingly be not,” observed Margaret, dropping her
head upon her hand.

“They were not always at peace among themselves.
The Maquas, an imperious race, did much harm to the
others, and threatened universal supremacy. But they are
gone. For reasons which we cannot well understand, the
red gives place to the white man. With their wigwams
and canoes, their gods and their pawwas, their government
and titles, their language and manners, they have vanished
forever. No trace of them remains, except in the
names of a few localities. The way is cleared for a new

population, a new religion, new society, new life. We wait
to see what will be done. New England is swept and
garnished; it is an unencumbered region.”

“Do I live in New England.”

“Yes, you are a New Englander.”

“Mehercule! I thought I lived any where between the
sky and this most anagogical rotundity, and have been entertaining
my later years with soap-bubbling a few divinities
—I will be serious, Mr. Evelyn, I do know the realities of
things. But how the gods chase one another over the
world, Manitou, Jupiter, Jehovah! Are not New Englanders
like Old Englanders, and Old Englanders like the
Hindoos?”

“Men are all formed of one blood; yet there are specific
differences. But God is one, and if New Englanders
were pure in heart, as Christ says, they would see Him, and
that more truly perhaps than any other people. Yet many
of them ascribe acts to their God which would disgrace a
heathen deity. This results from the debased state of the
public mind; or rather I should say, from the debased doctrines
of a fallen church which have been transmitted to us.
Still in many respects we have an advantage over all
other nations, which it is worth your while to think of.”

“Thoughts are coming upon me plenty as blackberries,
and the more the better.”

“A good part of the Old World on its passage to the
New was lost overboard. Our ancestors were very considerably
cleansed by the dashing waters of the Atlantic.
We have no monarchical supremacy, no hereditary prerogatives,
no patent nobility, no Kings, and but few Bishops,
by especial Divine interposition. The gift of God is
with the virtuous and truthful. `All men are equal,' is
our favorite motto; and it is one of far-piercing, greatly

humanizing, radically reforming force, though now but little
understood. Many things that affect character and condition
in the Old World, adulterate truth, perpetuate error,
degrade society and life, sully the soul, and retard improvement,
we have not. I intend to take a trip thither soon,
and shall see what they are of and for.”

“Are you going away?”

“My health and taste both require a sea voyage, which
I shall make as soon as Bonaparte and Mr. Pitt settle their
differences a little.—There are no fairies in our meadows,
and no elves to spirit away our children. Our wells are
drugged by no saint, and of St. Winifred we have never
heard. Our rivers harbor no nereids, they run on the Sabbath,
and are all sacred alike, Mill Brook as the Ganges;
and there is no reason why the Pond of Mons Christi
should not become as celebrated as the Lake of Zurich. In
the clefts of our rocks abide the souls of no heroes, no
spirits of the departed inhabit our hills, nor are our mountains
the seats of any gods; Olympus, Sinai, Othus, Pico-Adam,
Umkidden, Washington, Monadnock, Holyoke,
Ktaadin, it is all one. The Valley of the Housatonic is
beautiful as the Vale of Tempe, or of Cashmere, and as
oracular. We have no resorts for pilgrims, no shrines for
the devout, no summits looking into Paradise. We have no
traditions, legends, fables, and scarcely a history. Our
galleries are no cenotaphic burial grounds of ages past; we
have no Haddon Hall or Raby Castle Kitchen; no chapels
or abbeys, no broken arches or castled crags. You find
these woods as inspiring as those of Etruria or Mamre.
Robin-Good-Fellow is unknown, and the Devil haunts our
theology, not our houses, and I see in the last edition of the
Primer his tail is entirely abridged. No hideous ghosts
appear at cock-crowing. Witches have quite vanished,

and omens from sneezing and itching must soon follow. At
least in all these things there is a sensible change in the
public mind. If the girls put wedding-cake under their
pillows to dream upon, it is rather sport than magic.
Astrology, Alchemy, Physiognomy and Necromancy are
fast dying out, and Animal Magnetism has not ventured to
cross the sea. January and May are not, as in the Old
World, unlucky months, and Friday is rapidly losing its
evil eye. At marriages the bride is not obliged to throw
her shoe at the company; at births, we have no Ragged
Shirt or Groaning Cheese; if a child die unbaptized, it is
not thought to wander in woods and solitudes; at deaths
our common people do not cover up the looking-glasses.
Ecclesiastical Holidays have a precarious hold on New
Englanders; curses are not denounced upon sinners, Ash
Wednesday; we have no Whitsuntide given to bearbaiting,
drunkenness and profligacy; Trinity Sunday our bachelors
do not kiss our maidens three times in honor of that
mystery; bread baked on Christmas eve turns mouldy as
soon as any other; we are not obliged to use tansy to purge
our stomachs of fish eaten in Lent. In our churchyards
bodies are buried on the North as well as the South side.
There is no virtue in the points of compass that our clergy
repeat the Creed looking towards the East, and none in
wood that we bow to the Altar.

