Jay_Shiloh.txt topic ['13', '324', '378', '393']
i.
PITCHING TENT.
HAVE turned a leaf in my life's book,
dear Francesca. The last paragraph broken
short off in its joyous, triumphant flow, and
blurred and blotted with tears is covered from
sight. Let it rest in peace.
Here begins a fresh page.
We were leaning over the gate, Bona, Mala,
and I. Do you need to be introduced to these
persons of the drama ? Bona is my alter ego, my better
self, my Mentor, my counsellor, my consoler, or, to speak
more to the purpose, the grace of God working within me.
So Mala is my worst self, my evil genius, by turns my
tempter, flatterer, tormentor, betrayer, that part of me
which Holy Writ declares to be deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked. And the entity here represented by
the pronoun " I " is the arbiter between the two, influenced
by both, alternately swayed by each, yet to whose decision
either must submit with what grace she is able. In brief,
"I" repi-esents the Will-Power of the concern.
They who know me best, never behold either of these
characters per se, but a mixture of the three, seen darkly
through a veil of reserve which is common to all, and fur-
ther colored by their own prejudices and prepossessions.
3 SHILOH.
Nevertheless, these personages do exist ; leading a distinct
and highly belligerent existence in one fleshly tabernacle,
and making themselves manifest through one set of human
organs. Occasionally, one sinks into a state of passivity,
and' leaves the other queen regnant ; but their normal con-
dition is struggle, conflict, hand-to-hand fight, and no quar-
ter. I lead an unquiet life between them, made endurable
chiefly by the reflection 'that things might be worse. If
Bona were to depart, and leave Mala triumphant, there
would be dreary deterioration, and sliding down slippery
places, for me here, and a fearful record to face hereafter ;
while that Mala will ever go forth, shaking "the dust from
her feet, and leave Bona and me to keep quiet house to-
gether, is not to be hoped for until " this mortal shall have
put on immortality."
I make no apology for thus taking yo\i into the heart of
things. You and I believe that no chronicle of human life
is complete, which deals not with the inner strife as well as
with the outer circumstance.
Neither Bona nor Mala was rampant as I leaned on the
gate, and looked out over this sunset-reddened Shiloh ; the
sweet signification of whose name had so touched my jaded
heart as I ran over the boai'ding agent's list. I had such
sore need of a " Place of Rest ! "
" Is it hill country or plain ? " I asked the man.
" Hill country, ma'am. You climb straight up, from
Shiloh Bridge, for three miles and a half. When I went
there, I had a mind to settle, for fear I'd never get any
nearer heaven."
" Is it quiet ? "
" Quiet as a graveyard. You'd think 'twas Sunday all
the time."
So it was settled. Aunt Belle was most graciously ac-
quiescent, after a polite remonstrance or two; doubtless,
she was charmed that I should thus voluntarily remove my-
self from her orbit, for awhile. Flora pouted and gibed.
SHILOH. 9
Uncle John growled good-naturedly from the mist of busi-
ness cares and projects that always enveloped him ;
" Nonsense, child ! go to Saratoga with your aunt and
cousin, and enjoy yourself."
" But, uncle, I am as tired of enjoying myself as ever
was a convict of the treadmill. I want quiet and rest."
Surprised, Uncle John came out of the mist, and, for
the first time in six weeks, brought the eyes of his mind to
bear on me.
" I should think you did ! " he muttered, after a brief
inspection. " What on earth have you done with your
roses ? Why, Belle, the child is as pale and thin as a
ghost ! What is the matter with her ? "
" Nothing, uncle," I hastened to say, " but too much of
Madame La Mode, and too many calls and balls and recep-
tions. Only let me go to Shiloh for the summer, and I will
bring you back my roses, in the fall."
" Be off with you, then ! and mind you keep your
promise."
Nineteen twentieths of my journey were performed
swiftly by rail, the remaining fraction slowly in the farm-
er's wagon. If I saw anything on the way, I forget what
it was ; my mind was still wandering, in a dazed and aim-
less manner, among the ruins of the Past.
The first object that made any impression on my con-
sciousness, was the cheery, kindly, sensible face of Mrs.
Divine, framed in the dark doorway of the venerable old
farm-house, to whose gate the lapse of an hour had brought
me. She led me to a large, airy chamber, fragrant with
cleanliness, and of a most comfortable aspect, and left me
to myself. Which opportunity I improved by taking my-
self to task for my moodiness and apathy. " That dream
is over," I said, giving myself a moral shake ; " no amount
of brooding will bring it back. Now you have to do with
realities." And then Bona, Mala, and I, strolled out to
the gate, and looked about us.
10 SHILOH.
Evidently, Shiloh was neither town nor village, as it
presented to view no public-house, nor store, nor contigu-
ity of roofs ; but merely an ancient neighborhood of well-
to-do farm-houses; each standing apart within its own
principality' of orchards, gardens, cornfields, meadows,
barns, stacks, and whatever gives the broadest idea of rural
plenty; and all with a certain freshness and peacefulness
about them, as not- being touched by the dust, nor the tur-
moil, of the highway. Right before me rose a huge ram-
part of a hill ; steep, but smooth and grass-grown to the
top ; where its vivid green met the rosy horizon-line of the
sky.
On its left crest, a farm-house, painted red, dazzled me
with the splendor of its sun-gilded windows ; and be.low it
was a long slope covered with mosaic work of corn -and
potato fields and orchards ; falling off siiddenly to a deep
dell or ravine, I concluded, for I saw the bossy tops of
large trees just beyond the corn, and, apparently, on a level
with it. On the right crest, a small white church lifted a
square yard of belfry and a modest triangle of spire into
the rose-ripples of the sky; and a bowed and decrepit
school-house crept humbly close to the hill's foot, other
shade being inscrutably withheld from it and its sun-burned
occupants.
" A cosy and a peaceful spot," said Bona. " Brimful of
the goodness of God, and nowise spoiled by man. There
can be no excuse for sinning here."
MALA. And every excuse for rusting and rotting ; not a
soul worth speaking to ; none of that inspiring contact
with refined and cultured minds, which is the great advan-
tage of city life.
I (sarcastically). Such as a morning spent with Madame
La Mode, settling about the width of our flounces !
MALA (taking no notice of the interruption}. To be sure,
these woods and rocks are well enough in their way, and
you had better content yourself with their society.
SHILOII. 11
BOITA (in dismay). I hope you have brought no phari-
saical that is to say, aristocratic notions hither. Why,
every leaf, laying its cheek softly to its neighbor leaf, every
dew-drop, caring not whether it falls on rosebud or potato
stalk, so it refreshes something, will be a sharp rebuke to
you.
I. Be easy, Bona ; I never had less of the not-as-other-
meii spirit.
MALA (soothingly). But you are weary, and sore, and
sorrowful, and have no heart for society. And society in
Shiloh, surely, has no claim upon you. It did without you
before you came, and need not miss you when you go.
Lead as idle and isolated a life as you please, free from all
bonds and burdens, and so gather strength for the future's
needs.
BOXA. An idle, isolated life never gave strength to any
human soul. Bonds and burdens are ordained of God ; and
strength is found in bearing, not in shirking, them. It is a
good and safe rule to sojourn in every place as if you meant
to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of do-
ing a kindness, or speaking a true word, or making a friend ;
seeds thus sown by the wayside often bring forth an abun-
dant harvest. You might so spend your summer among
this people, that they and their descendants should be bet-
ter and happier, through time and eternity, for your works
and your example.
I (uneasily). Let me alone, both of you. I do not mean
to make a fool of myself, Mala, by putting on airs in this
out-of-the-way place. Neither, Bona, did I come here with
any Quixotic idea of reforming or elevating a community
which has gotten on thus far without me ; and will, doubt-
less, till the end of time. I came here for rest, and I must
have it. Such persons as I meet I intend to treat civilly
kindly, if you will have rt so, but I will not be drawn
into any relations which must force me into action now,
and may be inconvenient entanglements hereafter, I cle^
12 SHILOH.
sign to make friends chiefly with woods, and meadows, and
brooks ; to study good Mrs. Divine, who is as original a
character as can be found outside of Dickens' s stories ; and
to lead a leisurely, thoughtful, restful life under this moss-
grown old roof
I turned to get a clearer idea of the gray, quaint, weather-
beaten dwelling, and forgot to finish my sentence. Its side
was turned toward the street, showing the long slope of
the back roof, coated all over from high ridge-pole to
low eaves with a soft, verdant mossiness, and mottled with
the greenish-gray growth of scaly lichens, all fed, doubt-
less, by mouldy accretions from the breath of bygone gen-
erations. The ridge-pole was somewhat depressed in the
middle, and one corner-post bulged out noticeably ; as if
these portions of its framework had grown a little weary
of their age-long task, and did not set themselves thereto
with all the vigor of youth. A wide-open door, in the
lean-to, gave the passing wayfarer a pleasant look right
into the heart of its domestic life, viz., the low-studded,
time-darkened kitchen with its bare floor, scrubbed white ;
its old-fashioned dresser, displaying orderly rows of pol-
ished pewter plates, and dark blue cups and saucers ; its
grim old clock, in a tall case of carved oak, whose loud,
slow tick seemed to mark the tread of inexorable Fate ;
and its enormous fireplace, in the corners of which one
could sit on a chilly night, between a dusky jamb and a
pile of blazing logs, and watch the slow march of the stars
across the mouth of the huge, irregular, stone chimney. He
could see, too, the brisk, blithe mistress, passing to and fro
between pantry and oven, with scant skirts and flying cap-
borders ; or pausing in the doorway, and lifting her specta-
cles, the better to see if he were likely to prefer any claim
upon her acquaintance or her charity.
The whole place was thickly and lovingly shaded. A
grand old maple, of whose birth Time had lost the record,
flung a broad shadow over the gate and the lean-to door ;
SIIILOII. 13
a group of gnarled, knotty, vagabond cherry-trees made a
quivering network of sunlight and shade at one corner ;
and a century-old pear tree, whose fruit was famed in all
the country round, darkened the front roof and the second
story windows, up to whose worm-eaten sills thick clumps
of lilacs lifted their pointed leaves and odorous" blossoms.
Looking at the old house thus narrowly, it was difficult
to regard it as an inanimate object. It seemed to have a
life and history of its own ; more placid, meditative, and
enduring than any human existence; but sympathetic
and kindly still; rich with long experience of sunshine,
shadow, and storm, bii'th, marriage and death, where-
with it had rejoiced and sorrowed., and whose memories
made fragrant its atmosphere and sweet and mellow its
ripe old heart. The combined physiognomies of a whole
acre of city houses could not give one so much of a home
feeling ; nor so subtly infect one with a sense of some
mysterious, sympathetic friendliness and companionship in
mere stone and timber.
My description would be incomplete without due notice
of a sunny square of garden, upon which the house front-
ed, a sort of cultivated wilderness, inhabited by scattered
tufts of marigolds, peonies, sweet-williams, and other old-
fashioned favorites, a small clique of sage, thyme, and
summer-savory, a riotous rabble of raspberry and goose-
berry bushes, a few scared strawberry plants, hiding in
the grass, a knot of quince trees, drawn apart in a cor-
ner, some sturdy ranks of homely vegetables^ and guarded
all round by a row of currant bushes, that had miraculous-
ly preserved some notion of order and discipline. And it
would be an unpardonable omission, on the side of the pic-
turesque, were I to forget two wells, one, at the front,
and another, at the rear, of the house, each with its
weather-beaten curb, its lichened crotch, its long, stone-
weighted sweep, and its pole, from which depended one of
that family of oaken, iron-bound, moss-grown buckets, im-
mortalized in song.
14: SHILOH.
My further inspection was cut short by one of those
curious intuitions of the presence of another human soul,
which prove that we are not wholly dependent upon our
senses for knowledge. Facing about, I saw a 'black-eyed,
bold-faced urchin, on the other side of the gate, with his
hands thrust deep into his pockets, regarding me attentive-
ly from beneath the shadow of a torn straw hat. As he
evinced no intention of opening the conversation, I ac-
costed him with,
" Well, my boy, what can I do for you ? "
"I ain't your boy," was the matter-of-fact rejoinder.
" And I want Aunt Hannah."
" I do not think she lives here," I replied, after men-
tally running over the inmates of the house, to see whom
this appellation might fit, and deciding that it belonged to
none of them.
" Don't live here ! " exclaimed the small imp, with his
nose in the air, and a rising inflection of unutterable con-
tempt; "why there she is now!" pointing straight over
my shoulder.
Looking around, I saw my hostess in the doorway,
peering out at us from under her raised spectacles.
" Mrs. Divine, here is a boy who says he wants 'Aunt
Hannah' ; and he avers, furthermore, that you are the per-
son meant," I said, opening the gate for the urchin to
enter.
" Oh ! you are not used to that yet," said Mrs. Divine,
good-humoredly. " Everybody about here calls me Aunt
Hannah, all the big boys, all the little girls, all the mar-
ried women, old maids, idiots, and farm-hands ; and, likely
enough, the cows and hens, too, if I understood their sort
o' language. It's a way we have, and means nothing but
friendliness; at least, we find it out quick enough, if any
disrespect is meant. I remember a young city chap, brim-
ful of airs and conceit (no offence, I hope), once came up
to my father, and said, in a pompous kind of a wqy, I
SIIILOH. 15
don't see how you manage to exist in such an out-of-the-
way hole as this, Uncle Ben.' And my father who was a
fine, tall, portly man drew himself up proudly, and an-
swered, ' I didn't know before that I was uncle to every
fool in the country ! ' "Well, Jack, what do you want ? "
turning to the boy.
" Ma wants to know if you'll come and sit up with Mag-
gie to-night? she's awful poorly."
Mrs. Divine took off her spectacles and wiped them
thoughtfully. " Well, no, Jack, I'm afraid I can't. I have
been baking and cleaning up to-day, and there are twenty-
four separate aches in my old back, one for every j'int.
Can't you get Mis' Carter?"
" No, marm, she's been a-washing."
" Well, then, there's Mis' Brown."
" Her baby's sick, and old maid Mercy's got the mumps,
and Mis' Peck's got company, and Aunt Sally Ann's gone
to Roxbury," returned Jack, rattling off his catalogue of
excuses with infinite relish, and refreshing himself there-
after with a prolonged stare at me.
" Oh ! then, I suppose I must go," said Mrs. Divine.
" Tell your mother I'll come, if she don't hear of anybody
else."
BON A (in my ear). You might go as well as not. You
have done nothing to-day but ride up from the city. And
it is a shame to let that old lady watch all night after her
hard day's work.
MALA (in the other ear). Don't be such a goose as to
take that trouble for people you never saw, and catch a
fever for your pains. Let the old lady do it, they are her
neighbors, not yours.
BONA. " Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was
neighbor to him that fell among thieves ? And he said, He
that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, go
thou and do likewise."
MALA (jiersisting) . More likely than not, you will get
no thanks, except to be called " stuck*-up city folks."
16 SHILOII.
" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."
I laid my hand on the boy's shoulder, as he was turning
away. " No, Jack, tell your mother that I, Winnie Frost,
Mrs. Divine's summer-boarder, will come and watch with
Maggie to-night, if she will let me. Will she ask for refer-
ences ? " I added, turning to Mrs. Divine, with a sudden
perception of a latent ludicrousness in the scene.
" Of course not ; we country folks don't look at the hand
that is held out kindly to us, to see whether it's red or blue
blood that runs in its veins. But, Miss Frost, aren't you
too tired to go ? "
" Tired ! the air of these hills has made me forget the
meaning of the word ! But I have a distinct notion of
what intoxication implies. I feel as if I had been drinking
wine."
The kind old woman looked pleased with my enthu-
siasm. The place where she was born and reared, where
she had loved and wedded, and given birth to children and
buried them, was dear to her. " Ah, yes," she answered,
" the air here is as pure as air can be, there's neither city to
foul it, nor ocean to salt it, within many miles. And you
see, my dear, we are situated on the southern slope of the
hill, Chestnut Hill, we call it, midway between tho
winds that whistle over its top, and the fogs that rise from
the valley. All our neighbors are not so well off. There's
the Warrens where you're agoing to watch to-night,
they live right on the edge of a swamp, and there's where
the fever comes from, I guess. Sam the eldest was taken
last week, and now, Maggie's got it. I shouldn't wonder if
it run through the family. But tea is ready, Miss Frost ;
come in."
II.
A NEW E^GLA^fD TEA-TABLE.
TRAVELED friend once said to me, " To
enjoy the day's meals in perfection, one
should breakfast in England, dine in Paris,
and sup in New England." Mrs. Divine's
tea-table where my last letter left me abun-
dantly verified a part of the assertion. It
stood in one end of the long, shadowy kitchen,
in front of the lean-to door, commanding a
visw of orchard and hillside ; and was, in itself, as pretty
a bit of color as tin artist, curious of such matters, might
hope to find in a long day's journey. There were biscuits
of the whiteness and lightness of new fallen snow, and but-
ter glowing with the bright yellow of early cowslips
transparent jellies and preserves, of rich, deep tints of
scarlet and purple clear, -amber-hued honey, still undis-
turbed in its close waxen cells pink slices of tongue-
crimson shavings of dried beef creamy, crumbly cheese
emerald pickles golden custards a pair of pies a bewil-
dering variety of cakes and a glass of roses in the midst
the last being a contribution from Mrs. Divine's pretty
granddaughter Alice. Over this bright picture, Bona and
Mala had a ^characteristic " brush."
"How wonderfully has God contrived even the common-
est details of life for enjoyment, if one stops to think of it,"
said the former. " For example, in this matter of eating."
MALA (indifferently). I don't see it. Of course, He must
provide some method of sustaining the life He has created.
18 SIIILOH.
BONA. But He might have done it so differently ! For
instance, we might have had a hole in the top of our
heads, or between our shoulders, with a lid to it, wherein a
servant, hurrying by, should drop a piece of raw meat, and
a few earth-incrusted potatoes, just as he would fling coals
on a fire. Whereas, in a family meal, the eye is fed with
beauty, the body with strength, the affections with loved
companionship, the mind with cheerful interchange of
thought, and the soul with content and thankfulness to
God!
MALA. Umph ! I think your supposed arrangement
would have suited me as well ! It would have saved a vast
deal of time and work.
BONA. And of refinement and sympathy, and labors of
love, and social culture, and delightful memories. No
prodigal son, feeding on husks in a far country, would have
thought longingly of the abundance and delights of his
father's table ; and there would have been one tender,
touching parable the less, to lead men's wandering, hungry
souls back to the Universal Father !
As I seated myself at the table, I bent my head for a
moment, according to my wont, which the keen eye of Mrs.
Divine did not fail to observe. " If you'll say that aloud,
Miss Frost, I'll be much obliged to you," she said quickly.
" As there's only women folks here, perhaps you won't
mind doing it."
The grace being said, I inquired, " But why should I
mind if there were men here, Mrs. Divine ? That is, of
course, if none of them would assume the duty."
The good old lady looked at me sharply over her specta-
cles. " I have lived sixty years in this changing world,"
said she, " and seen the coming-up of a good many neAv-
fangled things, but I never heard a lady say grace aloud
before. Not but that it seems right and proper enough
among women but I cannot conceive what would make
her do it before a tableful of men."
SHILOH. 19
" The grace of God, I hope," said I, meditatively. " Or
it might be that mushroom, courage which springs up to
the help of most people in an emergency ; yet is neither
Divine inspiration nor strength of will. At least, I am by
no means certain that it was not that, in mv case."
Mrs. Divine looked a mute inquiry.
" It never happened to me to officiate as chaplain for a
' tableful of men ' more than once," I answered, " though I
have done it, several times, in the presence of a masculine,
or two ; who, by reason of his youth or irreligion, could not
be expected to say grace himself. That once was in Mich-
igan. Travelling in a sparsely settled portion of the State,
it befell me to stop for a night at the house of a devout
Methodist sister ; who, having satisfied herself that I was
not altogether a ' dweller in the tents of Kedar,' to use
her own expi-ession, entertained me with a lengthy account
of her religious experience, and beset me with questions
of doctrine and duty. Among other things she bewailed
herself that the family meals were eaten unblessed, as she
was a widow, and none of her sons ' converted.' ' For, of
course, I could not ask a blessing myself,' she concluded.
' Why not ? ' said I, ' I do not see the impropriety.' ' But
I have five grown up sons and two farm hands ; they
would laugh at me ! ' 'I think not,' said I ; ' certainly not,
when they were once accustomed to it.' ' Would you do it,
in my place ? ' ' Without a doubt.' And I thought no
more of the matter until, at the table, with the five stal-
wart sons on the one hand, and the farm hands and female
' help ' on the other, I was called upon by my hostess to
' ask a blessing.' I confess I was slightly disconcerted, for
an instant ; but I said the grace composedly enough, nev-
ertheless, and the five unconverted sons did not laugh."
" And that reminds me," said Mrs. Divine, " of an inci-
dent a pretty little incident in one of Sir Walter Scott's
novels, I think it's in ' Redgauntlet.' It's your turn to
look surprised now ; but, really, it's the only book where I
20 SIIILOII.
ever read of a lady's saying grace before men, and I've
read a good many books in my day."
There was no doubt she had. Her talk was full of
chance allusions, and odd scraps of information, that showed
a confirmed, though desultory, habit of reading. Yet the
desultoriness was probably less a matter of choice than a
necessity of the case, for the family library contains little
beside a heap of old almanacs and newspapers, yellow as
ancient parchment, a set of Hannah More's works, that
mio-ht have crossed the Atlantic with the first Divine
o
that settled in America, a " Scott's Commentary," well
thumbed, a " Josephus," : a " Pilgrim's Progress," minus
one cover and some leaves, a " History of the United
States," and the "Statutes of Connecticut." So that
Mrs. Divine must have satisfied, or appeased, her intel-
lectual hunger with such miscellaneous books as chance
has flung within her reach.
She presided at her tea-tabie in the most cheery, hearty,
and informal way ; often beginning a sentence in her chair,
and finishing it, in a raised voice, from the pantry, whither
she had strayed in search of a knife or spoon, or an addi-
tional viand wherewith to allure my slow appetite. Oppo-
site to her sat an upright, angular, severe figure, which I
took to belong to the respectable sisterhood of old maids,
until it was introduced to me as Mrs. Prescott, a widowed
daughter of the house ; my own vis-a-vis being the only
child of the same, Alice Prescott, a shy, blue-eyed maiden,
who never once ventured to look me in the face, and only
answered me, when I spoke to her, in nervous monosylla-
bles. The " men folks," I was informed, would sup later ;
and would have laughed to scorn an invitation to satisfy
their labor-whetted appetites with the cates and dainties
whereon we had feasted. " No, indeed," said Mrs. Divine.
" The cold boiled pork and beef and potatoes, left from din-
ner, with plenty of bread and butter and apple pie, is what
they want."
SHILOH. 21
Tea over, I was kindly advised to prepare for the night's
vigil, by getting an hour's rest. So I underwent a kind of
figurative burial in a huge heap of downy feathers, let my
head sink into a soft unsubstantiality of pillow ; and, while
listening to a rambling talk between Bona and Mala, slid
into a confused and stifled sleep, perturbed with dreams
of a time and a person that it is the business of my waking
hours to forget.
A little before nine, I rose, donned a loose, thick wrap-
per, best adapted of anything in my wardrobe to the chill
watches of a night near the end of May, up here among the
hilltops (yet not without misgivings lest its bright hue
and flowered border should seem incongruous with the
place where my watch was to be kept), and went down to
the kitchen. It was a cheery picture upon which I entered.
The weather was still cool enough for an evening fire on
the hearth, arid its dancing blaze reddened the dingy walls
and. the dark oaken ceiling, played at hide-and-seek with
the shadows in the corners, laughed at its own reflection
in the pewter plates of the dresser, and lit up with a
ruddy glow the sun-browned, strong-featured faces around
it. Mrs. Divine sat at one corner of the hearthstone, mend-
ing certain coarse garments by the light of a tallow candle ;
the candlestick being upheld by a quaint, primitive piece
of furniture which she called a " candle-stand ; " consisting
of an upright post, on three legs, with a cross-bar at top,
capable of being raised or lowered at pleasure ; to one end
of which cross-bar the candlestick was hung, and to the
other the snuffers. Opposite to her sat a white haired,
dreaniy-visaged personage, known universal] v as "Uncle
True," who merits a more extended description, and shall
get it in some future epistle. In a shadowed corner, Mrs.
Prescott sat and knitted with the grim energy that charac-
terizes all her movements ; and by the table, two young
men were amusing themselves with a game of checkers.
But all these were subordinate to the centra.! figure of the
22 SHILOH.
picture, Farmer Divine himself; in a wide arm-chair;
shirt-sleeved and loose-vested ; with the full light of the
fire shed upon his large, portly frame, and good-humored,
intelligent face; and talking cheerily in a loud, hearty
voice, that had not a trace of insincerity nor of reticence
in it. Obviously, the farmer kept open house, open heart,
open mind; whoever would, might enter and partake
freely of such entertainment as was to be found. Nothing
would be concealed, nothing made to show falsely, nothing
tricked out in unaccustomed finery. Sundays and week-
days the fare would be the same, never, delicate, nor
luscious, nor high-seasoned; but always substantial and
wholesome; and offered with a simple heartiness that
would be better than any studied refinements of courtesy.
He rose, and greeted me cordially, taking my hand in
his broad, brown palm where it looked as pale and unsub-
stantial as if it had been cut out of French paper and
smiling down upon it from his noble altitude of six feet,
with a half amused, half pitying expression.
" It's high time you came to Shiloh, Miss Frost," said he.
" A little longer stay in that smoky Sodom, where you
come from " (pointing over his shoulder with his thumb),
" would have made you something like the old woman that
dried up and blew away. But do you s'pose you can put
up with our plain country ways ? "
" Better than you can put up with my lazy city habits, I
suspect. For example, I never rose at five o'clock in my
life. I hope Mrs. Divine will not think it too much trouble
to give me my bread and milk a little later, for the
present."
" Bread and milk ! " exclaimed Mrs. Divine, " you can
have that at any hour in the day you like, by just' stepping
into the pantry and helping yourself. But your breakfast
will be ready when you're ready for it, and not a minute
before. I can clap down a bit of chicken to the fire when-
ever it's wanted."
8HILOH. 23
" Thank you ; I will try not to tax your indulgence long.
Mr. Divine, is it far to the Warrens ? "
" Oh, no, only a step the first house beyond the church
you can't miss it. But as. you' re a stranger in these
parts, mayhap you wouldn't like to go alone ; Alice shall
go with you."
" But Alice will haVe to return alone."
" Well, where's the harm ? "
" Why, is it the custom here for ladies to go about by
themselves, in the evening ? Are there no thieves or des-
peradoes about ? "
" None that trouble anything but the henhouse. Why,
you might walk off for two mile, or more, without meeting
anything worse than Bill Somers's old white horse, that
Mis' Burns took for a ghost the other night, and was fright-
ened clear out of her wits." And the farmer chuckled in-
wardly.
" Then I will not trouble Miss Alice, thank you. I shall
really enjoy finding my way by myseli; There will be a
pleasant spice of adventure about it. But, Mrs. Divine, I
should like more minute travelling directions, in a way.
What sort of people are the Warrens ? "
" Poor folks enough, I guess. But people think they've
seen better days. They're new comers here that is,
they've only lived here going on three year."
" I do not mean that. I merely want to know if there
are any domestic or individual pitfalls to be avoided."
" Oh ! Well, Mrs. Warren's one of the prettiest " (pretty
beingjiere used in its Xew England signification of pleas-
ant, agreeable) " little women in the world you can't miss
your way with hei'. But her husband's a pitfall, sure
enough : only I don't see how you're to keep clear of him.
He likes to talk, when the fit's on ; and he's got a special
gift of talking to little purpose, or to evil purpose. HC'B
an infidel, Miss /Frost and that's saying enough that's
bad about a neighbor, for once."
The farmer followed me to the door, with the instinct -it
24 siiiLoii.
politeness. On the threshold, he turned as if struck with a
sudden thought.
" Wait a moment, Miss Frost. I guess, after all, I can
furnish you an escort jest to your mind one that won't be
in your way, nor bother you with talk." And he gave a
low whistle.
An enormous dog, hitherto coiled up in some dark cor-
ner, rose and came majestically forth. A noble animal, of
pure Newfoundland breed, coal black, and with a face of
rare intelligence.
" There ! " said Mr. Divine, with pardonable pride, " that's
the finest dog you ever saw, ma'am, if I do say it. I don't
believe there's his match, for sense and faithfulness, in the
whole world. He understands what you say to him jest as
well as you do yourself. See if he don't. Leo, sir ! this
lady is Miss Frost." The farmer laid his finger on my
shoulder and repeated the name twice, slowly and distinct-
ly. The dog looked at me attentively.
" Now," continued Mr. Divine, " he knows who you are.
He's hung up your name in his memory. If I pick up
your handkerchief, or your glove, or anything that belongs
to you, I've only to say, ' Leo, carry this to Miss Frost,' and
he'll bring it to you, anywhere within three mile. Shake
hands with Miss Frost, sir ! "
The dog came to me, and, with ineffable dignity, uplifted
a great, black paw.
"And now he knows you're to be put on his list of
friends," pursued Mr. Divine. " We never tell him to
ehake hands with any one we don't want him to trea like
one of the family. But you're in a hurry to be off. Leo,
show Miss Frost the way to the Warrens do you hear,
sir? to the Warrens ! " with an appropriate gesture.
The dog looked from his master to me, and went forward
to the gate, in token that he heard and obeyed.
" When you get there," said Mr. Divine, "just tell him
to come home, or he'll wait outside for you till morning.
Good night."
III.
THE WABRENS.
[Y spirits rose as I closed the gate behind
me, and looked down the lonely, moonlit
road. The prospect of a silent evening
walk, by an unknown path to an unknown
goal, in such strange companionship, too !
was not without its exciting charm. The dog
kept a few paces in advance ; grave, dignified,
and sombre, as an usher at a funeral. Once,
I spoke to him. He stopped a moment, put his nose into
my hand, and then went on again.
At first, the road was flooded with moonlight, and my
shadow glided silently beside me, sharply defined, but never
at rest, and leaving no trace of its passage behind. It oc-
curred to me that the time might come when most earthly
shadows should be seen to have been as much a necessity
of life's conditions, and as transitory. Beyond the church,
the road slunk under the gloom of a dense piece of woods ;
and when I emerged from that, the house which I sought
was close at hand. It was a small, low, unpainted struc-
ture, with only the merest shred of a yard between it and
the road ; and the door was wide open, giving a full view
of the kitchen, or living room ; for one glance sufficed to
show that it must serve every domestic purpose, save that
of a bedroom.
Leo paused at the gate, waited for me to enter, and
then, obedient to a word and a gesture, turned homeward.
Jack was seated in the doorway, busy with some mys-
2
26 SIIILOH.
terious complication of sticks and strings, which might, and
might not, have been a kite. He announced my coming,
in his own laconic fashion.
" Ma, here's your watcher."
A meek-faced woman immediately came forward, and
received me with a gentle ease of manner that would not
have been out of keeping with far more sumptuous sur-
roundings. Plainly, her soul's education had begun in
some place nearer to the world's great centres than Shiloh ;
and God was only finishing it here, amid such tribulations
as would help her to the most abundant entrance into the
Kingdom of Heaven.
" Thank you very much for coming, Miss Frost," said
she, hi that low monotone of voice which speaks so un-
mistakably of pain outworn, and hope and disappointment
both left behind, " and yet I am afraid that I ought not
to have let you come, either ; it is too much to ask of a
stranger."
" If I am a stranger now," I replied, " I hope I shall
not seem one long. I know it was taking a liberty to
proffer my services in such an off-hand way, but I could
come much better than Mrs. Divine. And I am tolerably
well-skilled in nursing ; my father was an invalid for many
months."
" Miss Frost is a student of human nature," interposed
a deep, gruff voice, behind me, " and she would not miss the
chance of finding a new variety in this poor, miserable,
fever-stricken hut."
The tone of his voice gave me a creeping of the flesh ;
such as one might experience, who, in feeling round a dark
vault, should suddenly put his hand upon a chill, slippery,
sliding reptile. Turning quickly, I met the derisive,, cyni-
cal smile of the " infidel," of whom Mrs. Divine had spoken
with such noticeable abhorrence. His body was massive,
his shoulders broad and powerful, his head large and
covered with shaggy, iron-gray hair, his eyes deep-set and
SIIILOH. 27
piercing. But this Titanic trunk was planted on a pair of
legs that would better have suited the boyish stature of his
son Jack, so that he was not so tall as myself. It is impos-
sible, dear Francesca, to give you any adequate idea of the
harsh repulsiveness of this strange man, not because of
his deformity, but on account of the sneering rudeness of
his gaze, and the lawless, almost impertinent, freedom
of his expression ; as if he cared not who saw the evil
in his soul, nor what sentiment of disgust it inspired. Not
that his face seemed vulgar. There was even a look of
quickness and acuteness of intellect about it ; but there
was no corresponding fineness of nature. There was also
a latent morbidness in his expression ; as if his deformity,
or something else,, had put him at cross-purposes with life.
His rude accost made me color, in spite of myself;
there was just truth enough in it to give it a sting. Cer-
tainly this man had a wonderful power of discerning what-
ever grain of selfishness might be hidden at the bottom of
a good deed, and of putting his cynical finger on it.
"A good student loves the subjects of his study," I an-
swered, after a moment's pause of embarrassment. " And
if I had not a real love of humanity and of Christ in my
heart, I should not be here to-night."
MR. WARREN. Oh ! you're one of that sort, are you ?
You don't look: like it ; I should say there was more fire
than frost about you (with just enough emphasis on the
words to make me aware of the pun). Well, madam, I will
undertake to convince you, if you will listen, that
Christ was only a man like myself, or if you don't like
the pattern (looking down at his shrunken legs with a
terrible irony) then, like William Herman in there, watch-
ing with my so*n Sam.
I. And if you could, sir, what help in life, or comfort in
death, should I derive from that conviction ?
He stared at me, for a moment, with an utterly blank
look. He had expected denial, or argument, not a prac-
28 SIIILOH.
tical question of valuation. Then, suddenly quitting the
subject, and changing his tone to one of more courtesy,
he said,
" Well, Miss Frost, I am obliged to you for coming here
to-night, whatever was your object, or your motive. It is
more than we expected from a city-bred lady -or deserved,"
he added, with an affectation of humility that was haugh-
tier than any outspoken pride. " But please to step this
way a moment."
He opened a door into a pantry near by, and motioned
me to enter. Then, holding the door in his hand, and half
closing it behind him, he said, in a low voice, " I bring you
here, that Maggie may not hear us. I wish to ask you to
refrain from any preaching, or exhorting, during your watch
with her. I don't want her to be frightened into the next
world by being told to 'prepare for death'; that's the
cant phrase, isn't it ? " with a sneer.
MALA. Tell the old bear that you'll do as you think
right, and if he does not like it, you can go home again.
BONA. No, no, if you want Mr. Warren to go a step
in your way, you must first go a step in his. Get a hold
on him by kindness, it is your only chance of doing him
any good.
I (speaking partly from the influence of one, and partly
of the other). Mr. Warren, you have a right to dictate, in
this house. And if you choose to send your child into the
next world, without the needful preparation, it is your re-
sponsibility, not mine.
MB. WABBEN (with flashing eyes). But Maggie isn't
going into the next world ! She won't die, I tell you, she
shan't die ! But she is weak and nervous, and you would
scare her to death, if you hinted that the're was even a
chance of her dying ; and that would be your responsi-
bility. You won't do it, will you ? (icith a mixture of en-
treaty and fierceness, impossible to describe.}
I (coldly). Sir, I will try to remember your wishes.
SHILOH. 29
The old sinister look settled back on his face. " Well,
that's settled," said he, throwing wide open the door, " and
I shall be near enough to see how the promise is kept. Xot
that I doubt your word," with a half bow.
Mrs. Warren had listened to this conversation with a
pained and anxious look ; now she seized the opportunity
to say,
" Will you come into Maggie's room, now, Miss Frost ? "
pointing to an open door, where I had already caught a
glimpse of a bed, and a young, fever-flushed face.
" I shall be glad to do so. And you had better give me
your dii'ections for the night, and go to bed at once, you
look thoroughly tired out. As I am here to watch, the
sooner I am made of use, the better."
I followed her into the little room so small that there
was barely a passage-way between the walls and the bed.
Here lay Maggie, a fine-looking girl of fifteen or sixteen ;
whose hectic cheek, and large, restless black eyes, lit up
with the unnatural brightness of fever, gave her a strange,
wild beauty. She looked at me curiously and intently, let-
ting her eyes rest with evident pleasure on the bright tints
of my wrapper ; but she said nothing, not even in answer
to my greeting. The few necessary directions were given,
the whereabouts of pills, drops, and refreshment tray,
pointed out, and then the mother bade us good night,
and withdrew.
THE VIGIL.
HAVE received your letter, Francesca mia,
but do not ask me yet, to enter upon the de-
tails of the separation of Paul and myself. Thank
you for your offer of friendly service, but the break
is past mending; neither explanation nor me-
diation could avail aught. The parting is final
let that suffice for the present. Not until grief
has become subdued and softened by time, can
we stand by the grave where hope and faith lie buried,
and talk calmly of our loss. Before then, sobs or silence
must speak for us. I scorn to give way to the sobs ; you
must try to iinderstand the silence.
" Forgetting the things which are behind " or doing
my best to that end, I continue the narrative of my
strange vigil with Maggie Warren. Seated by her bed-
side, fan in hand, I heard the slow footsteps of the weary
mother ascend the creaking staircase, move about overhead,
for a brief space, and then cease ; conjecturing, meanwhile,
what curious links of circumstance had bound that gentle,
refined woman to that morose, sneering, repulsive hulk of
a man. I wasted no wonder on the union itself, the story
of Titania and Bottom has been so often acted on the
stage of life, since Shakespeare's time, as to have grown
commonplace. But I began to wonder, ere long, what Mr.
Warren was about, in the kitchen, and when he would
SIIILOII. 31
withdraw, and leave me to myself and the sick maid-
en ? -
The query was soon answered. I heard him rise, open
a door, drag something forth, with a soft, rushing sound,
and then he presented himself before me.
" Are you ready, now, for the argument about the di-
vinity of Christ, Miss Frost ? "
" No, sir, I am content to let it rest where we left it
just now."
" I see you have no taste for argument. Women sel-
dom have," with a sneer.
I was foolish enough to be stung by the imputation.
" I am not averse to argument," I retorted, " when there is
anything to be gained by it. But I know you can do me
no harm, and I suspect I can do you no good."
" You might, at least, try," arching his eyebrows.
I kept silent. The man repelled me so, that I would
not enter upon a discussion with him.
" Miss Frost," he persisted, " you are afraid that your
faith will be shaken."
" Not at all, sir. I am already tolerably well ac-
quainted with the infidel writings from which you must
needs draw your arguments, since in infidelity as in the
earth there js nothing new under the sun."
"Which means, I suppose," said he, looking at me
keenly, " that you are a little better provided with counter 1
arguments than most young women. I am glad of it ; I
like a ' foeman worthy of my steel.' " Here Maggie turned
her head with an uneasy and peevish movement. The
symptom of weariness caught the father's eye, and his
love for his child proved more potent, even, than his love
of discussion. "I see that my talk worries Maggie," he
said, hastily, " and we will leave the subject till another
time. Miss Frost, I hope you will excuse it, if I quarter
in the kitchen, to-night. Our sleeping accommodations are
scant enough, at best ; but now with Sam taking the
32 SHILOH.
whole of one bed, and Maggie in another, there is nothing
left for me but a buffalo skin, and the kitchen floor. 'You
need not mind me any more than an old log, I'm a sound
sleeper."
And to my surprise, and almost horror, he wrapped a
coarse, shaggy buffalo skin around him, stretched himself
upon the floor, in a position to command the small interior
of the sick-room, and was soon, to all appearance, sound
asleep. This was what he meant when he said he " should
be near enough to see how my promise was kept ! " I re-
called the words with exceeding indignation, and Mala
made them the text upon which she discoursed furiously
for the next five minutes.
At first, his presence was an annoyance and a restraint
to me. I moved carefully, and almost held my breath
when it was necessary to pass him, so exceedingly reluct-
ant was I to bring upon myself the keen, merciless scru-
tiny of his deep-set eyes. Finding, however, that his sleep
was heavy and unbroken, I came gradually to feel more at
my ease, and moved about with greater freedom. In one 1
of my visits to the fireplace, where certain broths and de-
coctions were kept hot for the sick ones, I encountered my
fellow watcher the William Herman before mentioned
a tall, light-haired, light-eyed man, of a whimsical and hu-
morous cast of countenance ; and with a noiseless, almost
womanish, way of handling cups and saucepans, that testi-
fied strongly to his fitness for his office. He nodded to me
familiarly, with an evident understanding of the " situation,"
asked after my patient, told me that his own was " coming
along bravely ; " and went on tiptoe back to his post.
The slow moments crept on for an hour. The sick girl
turned her head restlessly on her pillow, the clock ticked
noisily, the firelight gleamed and flickered on the walls,
the tallow candle burned dim, and a great, black accumu-
lation of cinder hung to its wick. By and by, I found
myself observing the scene in the most abstract manner,
SIIILOII. 33
with a keen appreciation of its artistic effects of light, and
shade, and color. I perceived what an effective picture it
would make in the hands of a skilful artist, the dingy,
low, bare rooms, lit up with the fitful glow of the fire,
the youthful, fever-intensified beauty of the sick maiden on
her coarse pillow, the prostrate figure of the father^ a
mixture of the grotesque and the demoniac in its uncouth
shaggy wrappings, with its strongly marked features seen
half in red glow, half in deep shadow. I even regarded
myself in a purely objective way, as a mere accessory of
the picture, well pleased to see what a spot of warm,
bright color that deprecated wrapper would make amid the
prevailing sombreHess, and how effectively the soft richness
of its material, and the general refinement of my dress
and figure would contrast with the rudeness and squalor
of my surroundings.
But while I looked around, Maggie gazed at me with a
curious intentness that I could only account for by the sup-
position that strange faces were rare to her. She took her
medicines from my hand, at the stated moments, without
demur, but replied to the questions I addressed to her only
by gestures. Finally, after a long, unwinking scrutiny of
my face, she suddenly flung herself on one side and said,
pettishly, " I want mother."
" My dear child," I answered, gently, " your mother has
great need of rest, let us not disturb her. I can do for you
all that she could, I think,-^-at least, let me try. What is
it you want ? "
" Nothing, only I'm so tired," with a wailing intona-
tion, pitiful to hear.
I had already exhausted my invention in ringing the
changes upon a thin bolster and two small pillows, to afford
her some little change of position. There was nothing
more to be done with that material. So I lifted her light
form, pillows and all, and sitting down on the bed, laid her
on my lap, with her head resting on my bosom. She
2*
34 SHILOH.
yielded passively to the arrangement, and gave a low sigh
of satisfaction as she felt the relief of the entire change of
posture, while a pleased and restful expression brightened
her face. Then she raised her eyes, with a still curious,
but a softer, look, to mine.
" You ain't afraid of me," she said, in a half assertive,
half interrogative tone.
The question made me smile. " Why, no, my dear, I
cannot say that I am," I answered. " I do not know how
formidable a personage you may be, when you are well ;
but now, certainly, I am the stronger of the two, and if we
should happen to differ, which is not likely, I think I could
carry my point."
" Oh, I don't mean that," she returned, after a little be-
wildered stare, as if she were puzzled to understand the
drift of what I was saying. " I mean that you ain't afraid
of catching the fever. All the folks who have been here
before have been careful not to touch me, or come near me,
when they could help it. I s'pose they thought I didn't
know it, but I did, and it made me hate them ! " (with
a gleam of her father's fierce, vindictive spirit.) "They
wouldn't have held me like this for a million of money."
" I am not sure," I said, bitterly, answering to my own
thoughts, rather than to her, " but that to take the fever,
and die quickly and quietly, would be the best thing which
could happen to me."
Maggie opened her eyes with extreme surprise. " Why,
ain't you afraid to die ? " she asked, simply.
" No, I think not," I began, but Bona sternly inter-
posed.
" If you are not, you ought to be," said she. " No one
has the right not to be afraid of dying who is not content
to do and suffer all God's will, in living. Weariness of life
is poor ground for fearlessness of death. ' Perfect love,'
only, * casteth out fear,' and he who longs for death, for any
reason stronger than his love of Christ, and his desire to
SIIILOH. 35
be lifted into ' heavenly places in Him,' has great reason
for shame and confusion of face, if he is not afraid of
dying."
I hesitated, abashed and confounded. But Maggie still
looked and waited for my answer. So, in a far different
spirit, I finished the sentence " I think not ; at least I
should ask our Saviour to give me the victory over death."
She repeated the words after me, as if she were saying
a lesson. " The victory over death, I don't under-
. stand."
" I mean, Maggie, that inasmuch as the soul is capable
of a richer and more enduring life than the body, they who
have a good hope, through Christ, of escaping the death
of the soul,need not fear the death of the body."
" But I am afraid of death," she said, excitedly.
You will not be surprised, Francesca, that the answer to
this came in another voice than mine, if you have formed
any correct conception of the impressionable and suspicious
character of the father, and of his tireless watchfulness
over this favorite child, who seemed to have concentrated
upon herself all the tenderness of his natnre. I had seen
his eyes open soon after she began to talk, and my last
sentence had been uttered in the full consciousness that
he was listening. Now he called out, in a voice wherein
the effort to render it hearty and cheery was very percep-
tible,
" Nonsense, child, you are not going to die there's
plenty of strong life in you yet. You'll live to be a gray-
haired woman, and bury your old father long before you
go. Why, I can see you are getting better already. You
feel better, don't you ? " the last words being spoken at
the bedside, with her hand in his.
" I guess so, father ; I feel easier. Miss Frost holds me
so nicely. She isn't a bit afraid of touching me. And her
dress is so soft and pretty ! " said Maggie, nestling her
cheek against my wrapper, with a childlike enjoyment of
36 SHILOH.
its brightness and softness, and a look that was half affec-
tionate in her dark, inquisitive eyes.
Mr. Warren looked at me with real gratitude. " Thank
you," said he, "I will never forget your goodness to my
child."
MALA (instantly alert, and whispering in my ear). See
what a pleasant, winning way you have, when you choose !
Already this girl, who, an hour ago, only looked at you
suspiciously and curiously, as at some wild animal, begins
to show you confidence and affection. Already that cross-
grained father speaks to you gratefully. What tact you
have ! How good you are ! It is something to be proud of !
I (in an agony). Get thee behind me, Satan! Can I
not do one little thing for Christ, but you must needs spoil
it with your miserable self-righteousness ! With you for-
ever at hand, it is useless for me to try to do right.
MALA (insinuatingly). So it is. Give up trying, then.
BONA. If St. Paul had occasion to say, " To will is pres-
ent with me, but how to perform that which is good, I find
not ;" you, certainly, have no cause for discouragement.
For " the Spirit helpeth our infirmities." And God, seeing
your good will, will pardon the shortcomings of your per-
formance.
" Maggie is really better," persisted Mr. Warren ;
" don't you think she is better, Miss Frost ? "
I looked down at the thin face, noted that it was less
flushed than it had been, marked the short, faint breathing,
and could not say that I discerned any sign of betterment.
Mr. Warren saw my hesitation, and made an irritated ges-
ture. " You see she has less fever," he urged.
I did see it ; but I also saw that she seemed weaker.
" Will you hand me that glass of brandy and water ? "
I asked, by way of creating a diversion, and with a sudden
perception that' a spoonful of the stimulant would not be
amiss. Then the father went back to his buffalo-skin, and
soon after, Maggie fell asleep in my arms.
SHILOII. 37
Another hour crawled on, lame and leaden-footed, in-
deed, for my position became absolutely painful, after a
time ; but my charge slept quietly, and I would not disturb
her by moving. Thus Mr. Herman found me, long past
midnight, with benumbed muscles and a contorted face.
"This won't do," he said, decidedly. "You can't
stand that many minutes longer, and she may as well be
waked up now as ever. I'll lift her, while you crawl out."
He put his strong arms under her with a woman's gen-
tleness. Pier dark eyes opened with a bewildered look,
that did not become intelligent until the change was ef-
fected. Then she murmured, " Isn't it morning yet ? "
" Not yet," I answered. And she slept again.
To restore the circulation to my torpid limbs, I began
pacing slowly through the rooms ; sometimes brushing the
sleeper on the floor with the skirt of my dress, as I passed
him, but without visible effect. Plainly, his senses were
fast locked against everything not immediately affecting
the state of his daughter, to her voice only was he ever
awake and responsive. Seeing what treasure of love his
uncouth frame held, I began to feel a little more kindly to-
ward him.
Up and down I paced slowly, stopping at every turn to
observe Maggie narrowly ; and noticing with real sorrow
so quickly is human sympathy transfigured into the like-
ness of affection! that her pulse grew ever fainter, and
her cheek more wan. I increased the prescribed quan-
tity of stimulus, by way of disputing every inch of
ground with the Dread Encroacher, answering, mean-
while, her oft-repeated question, " Isn't it most morning ! "
with a soothing, ." Not quite yet, dear ; it will be morn-
ing soon."
At last, in the chill hour preceding the dawn, there
came upon her face that indefinable look, which shows that
the " earthly house of this tabernacle " is being dissolved,
and the imprisoned spirit is beating against the weakened
38 SHILOH.
*
bars. I went to the door of the other sick-room, and mo-
tioned to Mr. Herman to join me. He detected the change
at once.
" It's coming, sure," he said with deep gravity. " I'll
call her mother."
Maggie caught the tone of his whisper, though not the
words, and opened terror-stricken eyes upon \is.
" Am I going to die ? " she gasped.
I am no mystic nor spiritualist, yet I do sometimes
question if the soul is not endowed with some finer sense
than the body, which comes to its aid in life's critical mo-
ments. That sleeping father was on his feet almost as
soon as the words were out of her mouth !
" Of course not," he began, " you'll be all right in a
few days, and " But, as he neared the bed, and saw his
daughter's ashy face distinctly, he faltered, paused, and
dropped into a chair as if he had received a sudden, severe
blow.
Maggie fixed her eyes on him, and repeated her ques-
tion.
" No, child," he replied, making a Herculean effort for
composure. "Don't be afraid; you know your father
wouldn't deceive you."
It was terrible to hear the misguided man answer his
dying daughter with a lie. It was done in love, I knew,
but it was no less awful to hear. Lulled to a momentary
security by his encouraging words, Maggie closed her eyes.
But some inward trouble, or monitor, would not let her rest.
Ere long, she opened them again, and appealed to me.
" Am I going to die ? " she said, earnestly.
It was impossible to face the awakened soul in those
eyes, and answer it with a falsehood; it was almost as
hard to meet the father's stern, agonized face, and tell the
whole truth. Vainly, it seemed to me, I groped about for
words that should help and satisfy the one, without hurt-
ing the other. Finally, I said
SHILOH. 39
" Only God, Maggie, knows whether you will die or
live. You are in His hands, dear. But they are such
wise, and strong, and loving hands J You may trust your-
self to them without a fear. If you do trust them, you
are just as safe in your deathbed, as ever you were in your
cradle."
Her lip quivered. Then she said, faintly, halting over
the unfamiliar words, " I wish I knew how to ask Him to
give me the victory over death ! "
I looked at her father. He had turned his face away.
Evidently, he left the matter in my hands.
" Don't you know how to pray ? " I asked.
" Not much. Mother taught me, ' Now I lay me.' "
Only that ! A lightning intuition showed me that the
sceptical father had forbidden, or laughed at, all religious
instruction ; and that the meek, gentle mother had not
dared to withstand his authority.
" That will do very well, dear," I replied. " To God's
children, death is only a chamber darkened for a quiet sleep.
Ask Him to keep your soul, for Christ's sake."
She closed her eyes, and I think she uttered the childish
prayer, but I do not know. For I bowed my own head on
her pillow, heart-heavy with poignant pain and pity, and
prayed silently for that poor, helpless, untaught soul, drift-
ing affrightedly out into an unknown future, and groping
about for some hand unto which to cling, prayed with
greater intensity and fervor than ever I prayed for myself,
I think, though I need prayer enough, Heaven knows !
And the prayer was not lost ! If it availed nothing for
her, it, at least, calmed and strengthened me. Without it,
the long strain of that death-scene would have been more
than I could bear.
When I looked up, Mrs. Warren stood near, perfectly
calm, patient, and resigned, as seemed her unvarying habit.
" I expected this," she said, quietly, taking my place at the
bedside, and smoothing Maggie's long, dark hair, with in-
40 SHILOII.
effable tenderness. The girl opened her eyes, and once
more repeated her wailing question " Isn't it morning ? "
" Almost," answered the mother.
" I'm so tired ! " she moaned again.
The father and mother lifted her, but she looked dis-
satisfied, and half impatient, with their efforts to relieve her.
" Nobody holds me like she did," she said, indicating me
with her eyes.
I came forward. "Would you like me to hold you
again ? " I asked.