“All these things our fathers left behind in England, or
they were brushed away by contact with the thick, spiny
forests of America. Our atmosphere is transparent, unoccupied,
empty from the bottom of our wells to the zenith,
and throughout the entire horizontal plane. It has no
superstitious inhabitancy, no darkening prevalence, no
vague magistracy, no Manichean bisection. As you say,
Manitou is gone, and with due courtesy to your Pantheon,

the One God supervenes; there is no intermediation but
Christ; and for man, the bars are let down. Our globe
stands on no elephant, but swings clear in open, boundless
space; it is trammelled by no Northern Snake, and circumvented
by no Oriental Sea of Milk. We have no Hindoo
caste, and Negro Slavery is virtually extinct in New
England. Education is universally encouraged, and Freedom
of Opinion tolerated.”

“So you think New Englanders are the best people on
the Earth?”

“I think they might become such; or rather I think they
might lead the august procession of the race to Human
Perfectibility; that here might be revealed the Coming of
the Day of the Lord wherein the old Heavens of sin and
error should be dissolved, and a New Heaven and New
Earth be established wherein dwelleth righteousness. I
see nothing to prevent our people reassuming the old
Hyperionic type, rising head and shoulders to the clouds,
crowding out Jupiter and Mars, being filled, as the Apostle
says, with all the fulness of God, reaching the stature of
perfect men in Christ Jesus, and reimpressing upon the
world the lost image of its Maker.

“New England! my birthplace, my chosen pilgrimage,
I love it. I love its earth and its sky, and the souls of its
people. They, the Unconquerable, could alone subdue its
ruggedness, and they are alone worthy to enjoy its
amenities. I love the old folks and the children; I love
the enterprise of its youth and honorable toil of its manhood.
I love its snows and its grass, its hickory fires and
its corn-bread. The seeds of infinite good, of eternal truth,
are already sown in many minds; these might germinate
in another generation, and in the third bear fruit. High
Calculation, which is only the symbol of a higher Moral

Sense, is even now at work; and they are ripping up the
earth for a Canal from Worcester to Providence; and what
shall next be done, who knows? Only, if love lay at the
heart of all things, thought and action, what might not be!
But how stint we ourselves! Politics, society, life, the
Church, love, aim, what are they all?”

“Why don't you lead off yourself in this matter! You
shall be a Hero, the days of Chivalry shall be renewed.”

“I! I have neither health nor spirit. I only perceive, I
only deplore.”

“Really, we must go to the Widow's without delay, and
get some of the Nommernisstortumbug; that will cure you.
Speaking of the Widow, I think of Rose, poor Rose. I
asked her to come with me and see you to-day; she
hesitated, and declined. I told her you would speak better
to her than any body else. She shook her head mournfully,
and said, `Only you, Margaret, only you!' What can we
do for her?”

“I do not know, I am sure, I have turned over the
account you gave me of her. I am persuaded she has some
chord that could be reached, some secret self to be
disclosed.”

“Can you send me for no hammer that will break her to
pieces?”

“Christ might reach her, if nothing else.”

“O no. She has a perfect horror of that name. She
hates it worse than I did; I only laughed at it, she seems
to loathe it inwardly. Said I, `Rose, Christ loves you, he
suffered for you, can't you have faith in him?'—`In the
name of mercy!' she cried `if you won't kill me, Margaret,
don't speak of that,' and so shut my mouth, and I could say
no more.”

“I think I see how it is; I believe I understand the
difficulty, so far at least as that demonstration is concerned.”

“I can very well understand how a person might not
like the name of Christ, how it might offend one; but that
it should give a shuddering pain quite poses me.”

“Be good and kind to Rose, and she may yet listen to
to you.”

“I have borne her deep in my heart, I have felt most
strange motions towards her, I am ready to melt and flow
into her, and much sorrowful feeling she gives me, and I
am willing to have for her.”

“Persevere, and I am confident she will yield. I might
say many things of what I think about her, but perhaps it
were of no use. I am willing to leave her with you, though
if it were in my power I should be glad to see her. When
shall I find you at leisure again?”

“To-morrow I must spin, next day help Chilion on his
baskets. There is Sunday when we do not work, come
then.”

“I go to Church.”

“Sakes alive! so you do. I quite forgot you belonged
to the fallen race!”

“I told you all had some excellences; and if you would
come and hear Parson Welles you might think so too. He
is serious-minded, his prayers are earnest, his sermons have
good sense, and the place itself is grateful to one's feelings.
Perhaps in no one more than in him would you see
the struggle that goes on between Nature and the Unnatural.
Nor is it easy to overcome the effect of education so but
that old erroneous influences seem to minister to one's
spiritual peace, and I find going to Meeting very pleasant.”

“It is not indeed,” replied Margaret laughing, “and I
find much pleasure in staying at home.”

“Monday, I may see you?”

“After washing. Besides, you have left me enough for
a three days' rumination, at least.”