Her eyes brightened. I assumed the old position, and
received her in my arms.
" It feels so nice ! " she said, faintly. Her mother sat
down beside her, with her fingers on her pulse. The father
walked the room, or hung over the bed's foot, with a face
of mute misery.
I cannot tell how long I sat there, watching the slow,
almost imperceptible lapse of the stream of life into the
ocean of eternity ; it could not have been more than an
hour, but it seemed ages, ere the low voice of Mrs. Warren
broke the silence.
" Our Maggie is gone," she said ; adding, almost im-
mediately, "Miss Frost, your hard task is over. Thank
you,"
She lifted the fair, still form from my arms, and I stag-
gered to the window. A bright strip of gold bordered the
eastern horizon ; the morning, for which that dead girl had
so longed, was breaking. Was there good reason for hope
that her eyes had opened upon a morning of more endur-
ing glory, a morning of endless light and knowledge and
love, in Christ ?
I grew sick amid the whirling uncertainties of the in-
vestigation.
"Take this, Miss Frost, you are faint," said a quiet
voice.
I drank the water, and then looked at the giver in
SHILOII. 41
amazement. Mrs. Warren was pale, sad, but quite col-
lected, and gentle as ever. If there were tears in her
heart, they did not moisten her eyes. A poignant pity
smote me. What storms, I thought, must that woman
have come through, to have attained to calm such as this !
And what a history of long self-abnegation, and patient
doing of " the duty which lies nearest," was discernible in
the fact that, after duly closing the eyes and laying straight
the limbs of her dead daughter, her first care had been for
a stranger, overwhelmed by the woful scene wherein she
stood so tranquil ! I leaned my head against the window-
frame, and my thoughts went wandering off, lost and be-
wildered amid the mysteries not of death, not of revela-
tion, but of life of this strange earthly being of ours. Oh,
Life, Life ! let us drink reverently of the rich, strong, sweet,
bitter cup ! So shall we learn, Thou Cross-Lifted and
Thorn-Crowned, to thank Thee for the kingly gift !
SETTING THE " EAETHLT HOUSE 5 ' IN OEDEE.
NCE more, Mrs. Warren's mild voice recalled
me to the present's realities. Looking at
her, I seemed to recognize a visible incarna-
tion of Duty, treading her narrow path steadily,
serenely, unassumingly ; neither turning to the
right nor left, neither looking behind nor be-
fore ; but keeping her eyes always bent on the
ground, to make her footing sure. At least,
this was Mrs. Warren's outer seeming ; if the
hidden soul walked in white robes of consecration upon the
serene heights of faith, or was bound by chains of suffering
to some chill rock of despair, I could not tell. From these
deeper things of her life, my eyes were necessarily holden.
" I have sent," said she, " for some one to lay Maggie
out. She will be here soon. I know you are tired, and
would like to go home."
I was tired ; yet I felt a strong reluctance to leave that
beautiful piece of" clay, which had so lately given up its
vital part in my arms, while any tender or helpful service
remained to be performed for it. Those artless words of
the dying girl, "Nobody holds me like she did," had
touched some very deep-down chord in my heart. It was
so long since I had felt myself really of more use than
another to any human being !
" Is there, then, nothing more for me to do ? " I asked.
"Nothing, until Aunt Vin comes, perhaps I should
SHILOH. 43
say, Miss Lavinia Rust, to you, though the first title is
the only one in use among us."
" She is not a relative, then ? "
" No ; she is an elderly, and somewhat eccentric, maiden
lady ; who has somehow slidden into the office of laying
out the dead for this whole neighborhood. Perhaps some
secret heart-sore first led her to give herself to the work
of nursing, watching, and similar acts of self-devotion ; and
so, by degrees, she learned how to do the other sad duty,
and does it constantly, chiefly, it appears, because there is
no one who can do it any better. She is not even a poor
woman; she has a small farm of her own, which she
manages with much method and shrewdness."
" But she will want some help," I said, after a moment.
" Not much. And if she does, I doubt if you are able
to give it. I will help her myself."
And no doubt she would have done it, as she did every-
thing else, submissively and serenely. Neverthless, it
pained me to think of it, and I said, earnestly,
" No, no, let me stay and do it, please. I am stronger
than you think. It was not so much the fatigue of holding
Maggie that overcame me just now, as sorrowful recollec-
tions of another deathbed, which left me alone in the world,
my father's. But it would give me real pleasure to ren-
der this last service to Maggie, if you will permit me, and
if you do not still think me too much of a stranger."
Just for one moment the mother's voice shook. " You
will never be a stranger to me, after this," she faltered.
Then, turning instantly from the masterful grief to the
waiting, composing duty, she went on. " It is very kind
of you to stay, for Sam wants me, I know ; and the break-
fast is to be got ready ; and there are so many things to be
done, that I cannot see my way clear to refuse your assis-
tance, if you really wish to give it."
" I really do," I answered, heartily. She gave my hand
a single, strong pressure, which, from her, was more touch-
44 SHILOH
ing and significant than any words, and quickly went her
way.
I looked at the corpse. Some one was it the mother?
had laid two large copper coins on the eyes, a custom that
always seems to me to be a horrible burlesque upon human-
ity, so many eyes are holden, all their lives, from the sight
of the things which most concern them, by earth's paltry
coin. I took them off with a shudder, and seating myself
by the bedside, held down the eyelids with a light pressure
of my fingers. So sitting, the peacefulness of the corpse
seemed to be communicated to me also ; and for the time,
earthly anxieties and vicissitudes shrank to microscopic
proportions, mere motes in the sunbeams that shine down
from God's countenance into the hearts of those who seek
to find out His meaning in life, and to let it work all His
loving will upon them. Alas! that those motes should
ever be magnified, through our unbelief and insubmission,
into dense clouds between us and His face ; darkening our
hearts, and bewildering our minds, with shadows of doubt
and fear !
Ere long Miss Rust arrived, and after a brief pause in
the kitchen, entered the chamber of death. She merits a de-
tailed description ; no queerer character, I think, will ap-
pear in this chronicle. She was nearly, or quite, six feet
tall; large-framed, bony, and angular. Her dress was of
dark, printed calico ; made after some quaint fashion of her
own, with reference mainly to economy of material and
freedom of motion. On her head was a calico sun-bonnet,
of like pattern with her dress, beneath which appeared the
plaited border of a muslin cap. Her large, coarse features
were strongly expressive of well-founded self-reliance and
sturdy sense ; but there was also a grim sternness about
them, for which I was Unprepared, after the bit of history
that Mrs. Warren had given me, and of which I learned the
secret only after a more extended observation. Miss Rust
was the victim of some curious nervous or paralytic affec-
SHILOH. 45
tion, that manifested itself in a slow, spasmodic jerk or
shake of the head, repeated at regular intervals. Evidently
she strove against this infirmity, which was yet of a nature
not to be overcome; and the look of decision and self-
control consequent upon that- endeavor, gave to the mo-
tion the actual force and character of a voluntary move-
ment, though it was really so irresponsible and meaningless ;
and impressed the beholder with the idea that she was en-
tering a stern and solemn protest against the depravity of
the times, or his individual vices and follies.
But Miss Rust's external singularities shrank into noth-
ingness, when once she opened her mouth. Her tongue
was of the Mrs. Partington order; apparently well hung
in the middle, with free play at both ends ; and aiming
continually at high-sounding, unfamiliar words; but sel-
dom making a wholly triumphant hit, or a totally incompre-
hensible failure. Apparently, she never either accurately
remembered, nor altogether forgot, any word once seen or
heard ; to her, similarity of sound was identical with simi-
larity of meaning, and prefixes and suffixes were supposed
to be obligingly interchangeable. The first remark which
she addressed to me well-nigh demolished, at one blow, the
superstructure of composure which I had reared on the
last half-hour's meditations.
" How d'ye do, Miss Frost ? It's a good while since
we've had any extinguished strangers in Shiloh, though
there isn't any place where they're better depreciated. Do
you mean to stay here long ? "
I bit my lip. The inclination to laugh was all the more
irresistible that it was perplexingly entangled with recol-
lections of recent solemnities, and a keen perception of the
unfitness of the time and scene for any mirthful demonstra-
tion.
" Mrs. Divine has promised to give me shelter for the
summer," I answered, as soon as I could trust my voice.
" Yes, so I've heerd. And you couldn't find any better
4:6 SHILOH.
place to take up your adobe in, Aunt Hannah is a woman
of imminent virtoos, she's made out of the salt and fat of
the land. I understand you come from the great necropo-
lis of York ? " shaking her head in a manner to convey
volumes of disapprobation of that sombre locality.
" Yes that is to say, I am from New York."
" I wonder if you ever came acrost my cousin Hiram
there Hiram Rust, his name is. He keeps an expensatory
on Derision street."
" No, I never had that honor."
" I'm sorry for it ; I should like firstrate to hear how
Hiram gits along. He's a young man of uncommon debil-
ities, and very examplary, too, leastways he used to be
when he lived to home. I hope he keeps right end upper-
most speaking figuringly, you know down in that ' sink
of moral dilution,' which is Deacon Haineses elias for
York."
" It is to be hoped he does."
" Your name's Frost, is it ? I wonder if your family
came aboriginally from Rixbury ? "
" Indeed, ma'am, I do not know."
" Well, I used to know a Frost there, and I really be-
lieve I see a likeness to him in your liniments. Poor man !
how he used to suffer with the brown-creeters ! But he's
diseased now ; he diseased six years ago."
" I beg your pardon, but what did you say he suffered
with ? "
" The brown-creeters in his throat. I remember hold-
ing his head once, for Dr. Smith to burn them out with
acrostics."
Here abused gravity gave way, and rushing to the win-
dow, I leaned far out, and tried to mask my laughter with
a cough.
" Goodness gracious ! " pursued Miss Rust, " I hope
you haven't any infection of the lungs, newmony, or
what not. But if you have, I've got a proscription that
SHILOH. 4:
Dr. Bird calls a ' perfect pacific ' for it ; I'll send it to
you. There's nothing like taking a cough by the firelock.
I've saved lots of people from digestion of the lungs with
that proscription."
I felt what horrible indecorum it was, but I continued
to shake with silent laughter until the tears came/ My
gravity would scarcely have been routed so completely,
but for the suddenness and unexpectedness of the attack
upon it. Not until the paroxysm had worn itself out,
could I venture to face Miss Lavinia's vocabulary. Then I
turned, and said, " Now, I am ready to help you, whenever
you please."
" Laws ! you don't look as if you could help a butterfly
brush his wings. But looks is deceitful ; I've seen a good
many women that looked . as if a good gusto of wind
would blow them out of consistence, who could stand
more than I could. I 'spose it's the sperit that does it.
Speritous strength goes a good way sometimes."
Miss Rust then addressed herself to her task with such
vigor and skill, that my share of the labor was next to
nothing. Meanwhile, the swift stream of her talk ran in
and out among the lights and shadows of Shiloh's social
life, bearing an odd company of dismembered and mis-
matched derivatives on its meandering flow. It suffered
no inteiTuption until seeing her about to uncover the fair,
statuesque form of the dead girl more than seemed to be
needful I seized her arm with a sudden ejaculation ; when
she dropped her napkin, and looked around startled and
scared.
" What is it ? " she faltered. " Have you seen a sperit ? "
" No ma'am. Pardon me, but is that disrobing really
necessary ? Do you think she would like it ? "
The good woman looked intensely disgusted, and her
head jerked violently. " I don't mean to dis-rub her,"
said she, shortly, " I shall wash her as carefully as if she
was a baby. And I never heard of enterring a corpse with-
48 SHILOII.
out washing it. I think the body ought to be putrified
from earthly irruption, after it's dead, just to show that
we believe Our Saviour will do as much for the soul."
I drew back, satisfied to find that there was a latent
beauty and fitness in her proceeding, mortified, too, that
I had been blind to the spiritual analogy which was so plain
to this uncouth, illiterate, absurd, old maid.
When all was done, and the fair "earthly house"
draped in white, to typify those robes of righteousness
which, I trusted, Christ would fold around the liberated
soul, I went out to a small strip of carelessly-cultivated
ground, called a garden, where I had seen, from the win-
dow, a few flowers struggling in the embrace of number-
less lusty weeds. Near by I discovered Mr. Warren,
seated on a fallen fence, with that drooping head, and
nerveless frame, so expressive of bitter, hopeless sorrow ;
so, after gathering all the white blossoms I could find, I
went up to him.
" May God who has sent this sorrow upon you, sir, send
unto you ' also, the Holy Ghost, the comforter ! ' '
" What's the use of talking to me in that way ? you
know I don't believe it," he answered, without stirring.
" I am sorry for it, sir. Those who do, never feel such
bitterness of grief as you are now indulging."
" How do you know ? " lifting his head.
Seeing that he was inclined to talk, I sat down near
him, and began tying my flowers together, as I answered ;
" I do know, sir. When my father died, he was all that
I had ; he had been my mother, and sister, and brother
for years. Yet I was helped to see that God did right-
eously in taking him \into Himself, and to endure my loss
with patience."
ME. WABBEN (angrily). He did not do right in taking
my Maggie !
I. It seems to me that even human wisdom might
teach you that yoii are possibly wrong there. Has life
SHILOH. 4:9
been so invariably pleasant to you, that you must needs
feel it to be a wrong to Maggie that she is spared the bur-
den and heat of its full day ? Have you never seen girls
who have lived only to drag on a- blighted, bruised exist-
ence, or who have gone grievously astray, or have become
neglected, ill-used, cowed, and heart-broken wives?"
He dropped his face in his hands. Perhaps the crushed
and hopeless expression of his own wife's meek face rose
befqre him. But he struggled with the feeling, whatever
it was, and overcame it.
" What you say may be true," said he, " but life is very
sweet to them all, nevertheless. No matter how bruised
and broken the heart, it continually sends forth new shoots.
No matter how dark the sky, there is still light enough for
us to behold Nature and Art, and to enjoy them. Am I
not a striking example of this fact ? Blasted and marred
from my cradle, a laughing stock to some, an eyesore to
others, a clog and a mortification to myself, I still cling
tenaciously to life; tasting lingeringly its sweet, and
ignoring its bitter, as best I may. Ah ! why was it made
so bitter, when it was forced upon me without my seeking
it ! Why was it made so sweet, since it will be taken
from me, sooner or later, without asking my consent ! "
I. The sweet and the bitter have their uses, I think.
The bitter helps us to understand what a life of endless sin
and woe would be, and leads us to avoid it. The sweet
makes us the more eager to lay hold upon that " far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory " that shall be re-
vealed.
MK. W. (looking at me searchingly). Tell me honestly,
Miss Frost, do you never have any doubts of the truth
of the things that you talk about so glibly ?
I. Yes, sir, now and then.
MR. W. (triumphantly}. Ah! I thought so. Well,
what do you do with them ?
3
50 BHILOH.
I. Sometimes, I just quietly lay them aside. And on
the morrow, when I look for them, lo ! they are gone !
MK. W. But that is a pure act of the will.
I. Well, what was a man's will given him for, if it
was not to help him to resist evil, and hold fast that which
is good ?
MK. W. But is not a man's reason that .part of him
which constitutes his superiority over the brutes ?
I. ~No more than his conscience, I think.
MK. W. Well, I hardly think his conscience would
justify him in using his will in opposition to his reason.
I. Not so fast, sir. You assume that reason and reason-
ing are synonyma. If you had heard as many polemics as
I have, you would hardly espouse that view of them.
And I hold it to be a far more reasonable act for a man to
plant himself firmly "on that faith which, in his best and
soberest moods, both his reason and his conscience have
approved, saying : " Here I stand, though the earth reel,
and the heavens fall ," than it is weakly to suffer himself
to be knocked about by every wind of doctrine, and every
wave of doubt, or to be led by the nose by every wile of
the devil.
MK. W. But how do you know that the doubt is not
the true thing ?
I. Because doubt is not the normal condition of the
mind, nor the spirit in which life's economy must be car-
ried on. If you doubt your food, you starve ; if you
doubt nature, you reap no harvests; if you doubt love,
you live and die alone. Moreover, to doubt an error is
not to gain a truth. For, when the truth is possessed,
error is known for itself, and doubt is gone. This is
the weak point in scepticism : it proves nothing, it only
denies. There is no rest an it.
MR. W. (frankly). You are right there. When once
a man begins to doubt, there is no telling where he will
stop. He doubts his friends, his neighbors, 'himself; he
SHILOH. 51
doubts motives, means, aims ; he doubts his own senses ;
he gets to doubt his own being. The ground slides
continually under his feet, like quicksands. But is it
always, possible to will doubt away ?
I. Perhaps not, sir, any more than it is possible to will
sorrow away. It is right that some doubts should be
solved. Others must be borne for a time, as sorrows must
be borne. In such cases, there is the same remedy for
doubt that there is for sorrow prayer. And though the
prayer may not at once solve the one, or remove the other,
since God, seeing not as man sees, but into the depths of
life, may discern that it is needful to discipline and to in-
struct even by these stern teachers, yet the fervent, hum-
ble prayer will sustain the heart under the sorrow, and
enable the reason to endure the doubt.
ME. "VV. (turning away with a disappointed air) . I hoped
your remedy Avould be more real and efficacious.
I. More real ! What would you have ? Is not prayer
the one Divine and spiritual instinct which distinguishes
man above the brutes ? If ever you owned an intelligent
dog or horse, there have been times when you found it diffi-
cult to deny him the possession of both reason and con-
science ; but you never, for one moment, suspected him
of praying. You knew that the idea of communion with
God, the Infinite, never entered his head. But all human
beings pray ; no race so low, so savage, so brutish, but it
makes to itself idols whereunto to pray ! Does this uni-
versal instinct of the race teach nothing ? Did you ever
know bird, or bee, or fish, or hound, or deer, to be gifted
Avith an utterly useless, unmeaning, superfluous instinct?
And is man the highest, the mos't perfect, creature of them
all the only abortive one ? Given an inherent, universal
impulse to pray ; and the necessity and the efficacy of
prayer follow as inevitable corollaries. For exercise is es-
sential to the maintenance of life. As the disused limb, the
muscles never brought into play, become rigid, useless,
52 SHILOH.
diseased ; so the soul that never lifts itself in prayer the
highest expression and manifestation of its life becomes
equally torpid, paralyzed, unsound.
There was no immediate answer. Mr. Warren's eyes
were fixed on the blue crown of a distant hill, with a
dreary, hopeless expression, unlike anything I had ever
seen in his face. Finally, he said, in a broken, disconnect-
ed, listless way,
" I almost wish I could think as you do. The most
superstitious belief would be more comfortable than this
ever-shifting doubt. But the habits of youth and middle
age become fetters to the mind and limbs of later years.
I don't know as I could shake them off, if I cared
to ; and I don't care for anything much now that
Maggie"
The sentence was left unfinished.
For grief such as Mr. Warren's, it is hard to find words
of comfort. One can point to the soothing power of time,
to be sure ; but time, without God, is more likely to harden
than to heal. I worked on in silence, therefore, until my
floral emblems were finished ; then I held them up for in-
spection.
" I have made these for Maggie, sir. I wish to put this
little cross on her bosom, and the wreath in her hand, show-
ing thereby that they who patiently bear the cross .shall
win the crown. The cross is a tiny thing, you see, not larger
than is often worn for ornament, while the wreath is mas-
sive, by which I would suggest also that rich, triumphant
saying of St. Paul's, ' I reckon that the sufferings of this
present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory
which shall be revealed in us ! ' These four or five single
G
flowers I shall scatter over her feet, to show how few and
scattered must have been the joys of earth, even if she had
lived to taste them. Have I your permission to place them
thus?"
MR. WARREN (huskily). Do what you like with her,
SHILOH. 53
now, I know you mean well. And don't think I am too
rough and crabbed and sneering, to feel your kindness to
Maggie.
I disposed the flowers around the corpse, according to
my design ; their symbolism, you will not fail to see, being
intended for the living rather than the dead ; for I knew
not if Maggie had ever borne any cross, or aspired to any
crown. For her, I had ceased to have either hope or fear ;
having left her with a prayer, in God's tender mercy, I
felt no disposition to take her thence, even in idea, that
being the only safe place in the universe for her benighted,
undeveloped soul. Mrs. Warren came in, for a moment,
and looked at my work with a face wherein the gravity
grew ever sweeter till it bordered on joy. "Aunt Vin "
bestowed on it some qualified admiration.
" It's very statistically done," she remarked, jerking her
head at it grimly, " and shows you might be a painter, if
you ambitioned it. But isn't it a leetle mite Romanesque ?
I hope you don't belong to the Pusseyites or the Jeshuites,
or any of those people with queer pigments in their brains,
who set more store by the shell of things than they do by
the kernel."
Mr. Warren came, too, after a time, bringing me a deep-
tinted, half-blown damask rose.
"Could you find a place for this ?" said he. "Maggie
liked bright colors. And I should like to have something
from her father somewhere about her."
" Certainly ; she shall hold it in her hand with the
wreath. You know, Mr. Warren, that red is the color of
Love ; so this rose may fitly image, not only your own ten-
der affection for your darling, but also that mighty love of
Christ, as shown in His precious bloodshedding for us;
without which, we should all struggle vainly under the
crosses of earth, look for no heavenly crown, and be for-
ever buried in the darkness of spiritual death."
Mr. Warren turned away, looking half displeased. I
54: SHILOH.
was well aware that this last meaning was alien to his
thought, but I was glad that he could not look at his rose,
henceforth, without being reminded of it. For, though I
expected no swift miracle of conversion to be wrought in
him, no one could tell what planting, or what watering, it
might please God to bless with slow perhaps almost im-
perceptible yet steady increase.
THE REACTION".
WENT home through the ripened glory of
the morning ; noticing with those sharpened
and concentrated senses that city-refugees some-
times bring to lovely rural pictures the vivid,
lustrous green of the turf, t;ie bright hues and
delicate odors of the flowers, the sharp, clear out-
line of verdure and rock, the soft, pure depth of
the sky, the infinite beauty and diversity of form
and color that enriched my way. For the first time in
many days, my heart was singing within me. I felt well
pleased with my night's work: out of that shadow of
death, there seemed to have been born unto me new hope
and meaning in life. I even fancied that Bona walked hand
in hand with me all the way, and that Mala had departed
for a considerable time.
Mrs. Divine met me at the door, and inquired, in her
ringing, cheery voice, " Well, how is Maggie Warren this
morning ? "
" She is dead," I answered, briefly.
Her face grew grave and sympathetic at once. But
Mrs. Prescott, busy in the kitchen, caught the words, and
delivered herself of a quick, caustic commentary,
"It's a mercy to her and the neighborhood! That
miserable Warren will have one child the less to bring up
in infidelity."
56 SHILOH.
MALA (ironically, through my lips). Thank you, madam.
Shall I convey your consolatory message to the afflicted
family ?
MBS. PEESCOTT (with heightened color}. Just as you
please. I ain't afraid to stand to it that the less family
that man has, to train up in the way they shouldn't go, the
letter.
I (in a cold, hard tone). If that rule operated universally,
is is perhaps easier for us to discern the houses which Death
would visit, than those which he would spare. Thousands
bring up their children in practical infidelity, having less
excuse than Mr. Warren has. He teaches what he believes.
They believe one thing, and teach by implication an-
other.
BON A (softly, to me). Are you "speaking the truth in
love ? "
I took no notice of her inquiry, but went up to my
room, with a mortal fear chilling my heart. Nor was it
groundless : I found waiting there, ready for my shoulders,
the same old burden which the little excitement of last
night, and the hope of doing a good deed, had enabled me
transiently to throw off. Wearily I took it up, and a great
discouragement came over me. And Mala, of course, took
delight in pushing me over the brink of the moral precipice
upon which I trembled.
" You expected a great deal from this ' doing something
for Christ,' as you so nicely phrased it, have you found
it ? " she asked.
I admitted to her and myself, that I had not.
MALA. You even fancied, this morning, that a life of
this sort of work would bring you, first healing, then hap-
piness ; do you think so still ?
I confessed that such a fancy, if I had ever had it, had
vanished utterly, leaving not so much as the shine of its
wings in the distance.
MALA. And all that very good and proper talk, where-
SHILOH. 57
with you so abundantly favored Mr. Warren, is it the
faithful expression of your feeling now ?
Moodily I acknowledged that if Mr. Warren were then
before me, the chances were that he might utter what
blasphemy or infidelity he chose, without much danger of
interruption.
MALA (triumphantly). Perhaps you will take my advice
next time, and
" Miss Frost, your breakfast is ready."
I looked up. Mrs. Divine was standing in the door, a
striking impersonation, I thought, of steady, homely, health-
ful Common Sense.
" Thank you," said I ; " but I am afraid I don't want
any, Mrs. Divine."
She looked at me narrowly, then asked, abruptly, " What
did Mrs. Warren give you for lunch last night ? "
" Indeed, I do not know. I never looked at it."
" Umph ! I thought so. I suppose the world doesn't
look very bright to you this morning ? "
" No, ma'am, I believe it does not."
" And a good reason why ! You've been up all night,
hard at work ; you've been through with the trying scenes
of a deathbed ; and you've eaten nothing to keep your
strength up. I was reading in one of your books last night,
that 'mind is superior to matter ; ' but the writer forgot to
add that mind and matter have a good deal in common.
At least, as long as mind is tied to matter, it can't do much
business without consulting its partner. And when a per-
son's tired and "hungry, or faint, his views of life ain't apt
to be bright or correct. Come down stairs, right away,
and eat a good breakfast ; and then go to bed, and get a
good sleep ; and if things don't look brighter after that,
we'll see what's to be done next. One thing you may put
down for certain, child that there's no trouble so deep
that there isn't some remedy strong enough to reach it."
I submitted to her guidance like a child. And after the
3*
58 SHILOH.
sleep had been duly sought, found, and let go again,
" things " certainly did look brighter. I wondered at my
late miserable subjugation to Mala, and called Bona to my
side.
" Tell me, if you can," I said, humbly, " why it was
that I fell so completely and helplessly into Mala's hands,
just now, when I was so fully persuaded that I had escaped
from her, for a time, and was hopefully entering upon a new
and better era of my life."
" The cause was complex," returned Bona. " In your
temporary exaltation of mind, you fancied yourself so
secure that you forgot to watch and pray, lest you enter
into temptation. Mrs. Prescott's harsh, though not alto-
gether unjust remark, jarred rudely upon your awakened
sensibilities. You were physically exhausted, and as Mrs.
Divine told you, body and mind act and react upon each
other. Finally, if you want the whole truth, you are still
thinking of, and striving for, present, rather than eternal
peace, earthly distraction more than heavenly consolation."
" Oh, Bona ! " I murmured, reproachfully
" It Is true," she answered, steadily. " I will not say
anything about the curiosity, or the sad unrest which
helped to induce you to go to the Wan-ens, perhaps hu-
man motives can never be quite pure. Your chief mistake
was that you thought to earn present peace by doing
Christ's work, much as a man means to earn his daily bread
by carting sand or laying bricks. Whereas, he who
would do our Lord faithful service, must set himself
thereto as a sculptor does to Art ; thinking of daily bread,
pleasure, fame, only as things which may come to him
through his work, but are never to be confounded with its
object. Art is dearer to him than they all ; and his work
in her service is less a labor than a love ; less a means to
an end, than a self-forgetting worship. ! "
" Was not my work at the Warrens well done, then ? "
I faltered.
SHILOH. 59
" Very well, in the maip. But that was because the
Spirit of God worked with you. To Him, therefore, be all
the praise ! "
Her words confounded me. I felt keenly their force
and directness. Yet, as I considered them- carefully, pac-
ing absently to and fro, I discerned in them quite as much
cause for hope as discouragement. For he who knows the
exact nature of his disease, has only to set about seeking
the remedy. And in this case, there was no mistaking it.
" O Christ ! " I murmured, " enter Thou into my secret
thoughts, and lead them, as only Thou canst, up their
Mount of Transfiguration ! "
When I recovered consciousness of time and place, I
found that I had been standing, nobody knows how long,
staring vacantly into my fireplace ; which is filled, accord-
ing to the quaint old fashion of the place, with the feathery
green of asparagus. Have ^ never described my room? 1
I beg its pardon ! it deserved better things of me.
It is a large, square, low-studded chamber, with a huge
beam running athwart the ceiling, calculated to inspire
implicit confidence in the building's strength. It has
white-washed walls on three sides, and on the other, a
dark wainscot of oak, in the midst of which is the queer
high mantel, and the fireplace. Its furniture is a study in
chronology. A high-post bedstead gratifies no aesthetic
need, but, with its snowy linen, homespun blankets, and
quilted and stuffed counterpane (a miracle of patience
and ingenuity), answers every demand of weariness, and
deserves respect, therefore, for fulfilling the chief end of
its being, which is more than we humans do, as a rule !
There is a stiff company of antique, straight-backed, ma-
hogany chairs, black with age, and shabbily genteel with
upholstery of threadbare hair-cloth, and rows of tarnished
brass nails, picturesque objects to look at, and with a cer-
tain dignity of immemorial descent about them; but a
plebeian Boston rocker, brand-new, furnishes more artistic
60 SHILOH.
curves for use. There is a quaint, dingy,, wizened, stilted
table, that irresistibly reminds me of a mummy. There is
a very light-colored, modern dressing-table that, not less un-
avoidably, suggests a mushroom. Over the latter, an ancient
looking-glass is suspended from the wall, at an actite angle ;
having, for its upper panel, a curious composition in color,
in the Chinese School of Art, whose intent I have failed to
discover. There is a cumbrous structure, mounted on slen-
der, carved legs, which my hostess calls a " chest of draw-
ers ; " whereof the design must have been handed down
from the days when " there were giants in the earth," the
top drawer being quite out of my reach, even though I sup-
plement my height with a chair. There is no carpet ; but
the unpainted floor is white with manifold scrubbings ; and
after some acquaintance with it, I am growing sceptical
whether carpets are, in summer time, the luxuries we are
wont to think. Mrs. Prescott the grim embodiment of
uncompromising neatness avers that they are only hiding
places for dirt, at any time.
" The dust," says she, " sinks into 'em, and slinks under
'em, to be raised and settled over again, at every sweeping,
till both the carpet and floor are nothing but nastiness.
No carpet shall ever again be nailed down, in any house of
mine; I won't have anything that can't be shaken and
aired, and the floor cleaned under it, every day, no matter
what the fashion is."
By way of outlook, my room has two small windows,
in time-browned, worm-eaten frames. The panes of glass
arc so small and so imperfect, setting the objects seen
through them at sixes and sevens, that it is plain they
must have experienced the restraint, directly or by heredi-
tary transmission, of the old, oppressive tax on glass,
which made that commodity a subject of strict economy.
All the windows of this ancient structure, by the way, ex-
cept on the front, have a curious irregularity of position,
seen from the outside ; being subject to no external rule,
SHILOH. 61
but only obedient to the hidden law of interior fitness and
convenience an arrangement which has manifest advanta-
ges. How many rooms, in modern dwellings, would be
unspeakably more enjoyable, if a certain window could be
shoved a yard to the right or left ; but the inexorable ne-
cessity of putting it on a line with some other window, ex-
ternally, was neither to be set aside nor overcome, in the
builder's conventionally moulded mind, and so there is no
spot in all their length and breadth pleasantly adapted to
piano, sofa, or bedstead. This old manse is hampered by
no such arbitrary rule ; consequently, the windows are pre-
cisely where they should be, for the highest internal beauty
and comfort; and its exterior has, withal, an expansive, .
unconventional, hearty, and habitable expression, which is
a better thing than regularity of form. When will our
domestic architects learn that beauty is far less likely to be
found in uniformity than in its opposite, symmetry and
balance, which are more essential, being easily attainable
without it ! And why must the lives we live, as well as
the houses we build, be chiefly directed to the attain-
ment of certain external effects ; to gain which, much inte-
rior beauty, fitness, and Tightness, must be sacrificed or
compromised ? But my windows are giving us a deeper
view into things social and spiritual than we had counted
upon, let us go back to their material outlook.
One is thickly shaded by the centenarian pear-tree,
aforementioned, and looks to the south, taking in its wav
the riotous garden, the farther crest of Chestnut Hill, the
white church, the grey school-house, a farm-house, painted
red, and a dark border line of forest. The other com-
mands a wide view over a varied tract of country ; the
nearest feature being a vividly green meadow, dotted with
great, gnarled, leafy apple-trees ; through which a brook
goes singing and shining, and playing "peep-oh!" with
me from among tall grasses, pointed leaves of calamus and
iris, and all the lawless and vagrant growths that huddle
62 SHILOH.
together on its "borders. This view would be one of still
life, indeed, only that afar over the meadows there is an
opening, where a brown bend of road is seen ; upon which,
at irregular intervals, a primitive wagon, attached to a
sleepy horse, guided by a sleepier driver ; or a slow-moving
cart and oxen ; or a stout countryman with a stick, driving
a pig or a flock of sheep before him ; appear suddenly from
behind a screen of verdure, glide slowly across the inter-
vening space, and vanish behind a similar screen, like fig-
ures in a dream. And these ever-recurring glimpses of hu-
man life too remote to be intrusive, yet near enough to
remind me of the innumerable and secret ties, by which
at every moment of our lives, we are bound to a common
humanity save the scene from that sad loneliness of ex-
pression, which is the inevitable peculiarity of views made
up of natural objects only. Yet it seems mournfully
enough typical, too, of the evanescence of human life,
compared with the works of Nature, hills and dales,
rocks and streams, things which change so slowly that
they seem to us unalterable and everlasting ; while man's
appearance among them is scarcely more enduring or mem-
orable than those gliding, panoramic figures in the dis-
tance !
VTI.
EXPLORATIONS KTJRAL, MORAL AND PAROCHIAL.
ITTING by my western window, after I
had written you my last letter, a fever of
exploration seized me. That point in the
northwestern landscape, where the ground
dipped into a dell or a ravine, caught my gaze
and my imagination. What sort of a place
was it likely to be? Cool and shady, doubt-
less, for I could see great balls and cones of
foliage, held aloft by sunken tree-trunks. Beautified with
the ripple and gleam of water, surely, for the brook plainly
knew the way thither, and took it, in its own delightful,
meandering fashion. I put on my hat and followed it. Leo,
whom I encountered on the way, accepted an invitation
to follow me, without the ceremony of putting on the hat !
Having reached the meadow's limit, my tinkling guide
darted under a fence, which I was forced to climb. Then,
dropping on a soft bank of moss, I found myself in one of
the loveliest, dreamiest, shadow-haunted nooks conceivable.
The brook flowed suddenly, with a low and liquid note,
into a deep, dark, clear basin, bordered, on one side, by a
moss-enamelled rock, and on the other by a steep, ferny
bank, embossed with black free-roots, all overarched by
thickly interlacing boughs of tall trees, through which
the sunshine trickled scantily, in shining, golden drops.
What a place for a troop of naiads to bathe ! I half ex-
pected to see the lovely ^Egle herself rise from the basin's
04 SHILOH.
clear depths, like Venus of old from the sea. Instead
thereof, Leo plunged in, and paddled about with a face of
serene enjoyment.
From this point, the brook's banks continually gained
in altitude, taking the form of a rough, rocky, wooded
cliff, on one side, and on the other, of a steep, but smooth
and green, hillside, shaded here and there by huge, wide-
spreading trees, among which I noticed an enormous tulip-
tree, a very Anak of its race. Between these curiously
diverse banks, the brook ran, crept, sparkled and sung
tumbled, too, once and again, but altogether as if it en-
joyed it ; for a shout of laughter accompanied its fall, and
then it went on, giggling and gurgling to itself, with occa-
sional spurts of irrepressible merriment, as if the joke were
much too good to be quickly let go and forgotten. I
crossed it many times in my progress down the glen, at-
tracted by a gay breast-knot of flowers on the hill's green
robe, a tiny fern-forest on the brook's border, a mossy, leaf-
strewn ledge, all the more fascinating because well nigh in-
accessible, or a wild vine flinging an ideal grace over the
gaunt, gray outline of some rugged rock, yet without im-
pairing any really valuable quality, as a sunny and loving
spirit may do over the hardest, homeliest duties of com-
mon life. By and by, the hill began to slope off gradually,
the cliff terminated in a sharp promontory of rock, and a
sinuous rail-fence marked the extreme limit of the glen.
Under this fence the brook shrank into the disihal shadow
of a dense forest, its song hushed, its gambols all over,
and flowed silently through a dead level of damp, black
mould, scantily coated with a pale and fungous vegetation,
and strewn with dead leaves and dry twigs, seeming, at
first, half-sulky, and altogether scared, by the sudden and
complete change of its manner of life. Bona, Mala and I
leaned on the fence, and looked after it.
" See ! it is a type of your life," exclaimed Mala, less
bitterly than her wont. " Just so, that went singing
SHELOH. 65
through flowers and sunshine, unsuspicious of change ;
just so, without volition or responsibility of its own, it was
suddenly thrust out into an atmosphere of impenetrable
gloom, and set to flow through earth dank with tears,
fruitful only in diseased and depressing imaginations, and
strewn with the dry, rustling debris of dead hopes. Ay !
look at the poor little .stream and weep, you have cause !
In its dumb, shadowed, monotonous flow, all your future
life is mirrored."
BOXA (tenderly}. Nay, where there is shadow, there is
also shelter; the roof that shuts o\it the sun may shut out
the storm as well. And notice how calm, and broad, and
sweet-browed the brook becomes, after a while ; with here
and there a speck of blue sky reflected in its. depths, like a
thought of peace. There are a few low, sweet flowers^
on its bn 1 :*, too; needing its refreshment, and growing
brighter and more fragrant for it. And beyond the wood,
no doubt, it flows out into the sunshine again.
I. If I were sure of that, Bona, the thought of that
future sunshine would help me so powerfully through the
shadow of this Present !
BOXA. Have you forgotten the " glory that shall be re-
vealed ? "
MALA. But it looks so far off when it is only the heav-
enly sunshine !
BOXA. Only? After brief weariness, only long rest !
After swiftly vanishing years of strife, only ever-flowing
peace ! After short pressure of sorrow, only eternal weight
of joy ! After hard faces of enemies and changeful ones of
friends, only the tender, winning, satisfying face of Christ !
After the rough usage of the world, only the Everlasting
arms ! After a life-time of desire, only an eternity of love !
Can any dare any, sinful mortal ask for more ?
For a moment I looked at Mala ; then she somehow
disappeared. There is this peculiarity about these strange
companions of mine, that whenever I regard Mala steadily,
66 SHILOH.
trying to see her as she is, she always dwindles, grows
vague, and vanishes ; whereas, the longer and more search-
ingly I look at Bona, the brighter and better defined she
becomes. The first is most powerful when I do not recog-
nize her for herself, when she pushes me from behind, or
allures me from before, hidden under a mask of self-respect,
custom, expediency, necessity, and I know not what beside,
"for she has more shapes than Proteus. Bona's efficiency,
on the contrary, is greatest when I seek her out, entreat her
help, and consciously put my hand in hers. If I grow care-
less and off my guard, Mala is nearly certain to be at my
elbow, ordering my goings ; but there is little drifting, or
going blindfold, under Bona's guidance, she compels me
to use my reason and my will.
I now turned to her, and exclaimed, " Oh ! Bona, if I
could always look at Nature thi'ough your eyes ? "
" Your own will serve you as well," she answered, gen-
tly, " if you have the right spirit in your heart. Nature is
like a stream ; it has different aspects for different beholders.
One sees in it little beside the reflection of his own face.
Another, looking closer, discerns the form of its waves, and
the grasses, flowers, and other minute objects that float on
its surface. Still another discovers fish playing in its
depths, and pebbles and roots at the bottom. A fourth is
ravished with its graceful curves, its sparkle and play of
light, its soft concords of color. A fifth floats into dream-
land on its liquid music. A sixth, feeling somewhat of its
sentiment as well as of its beauty, finds out subtle analogies
to human life. But the divinely inspired heart of a seventh,
while it loses none of these effects, swells with rapturous
thought of the peace that ' shall flow as a river ; ' or, like
St. John in Patmos, looking on the Nile, beholds in a vision
the River of Life, ' clear as crystal, proceeding out of the
throne of God and the Lamb.' In nature, to-day, you have
found a bit of mythology, some analogies, many artistic
effects, and a type of your own life. Suppose, now, you
peek for the Goodness of God in it."
SHILOH. 67
I looked, and- lo! the Transfigured Landscape! Every
leaf, every flower, every gray rock, every waving line, every
bright hue the brook's song the forest's shadow were
all alive and aglow with that Goodness. By it the sun-
beams shone, the breezes played, the birds twittered, the
sky hung soft-eyed over the smiling earth. David saw it
when he exclaimed " Oh ! how great is Thy goodness which
Thpu hast laid up for them that fear Thee ! " not made visi-
ble to every careless gaze, intent on outward things alone,
but laid up ; stored richly for the joy and consolation of the
searching eye and the prayerful heart. I stood, trembling
and tearful, overwhelmed with the sudden, dazzling revela-
tion.
" Just so," said Bona, softly, "just so, though in a
deeper and fuller degree, will the awakened soul, one day,
stand overjoyed and awe-struck before its sudden dis-
covery of God's wonderful goodness in the circumstances
of its earthly life. Where it saw only shadow, it shall
discern shelter; where it felt only rigour and hindrance,
it shall discover the Rock of Defence ; and sorrow, casting
off her mask and her mufflings, shall stand forth as the
fulness and the graciousness of Redeeming Love ! "
A deep sigh here broke upon my ear. Leo, faithful to
his notions of duty, would not leave me ; but it was plain
he thought I took a tiresome time for meditation. He had
dropped despondently on the grass, near by, and was look-
ing at me with uplifted head and wistful eyes.
" Thou art right ! " said I, gravely apostrophizing him.
" No need, either in thought or act, to go fai'ther and fare
worse ! It is the bane of moralists and philosophers that
they never know where to stop. We are wiser, Leo, we
will go home ! "
No question but that he understood ! At the first
words, he pricked up his ears, and looked at me earnestly,
inclining his head to one side. At the last, he sprang up,
wagging his tail, gave a bark of joyous acquiescence, and
bounded forward.
68 SHILOH.
He guided me home by a shorter route. It led through
a shady, turfy lane, traversed by deep cart ruts, and a sun-
ny bit of road, bordered by that queer tangle of creeping,
climbing, prickly, vagabond vegetation, which always ac-
cumulates by roadside stone-walls, in the country ; sowing
its own seed, and reaping* its own harvest, with some little
help, in the latter task, from stray cattle and loitering
school-children. I soon came upon the" Divines' wood-pile,
a domestic institution which, in Shiloh, has the habit of
establishing itself by the roadside, in convenient proximity
to the house gate, by way of saving the enclosed land, and
allowing the wood-chopper to keep au courant des public
affairs. There I found Mrs.' Divine's silver-haired bachelor
brother, who is so universally addressd and spoken of as
" Uncle True," that it seems like unnecessary particularity
to mention that he has a claim, by baptism and birthright,
to be called Truman Hart. He was sitting in an ancient-
looking arm-chair, chopping wood ; with a barrier of logs
before him, and a plentiful sprinkling of chips all around.
A huge mass of rock jutted up near him, in the top of
which was a deep depression, or cavity, half full of water.
I looked at it curiously, and inquired if it was an artificial
or natural basin ?
" I guess it's nateral," replied Uncle True, laying down
his axe, and wiping his brow. " It's been there ever since
I was born ; an'. I've heerd tell that the first Hart settled
on this place on account on't ; he saw a fairy pictur, or
suthin' or other, at the bottom, when he first looked into't,
that took his fancy. Sartain, it couldn't 'ave ben his own
face, for the Hart breed never was a harnsome un ! An'
people du say, when that holler gits dry (which it never
does except in seasons of uncommon drouth), that the
Haits can look out for bad luck. An' though I don't
b'lieve much in them sort o' sayins, there does seem to be a
leetle mite o' truth in that un. Leastways, I've often no-
ticed that things are apt to come cross-grained when that
SHILOH. CO
holler's dry. To be sure, they do other times, too ; so I
ain't quite clear Avhether there's anything in't, or not. It's
pooty much like an ox-yoke, I guess ; what'll fit into one
bow '11 fit abeout as well into t'other."
Amused by the quaint speech and homely simile, I sat
down on the rock, the more comfortably to pursue the con-
versation.
" The place seems to be amply supplied with water,
without the help of the hollow," I remarked, prompted by
the sight of the aforementioned well sweeps, rising into
view, one on either side of the house, and looking much,
like an enormous pair of fishing-poles. " May I ask how it
happens that you have two wells, in such near proximity ? "
" Ask all the questions you like," returned Uncle True,
benignly ; " they're the short road to larnin', and save makin'
mistakes. As for the wells, the one behind the house was
dug first, and the water turned out to be so hard and
brackish that they concluded they'd try 'tother side. An'
that's the best water in Shiloh cool as if it had jest come
out of an iceberg, an' soft an' sweet as if it had been stirred
up with a rosebud jest afore it started."
" That seems strange," observed I, " inasmuch as there
is only the length of the house between them."
" Sweet an' bitter waters are nigher together than that,
sometimes," said Uncle True, sententiously. " I've known
'em both to come out o' the same spot."
It was plain that his mind had wandered from wells in
fact to wells in metaphor.
" Besides," he continued, after a pause, " though, as you
say, there's nothin' but the old house 'twixt 'em, yet that
may stand for this world an' all its consarns. An' jest as
the old house ain't much compared with this whole hillside
an' valley, as fur as you can see, so life isn't much, nuther,
when you look at the eternity afore it an' the eternity arter
it. But there's jest that, an 'nothin' else, 'twixt the bit-
ter waters of earth that we all begin to drink as soon as
70 SHILOH.
born, an' the river o' life in heaven. "Wall, then, there's
another way o' taldn' it. The brackish well, you see, is on
the kitchen side o' the house, where all the work an' worry
goes on ; an' I suspect that people who dig all their wells
amongst the toils an' cares, an' hurry an' skurry, o' this
world, thinkin' o' nothiii' but how to make money or save
it, needn't wonder if they don't git much out on 'em but
bitterness. Whereas, them who dig towards the garden^
that is, as I take it, towards Christ an' His Church ( ' A
garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse,' says Solomon V
song), them who dig thar, will find livin' waters, sweet to
the tongue, an' satisfyin' to the soul. You see, Miss Frost,
them wells are among my preachers. But, bless me ! we
mustn't be preachiu', nor listenin' to preachin', all the
while ! "
And Uncle True caught up his axe and laid aboxit him
energetically, to make up for lost time. I watched the
slow, stiff" swing of the axe, indicating somewhat of rusti-
ness and infirmity in the joints and muscles that wielded it ;
then, my attention became fastened on the chair wherein
the old man sat.
" Your chair has a most suggestive look," I said, at
length ; " it seems unctuous with long absorption of life's fa-
miliar knowledge and homely interests. Has it a history ? "
" It's history and mine's pooty much the same," replied
he, laying his hand on its arm with a certain fondness.
" Me and my old chair's kept company for nigh onto fifty
year, and I guess nothin' but Death will part iis now. In-
deed, I've some thoughts of askin' to be buried sittin' in
it ; I've read somewhere that old Ben Johnson (he's a
poet that used to be read, when I was young, more'n he is
now), was buried standin' straight up in in wall, you
know where I mean, in that fine church in England where
they bury their great folks."
" Yes ; in "Westminster Abbey," said I. " But it is
painful to think of a man on his feet so long ; and, though
SHILOII. 71
sitting may be an easier posture, I advise you not to make
the request. The thought of your sitting upright till the
end of time, could scarcely be otherwise than wearisome to
your friends. Moreover, it seems fitting that a man should
lie down in his grave as he does in his bed, resigning him-
self into God's hands, and trusting to Him to take care of
his awakening."
" So it does," said Uncle True, heartily ; " I declare, I
never thought o' that ! Wall, anyhow, me an' my old
chair '11 jog on together, as fur as the grave. To be sure,
it's a good deal rusty an' creaky (like myself), an' its ben
mended tAvo or three times (which I hain't, as I know on),
but I guess it'll last my time. I hope so ; I shouldn't like
to try a new un, this has been legs an' seat, an' carriage
an' travel, an' tavern- for me, so long ! "
" Why ! do you never go without it ? " I asked, in sur-
prise.
" No more'n a snail goes without his shell. You see,
marm, when I was a young feller, about sixteen year old,
I was flung out of a wagon, an' lamed for life. Wall, first
I -tried crutches; but I couldn't sit on 'em when I got
tired, an' that w r as pooty often. Then, I took to shovin'
this old chair about ('twas a new un, then !), an' that
suited 'xactly. I could go as fur as I liked, an' sit down
jest where an' when I liked. Besides, it's got a drawer
here, under the seat, you see, where I keep the things I
want to use commonly." And Uncle True opened it, and
displayed its contents. " Here's hammer an' nails, an' gim-
let and screws; them's for tinkerin' round the place:
wherever I see a board off, or a hinge loose, or anything
out o' kilter, I fix it. Here's an awl an' waxed ends, so
that I can mend old harness, an' boots an' shoes. Here's a
needle an' thread ; its easier to sew on my buttons or mend
a tear, sometimes, than 'tis to travel deal- into the house, to
get it done. Here's a trowel to dig up Aveeds with ; by
the way, I make out to do most o' the garden Avork.
V2 SIIILOH.
Here's some old linen, an' salve, for doin' up cuts and
bruises ; I git a chance to use them, on myself or some-
body else, abeout every week. An' here's the last news-
paper, to read in the shade when I get tired o' choppin'.
An' now," shutting up the drawer, " I'm agoin' to cut
up that log, over yonder, an' you can see how I manage."
So saying, Uncle True stuck his axe through some
leather straps at the side of his chair, raised himself slowly,
by a firm grasp of its arms, and turned about, shifting
hands, as he did so, from one side to the other. Then he
lifted it by the arms, set it forward a step, dragged one
foot after the other slowly up to it, set it forward again,
and so proceeded until he reached the point indicated ;
when he twisted himself into it, resumed his axe, and set
to work.
I looked on with interest ; and something like pity must
have shown itself in my face, also, for the old man, after
looking at me keenly, once or twice, said quietly, "It's a
dull sort of a life to lead, may be you think; but it isn't
quite a useless one, you see. And I've grown so wonted
to it, that I guess I shouldn't care to have it any different,
now, if I could."
I recalled Mr. Warren's emphatic assertion, " Life is
sweet to them all," and felt its truth. Yet, what a dissim-
ilarity in the two men ! Uncle True's placid, sensible face,
was full of the glow of a kindly and contented spirit, shin-
ing through the dusk and rigor of its ch-cumstances like
sunbeams struggling through a dusty, discolored window-
pane. The little light in Mr. Warren's face resembled
rather the chill reflection of sunbeams from ice ; which
freezes all the harder to-day because it thawed a little yes-
day.
Entering the front gate, I discovered Mrs. Prescott, sit-
-ting in a low, lilac^shaded doorway, opening directly into
the parlor, or, as Mrs. Divine oddly enough calls it, the
" out-room. " It is a large, low-studded room, covered
SHILOH. 73
with a carpet of domestic manufacture, and filled with an
odd mixture of antique and modern furniture ; the stiff
and angular arrangement of which, shutting out every ge-
nial and hospitable grace, as well as the exquisite neatness
in which it is kept, being, evidently, a work after Mrs.
Prescott's own heart. Surmising that this stronghold of
the family dignity had been opened in my honor, and con-
scious, withal, that I owed the lady some civility, in atone-
ment 'for my rude speech of the moraiing, I went to her at
once.
" Mrs. Prescott, is there any rector to the little church
on the hill yonder?"
She looked up with the first gleam of real interest that
I had seen on her chronically dissatisfied face.
" No, there ain't any now," answered she, " but I hope
there will be before .long. There's a minister coming to
preach here next Sunday, and if he gets encouragement
enough, he'll stay."
" Then the parish has not given him a call ! " said I,
with a little natural surprise at this way of doing things.
" A call ! Land's sakes, no, I wish they had ! But
there ain't life enough in them for that. He'll get no call,
unless it's from the Ladies' Sewing Society ; or, I might as
well say, right out, from me and Esther Volger, for we have
to drive 'em up to do all that is done. We went to the
Bishop, and got him to promise us that he would send this
man here ; and we obligated ourselves to see that he got
enough to support him, somehow. Of course, when the
men find out that a minister's really coming, they'll get
together and auctioneer off the pews ; and then the ladies,
by dint of sewing societies, and tea-parties, and fairs, must
make up the rest."
" Has the parish always been so feeble, or so torpid ? "
I inquired.
" Obi ! dear, no ; once it was strong enough. You see,
it was a split-off from the old church (that's up street, five
4
74: SHLLOH.
miles away) ; and it took some of the best and most .influ-
ential men of that parish, father among the Test. But
most of them died years ago, and their sons didn't fill
their places (seems to me none of them do, now-a-days !) ;
or their property was divided and sold, and the new
owners didn't care for the church. Then father met with
heavy losses, and had to sell out his old, fine place upon
the Hill (this is mother's property) ; and so the parish
began to run down, and it's kept going down hill ever
since, till there isn't a man left in it worth his salt. To
be sure father '11 do all he can, but he's got to be old,
you see, and has pretty much done with active life, in the
world and in the Church. And if it wasn't for the women,
the parish would be dead as a door-nail, in no time ! "
Which it never would be, I thought, as long as Mrs.
Prescott remained to galvanize it into any spasmodic, inter-
mittent life, with her energy and acidity. And I found,
thereafter, that she was truly the mainspring of the parish,
without which it must have gone to irremediable ruin.
Not that she was a popular or discreet leader, for her sharp
philippics and stinging comments, while they penetrated
some obtuse consciences, and stirred their owners up to
sluggish good works, mortally offended others, and drove
them into greater apathy or dogged opposition. Neverthe-
less, she fought on, exhibiting genuine courage, persever-
ance, and self-sacrifice, and achieving something for Christ
and His Church, which is put down to her credit, doubtless,
against the day when the books are opened.
"And the clergyman that is coming next Sunday, who
is he ? " inquired I.
" Oh ! he's a Mr. Taylor, just ordained, I believe,
though he's not a young man ; he has a wife and family.
He seems like a downright, earnest, zealous, wide-awake sort
of a man, and I hope he'll shake up this valley of dry bones
a little. By the way, Miss Frost, won't you join our Sew-
ing Society ? We need all the help we can get."
SHILOH. 75
MALA. Sewing Society ! Nursery of gossip, and hot-
bed of malice and all uncharitableness ! In the name of
Common Sense, tell her you must respectfully decline.
BOXA. You need not gossip, nor bear malice, nor deal
uncharitably. Take care that your own motives are right,
and do not judge your neighbors. If no good work is to
be commenced, or carried on, until the workers and the
system are cleansed from all evil, where, on this earth,
are you to find a place to begin ?
MALA. To be sure, it might afford you amusement to go.
It must be a rare place to study character.
BOXA. Nay, if you are going for that object mainly, you
had better decline.
I (peevishly). Was ever poor mortal bothered with such
a pair of contradictory advisers ! You change your places
so quickly that I do not know one from the other, nor
which to follow. (Then, aloud, to Mrs. Prescotf). I cannot
promise to join, until I am more certain that I can do good
by becoming a member. But I will go once, if you wish,
-and see what it is like.
" "Well, it meets to-morrow," she answered. " It don't
generally meet on Saturday, but it will this week, on ac-
count of Mr. Taylor's coming. We must get together,
and find out what sort of a support we can promise him.
And I shall certainly call you, to go along."
That evening, Leo once more accompanied me to the
dwelling of the Warrens, and waited patiently at the gate
while I made a brief visit within. The white, waxen maid-
en still slept her untroubled sleep, in the room where Death
had given her the kiss of peace ; the father sat apart, silent,
morose, wrapped in grief and in gloom ; the mother received
me with sad, gentle composure. She told me that the funeral
was fixed for the coming Sunday, at the usual hour of after-
noon service ; an appointment that seemed strange to me,
though I heard it without comment, seeing, from her
76 SHILOH.
manner, that it must be in accordance with the Shiloh
practice.
Then, through moonlight and shadow shadows our-
selves ! Leo and I went silently home.
And the morning and the evening were the second
day!
VTII.
THE SEWING SOCIETY.
N BOUT one o'clock on the following day,
Mrs. Prescott sent a shrill call up the stair-
case to know if I was " ready to go to So-
ciety ? " I had not expected so early a sum-
mons, but I made quick work with my toilet,
and soon joined her and Alice at the gate.
The walk was a pleasant one ; over a wind-
ing, hilly, alternately shady and sunny road,
bordered by a pleasant succession of fields and mead-
ows and woodland, with here and there a comfortable
farm-house, standing sufficiently aloof to preserve its own
individual life intact, yet affording its neighbors glimpses
of a blue column of smoke, by day, and a red window-
gleam by night, as an assurance of available help and com-
panionship, at need.
Mrs. Prescott enlivened the way with some account of
the people I was about to meet.
" There's my second cousin, Esther Volger Essie, most
folks call her, but I don't believe in turning the^ good old
Bible names into wishy-washy nicknames I'd rather have
cream than skim-milk, any day. Well, Esther is a person
of some consequence in Shiloh ; she is the only daughter
of the richest man in the place, and she has been away to a
city boarding-school for two or three years, and learned te
play the piano, and got varnished up generally ; though if
hasn't spoilt her a bit I'll say that for her. On the con-
trary, she's got some good, besides the varnishing ; for she
78 SHILOH.
went to a Church school, and learned more about Church
ways, and got more interested in Church work, than she
would ever have done if she had stayed at home ; for her
father don't care any more about any Church than he does
about the man in the moon. But he gives Esther pretty
liberally of pocket-money, and as she's young and spry,
and hasn't much to do, except to mitten young fellows who
hang round her because she's an heiress, I manage to get
more money and more work out of her than anybody else.
Then, there's Mrs. Seber (it's at her house that the Society
meets to-day) ; she's a woman who had a good deal rather
there wouldn't be any minister here in Shiloh, because she
thinks it's smarter to go up town to church. Still, she has-
n't got the face to turn her back on us, when we do have
service ; but she means to be top of the heap, to pay her for
her condescension. She always expects to be made presi-
dent of Society, though she hasn't any idea of doing a pres-
ident's work. But there's one comfort about that, when
she's president, I can have my way pretty much ; all she
wants is the honor ; she is glad enough to get rid of the
labor. But Mrs. Burcham is a bird of a different feather.
Whether she's in office, or out, she makes it her business to
fight what anybody else proposes. If a measure is tried to-
day, she'll fight it tooth and nail ; if you try the very oppo-
site to-morrow, she is just as ready to fight that. I always
know where to find her, on the contrary side ! Then,
there's Mrs. Shemnar ; she happened to be made without
any mind of her own, so she helps herself to the one that
is handiest, whenever there's a vote to be taken. If I could
be at her elbow all the time, she would do just as I said ;
if Mrs. Burcham happens to be nearest, she'll follow her
lead just as quick. But I believe I'm more troubled, just
now, about Mrs. Danforth than anybody else." And Mrs.
Prescott stopped to take breath.
" Who is Mrs. Danforth ? " I asked.
" Mrs. Danforth is a New Yorker, like yourself. She
SHILOH. 79
has taken a house down on Hope Plain, for the summer, on
account of two pale, peaking, spindling children she's got,
that the doctor told her must be brought away from the
city, or they would die. I called on her the other day be-
fore she had got fairly settled, I was so anxious to see if
the Church was like to get any good out of her. And
well, she's a curious one, Miss Frost. Not much after your
sort, though I used to think all city folks must be pretty
much alike."
" What sort is hers, then ? "
" That's just what I can't say ; she puzzles me more than
common. When I called, she came sweeping into the room,
with a silk dress and a long train, and the grandest kind
of an air, so I expected to be snufied out like a candle
in no time ; but, instead of that, she sat right down and
talked to me in the easiest and chattiest kind of a way,
and told me all about her children, and her family, away
back to the Mayflower times, and what she had done,
and what she had meant to do, and what grand people
she knew, and I don't know what all, my head fairly
swam before I got away from her. As she talked, she
made gestures in the most wonderful way I never saw
anything like it in my life ! and then her hands were
loaded with diamond rings ; she had two or three on a
finger, and how they did twinkle and glitter"! But yet,
somehow, her diamonds seemed to be a part of her, I
couldn't think of her Y ithout them, now, and I should
think she would have to sleep in them, for fear she would-
n't know herself when she wakes up. Well, she treated me
handsomely enough, plain as I am ; but I concluded, after
I had watched her awhile, that she thought she was made
of a very superior sort of clay, indeed ; and when she was
finished, there wasn't any left ; and so the little differences
in other people's earth weren't worth her minding. But I
thought, Miss Frost, that in spite of her diamonds, and her
grand air, and her good blood, she wasn't quite a lady."
80 SHILCII.
" Indeed," said I, " what was lacking ? "
" Well, in the first place, she didn't look tidy, to be
sure, she was in the midst of setting to rights. Then, she
did boast ; though she covered it up as nicely as ever you
saw it done. And once she said, ' By George.' "
I had had some little idea of making common cause
with my unknown city sister, and defending her against
Mfs. Prescott's charge ; but the " By George " shut my
mouth. I think a lady cannot be too careful in her expres-
sions ; too steady in her resistance to that mighty army of
slang words and phrases which is invading our literature,
our parlors, lyceums, courts, even our pulpits.
Mrs. Prescott continued. "Anyhow, she's a Church-
woman, and used to Church work : she said she had been
President of ' The Friend in Need,' arid Vicc-President of
' The Wayside Sower,' and First Directress of something
else ; to hear her tell the story, you'd say there wasn't any-
thing she hadn't been, and done. But one thing I saw
plain enough, she isn't going to work after anybody's or-
dering but her own. She'll work like a horse, I should
say, if you'll give her the lead ; but she hasn't much gift
for following on. I suspect the best thing we can do, con-
sidering all things, is to make her president of our Society
right off. But then there'll be trouble with Mrs. Seber. I
laid awake' all night thinking about it."
And Mrs. Prescott went on thinking about it, to such
an absorbing extent that she said no more till we reached
Mrs. Seber's gate, not the front one, which seemed not to
have been opened since the house was built, but a side
gate, which, being fettered by a chain, with a heavy weight
of old iron attached, did not admit us with very gratify-
ing alacrity.
It is the Shiloh habit to enter your neighbor's dwell-
ing by its heart, namely, the kitchen, a practice which
must have originated in the kindest consideration for visit'
ors ; since to be first introduced into such stiff, sour, se^
SHILOH. 81
vere looking parlors as are the rule here, would inevitably
freeze the friendliest heart, and depress the most vivacious
temperament. Whereas, the kitchen, in its afternoon pre-
sentment, is usually an airy, tidy, and genial apartment ;
full of homely, but cheerful, tokens of domestic thrift and
comfort ; and rich as a human heart in long experience of
life's familiar cares, labors, and interests. Through Mrs.
Seber's kitchen, therefore, Mrs. Prescott led the way to a
small bedroom at its farther end ; where a puffy feather-bed
was strewn with an assemblage of bonnets and wrappings
that would have served for an illustration of defunct fash-
ions. Among them a jaunty hat, with a scarlet feather
(a very tulip among sage plants) caught my companion's
eye, and pointing to it, she said, briefly, " Esther Volger."
Thence, she conducted me to the "keeping room," already
tolerably well filled with sober matrons and comely maid-
ens ; all sitting stiffly upright, with that uncomfortable air
of being arrayed in company attire and manners, which is
apt to make the first half-hour of a rural gathering a thing
to be dreaded. From an open door into the parlor beyond,
came a sound q laughter and cheery voices, that indicated
the presence of a more enlivening spirit. Mrs. Prescott
made a brief pause on the threshold, nodded toward me,
and said, " Miss Frost, ladies."
A stout, rosy-faced dame arose and bestirred herself to
find me a chair, by which I identified her as the mistress of
the mansion. Having put me in it, she hesitated, as if
conscious that something further ought to be done, or said,
in rny behalf, but not quite certain what ; and was, doubt-
less, much relieved when the sudden appearance of a young
lady in the door, close to which she had placed me, saved
her from the necessity. The new-comer paused, with a little
start, in her swift career, at sight of a stranger in her path ;
then she held out her hand in the frankest, simplest way
" Miss Frost, I presume, I am glad to meet you. How
do you do ? I am Essie Volger."
4"
82 SHILOH.
I did not need the explanation. The rich farmer's
daughter, who had been polished, but not spoiled, by ed-
ucational advantages, was easy recognizable. Miss Essie's
manner had not lost any fresh, natural charm by being sub-
jected to boai'ding-school revision ; but it had gained some-
thing, doubtless, in ease and courtesy. There was an air
of style, about her dress, too, as became the heiress, yet
nothing showy or vulgar. Without being beautiful, " her
face was extremely pleasing; the eyes were dark blue,
and met mine frankly, the nose piquant, the complexion
a clear shade of tan, the cheeks blooming. A frank, bright,
brisk, fun-loving New England maiden was Miss Essie,
with but little imagination, but much good sense and good
humor ; whose sphere was, even now, more in the Actual
than the Ideal ; and who would, in due course of time,
tone down into the most domestic, practical, and devoted
of wives.
I took the hand with real pleasure. " Thank you, Miss
Volger. Introductions are such stupid things. I am glad
you did not wait for one."
" So they are ! " she answered. " They t^ll you nothing
that you want to -know. I do not care a rush whether my
vis-a-vis at a dinner party is called Brown or Green, so
what is the use of telling me ? If we were introduced
something in this wise, ' Mr. Brown, who has been trav-
elling in China for a year, and is about to open a tea-store
in Blankville ; and Miss Volger, just from boarding-school,
with a ridiculous smattering of ologies, and a solid accum-
ulation of long repressed fun,' we should know where we
stand. But if we have to pick up these items by chance,
why not leave us to slide into acquaintance in the same
way, when we like ; and not bring us face to face to dis-
charge stiff commonplaces at each othef, when nothing
else is possible ? Names furnish no ground of meeting, ex-
cept for people who have genealogical tastes. But I
thought I heard Cousin Priscilla's voice in here ; did she
not come with you ? "
SHILOH. 83
I looked arotmd ; Mrs. Prescott had disappeared.
" She went into the bedroom with Mrs. Seber," said a
lady near us.
" Oh ! " exclaimed Miss Essie, with a queer, dry intona-
tion. And she went after them.
In my vicinity, there was a dead silence. In other
parts of the room, conversation went on in most subdued
tones. Obviously, these good people were very much
afraid of me. By way of offset, I was getting to be
afraid of them. The spectacle of a roomful of strange,
stiff people, awfully afraid of doing something wrong, and
consequently doing nothing but send surreptitious glances
around them, is always discomposing to me. In sheer des-
peration, I turned to my next neighbor and said, " What
a very lovely view we have from this window ! "
" Yes, marm."
I tried again. " That is a pretty little lake down there ;
has it a name ? "
"Marm!"
" Perhaps she means the pond," faintly suggested the
next in the row. .
" Oh ! I don't know, marm," said the first.
I went on, scarcely knowing what I was saying, but de-
termined to say something. "It is so pretty in itself, it
deserves a pretty name. See how the sunshine glints
across it ! I wonder if Longfellow could tell us the Indian
for ' Sparkling Water.' "
Profound and awful silence for some moments. Then a
stout, cheerful looking dame over the way came to the res-
cue. " We call it Rustic's Pond, around here that's the
man's name who owns it. He lives right down to the foot
of the hill, two hundred rod or so, in that white house with
a piazzy in front, and green blinds, and a red barn, with a
vane, with a horse on top, you must have took notice of
it, if you've ever ben that way. His wife's a kind of cou-
sin o' mine Marietty Hine, her name was afore she was
84 SHILOII.
married, mine was Lucindy Hine: we come from the
Hines of Winteford, which was a wonderful spreadin' fam-
ily ; my grandfather had nineteen children, all by one
wife, and most on 'em lived to marry and have children of
their own, not quite so many as he had, but Peter (that's
the oldest un) had eleven right smart children, as ever you
see, and one fool, who wasn't born so (I shouldn't want
you to believe that), but was made so by the scarlet fever,
as often makes children fools, or lame, or somethin' aruther ;
it made one of my sisters deaf, and I've heerd tell "
There seems to be no good reason why this stream of
recollections, continually fed by fresh tributaries, should
not have flowed on till now, if it had met with no interrup-
tion. Indeed, I had a fantastic, oppressive vision of the
spell-bound auditory sitting there till -doomsday, and the
archangel's trump breaking in upon some ludicrously petty
detail with tragic, untimely, irreconcilable awfulness ; upon
whose terrible and grotesque grouping, my imagination
would linger, to the poignant distress of my conscience.
It was a relief, therefore, to see the gaunt form of Miss La-
vinia Rust at the door, and to be hailed by her with the
cordiality due to old acquaintanceship, albeit, a little tem-
pered by that grim shake of the head.
" Why, bless me ! if here ain't Miss Frost ! I didn't
participate seeing you here, though it's strange I didn't,
too, you have such a dereliction for good works. Have
you seen any of the Warrens to-day ? "
" Yes, Miss Rust, I went down this morning and re-
newed the flowers around Maggie. Mrs. Warren was her
usual calm self. Sam is much better."
" I'm desperate glad to hear it. But, Miss Frost, did
you ever see a woman with such exposure as Mrs. Warren
has got ? I expected yesterday morning, to see her break
down all at once, and have a historical turn, but she kept
around like a marble statute. Such women ain't as num-
berous as grass-seed, I can tell you. Why, only yesterday
SHILOH. 85
afternoon they sent for me into one of the neighbors, her
little boy had cut his foot, and before I could stop the
confusion of blood she'd gone into a dead faint, and I
didn't know which to take hold of first. I never was in
such a digamma before."
" Aunt Vin," here interposed the loquacious dame oppo-
site, " have 'you found out why Tom Sharp and his wife
have separated ? "
" Yes'm," responded Miss Rust, promptly, " on account
of compatibility of temper."
" Oh ! I didn't know but 'twas something worse," re-
turned the other, in perfect good faith.
" You'd think that was bad enough, I guess," said
Aunt Vin, " if you had any idea what sort of man Sharp
is ! He comes of a distempered family. His brother was
tried for murder once, and only let off, Lawyer Pound says,
because there was nothing to discriminate him, but sub-
stantial evidence. But there's plenty of people who think
he ought to have been hung, to this day."
Mrs. Prescott now entered. Mrs. Seber and Essie Vol-
ger followed her, the former looking annoyed, the latter
with a quizzical expression and dancing eyes. Essie came
directly to my corner, found a chair, and compelled the
whole row of wall- flowers to move and make room for her,
next to me. Then she whispered, confidentially, " Such a
time as we've had with Mrs. Seber ! I doubt if Mrs. Dan-
forth herself has less taste for playing second fiddle. But
she has consented to do it once, though you see her mouth
has a twist in it ; as if, after making up her mind to dine
off turkey and truffles, she had been forced to take up with
boiled pork and cabbage."
I looked at the lady in question, and could not suppress
a smile at the appositeness of the simile. Miss Essie con-
tinued, " I suppose you like keeping accounts, I am glad
somebody has that useful penchant. I would rather hoe
corn and potatoes."
86 SHILOH.
I looked at her in infinite amazement at the apparent
irrelevancy of the remark ; seeing which, she appeared
nearly as much surprised as myself.
" I took it for granted," she said, apologetically, " that
you were in all Cousin Priscilla's secrets. Well, no matter,
she will open her budget pretty soon, and then you will un-
derstand. We are only waiting for umphl ' Speak of
an angel and you see his wings ! ' there she is now Mrs.
Danforth."
Looking up, I beheld a new-comer in the doorway, a
striking figure of a woman, just at the height of her richest
maturity, and fashioned upon a most spacious and luxuriant
plan of physical development. The haughty air, the gra-
cious manner, the sweeping silken robe (no longer untidy),
the diamonds, the gestures all the details of Mrs. Pres-
cott's recent sketch were there ; and I mentally compli-
mented that lady's skill in portraiture, while she received
and introduced the original. In two minutes, Mrs. Dan-
forth had glided easily into conversation with those nearest
her ; in four, she was relating some incident of her life with
a varied modulation, an illustrative play of feature, and a
rich and happy exuberance of gesticulation, that would have
made her fortune on the stage ; in six, everybody was
listening to her, half in wonder, half in admiration. As her
hands moved, her diamonds flashed and scintillated ; and,
after a moment or two, as Mrs. Prescott had said, it became
impossible to conceive of her without them ; so readily did
they amalgamate themselves with one's idea of her charac-
ter ; so subtile was their correspondence with some luxuri-
ant inward growth of pride and pomp; so perfectly did
they assimilate their richness to the brilliancy and showi-
ness of her person and manner. There was a charm, almost
amounting to fascination, about her conversation ; and yet
something strongly repcllant, at least to me, in her person-
ality. Watching her closely, I was nearly as much puzzled
where to place her as Mrs. Prescott had been. That lady's
SHILOH. t 87
simile of the " superior clay " helped me a little, at last. I
decided that Nature had moulded Mrs. Danforth of the
coarsest earth rather than the most delicate; but circum-
stances had placed her in a high position, and given her a
large experience of men and manners, and so the rude
material had been painted, and gilded, and varnished, and
made to show, as nearly as possible, like Sevres porcelain.
But nothing could altogether conceal it. Notwithstanding
her fluent, often witty, speech, her polished manners, her
elegant dress, her haughty carriage, there was some in-
scrutable hint about her of a latent coarseness of nature,
upon which a vast deal of refinement had been lavished,
without being able to eradicate it.
On the whole, she impressed me much as a washer-
woman, masquerading as a queen, might have done, only in
a far less marked and offensive degree. I have often seen
German and Spanish women of identical characteristics,
rarely an American. Yet I am told that no foreign element
tinctures the ebb and flow in her veins. It must be one of
those curious cases of intermittent hereditary transmission,
which now and then startle families with what appears to
be the introduction of a new type, but is only the restora-
tion of an ancient one. Probably the blood of some old
time German actress, or Spanish cantatrice, after running
underground, as it wre, for two or three centuries, flashes
up to light again in this showy, fluent, haughty New
Yorker, of our day.
Her treatment of others was an ingenious compound of
easy familiai-ity and condescension, the latter being rather
a subtle, elusive flavor than a manifest ingredient: Nor
did this manner alter in the least for any difference of pei'-
sons. Obviously, Mrs. Danforth was too much engrossed
with her own huge egotism, to trouble herself to discrimi-
nate between the egotisms of others.
Aunt Vin eyed her curiously and silently for a considera-
ble time, then, willing to be agreeable, she addressed her,
88 SHILOH.
" Was there much predisposition in the city when you
left, ma'am ? "
" To what', madam ?" inquired Mrs. Danforth, after an
unavailing attempt to catch the slippery purport of the
question.
" Why, I mean small-pox, and typus fever, and dipthery,
and diaeresis, and cholery infanticide, and all those refec-
tious and benignant deceases that carry off you city-folks
to Haids before your time."
Mrs. Danforth's eyes opened a trifle wider, and she gave
Miss Lavinia a keen look, as if to discover what manner of
person this might be ; then she answered, courteously
enough,
" I left before the sickly season commenced. The doc-
tor advised me to give my children the benefit of a long
summer in the country ; they have always been delicate."
" Do tell ! " exclaimed Aunt Yin, with great interest,
" I must come and see them, poor little dears ! I shouldn't
wonder if 'twas worms that ailed them ; and if there's any-
thing that I'm 'Ofate' on (as the French say), it's chil-
dren's complaints, ma'am. I'm particularly innoxious to
worms. First, I give them a mild purgatory to eradicate
the bowels ; and then a good, strong conic that old Dr.
Nichols told me of. If you'll follow my advice, ma'am, I'll
promise to make Tritons of your children, in a foi'tnight."
Mrs. Danforth listened to this alarming proposition with
a command of countenance that did her infinite credit.
" Thank you," she said, with only the faintest suspicion of
irony in her tone, " I shall be quite satisfied with some-
thing less than that. If you can make strong, hearty chil-
dren of them, you will place me under unspeakable obliga-
tion to you. And I shall be very glad to have your ad-
vice."
Mrs. Prescott now cleared her throat with an emphatic
" Ahem ! " that meant business.
IX.
IN OFFICE.
ADIES," said Mrs. Prescott, " you all know
what has brought us together. There is
a chance of our having a minister once
more ; we want to do what we can to make
it a ceitainty. The men say that Shiloh
can't support a clergyman. I say it can, if
it does its best. We have met to-day to
find out what our Sewing Society is willing
to do toward supporting one."
MBS. BURCHAM. It's my opinion, that if we did less,
the men would do more. They are not going to follow
petticoat lead ; I wouldn't if I was they. We ought to
wait for them to go ahead, and then take hold and help
them with all our might.
MRS. PRESCOTT (sharply). That's nonsense, Mrs. Bur-
cham, and you know it. We should wait till doomsday.
I did wait three years before I got our last minister, Mr.
Dragner, to come here ; and I've waited six months since
he left, and begged and prayed every man in the place to
take hold of the matter, before I did anything about it.
They didn't any of them " like to take the responsibility ! "
But if I had a husband, he should take it. Suppose you
get Major Burcham to !
ESSIE VOLGER (aside to me). Cousin Priscilla has made
a fine mess of it now I wish she would keep her tongue
in better order ! Mrs. Burcham will not get over that shot
in six months ; it hit hard. You see, Miss Frost, Major
90 SHILOH.
Burcham is the dog in the manger, in our parish ; he won't
do anything himself, and his example and influence keep
back others.
AUNT VIST (adding her testimony in another aside).
Yes, Miss Frost, and then he's a proud, porpoise sort of a
man, who likes to have people believe he's the very centre
and circumvention of all things ; and when Mr. Taylor
comes here, he'll make him a high-blown speech, chock-full
of polysyllabub words, and take the credit of everything
we've done.
Mrs. Burcham being speechless with confusion and rage,
Mrs. Prescott proceeded :
" Our first business is to organize the Society. It has
always been our custom to take the names and fees for
memberships first, as only members are allowed to vote.
Nothing less than twelve and a half cents constitutes a
O
member, but you can pay just as much more as you please.
Esther, will you take down the names ? "
Mrs. Danforth took five dollars from her purse, with a
mixture of carelessness and ostentation. Other donations
appeared to consist of very small sums ; if the widow's mite
had any lineal descendant among them, it must have been
the half-dollar of poor, little Mrs. Banser, with four chil-
dren and a drunken husband depending on her needle for
bread, who blushed as if she thought she had taken a
liberty, or been convicted of extravagance, when she found
that far richer people gave no more. For some unacknowl-
edged reason, or it might have been merely the effect of
an idle mood, I was averse to become a member of the
Society. But it was a pleasure to contribute what I could
to the fund, and Essie paid no attention to my whispered
injunction not to put my name on her list, except to make
a comical grimace, and show it to me, written out in very
exaggerated characters.
MKS. PKESCOTT. It is our custom to appoint a Secretary
SIIILOH. 91
next, that she may be in readiness to take notes of our pro-
ceedings. Will anybody give a nomination ?
MKS. SEBEK. It is a well-known fact that a people
who have always a resided in one place, and a done
business in a one way, are apt to get into a set ways
of doing a things. On that account, it is a good thing
to a work in new material, when it comes to a hand.
No doubt our Society would be the better for some a
new material, and therefore a a I nominate Miss
Frost.
I had watched the painful progress of this speech with-
out the faintest suspicion that it was limping in any direc-
tion that could concern me ; its termination, therefore, as-
tonished me nearly as much as if a mild-looking churn had
suddenly exploded a seven-inch shell in my face. Before I
could speak, Miss Essie had called out, in clear, brisk tones,
" I second that nomination."
MKS. PRESCOTT. I don't think it is necessary to vote
by ballot ; we will try it without. All who are in favor
of
But, by this time, I had recovered from my surprise
enough to interfere. A spice of indignation that a trap
should be sprung upon me thus, enabled me to do so in a
tone not to be ignored. " Mrs. Prescott," I began, " excuse
me for interrupting you, but "
Miss ESSIE (in an alarmed whisper). For heaven's sake,
Miss Frost ! for the sake of all that is good-natured and
obliging !
AUNT VIN (in equally dismayed tones, from the other
side). Now don't decline, pray don't ! Leastways, wait and
insult Mis' Prescott about it !
I (taking no notice of either). While I thank the ladies
very sincerely for the honor they have done me, and which
I duly appreciate
ESSIE (in consternation). If you decline now, they will
get in somebody who will ruin everything !
92 SHILOH.
AUNT VINT (insinuatingly). A young lady who has such
a dereliction for good works !
I (proceeding steadily). I must beg to decline the nom-
ination, most respectfully, yet decidedly. There are many
ladies present, who, being thoroughly acquainted with the
work to be done in Shiloh, and the best way of doing it,
can fill these offices better than any stranger. It gives me
pleasure to nominate in my place Miss Volger.
And I turned to that young lady with a most demure
look. She bit her lip. " You might have done worse, it
must be confessed," whispered she; "I was afraid you
would leave them without any nomination, and I saw that
Mrs. Burcham had one at her tongue's end, ready for the
instant you stopped talking ; yours has disconcerted her a
little. But I don't want to be Secretary, it is not in my
line ; besides, I am booked for something else. There, she
has got a shaft ready."
MRS. BURCHAM. Miss Frost's action in this matter does
credit both to her modesty and her good judgment. As
she says, some one who knows the place and people
. MRS. PRESCOTT (interrupting her). It doesn't need any
knowledge of the place or people, to keep accounts. Miss
Frost is perfectly competent to fill the office to our full
satisfaction ; and the less she knows about the place and
people, the more likely she will be to take some satisfaction
in it herself. I do hope she will reconsider the matter
(looking unutterable entreaties at me). She might help us
so much, I know she's had some experience in such work.
And she won't be half so likely to take an interest in our
work, if 'she doesn't identify herself with it, and keep the.
run of it. Miss Frost, won't you allow the vote to be
taken ?
AuNT-Viisr. Do dissent, now, do !
MRS. BURCHAM (quickly). Essie Volger' s name is before
the meeting.
I suddenly became aware of a rising dislike for Mrs.
SHILOH. 93
Burcham, and a desire to see her outwitted. Not that I
suspected her of any hostility to me, personally ; I saw
plainly enough that her opposition was levelled at Mrs.
Prescott, whose candidate she believed me to be. But one
docs not care to subserve another person's vengeance in a
quarrel which does not concern him, and the attempt to
make him do so is nearly certain to convert him from an
idle spectator into an interested partisan. Moreover, it is
next to impossible to watch any contest long with purely
neutral feelings ; whatever be the natural or artificial re-
moteness between ourselves and the combatants, there are
innumerable unsuspected and hidden channels by which the
ebb and flow of a common humanity will pervade our hearts
and minds, and draw us inevitably into the excitements and
sympathies of the occasion. In the interest of the struggle,
the listless mood which had possessed me since morning
wore off; and I became dimly aware that some personal'
duty might be involved in it ; but no time was given me to
decide what.
Miss ESSIE. I shall consider it a pleasure, Mrs. Bur-
cham, to withdraw in favor of Miss Frost, if she will allow
me. (Then, in a whisper to me). Do say you'll take it !
MKS. BURCHAM (doggedly). I call for the vote. Miss
Essie has the nomination.
MALA. Are you going to let that spiteful woman have
her way ?
I hesitated. Not that I regarded the Secretaryship with
any more favor, having had some previous experience of the
utter thanklessness of the office ; but I did feel as if it would
give me pleasure to demolish Mrs. Burcham. Essie saw
the hesitation, and took courage.
" I re-nominate Miss Frost," she said. " I am sure she
feels it to be her duty to yield to our solicitations. Mrs.
Seber seconds the nomination. Cousin Priscilla, please put
the vote."
Mrs. Burcham made one last effort. " My dear Essie,"
94 SHILOII.
she said, blandly, " I cannot allow you to withdraw in that
way, as if we made you serve for ' Jack at a pinch.' There
is no reason why we shouldn't have two, or more, candi-
dates, and vote by ballot. Are there any more nomina-
tions ? "
A weak voice from a corner responded, " Miss Bryer."
" Certainly," returned Mrs. Burcham, with immense
cordiality. " Ladies, your candidates are Miss Volger, Miss
Frost, and Miss Bryer."
Essie made a face, but said nothing. She and Mrs. Bur-
cham distributed slips of paper and pencils, and it was plain
enough that sly winks and hints were dispensed in about
an equal ratio. Mrs. Prescott announced the result, with a
note of triumph in her voice, "Miss Frost, twenty-one
votes ; Esther Volger, seven votes ; Miss Bryer, one vote.
Miss Frost is elected."
BOJTA (in a still, small, but most distinct voice). So you
are Secretary. Not for the sake of the Church, not from a
humble desire to be of use where the Providence of God
has placed you, not even from a willingness to oblige, mainly,
but from the paltry ambition to override and mortify a
woman that you never saw before to-day, and to whom you
happen to have taken a dislike !
Abashed and confounded by this plain statement of the
case, I was only half-conscious of what was done next, until
I found myself at a small table, with some sheets of foolscap
paper, yellowed by time, a rusty steel pen, and a bottle of
pale, scared-looking ink, before me. Then, I drew a little
comfort from the pleased and satisfied faces of Mrs. Pres-
cott and Essie ; and straightway fell to berating myself for
doing so. " For " said I to myself, " wrong-doing is not
the less wrong-doing because it pleases somebody else."
BONA (more kindly). Now you are confounding the act
with the motive. There is no harm in your being Secre-
tary, if you work in the right spirit, henceforth ; there is
yet time to overcome evil with good. You have only to
SHILOH. 95
take care that the whole of your incumbency is not accord-
ing to its beginning.
MKS. PRESCOTT. We will now proceed to elect a Presi-
dent, when I shall be glad to resign the chair. Any nom-
inations ?
Miss ESSIE. I nominate Mrs. Danforth.
MRS. SHEMNAB. I second the nomination.
MKS. BUBCHAM. I nominate Mrs. Seber.
FAINT VOICE FBOM THE COBJSTEB. Miss Bryer.
I shot a glance at Mrs. Danforth, to see how she took
her nomination, and discerned that she must have been
prepared for it ; doubtless, there was a conference, some-
where, before her introduction to our assembly. Then I
fell to wondering what could be her motives for accepting
it, and let my conjectures stray into some crooked, and not
over-clean paths, in search of them ; which might have
taught me something, by inference, of the places whence
my own motives are too often derived. But it is a mourn-
ful wisdom, at best, that questions motives; and oftener
misleads than guides aright.
After balloting, Mrs. Danforth was declared elected by
an overwhelming majority ; whereupon she took the chair
with an easy, nonchalant grace, implying that she had not
so much assumed the office, as attracted it to herself, by
some inevitable operation of natural affinities. Up to this
moment, she had watched the course of events with a stud-
ied carelessness and indifference ; now her manner changed ;
she became alive and animated to her very tinger-tips ; and
the rest of the organization went forward with a celerity,
a decorum, and an attention to parliamentary rules, that
showed her to be thoroughly conversant with the- details of
her office. Mrs. Seber quickly became Vice-President, and
Essie was chosen Treasurer, without a dissenting voice.
But over the First Directress, there was a sharp contest.
Mrs. Pfescott had designed this office for herself, and so
constituted its duties as to make it serve, upon necessity,
96 SHILOH.
as a check on the President. She was duly nominated by
Mrs. Sebr; but Mrs. Burcham also contrived to get a
nomination, and there was the usual weak call from the
corner (now nearly extinct) for " Miss Brycr." Essie, how-
ever, did her cousin good service in the electioneering way,
keeping a sharp look out for Mrs. Shemnar and other
weak-backed minds ; and so Mrs. Prescott won by two
votes ; Mrs. Burcham and Miss Bryer being declared Sec-
ond and Third Directresses.
" The millenium is come ! " exclaimed Essie, in her
laughing aside to me, " The lion, the tiger, and the sheep
are to work together ! But what a quantity of flattery
and finesse I shall have to expend upon that poor sheep, to
make her cooperate with the lion, and not with the tiger,
and so keep a majority of our directresses on the right
side ! However, we have got our ticket elected, pretty
much as we settled it beforehand. Mrs. Burcham is the
only interpolation, and she is null and void, with two to
outvote her."
A constitution was next produced, and accepted, with
a few alterations ; and a book containing former records of
the Society was handed over to me, of which Mrs. Pres-
cott remarked, parenthetically, that " nobody had ever
been able to make head or tail of them, and she did hope
my accounts would be kept more orderly ; for there were
always disagreeable people around, to insinuate that there
must be something wrong about what they didn't under-
stand."
A bag of patchwork was next produced and distributed ;
and Mrs. Danforth took a pair of ivory needles and a ball
, of worsted from her pocket, and commenced knitting with
wonderful velocity, her diamonds flashing with the quick
motion, and her mobile face furnishing a kind of pictorial
illustration of her sparkling, graceful talk.
" Be it known to all and sundry," she remarked, " that
I always knit in Society ; it is the thing I can do the best,
SHILOH. 97
and like the best to do. I have a passion for worsteds.
Bright colors enchant me. A well stocked worsted store
holds me enchained longer than a picture-gallery. I dream
of new colors and patterns ; and I go distracted because I
cannot reproduce them, when I wake. However, I can
make any number and variety of pretty things for fairs
and tea-parties ; and you will see, one of these days, that I
am not an altogether unprofitable laborer in your field.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Prescott, what is it about that minister
who is coming to preach for us to-morrow ? "
Mrs. Prescott reiterated the statement she had made to
me, with some additional particulars.
MRS. BUKCHAM. I hope you did not tell him he could
come here, before we've heard him, and decided if we like
him !
MRS. PRESCOTT (with asperity). That is just what I
did tell him. What's the use of putting on airs about it ?
The question with Shiloh is not who we'll have, but who
we can get. Mr. Taylor, ma'am, begun life as a book-
keeper, or an agent, or something of that sort ; but his
whole heart is in the Lord's work, and he has been so suc-
cessful as a lay-reader, and so forth, in city, that he be-
lieves it is his duty to devote himself to it entirely. So he
has fitted himself for the ministry, and is going to begin it
among us. The real truth of the matter is, that, to do us
good, he gives up a certainty for an uncertainty, a comfort-
able livelihood for a miserable pittance given grudgingly,
and the right to be his own master for the privilege of
being everybody's servant. And you talk of waiting to
see how we like him !
MRS. DANFORTH (speaking so quickly as to prevent Mrs.
Burcham from answering). You. make him out quite a
hero, Mrs. Prescott. I am already profoundly interested
in him ; and no doubt we shall all like him. But is he com-
ing here without a call, or is our Society to vote him one ?
MRS. PRESCOTT. Oh ! the Bishop sends him. Shiloh is
5
( jy SIIILOH.
considered Missionary ground'. Our business is only to
see that he is kept from starvation. Miss Frost, how much
do those memberships foot lip ?
" Twenty-seven dollars."
MBS. SEBER. That will pay his house-rent, if he can
find one. By the way, where is he to live ?
MBS. PEESCOTT. In my house.
MRS. SEBER (looking at her in great amazement}.
In your house ! Then what is to become of William
Dunn?
MBS PRESCOTT (shortly). That is his lookout.
MRS. SHEMNAR. Poor man ! I don't believe he can
find another house in the place.
MRS. PRESCOTT (with increased asperity). He can go
out of it, then. He's never done it any good, that I know
of. A man who doesn't care a straw for the Church, and
spends Sunday in counting his sheep, and patching up his
fences ! I tell you, people who deal with me, will find out
that everything and everybody has' got to stand aside for
the Church. I know it isn't other people's way of doing
business, but it's my way ; and I don't calculate to change
it, for nobody. Least of all, for a man like William Dunn.
He makes his bed to suit him, I guess, and he can lie in it.
There Was a silence of some moments ; Mrs. Prescott's
set mouth, and irate look, not encouraging further prosecu-
tion of the subject in hand. Mrs. Danforth had the tact
to recur to the previous question. " What has Mr. Taylor
to depend upon besides these twenty-seven dollars ? " in-
quired she.
" I can tell you, almost to a fraction," answered Essie.
" Our Society will raise about one hundred and twenty dol-
lars ; it always has, somehow, and it certainly can this year,
beginning under such unusually favorable auspices. The
seats will sell for a hundred and fifty dollars, or thei-e-
abouts ; and the Christian Knowledge Society gives us a
hundred more. Take into account that he will get his rent
SHILOH. 99
for little, or nothing, and that Shiloh is a cheap place to
live in, where he can wear out his old clothes, if he has
any, and nobody hurt ; and you have the sum total of
Mr. Taylor's resources."
" Three hundred and ninety-seven dollars, and a family
to support ! " exclaimed Mrs. Danforth, with a clear, some-
what loud laugh, not in the least like the laugh of fash-
ionable women, in general, " why, he had better advertise
for a situation as coachman, at once ! "
Mrs. Prescott's set features softened a little. " So he
had, ma'am, if it's money he thinks of. But he's doing the
Lord's work, and I hope He will give him bread to eat that
we know not of."
MRS. DAXFORTH (icith a comical lifting of her eye-
brows). It is devoutly to be hoped He will ! But it is our
business to see that Ire has bread to eat and butter, too
that we do know of ! I think I can promise you that the
Society will raise more than a hundred and fifty dollars
this year. And if those seats don't sell for a larger sum
than you mention, I'll sit on the doorstep or buy them
all ! Six hundred dollars is the very least that Mr. Taylor
ought to have, and that is less than a single pew sells for,
in the church I attend, in Xew York.
MRS. PRESCOTT. But you see, the church has been un-
occupied so long that it is in a dreadful state ; we've got
to raise some money for repairs, too. And you don't know
whafc sort of people you have to deal with, Mrs. Danforth ;
farmers don't have a great deal of money, and a cent looks
bigger to them than a dollar does to you.
"Ah, well, we shall see," answered Mrs. Danforth,
cheerily.
The afternoon wore on swiftly enough. The blocks
of patchwork were gathered as fast as finished,' and Essie
brought me a pile of them, with a very amused face.
" If you want to see," said she, " how people carry their
individuality even into so mechanical a process as sewing,
100 SHILOH.
just examine these specimens of needlework, and try to
find two alike. To utilize your study to the Society, you
can, at the same time, trim the blocks down to one size."
I found smooth work and puckered work, wide seams
and narrow seams, straight seams and crooked seams, neat
seams and soiled seams ; long stitches, short stitches, deli-
cate stitches, heavy stitches, stitches set with the precision
of a machine, and stitches in a state of riot ; but I did not
find the " two alike."
With the sewing, a good deal of talk went on, of a
corresponding diversity of tone and character. It was not
the kind of talk I have heard in Aunt Belle's drawing-
room, when the " Dorcas Bag " met there ; much of it had
to do with farm and dairy matters, and was couched in
terms that would sound like an unknown tongue to that
elegant assemblage ; but it was kindly, sensible, and prac-
tical, for the most part ; without any of that frothy noth-
ingness on its flow, which has made me so soul-sick in the
city organization. In the matter of gossip, the two stood
upon a more equal footing than I had expected ; if there
was more of it in the rural association, it was also of a pet-
tier character, and less scathing. The victim would, doubt-
less, have felt pricked all over, if he could have heard it ;
but he would not feel the quick, sharp thrust, penetrating
to the vitals, with which his city friends would transfix,
and leave him. In the country, gossip is a pastime ; in the
city, it is a warfare.
Moreover, there was a certain informality, very pleasant
to see, in the intercourse of the Shilohites, after the first
stiffness, and the little asperities evoked by the election, had
worn off. Their manner to each other was characterized
by a lack of ceremony and a directness of speech, which
were yet without any approach to rudeness. I carried
away an impression of a friendly, sincere, and genuine,
though somewhat narrow, life ; not without its place and
value in the economy of existence ; and capable of being
SHILOH. 101
refined, by right feeling and a generous spirit, into a sim-
ple beauty that would have its own exceeding charm.
At five o'clock, supper was announced. A by-law, re-
straining hospitable instincts or housewifely ambition in
the matter of eatables, having been passed, over much de-
termined opposition, it was limited to tea, biscuits, butter,
cheese, preserves, and one sort of cake, the last item being
felt to be one of almost imendurable rigor. The house-
wife's skill did what it could, however, to cover itself with
glory, in the matter of quality ; and succeeded so well, that
any fault-finder would have deserved a diploma from the
Society for the Promotion and Encouragement of Grum-
bling ; if there be one.
There was no " standing upon order," in the serving.
Each lady helped herself to what she liked (and as many
others as her good-nature prompted) and ate it in any spot
that suited her mood. There were little knots of tea-drink-
ers, therefore, scattered all through the rooms, and some in
the porch and door-yard. Essie and I took ours on the
front doorstep ; the lilacs meeting overhead, and framing
with verdure the pretty view of hill-side and lakelet ; and
Aunt Vin sitting in the doorway, listening benignantly to
our chat, till a thought of " cows " and " milking-time "
hurried her homeward. As she took her departure, she
favored us with her opinion of the afternoon's proceed-
ings.
"The Society's begun suspiciously, Essie Volger, and
that's good, as far as it goes. But smart as you and Pris-
cilla Prescott think yourselves, I shouldn't wonder if you'd
caught a cream-of-tartar in that Mis' Danforth. She'll do
well enough as long as your mind and hers runs parallax,
but when hers wants to go north and yours east, I reckon
you'll see a promotion." And shaking her head grimly
over whatever gloomy prospect was mysteriously shadowed
forth in this mild prediction, Aunt Vin went after her sun-
bonnet.
102 SHILOH
*
In the midst of the pleasant bustle of leave-taking, Mrs.
Danforth sought me out. " I believe we are compatriots,"
said she, holding out her small, jeweled hand, with her
usual mixture of hauteur, languor, and cordiality, " I am
glad there is somebody to whom I can say ' How queer ! '
over these Shiloh people. Do they not amuse you
mightily ? "
" A little, sometimes ; but they command my esteem,
too."
" Oh ! yes, of course," (with the slightest perceptible
dryness of intonation.) " I have no doubt they are very
estimable people, all of them ; particularly that queer
old maid whose vocabulary seems to suffer from what she
would probably call a ' suffusion worse dumb-founded.' I
believe I am the first comer in Shiloh, by a day or two, so I
shall have to call upon you. May I come any time ? "
" Certainly. I do not think reception days are in vogue
here. And I have not the least wish to introduce them ; I
am only too glad to dispense with the fashionable code and
the minor proprieties, for a time. I have some thought of
sending the fripperies after the code. I went to Clay Cor-
ner, and bought me a calico dress, this morning ; do not
marvel if I return your call in it."
" Allow me to suggest that you make it after the Vocab-
ulary's pattern, with a sunbonnet to match," said she, with
an irresistibly comic face. " I hope you do not need to be
told that I shall be glad to see you,in that or anything else.
Good morning, or good evening or whatever it is, really,
if there be one thing more marvellous than another about
these people, it is the hours they keep." And Mrs. Dan-
forth smiled and bowed herself out.
We reached home while the sun was yet an hour high.
Mrs. Divine was standing in the doorway.
" I have the honor," said I, making her a low courtesy,
" of introducing to you the Secretary of the Ladies' Sewing
Society of St. Jude's Parish, Shiloh."
SIIILOH. 103
" Indeed ! " she answered, giving me a keen look, " so
Priscilla got you in, after all ! I told her she wouldn't. I
thought she wasn't going the right way to work ; I had a
notion that ' AH open and above-board ' was your motto.
But I'm real glad all the same ; you'll make a good one.
How did it all happen ? "
I thought of Mala's short, persuasive speech, and was
silent. But Mrs. Prescott opportunely launched into a
spirited account of the afternoon's events, and the silence
passed unnoticed.
THE MORKISTG SERVICE.
[HAT a day it was ! One of those fresh, exu-
berant days of dawning summer, never
quite so perfect as on Sunday, when thought
involuntarily goes back to the story of crea-
tion, and God's pleasure in His finished work.
When all things visible seem so fresh, so
pure, and so glad, that we are fain to believe
our Earth has entered upon a new and better
cycle of her existence ; one wherein all the old wrongs are
to be righted, all the old wovmds and defilements healed
and cleansed ; and so we take courage and thank God.
And no matter if Monday, coming with its hard hands full
of work and its stern brow full of care, dispels the illusion !
- we shall not be the worse for our cherished faith in the
world's improvability, nor our momentary persuasion that
the " good time coming " was come. Both the one and the
other will make us patient to wait, and earnest to labor,
for its advancement.
I spent the hour before service with a volume of George
Herbert's quaint poesy in my hand, wherein such Divine
fire often breaks up through such a homely crust of expres-
sion ; and was helped, possibly, to' a deeper comprehension
than usual by nature's leafy commentary, lying open out-
side my window. By and by, I descried small groxips of
country-folk, on foot and in wagons, slowly wending their
way churchward, across the far-off bend of road before-
mentioned ; Uncle True and his chair, too, setting forth on
SHILOH. 105
their snail-paced pilgrimage, came into view just beyond
the garden-fence ; so, putting the finishing touches to a
designedly plain and simple toilet, I went down to the
" out room," where Mrs. Prescott and Alice, with their
bonnets on, were assisting Mrs. Divine to don hers.
The faces of the elder ladies clouded so noticeably, at
sight of me, that I was moved to ask, in some perplexity,
" What is the matter ? "
" Nothing," said Mrs. Prescott, shortly, closing her lips
firmly over the cause of her disapproval ; which, neverthe-
less, seemed to escape from them, unwittingly, the next
moment. " I thought you would have dressed up more."
And Mrs. Divine added, " You wore a finer gown than
that to Society, yesteixlny."
" I am sorry," said I, " if you think my attire is not
worthy of the occasion ; but I supposed that the congrega-
tion would be dressed very plainly, for the most part, and
I did not want to look like a popinjay among respectable
fowls."
_ " Umph ! there's no danger of your outshining Mrs.
Danforth, I guess," said Mrs. Prescott, relaxing her severe
features a little. " But, I can tell you, we country folks
like to have city people wear their fine feathers when they
come among us ; if they don't, we suspect they think we
ain't worth wasting them on."
" But, Mrs. Prescott, I don't think God's house is the
place to wear ' fine feathers.' "
Here Mrs. Divine took up the subject in her usual crisp,
decided tones. " I suppose, Miss Frost, if you were going
to see Queen Victoria, now, or the Emperor of Russia,
you'd wear your best clothes, wouldn't you ? "
" Yes, ma'am, but, "
" Never mind the ' but ' just now ; I want to ask you,
first, if you think you ought to show more respect to one of
them earthly rulers, than you do the ' King of Kings,'
whose house AVC take the Church to be ? "
5*
106 SIIILOII.
" Certainly not ; but then Christ set us such an example
of plainness and simplicity in all His earthly life, that it
seems fitting for His followers to imitate it ; particularly
when they meet together, to offer up prayers and praises in
His name."
" Now, I think," persisted Mrs. Divine, " that Christ
lived and labored in the humblest walk of life, to show men
that fine things are nothing in themselves, since He could
do without them ; so that nobody need to feel proud be-
cause he has got them, nor mean because he hasn't. I am
certain that the Lord likes me just as well in my old-
fashioned gown here, that I've" worn this ten years, as He
does Alice in her pretty blue muslin, if my heart is as much
set to obey Him ; but I shouldn't feel so sure of it, if I had
a brand-new silk hanging up in my closet, that I thought
was too good for Him, but not a bit too nice for Mis' Thing-
embob's parties. I guess Solomon wore his royal robes, and
handsome ones, too, when he went up to praise the Lord in
the temple he had built."
" But, Mrs. Divine, I wish you could see some of the
dresses I wear to parties, at home ! I am sure you would
agree with me that they are not suitable to wear at
church."
" It's very likely I should. But did you ever ask your-
self whether it was just right to have dresses too fine, or
too showy, to wear in God's house ? The bettermost for
Him, I say ; but that don't prove that costly finery and
finicky gew*gaws are the things for a Christian to wear
anywhere."
"But there are always people who will wear such
things," returned I ; " must they, therefore, wear them
at church ? "
" Well, no, I suppose not," answered Mrs. Divine, after
a little hesitation ; " perhaps it's one step toward better
things for them to make up their minds they can't flout
them in the Lord's face. But that don't make it right for
SHILOH. 10t
His followers to have clothes too fine to wear in His courts ;
I'm decided on that." ,
" Still," I urged, " custom will always make a certain
style of dress obligatory for parties."
"Don't you be too sure of that. The Christian world
is stronger than the fashionable world ; if it did but know
it, and wasn't afraid to stand to its principles. If Christian
people always went to parties in simple, modest apparel (I
don't care how pretty and becoming it is, if it keeps inside
the bounds of simplicity and modesty), you'd soon see a
change in custom. The fashionable world wouldn't like to
see itself marked out so plainly as an enemy to God and
decency. It is because Christian women are so much ' con-
formed to the world,' that women of the world are rushing
headlong into such reckless extravagance and such shame-
less display. As long as they know that wherever they
lead, good women will follow, there's nothing to put any
check on them."
Mr. Divine now joined us, with a quizzical smile on his
shrewd, sensible face. "I've heard you preaching for a
good quarter-hour, mother," said he; "don't you think
it's about time to go over and let Mr. Taylor take his turn
at it?"
Half-way to the church, we found Uncle True resting
in the shade of a great, gnarled apple-tree that stretched
its sturdy boughs, covered with a late bloom, over the
stone wall, and half-way across the road ; his face beaming
with mild contentment and good-humor as he returned the
greetings of passers by ; all of whom addressed him with
a certain deferential cordiality, partly due to his infirmity,
and partly to the simple, genuine character of the man. I
stopped to speak with him, I"am acquiring a relish for the
old man's cheerful, mellow philosophies, with here and
there a vein of something like poetiy in them. I am get-
ting to call him " Uncle True," too ; the influence of con-
stant example is so strong, and the' hearty, homely life of
Shiloh so insidiously destructive of formalities.
108 SHILOH.
" How lovely it is ! " I exclaimed, glancing around at
the fresh, shining landscape. " But I miss one thing, the
bells. I caught myself singing a snatch of Robinson Cru-
soe's aong this morning,
The sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard ;
yet how silvery sweet and clear the tones would flow out
over these meadows and linger among these hills ! St.
Jude's ought to have a bell."
" I don't know about that," said Uncle True, reflectively ;
" I b'lieve I like the Sunday stillness and the birds' singin'
the best. And I ain't so lazy, nor so forgetful, that I want
a bell to tell me when it's time to go to church, no more'n
I do to let me know when to go to work Monday mornin'.
But hark ! do you hear that ! "
A faint, sweet bell-echo pervaded the air ; not louder
nor more distinct in one quarter than another ; seeming to
have fallen from the sky, rather than to have arisen from
the earth, so difficult was it to associate its soft, ethereal
melody with any lower origin.
" That's the up-town bell," continued Uncle True ;
" seems to me it sounds a good deal pootier than if 'twas
nearer. You can allers hear it like that when the air is
clear, and the wind right if you listen for it. There's a
good many fine things you've allers got to listen for, if you
hear 'em at all ; there's a bee hummin' in that clover-head
yonder ; you can't hear it when you're talkin' ; but if you
jest keep still a minute " (Uncle True made a little pause)
" you can hear it as plain as a church-bell, and I think it's
jest as pooty a noise, leastways, it tells me more."
" Indeed ! " said I, leaning my elbow on the stone-wall,
covered with greenish-gray lichens, " I should like to know
what it tells you."
" Wall, in the fust place, it shows me that honey's to
be got out o' all the flowers, even the leetlest and home-
SHILOH. 109
liest. The bee gets it in the onlikliest places, you see ; he
don't turn up his nose at a mullein stalk no more'n he does
at a garden pink, and I shouldn't wonder if the Lord had
put jest as much honey in one as t'other. But if he was a
bee with an aristocratic turn o' mind, and wouldn't look
for honey anywheres but in garden pinks and damask
roses, it's my opinion that he'd go hum' to his hive empty-
handed, the biggest part o' the time. And I guess the
Lord has put abeout as much honey in one man's road as
another's ; if he only knew how to look for it, and didn't
despise mullein stalks. Then, the bee shows me that it's a
man's business to hive up honey, not jest to go round
amusiu' himself with the flowers, and takin' only what
tastes good and what he can eat at the time ; but to store
it up against the winter of old age and trouble, I mean
the honey of wisdom, mama, that begins in the fear of God.
And, besides all that, the bee shows me that a man should
go to his honest day's work with a joyful sperit, singin'
and rnakin' melody in his heart : and not be a goin' round
with a sour face and a grumblin' tongue and a cross-
grained temper, jest as if he thought the Lord that made
him didn't know what was good for him. But it's time
for me to jog along, inarm, for this old chair and I
haven't been late to church, since we took to goin' thar to-
gether, and we shouldn't like to begin now; though to
be sure, people that's got legs, and horses, to git 'em thar,
don't seem to mind bein' late much."
" Thank you*" said I, as he twisted himself out of his
chair, " I suspect you have taught me as good a lesson as
any I shall get at church."
Uncle True stopped in the act of dragging his foot after
the step he had caused his ' chair to make, and looked at
me gravely. " No, marrn, you don't quite mean that, I
guess. For, though the Lord's works do preach pooty
good sermons to them that's got ears to hear, you'll hear
His Word in the church, and that's what helps us to under-
110 SIIILOH.
stand the works. People that don't know the Word, are
apt to make mistakes in rcadin' the works more's the
There was a buzzing human swarm about the church
steps, hale, weather-browned farmers, exchanging re-
marks about the weather and the crops, bashful youths,
awkward and uncomfortable iif the unwonted restraints of
Sunday garments, and boys, who gave me a vague im-
pression of being all eyes, mouths, and pantaloons pockets ;
all of whom stared at me in a way to indicate that a
strange face was a novelty in their experience. The small
vestibule was filled with a varying company of matrons
and maidens ; each comer lingering there, a few moments,
to exchange greetings and. set to rights garments and
tresses disordered by the breeze. Mrs. Prescott awaited
me among them.
The interior of the church, by reason of the preposter-
ous size and number of its uncurtained, unblinded win-
dows, gave me an odd impression of a spiritual hothouse,
where moral cuttings and seedlings were to be carefully
nurtured under glass ; while the light thus freely admitted,
and everywhere reflected from white walls and woodwork,
dazzled and blinded me to a painful degree. All addition-
al details, when I could look for them, were comprised
in a small gallery, perched aloft at the rear end of the
building, over the vestibule ; a box of a pulpit against the
opposite, wall ; a small communion-table in front of it ; and
thirty or forty narrow, high-backed pews, 'strongly sugges-
tive of penitential observances.
Mr. Taylor soon entered the chancel. I saw a tall, thin,
bent form, a pale face, not of a decidedly intellectual typo,
but with some clear, fine lines in it, deep-set blue eyes, full
of a quick sensibility, and small, nervous looking hands. I
discerned that he brought to his work genuine enthusiasm,
thorough conscientiousness, inconsiderate impulse, ready
sympathies, morbid sensitiveness, activity verging on rest-
6IIILOH. Ill
lessness, little tact, and such culture as circumstances had
permitted. A man whose enthusiasm would often outrun
his judgment ; who would never, except by a miracle, escape
any wayside thorn, but would get his wound from each,
and give his drop of blood in return ; yet whose true cour-
age, earnestness, and self-devotion, could not fail to win re-
cognition and respect, and to gather in sheaves to the Lord
of the harvest.
It was plain that some nervousness beset him, at first.
The congregation was not of the class to which he had been
best accustomed in his lay-missionary work among the city's
lower life-strata. These sturdy, hard-featured, and close-
fisted New England farmers looked much too independent
and critical ; they had far more the appearance of judges
sitting on his merits, than of disciples waiting to be taught.
His voice shook slightly, therefore, as he began the service ;
but nothing more composing can be conceived of, I think,
than its opening, the few solemn sentences from Holy
Writ, the Exhortation, touching the speaker's own heart as
nearly as any other, the Confession, when, losing the faces
and eyes of the congregation, he feels his voice and heart
buoyed up by the swelling undertone of their voices and
prayers. His tones soon steadied themselves, though he
still read with a rapidity of utterance that it took me some
little time to set down as habitual.
MALA.. How dreadfully thin he is ! He must have put
himself on a course of semi-starvation, to be ready for what-
ever pinchings and sacrifices are involved in Shiloh's hard-
raised four hundred dollars !
BONA. There is a worse semi-starvation than that of the
body, even that of the soul. They who deny themselves
the spiritual nutriment of the Church's praises and prayers,
while they indulge in sarcastic reflections on minister or
congregation, will be likely to experience its effects, in the
inevitable attenuation of their religious life and growth.
I (recalling my mind to the service, with an effort}. " As
112 SIIILOH.
it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world
without end."
MB. TAYLOR. Here beginneth the sixteenth chapter
of-
MALA (suddenly). Bless me ! there is Mrs. Danforth,
diamonds and all ! Evidently, she thinks it is proper to
wear one's bettermost (as Mrs. Divine phrases it) at church.
What a showy silk ! what exquisite lace ! what a sunset-
cloud of a bonnet !
I (meditatively). I wonder whether Mrs. Divine or I
was right about the Sunday garb ! It is one of those ques-
tions where there is so much to be said on both sides, that
one gets puzzled.
First, there is the human phase of it Mrs. Prcscott's
notion that these people would consider my studied plain-
ness of attire a slight to them. If the Queen of England
came to visit me in the extremest plainness of apparel pos-
sible to her, I wonder whether it would strike me as a dis-
courtesy, or a kind attempt to spare my feelings ! But why
should her splendor hurt my feelings ! Does it not argue
some meanness of spirit in me, to be either dazzled or mor-
tified by her rich array ? ' is not the body more than the
raiment ? ' I know she is a queen, and has queenly attire ;
would it not be paying me a more delicate compliment to
visit me in the same dress in which she would visit a prince ?
Is there any rudeness quite so rude as to make it evident to
your fellow-mortal that you are trying to let yourself down
to what you are pleased t6 consider his lower level ? and
does a man ever secretly attach so much importance to
social advantage, as when he is making an ostentatious
attempt to prove that he forgets it ?
Then, there is the heavenly phase. Will God feel His
courts to be duly honored by less careful and costly toilets
than are made for the courts of fashion ? Would it not be
only a surface humility that flaunts in satins and jewels all
the week, and goes to church in drab serge on Sundays ?
SHILOH. 113
Or did Mrs. Divine hit the nail on the head when she de-
clared that a Christian had no right to finer clothes than
could be fitly worn in God's house ?
Would the best motive ever justify the showy splendor?
I will suppose Mrs. Danforth putting on her diamonds, and
her point lace, without a thought of human observation,
but with a sincere desire to honor God's house with the
best that she has ; but then how could she sit under ap-
peals for money to build churches and schools, and fit out
missionaries, with the price of a church hanging in her ears,
a Sunday School library around her neck, and a Mission-
ary's salary on each finger ! Would she not suspect that
there were better ways of honoring God with her wealth
than by lavishing it on her personal "adornment ?
MR. TAYLOR. Here entleth the First Lesson.
Box A. And you have not heard a word of it.
MALA. IVever mind ; you were trying to settle a question
of right.
Box A (very gravely). But God's house, and His time of
worship, are not the place and time for settling questions.
Devotion and attention are essential to a right use of those
privileges.
I. But, dear Bona, when such a subject gets into my
head, it is so hard to get it out, even in church !
BOXA. There is always the resource of prayer. But do
listen !
I did listen to, and join in, the Te Deum, that grand,
wonderful Hymn, whose certain origin is lost in the shad-
ows of primitive time ; and which seems to have so little
of human work in its majestic, comprehensive, ordered
march of joyful praise, pure doctrine, and fervent prayer,
that I am fain to believe it came straight from the Holy
Spirit, through the hands of some devout, meek man, who,
feeling how little he had to do with it, dared not stamp it
with his name !
The Canticles were read, not sung. During the Jubi-
114 SIIILOH.
late, Mala's irreverence broke forth again, " Do see that
bonnet ! If it is not the identical one that Hani's wife wore
into the ark, what museum of dead and buried fashions was
it fished out of?"
My amused eyes lingered involuntarily among the
quaint details of the ancient structure, an awe-inspiring
poke, with a kind of full blown cabbage-rose on one side,
and a mammoth bow on top. Notwithstanding the wear-
er's face was invisible, the angular outlines of her tall form,
and several spasmodic jerks of the bonnet which gave me
an odd impression that that piece of head-gear, by reason of
extreme old age, had itself taken to shaking with paralysis
enabled me to recognize Aunt Vin.
Mala went on. " I wonder if she says her prayers ai
she talks ! In that case, she must put up some curious pe
titions to the Throne of Grace ! "
I very nearly laughed at the bare supposition.
BONA (severely). Have you any consciousness whatever
that you are saying the Creed ?
I (very humbly). " I believe in the forgiveness of sins."
Never were those words so sweet to me ! Coming in the
midst of my repeated failures to keep my thoughts from
wandering, they seemed to have been made for the express
need of the moment; as do so many utterances of the
Liturgy to humbled, burdened souls everywhere ; which,-
nevertheless, have given freely of their help and witness
to thousands before ; and, instead of losing anything, have
constantly grown richer thereby. And a comfortable ar-
ticle of belief is " the forgiveness of sins ! " Without it,
how the soul would tremble in view of the " resurrection
of the body, and the life everlasting ! "
MR. TAYLOR. " The Lord be with you."
I gave the necessary response with hearty emphasis. " If
Mr. Taylor's mind is as prone to wander as mine," I said to
myself, "how cheering it must be to him to hear the whole
congregation distinctly and devoutly ejaculate, ' And with
SHILOII. 115
thy spirit ! ' ' The people who would be blessed with the
most solemn, earnest, and effective ministrations from desk
and pulpit, must not fail to give their clergyman the sup-
port of their fervent, effectual prayers in his behalf;
" That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the
fountain."
During the prayers Mala's fertile mind suggested an-
other distraction. " I wonder," said she, " if Major Bur-
cham is here, and if he answers Aunt Vin's very flattering
description."
I darted a quick glance toward the corner where Mrs.
Burcham sat, and beheld the " porpoise-looking man " in'
question, Aunt Vin meant pompous, doubtless, but some
of her misses ai'e capital hits, and I thought " porpoise "
the better word. ^ Fancy a round, corpulent, oleaginous
figure ; with its head held very high and its hair brushed
straight up ; looking as if it had just jumped out of a sun-
ny sea of self-complacency, all dripping, and would imme-
diately plunge back again, and there you have Major Bur-
cham.
MR. TAYLOR. "O God, the Father of Heaven, have
mercy upon us, miserable sinners."
I echoed the petition with a fervency of beseeching
which might not have been too dearly bought, even with
that moment of inattention. We are so prone to forget,
in our guarded, upright moments, what miserable sinners
we are !
When the Psalm in metre was announced, so strange
and unexpected a sound came from the perched-up gallery,
that I was plunged into the darkest depths of bewilder-
ment ; and it was not till near the close of the second verse
that I was able to identify it (inevitably smiling, as I did so)
as proceeding from an accordeon. " Well, why not ? " I asked
myself, the next moment, " since many a rusty-sinewed fid-
dle, and growling bass-viol, has led off in the song of praise ;
and the melodeon favorite instrument of feeble churches
is only an accordeon on a large scale."
116 SHILOH.
This novel and incapable accompaniment was played
with a delicacy of touch and truth of feeling, that aston-
ished me ; and went far to justify its use. With it rose a
clear, fresh voice ; singing as a bird sings ; without artistic
culture, but with an airy sweetness, that had its own pecu-
liar charm. It was not powerful, an excessively harsh
alto and a direfully shrill tenor did their best to cover it
up ; but the pure quality of its tones could not be hidden,
any more than the small, sweet strains of a bird can be
drowned by all the cackle and clamor of a barnyard. I
looked up for the singer. Mrs. Prescott saw the look and
intei'preted it.
" That's Ruth Winnot," whispered she, with a degree
of pride ; " hasn't she got a nice voice ? "
XI.
THE SEEMOK.
)ETWEEN the close of the Ante-Communion
service and the singing of the Hymn, I had
a brief opportunity to give myself a moral
shaking up, and to set myself deliberately to
listen to the sermon. Of course, I did not ex-
pect an intellectual treat, I knew that Mr.
Taylor made no pretensions to oratory or erudi-
tion ; but I have found, after some years of pa-
tient listening to all sorts of sermons, that I never yet gave
my whole, prayerful attention to any, even the poorest and
plainest, without getting from it something that I should
have regretted to lose. It might be some subtle* touch of
human kinship, awakening new sympathies in my heart ; or
a bit of homely wisdom, quick with an endless progeny of
application ; or an isolated clause of a sentence, stirring with-
in me a train of heavenward thought that made me feel, for
some blissful moments, as if I had talked face to face with
God ; or perhaps, a hitherto unheeded text of Scripture fall-
ing on my ear with sudden opulence and profundity of
spiritual meaning. So I have come to think that God never
fails to bless the seed of the Gospel however unskilfully
sown with a rich germination of spiritual help, to all who
listen to His ministers reverently and teachably, as to
" deputies of Christ for the reducing of man to the obedi-
ence of God."
Mr. Taylor's sermon was pointed and vivified by a
118 SIIILOII.
warm earnestness of manner, and a directness of purpose,
that made it very effective, in its way. It was no fine
speculation of the brain, but a drop of life-blood from the
heart. It was enriched with wisdom gathered from the
mistakes, conflicts and defeats of his own life, and carefully
hived for the benefit of his fellows ; of whose longings after
holiness and struggles toward right, as well as of their dis-
couraging failures and lapses into evil, he knew something
through fellowship, not less than observation ; in virtue of
which knowledge he was irresistibly moved to help and to
teach them. His sentences were commonplace enough in
themselves, but they seemed to have imbibed a rich warmth
and fragrance from having been so thoroughly steeped in
the enthusiasm and the tenderness of his heart. I had a
curious intuition, as. I listened, why God had called him into
His service just as he was, with his culture and his want of
culture, his zeal and his unpracticalness, his strength and
his weakness. A man with less infirmity to contend with
in himself, would not have comprehended so clearly the
necessities of others ; and one of less sanguine and hopeful
temperament would never haw labored for their reforma-
tion with feuch entii'e confidence in his ultimate success. If
it was necessary for our Lord to take upon Him human
flesh, with the pains, weaknesses, and temptations belong-
ing thereto, for the work of atonement ; it is not strange
that those whom He calls to the work of teaching in His
name, should be men of like passions and infirmities with
ourselves.
Not that I would, for a moment, be supposed to under-
value, or discourage the employment of, whatever good gifts
of mind or manner God vouchsafes to man, in His special
service. If, in the Christian life, the wisdom of the serpent
be fitly conjoined with the harmlessness of the dove ; why,
in Christian teaching, need one hesitate to employ the finest
art of rhetoric, the loveliest grace of fancy, the subtlest har-
monies of elocution, in aid of the depth, the simplicity, and
_ SHILOII. 119
the endless adaptation of the Gospel ? Not that the Word
shall return unto Him void without these helps, since the
power of the Spirit of God is in it ; but the power of the
spirit of love in man should surely keep him from the in-
dolence, or the impertinence, of offering unto the Lord of
that which has cost him nothing nothing of that careful
labor and exquisite finish which shows that the heart of
the worker was in his work !
Just once during the sermon, my attention wandered.
Major Burcham was fast asleep in his pew, with his mouth
hospitably wide open; into which innocent-minded flies
strayed occasionally, and were instantly caught by the
quick, involuntary closing of his powerful jaws; to his
and, no doubt, their extreme disgust. The spectacle was
not exactly edifying, as a smothered laugh from the gallery
attested.
When the service was over, a little knot of people
gathered near the chancel to shake hands with Mr. Taylor,
foremost of whom was Major Burcham. His deep, im-
portant tones, swelling above the hum and bustle of the
departing congregation, reached me where I stood, and
made me acquainted with his peculiarities of speech ; name-
ly, a frequent substitution of some laggard word in place of
the half-spoken one that came more quickly to hand, and
an emphatic, sonorous repetition of commonplace phrases,
as if to make up by sound for lack of substance.
" I am de charmed to see you, sir," I heard him say-
ing, " and I hope we shall have the benefit of your la
ministrations for some time. You are aware, I suppose,
that Shiloh is rather a poor place to come to, rather a poor
place ; I really couldn't ad recommend you to take up
with the parish, if you've anything better in view ; but if
you're not afraid to try, we will do our best, sir ; we will do
our best."
I waited for no more, but went out with a foolish impa-
tience in my heart. In the vestibule, I came face to face
120 SIIILOH.
with Mrs. Danforth. She put out her hand in her usual
careless, condescending way ; " Good morning, Miss Frost,
how do you like him ? "
"Who Mr. Taylor? I do not know him yet, Mrs.
Danforth."
" I was not aware you were such a purist ! I mean,
how do you like him as a clergyman ? "
" I like all clergymen in the abstract."
" Well, what do you think of Mr. Taylor as a specimen
of the concrete ? "
" I have not thought much about him ; I was thinking
of his sermon."
" Nous arrivons" said she, arching her brows ; " what
did you think of that ? "
" I thought my life would be the better for an abund-
ant interfusion of its spirit."
She made a gesture of vexation, partly comic, partly
real.
" I never knew a case of perseverance so ill-rewarded,"
said she. " However, I will be as frank as you are non-
committal, and "
" I beg pardon for interrupting you, but I cannot let
that slander pass unnoticed. I thought the best compli-
ment to be paid to any sermon, was to bring its teaching
home to one's own heart and life."
" Bless us ! how pleasant ! " exclaimed she, shrugging
her shoulders. " We glorify ourselves, and fire sly shots
at our irreverent neighbors, simultaneously. But they do
not hit me this time. I was about to say that I liked Mr.
Taylor a great deal better than I expected."
" If I knew the character of your expectation, I could
better appreciate the compliment."
"Adieu!" she exclaimed, with. humorous abruptness,
" I shall take' refuge in flight. Good morning, Miss Rust,"
(addressing Aunt Vin, who approached at that moment),
" I advise you to keep out of Miss Frost's way ; she is in a
SHILOH. 121
mood compounded of the Sphinx and the Cynic, and you'll
come off second best as I go."
But Aunt Yin stopped her. " I hope, Mis' Danforth,
that you're a coming to the obsequious this afternoon ; I am
sure the family would take it as a tribune of respect."
Mrs. Danforth looked utterly bewildered.
" Maggie Warren is to be buried this afternoon," I ex-
plained. " A young . girl of this neighborhood, who died
on Thursday morning last. The funeral services are to be
held in this church, at half-past one. Miss Rust invites
you to attend."
" Oh, indeed ! No, I thank you ; it is not the city cus-
tom to attend funerals of people you don't know. By the
way, what is the hour of afternoon service? "
" One o'clock," replied I. " And it is the country cus-
tom, Mrs. Danforth, to hold funerals in the place of the af-
ternoon service, when they can conveniently be arranged
to take place on Sunday."
" Ah, I see, a labor-saving institution, and thoroughly
New Anglican ! But you do not mean to say that after-
noon service is always at one o'clock ! "
"Assuredly."
Mrs. Danforth held up her hands with a laughable air
of consternation. "Two sermons, with only an hour be-
tween ! my moral digestion is not equal to that ! I should
get the heads of the afternoon discourse tacked on to the
tail of the morning preachment, and the morning applica-
tion unlawfully joined to the afternoo\i text ; and endless
bewilderment and error would be the inevitable result.
Put me down for a half-day Christian in Shiloh, Miss
Rust."
" I haven't got anything to do with putting anybody
down. I expect the Lord attends to that business Himself,"
returned Aunt Yin, rather shortly ; internally displeased at
the implied ridicule of customs endeared to her by long fa-
miliarity. " And if you repine that an hour and a half out
6
122 SIIILOH.
of His holy day is enough to give Him, it isn't my loca-
tion to calculate whether it's a seventh or a seventeenth of
your time."
"My peccadilloes are getting hard measure between
you," replied Mrs. Danforth, with imperturbable good hu-
mor ; " Miss Rust has even more of the Cynic than the
Sphinx about her. Good-bye." And her diamonds flashed
out into the sunshine.
" It's easy to see what she's ' confounded of,' " said Aunt
Yin, looking after her, with two or three jerks of extreme
disapproval, " I guess 'twouldn't take a Styx to put her
together, nor a Clinic to pull her to pieces ! Are you go-
ing to the house before the people begin to dissemble, Miss
Frost ? "
" Yes ; I promised Mrs. Warren that I would bring
fresh flowers for Maggie ; but I must go over to Mrs. Di-
vine's and get them. Tell her, please, that I will be there
in good time."
I passed Uncle True at the foot of the hill. He looked
up at me with a beaming face. " That's what I call a good
sermon," said he, " a sermon with the breath of life in it.
I've heard 'em that sounded just as a case of bugs and but-
terflies, with pins stuck through 'em, looks ; a bit here and
a bit there, scraped together out o' books and papers, with-
out no connection, nor no heart and soul in 'em anywheres.
You feel pooty sure the preacher didn't write 'em with a
tear in his eye, nor a prayer in his heart."
Mrs. Prescott brought Mr. Taylor home to lunch witli
her, and engaged him in a brisk conversation at table. It
is rare to see a man so thoroughly in earnest, and showing
it in every word and movement. His whole soul was in his
work, and all his talk tended thitherward ; no matter what
other topic might be introduced, he gave it but a glance,
and immediately recurred to the one absorbing idea, fre-
quently overlooking the necessity, or expediency, of using
tact in the transition. His experience and success, as
SHILOH. 123
a lay-missionary, had been just enough to rouse his enthusi-
asm and engage his affections in the Church's work : and
now that he had been duly furnished with the requisite intel-
lectual weapons, and received the grace of ordination, he
felt himself stronger than all the powers of evil, human and
spiritual, combined. He believed, as many a_ tyro in the
ministry has done before him, and as many more may
do, I trust, in years to come, since a man had better never
have been born than to have been born without a gen-
erous hope and confidence in the world's amendment, and
in his power to help it forward; he believed, I say, that
he brought to his profession some more vital force, some
deeper spiritual insight, some Diviner fire, than his pre-
decessors ; by which the world, old and reprobate though
it be, must of necessity be intenerated and overcome, and
its long partnership in iniquity with the Spirit of Evil be
dissolved. I gazed at him with a sorrowful pity. It
needed no seer to discern that that bitterest form of
disappointment which steals upon the heart in the fair
disguise of a long and fondly cherished purpose, at last
accomplished was surely coming to him, sooner or later,
and would wring his soul with sharpest anguish and dis-
couragement. Not so easily was the old Adam to be
overcome by the new Melancthon !
I thought it a noteworthy expression of his character
that, before luncheon was over, he was engaged in a warm
discussion with Mrs. Divine, touching some matters, of cere-
monial, things about which she holds very old-fashioned
and decided opinions; upon some one of which, coming ac-
cidentally to the surface of the conversation, Mr. Taylor
pounced with zealous disapproval, and which she defended
with her usual adroitness and homely sense. In the height
of the discussion, I left them for the house of mourning.
XII.
WOUNDS AND BALMS.
[HEN I reached the little gray house of the
Warrens, to which the presence of Death
seemed to have imparted a certain dignity
as well as sombreness, I found Aunt Vin in
the doorway, watching for the undertaker, in
a state of extreme dissatisfaction.
"If there's anything that aspirates me,"
she said, severely, " it's to have people so
desultory about getting ready for funeral and wedding
cerements. Pm always punctuous, and I don't see why
other people can't be."
Mrs. Warren was standing by her dead daughter, hold-
ing Jack by the hand. That hardy and slippery urchin had
somehow been captured and thrust into a new suit of
clothes, and had- not yet recovered from his astonishment
and discomfiture. He glanced at his mother out of the
corner of one eye, and sniffled ; gave me a kind of leer with
the other, and grinned ; looked down at his clothes, and
wriggled, as if he would fain cast them as a serpent does
his skin ; and, finally, contemplated, the door in a way that
made it evident he was calculating the chances of escape.
His mother's face of quiet sorrow went to my heart.
"I am just beginning to realize that I must give her up,"
said she to me, piteously. " So far, she has been like an
angel in the house, filling it with peace and restfulness ; but
when she is gone, what is to take the vacant place?"
SHILOII. 125
There are questions which only He who spake as never
man spake, can answer. Certain of His words came to my
lips, in such wise that they seemed to utter themselves
without help of my volition. " ' I will not leave you com-
fortless, I will come unto you.' 'And I will pray the
Father, and He will send you another Comforter, that He
may abide with you forever.' "
" I know it," she answered, in a low, self-communing
tone. " I know the Everlasting Arms- are always ready to
catch us. when our earthly props fall away, if we will but let
them. Yet the human supports are very sweet, too ! But
thank you, Miss Frost ; I will try to remember those words
when when it comes to the final parting."
She watched me silently, while I combed out and ar-
ranged her daughter's long, shining hair, that wonderful
human growth ! so beautiful in its tint and texture, so in-
destructible in its nature, keeping lustrous and lifelike
long after the head that it adorned has crumbled into
dust, and often outliving both the affection that treas-
ured, and the memory that enriched, it!
" How is your son S..amuel ? " I asked, at length, de-
sirous of diverting her thoughts into some brighter
channel.
" He is a great deal better, thank you. He would make
us bring him in to bid his sister good-bye, this morning.
It was pitiful to see his wan face hanging over hers." The
mother's lip quivered.
" And Mr. Warren ? " I hastened to inquire.
" He is nearly sick with grief. Maggie was his idol,
you know. I am quite distressed about him. He comes in
and looks at her awhile, and then goes put and wanders
aixwnd the place, or sits in the garden, perfectly silent and
motionless, for hours. He is there now. Cannot you go
and speak to him, Miss Frost ? It is time he was roused.
He has not yet dressed himself for the funeral ; indeed, I
do not even know that he means to go."
126 - SHILOH.
I made a gesture of dismay. The idea of intruding
upon the grief of a man that I knew and understood so lit-
tle, was exceedingly distasteful to me.
" I wish you would go," she urged. " I think he likes
you. It is certain that he has listened to you more patiently
than ever he did to anybody else, and that he has not been
able to get some of your words out of his head. Do go ! "
Thus entreated, I went, though not without extreme re-
luctance. " What shall I say to him ? " I murmured to
myself, as I caught sight of his motionless figure at the
farther end of the garden.
BOXA. " Take no thought how or what you shall speak,
for it shall be given you in that same hour what you shall
speak."
He was sitting on a fallen tree, with his back toward
me. It is wonderful how much misery can be expressed by
mere attitude ; his head was bowed, all the lines of his
figure drooped, his very garments had a weary, dejected,
grief-worn aspect. He must have heard my footsteps, but
he neither moved nor turned his head, not even when I
stopped within an arm's length of him. A genuine em-
barrassment overcame me. I was about to steal noiselessly
away, when I felt by chance, I was about to say, but I
have expunged that word from my vocabulary my little
prayer-book in my pocket. The touch was like an inspira-
tion. Opening it at random, my eyes fell \ipon the thirty-
eighth Psalm, and I began to read, in a voice that shook
like an aspen leaf,
" ' Put me not to rebuke, O Lord, in Thine anger,
neither chasten me in Thy heavy displeasui-e. For Thine
arrows stick fast in me, and Thy hand presseth me sore.' "
I saw that the words struck him powerfully, not so
much by any start or gesture, as by the greater immobility,
the fixed attention, of his form. I went on, therefore, wi; h
increasing confidence, " ' For my wickednesses are gone
over my head, and are like a sore burden, too heavy for me
127
to bear.' ' I am brought into so great trouble and misery,
that I go mourning all the day long.' ' I am feeble and
sore smitten. I have roared for the very disquietness of my
heart.' "
A groan burst from him, like an echo of the words,
and so deep and powerful that I started in alarm. Recov-
ering myself instantly, I proceeded,
" ' My lovers and neighbors did stand looking upon my
trouble, and my kinsmen stood afar off.' ''
He murmured some unintelligible words.
" ' As for me *I was like a deaf man, and heard not ;
and as one that is dumb, who doth not open his mouth.' "
He nodded his head, as if in assent.
" ' For I will confess my wickedness and be sorry for
my sin.' "
A kind of hopeless shiver ran over him, and a deep
sigh escaped his lips. Still turning the leaves at random,
I alighted .upon the twenty-second Psalm, and read on
without any apparent pause. When I came to the sen-
tences," Our fathers hoped in Thee They called up-
on Thee, and were holpen. But as for me, I am a worm
and no man, a very scorn of men, and the outcast of the
people," he dropped his head heavily into his hands, and
a long, struggling moan of incontrollable agony testified
that the "Word of God is, in truth, " sharper than any two-
edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of
joints and marrow." The sound smote me with poignant
pain and pity ; not wittingly or willingly had I pressed so
heavily upon his hidden sore. I began to look, trembling,
for balm wherewith to dress the wound, and the thirty-sec-
ond Psalm came opportunely to hand. The better to make
him feel that his place was still secure in the sympathetic
chain of human brotherhood, I laid my hand lightly on his
shoulder as I read, knowing that there is often a subtler
sympathy in touch than in any word spoken afar off; and
having lost, for the moment, that consciousness of moral re-
128 SHILOHv
pulsion which had hitherto made it so difficult for me to
approach him.
When the Psalm was finished, I waited silently for the
paroxysm to cease ; then I said, quietly, " It is nearly time
for the people to gather, sir, and Mrs. Warren says you are
not dressed yet. Of course, you will not let Maggie go
from you, without accompanying her as far on the way as
you can."
And without seeking to extract any reply, or to look in
his face, I went back to the house. A moment after, I
heard him enter, and go up stairs.
In a short time the undertaker arrived, and brought into
* O
the death-chamber that long, narrow box, which, whether
it be rich or plain, shows more clearly than anything else
in the world, perhaps, how limited are the world's posses-
sions, how bounded the world's hopes. If this life were all,
and to end thus and there who would care to live it ?
So I thought, and so I said to Mr. Warren, who, I found,
was standing by me, looking into the coffin with a face of
utter loathing.
" You really believe in another life, then ? " he asked,
but in a listless, aimless way, as if the answer could in no-
wise concern him.
" Believe ! I think I can say with Job, I KNOW that my
Redeemer liveth, and that though after my skin worms de-
stroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."
He shook his head, more, it appeared, in hopelessness
than contradiction. " Look abroad in Nature ; everything
dies."
"Yes, sir- to live again."
" Um do you believe that the beasts live after death?"
" There is no conclusive evidence against it, that I know
of. The fact from which I chiefly draw an inference to the
contrary, furnishes as strong a presumption in favor of
man's immortality."
He began to look interested. " What is it ? "
SHILOH. 129
" Well, so far as we can judge, the beasts have no hope
nor expectation of another existence. And it seems to me
that God would be likely to impart a hope that He designed
to fulfil, inasmuch as He never implants one that He mean?
to disappoint."
"I don't know about that," he answered, in .a vague, in'
ward tone. " I once hoped to be happy."
" You can be yet, sir, if you will seek for happiness in
that only, narrow path which leads to it. They who choose
to walk in the broad way of self-indulgence, and the pride
of human reason, are fools, deceiving their own selves."
",And rich," he continued, in the same dreamy voice.
" Yes, sir, with the riches that do not perish in the
using."
" And handsome and brilliant."
" They shall be mine, saith the Lord, in that day when
I make up my jewels."
He turned upon me with a sudden and to me inex-
plicable sharpness. " I wish you would find an answer
somewhere besides in the Bible."
" I would, sir, if I could find an apter one elsewhere," I
answered, quietly. He looked at me a moment, then his
eyes fell.
All things now being ready, the undertaker stepped to
Maggie's side, and, signaling to Aunt Vin to help him, was
about to lift her into the coffin ; when Mr. Warren started
forward, crying out, in a loud voice, and with flashing eyes,
" What are you doing there ! In Heaven's name, let my
dead child alone ! "
The man shrank back, and stared hard at him, in amaze-
ment and perplexity.
"I don't want any strange hands about her," continued
the father, after a moment, trying to control his irritation ;
but still with a shade of bitter resentment in his tone. " If
you'll just step out into the kitchen there, we will do it
ourselves, thank you."
6"
130 SHILOH.
The man obeyed, and Mr. Warren carefully closed the
door after him, muttering between his teeth, " How dare he
touch her ! " Certainly, his character is a study of such a
nature as was never before presented to my eyes. What
a curious combination of delicacy and coarseness, of re-
finement and crudity !
We transferred the still, white maiden to her narrow
couch we four with very gentle hands ; it falling to my
share to lay the lovely head, with its face of unearthly
peacefulness, on its last, low pillow. A tear fell" beside it.
I bethought me that Maggie Warren was the first and only
being, in many long days, to call out in me that species of
affection which is so quickly begotten of helplessness and
help, and to respond to it with a certain degree of apprecia-
tion and preference ; and I regretted to lose even that small
sunbeam out of my life. To be helpful is not to be happy,
I know ; but it is one of the elements of happiness that I
least like to miss.
Lastly, I put a fresh cross and wreath in their -places,
and fastened to the coffin-lid a dove made entirely of lilies
of the valley ; which last ofiei'ing elicited from Jack a bit
of unqualified commendation.
" Golly ! ain't that fine ! "
" Perhaps Miss Frost will tell you what it means," said
his mother, quietly.
" It is the emblem of the Holy Ghost, whose sweetest
name is ' Comforter,' " I answered, instantly perceiving her
intent. " If it reminds us also of that first dove noted in
the world's history, which found no rest nor shelter till it
returned to the ark from whence it set forth ; and helps us,
by means of these exterior types, to understand that the
human soul finds never perfect peace, nor safe home, until
it resorts to that God who created it ; my dove will have
done its perfect work, Jack."
Jack stared, uncomprehending; Mr. Warren turned
hastily away.
XIII.
THE DOVE BEFORE THE ALTAR.
HE funeral guests were now assembling fast.
A goodly company of grave-looking ma-
tron*, quaintly respectable in well-pre j
served old fashioned garments, was already
seated in the kitchen ; filling it with a whisper-
ing buzz, as of a swarm of flies. Knots of
bright-faced girls were standing in the corners,
and around the front door-yard ; so thoroughly
imbued with the glow and freshness of this first day of
June by their long walk over breezy hills and through leaf-
arched lanes, that all their efforts to subside from gayety
into gloom, only resulted in a compromise of subdued cheer-
fulness. Not until they entered the little room where Mag-
gie lay, and looked at her white face, did their pretty play
of smile and dimple quite cease, and a quick moisture suffuse
and soften their sparkling eyes. There were stout, steady-
going farmers, too, gathered about the 'step and gate (the
house being too small to hold half the assemblage) and
talking intermittently in low, grave tones ; and a row of
young men leaning on the fence ; and a sprinkling of boys,
full of curiosity and restlessness, hanging .about their eld-
ers with upturned faces and wide-open ears. And all up
and down the road, on either side, was a string of country-
wagons, of every antique and clumsy pattern ; and horses,
132 SHILOH.
of every age, size, color, and quality ; from restless, h nlf
broken colts, constantly stamping and backing, and elicit-
ing an occasional low, sharp " Whoa ! " from their vigilant
masters, to patient, broken-down mares, standing motion-
less in the sun, with drooping heads ; and only proving
themselves to be alive by a lazy whisk of the tail; now and
then, or a sudden contraction of a muscle and twitching of
the skin, to displace some tormenting fly. One of these
last had a colt of very tender age, frisking about her, and
often provoking an angry snort and snap from some neigh-
boring animal, evidently of the opinion of certain of the
human race, that babies should never be taken from Jiome.
Mr. Taylor now appeared, accompanied by Mrs. Pres-
cott and the Divines. I saw his face light up, as he
caught sight of my dove ; and, a moment after, he sought
me out.
" "What made you hit upon that design, of all others ? "
inquired he.
' I do not know ; I thought it was appropriate enough,
is it not ? " I answered, wondering.
" I should think so ! you have not the least idea how
singularly appropriate it is." And he passed on.
A few prayers were offered : then the procession formed,
and moved slowly toward the church. Very seldom had
Maggie entered its doors in her lifetime, I knew, not so
much on account of adverse influence at home as because
its services had been so few and irregular, of late. -Not
only over Jerusalem, be sure, did the Saviour weep ; but, in
His penetrating, prophetic vision, over every place where
the House of the Lord is allowed to stand empty from
month to month, and year to year; while those who dwell
under its shadow grow daily and hourly more absorbed in
earthly toil and earthly aims, more and more forgetful that
life was given for any other purpose than to buy and sell
and get gain. Over all such fallow fields in His vineyard,
our Lord's mournful words echo even yet, "If thou
SHILOII. loo
hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the
things which belong to thy peace ! "
When I entered the vestibule of the church, Alice Pres-
cott (evidently on the watch) intercepted me, and led me
into the shadow of the gallery staircase. " Oh ! Miss
Frost," she exclaimed, eagerly, " can't you sing ? "
'' Sing ! " I repeated, between surprise and disgust, " no
I don't know that is, why do you ask ? "
" Ruth Winnot is so so hoarse," stammered she, blush-
ing, her small array of self-possession, called out by the
exigency of the moment, being utterly routed by my un-
gracious manner, " she can hardly make a sound. And I
thought or mother did that you would at least, that
perhaps you might sing for us just this once."
" But Miss Winnot sang this morning," I said, in a cross-
questioning tone.
" Yes, her cold was only just beginning then, and she
managed to get through, somehow. But she thinks that
singing only irritated her throat ; and after she stopped,
she seemed to choke right up. When she tried, a few min-
utes ago, she couldn't get out a note. And then I thought
of you."
" But do you not sing ? "
" I can help a little, I can't lead."
" Make your alto take the air, then."
" Who ? " asked Alice, looking bewildered. " Oh ! you
mean the second ! She went right home, as soon as it was
proposed. Nothing puts her out so much as to be asked
to sing treble."
No doubt I looked fully as much " put out," to judge
by Alice's downcast face. Its pained and discomfited ex-
pression softened my tone a little, when next I spoke,
though there was no relenting in my mood.
" I sing ' second,' too, Alice, when I sing at all."
" Do you ? " she rejoined, in a wondering, doubtful way,
" I thought you could sing anything you liked."
134 SIIILOII.
Her naive confidence in my powers brought a reluctant,
but irrepressible smile to my lips. "Thank you, but you
greatly overrate my musical ability ; I am not such a happy
and convenient combination of Malibran, Alboni, Mario,
and Lablache. The real state of the case is that I have
always cared more for the theoretical than the practical
part of music, for myself; and that latterly, for reasons
which it is not worth while to enter upon, I have acquired
an aversion to the sound of my own voice. You have not
heard me sing since I came to Shiloh, I think."
" Yes, ma'am, once in the garden. First, you imitated
a wren that was singing in the pear-tree ; and then you went
on with something that sounded like a great many birds'
songs, put together. I never heard anything like it, in my
life ! To be sure, you looked all the time as if you were
thinking of something else."
I was dumbfounded. Without this incontrovertible
testimony, I could not have believed that I had sung a
note since April. Doubtless, I had treated Alice and the
wren to a purely mechanical and involuntary repetition of
some old exercises in trills or chromatics, recalled to my
memory by something in the song of the latter. And no
wonder the simple little country-maiden was astonished !
Probably she never did hear anything like the scientific
training of a modern singer ; nor is she in the least aware
what a blissful ignorance is hers !
" I am very sorry," she sighed, after a pause, turning
reluctantly away. "It's so miserable not to have any
singing ! "
BONA (with severity). "Well, what are you waiting for ?
you know you can sing well enough for the occasion, if you
like.
I (petulantly). But I do not like ! You know I hate to
sing, and why. I wish I had never learned how !
MALA. And to such an audience ! How very appreci-
ative they will be of Signer Canto's "style," which lie
SHILOH. 135
drilled into you so thoroughly ! An accordeon accompani-
ment, too !
I shrugged my shoulders.
BOXA. The question is not one of preference or appre-
ciation. It is simply whether the burial service this after-
noon shall be conducted with the greatest attainable degree
of perfection and solemnity, by your help ; or whether it
shall be shorn somewhat of both, through your unwilling-
ness to do your duty.
MALA. It is not your duty. You are not one of the
Shiloh choir.
BONA. It is your duty to do anything you are asked to
do, to sustain the service, when there is nothing to hinder,
and no one who can, or will, do it any better.
I. But I am all out of practice.
BOXA. That is your fault. And one fault is not to be
offered as an excuse for another.
I. And it is so awkward and uncomfortable to sing with
people one is not accustomed to sing with !
BONA. Your own comfort is the last thing to be con-
sidered, under the circumstances. And your audience will
notrbe a critical one.
I. And I sing alto !
BONA. Your voice has all the compass, and more, that
will be required for the music you will have to sing.
My last defences being thus carried, I began to mount
the stairs slowly and reluctantly. Alice, watching my in-
decision from a few steps above, accepted the movement as
a favorable augury. " Oh ! are you going to sing, after
all ? " she asked, with a brightening face.
"Perhaps," I answered, shortly; not to enhance the
value of the favor by that cheerful readiness of compliance
which would make it most acceptable.
Her face fell again, and she led the way in silence to
where Ruth Winnot sat, with her head resting wearily on
the seat before her. One glance at her flushed and suffer-
156 SHILOH.
ing face convinced me that her excuse was no trumped-up
one ; she was in the fell grasp of an influenza. Yet even
under such unfavorable circumstances, I was struck with
her uncommon beauty. Soft, wavy hair, of that rare, rich
tint of auburn which artists love so well, framed a face of
pure oval outline ; with straight, delicate features, and
clear, brown eyes, that had a strain of pathos in them for
which not even the influenza accounted fully.
" The bass " to borrow Alice's title, was turning over
his music-book, with an anxious face. He was a little,
meek-looking man, with a legible enough record of misfor-
tune and. patience written across his brow ; and wofully
near sighted. He glanced toward me nervously, gave ut-
terance to an embarrassed " Ahem ! " and buried his face
in his music-book.
I sat down, and looked around me. The gallery was so
small,. and so near to the ceiling so ill-ventilated, withal
that it was like a furnace. I noted, mechanically, half-a-
dozen high-backed pews ; the unrailed opening of the stair-
case, looking like a trap ; a ladder leading to the little
tower above ; and a whole colony of wasps clinging to the
window-sashes, with two or three scouts flying in the open
space, which I could not help dodging, now and then,
though no one else seemed to mind them.
The bass sent another nervous glance in my direction,
and a preliminary, " Ahem ! "
" What would you like to sing ? " inquired he, in a tone
which seemed to imply that he feared it was taking a liberty
to ask the question.
" It does not matter in the least," I answered, making
some little effort to bring my mood up to the level of oi-di-
nary civility ; but conscious that there was a disagreeable,
injured inflection in my voice. It was plain that it was felt
acutely in his consciousness, too, for he colored to the
roots of his hair, and hid his face in his music-book again.
Ashamed of venting my ill-hurnor upon anything so
SHILOH. 137
mild and inoffensive, I hastened to remove the unpleasant
impression. " That is," I continued, " I should prefer to
have you choose ; I am such a tyro in choir-singing. This
is my first attempt, and I have not the least idea how I
shall acquit myself. You are the best judge, therefore,
what the tune should be."
He looked a little reassured. After some moments'
search, he held the book toward me and pointed to the
open page. " Would you mind singing that ? I guess it's
as suitable as anything we've got, and it's an old tune that
everybody knows."
It was so old as to be quite new to me. I hastily sig-
nified my acceptance of it, however, and the matter was
settled. In good time, too, for Mr. Taylor's voice began
to vibrate solemnly through the building, "I am the Res-
urrection nnd the Life."
I drew near the gallery-rail, and looked down. Slowly
and with difficulty the pall-bearers made their way up the
narrow aisle ; and Maggie was placed in front of the chan-
cel, with her white face looking up to the white ceiling,
and the strong light of the many windQws setting clearly
forth every line, ev.ery feature, every fold and flower. A
broad band of sunshine lay directly across her bosom, kind-
ling cross and crown into a vivid, half-diaphanous bright-
ness ; and the breeze came freely in, full of pleasant sum-
mer sounds, the twittering of birds, the cheery chirp of
insects, the faint tinkling of a cowVbell in a far-off meadow,
and lifted the sleeping girl's hair with light fingers, and
ruffled the fragrant plumage of the dove on the coffin, un-
til both seemed to be stirring with some new-found, myste-
rious life. I should scarcely have marveled to see the one
arise, and the other fly out of the window, such life-likeness
did the breeze and sunshine impart to them.
The few mourners followed, and filed into the front
pews. Mr. Warren looked around him, with a face that
was almost fierce in its grief and bewilderment. He had
138 SHILOH.
not crossed the threshold of a church for years on years, I
was told ; and there were many eyes gazing at him with
more curiosity than sympathy. I think his quick intuitions
felt, and resented it momentarily, even then ; for he stopped
at the pew-door, and looked as if he were about to turn
and march out ; then his glance fell on Maggie's form, his
chin dropped on his breast, and he sank into his seat, with
the air of a man who had lost all consciousness of outward
things in the miserable abstraction of mental anguish.
Then followed the beautiful, brief, comprehensive bur-
ial service of the Church ; so excellent in what it says, so
especially admirable in what it leaves unsaid. There is
nothing like it anywhere ; all other ceremonials of burial
seem either heavy or puerile, beside its severe, yet most
fit and satisfying, simplicity.
I understood Mr. Taylor's remarks about my dove,
when he announced his text. " But the dove found no
rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him in
the ark ; for the waters were on the face of the whole
earth. Then he put forth his hand, and took her and
pulled her into the ark." Spiritual unrest its nature,
cause, and cure, this was Mr. Taylor's subject. It was
developed with a degree of poetic feeling that I had not
expected: God's loving haste to meet and welcome the
first return of the wandering soul to Him, as typified in the
putting forth of the hand, and the pulling of the dove into
the ark, was not overlooked : neither was the yet deeper
analogy of the hand to the death-angel, and of the ark to
the heavenly state, with its gentle consolations for the
time of bereavement, neglected; and the delivery was
warmed by a still richer glow of that fervor and earnest-
ness which had so impressed me in Mr. Taylor's manner in
the morning. He was more at home now, he felt himself
more thoi-oughly en rapport with his hearers, sure of the
responsive kinship of all souls that sorrowed or sym-
pathized around him. After the first few sentences, Mr.
SHILOII. 139
Warren lifted his head, and listened with an attention that
never wavered throughout. I was so interested myself,
that the announcement of the two-hundred-and-fifth hymn
came upon me with startling unexpectedness.
I might say, with almost perfect truth; that I did not
know there was such a hymn in the prayer-book ; for I had
never before read it with any attention, nor known of its
exquisite fitness for an occasion like the present. I just
glanced over the words, and a thrill went through and
through me. By the time Ruth Winnot had finished her
small prelude, I was nearly unconscious of accordeon, ac-
companiment, helpers, or hearers, of everything, save the
wonderful power and adaptation of the words I was to
sing, and the mighty swell of a musical inspiration such as
I never felt before, and do not expect to feel again. I be-
gan in a full, clear, recitative style, that filled the little
church like a sea, and quenched every stir and rustle be-
low. At the third line, Alice's small voice dropped out
entirely, and her head went down on the book-ledge before
her, trembling with emotion. The bass being both smooth
and sympathetic, kept along well ; the tenor, uncertain
what I might, or might not, do next, sang in subdued,
and consequently, more musical tones ; and Ruth played
like one doubly inspired from without and within.
When I came to the words,
" So blooms the human face divine,
When youth its pride of beauty shows,"
Mr. Warren faced square about, totally unmindful of cus-
tom or comment, and fixed his piercing eyes on my face.
His intent gaze only deepened and quickened the electrical
current that had already made me aware of the entire sympa-
thy of all my auditors, and I sang on with added power and
fervor. The mournful sentiment of the next verse wailed
itself forth in slow, soft, sombre 'tones, that Alice heard
with an accompaniment of long-drawn, smothered sobs ;
140 SHILOH.
"The fading glory disappears,
The short-lived beauties die away."
The next verse began to swell with the joy of heavenly
hope and faith ; but I reserved the full power of my voice
to roll out the last like a stately anthem of praise,
"Let sickness blast and death devour,
If heaven shall recompense our pains !
Perish the grass and fade the flower,
If firm the Word of God remains ! "
Mr. Warren kept his position for some seconds, after the
last tone died away ; then dropped heavily into his seat.
For him, I suspect, the service was over. Certainly, he
gave little heed to the prayers which followed ; neither^ if
the truth must be told, did I. The confusion and the
fatigue of reaction came upon me powerfully ; I leaned my
head against a pillar, and knew nothing save that I had
been in a state of superhuman exaltation, and that it had
left me very humanly weary.
When the benediction was pronounced, Ruth Winnot
turned a wet and working face toward me. " Miss Frost,
I shall never sing again," she said, mournfully.
" Indeed, why not ? " I responded, only half-roused to
intelligence.
" I can never sing like that, and nothing less could
satisfy me now," with a half-sob.
"Miss Winnot," I returned, earnestly, "your voice,
naturally, is worth a dozen of mine ; there are possibilities
lurking within it, to which mine could never, by any possi-
bility, attain. The effect that I have produced on you to-
day is partly owing to the cultivation my voice has received,
and partly borrowed from the emotional excitement of the
occasion. Your fingers felt it as much as my voice. If
you could put the same soul into an organ as you did into
that accordeon just now, the musical world would fall down
and worship you."
SIIILOH. 141
She shook her head sadly, unconvinced. Bona whis-
pered softly into my ear, and I made a sudden resolution.
An opportunity was now given to friends and neighbors
to take a last look at features shortly to vanish, for all time,
from the eyes and the places that had known them ; of
which, it seemed to me, everybody took advantage, except
Ruth Winnot, who remained in her seat, silent, and, ap-
parently, suffering.
The mourners went last. Mrs. Warren gave her child
one long, lingering, ineffably tender look ; and turned
away, never once losing her self-control. It was plain to
see, however, that her face was so calm only because her
grief had sunk so deep down into her heart ; as the bosom
of a lake is smooth and silent over the mournfullest secret
of its depths. But the father, utterly regardless of obser-
vation and the lapse of time, hung over the lovely face as
if he would never consent to part with it. "Twice the un-
dertaker laid his hand on his arm, and sought to draw him
away, and twice he shook it off, with a sound like a sub-
dued growl. Suddenly he stood upright, glared around
him like a wild thing, and marched quickly down the aisle.
Mrs. Warren hastened after, and took his arm; I suspect
she was afraid he would go straight home in a fit of sorrow-
ful abstraction.
XIV.
DUST TO DUST.
NOTWITHSTANDING the mournfulness of
the occasion, that afternoon ride has a kind
of glory in my memory, mainly attributable,
I imagine, to the genial influences of the balmy
June weather; the really fine days of which
month are the most perfect that the year
vouchsafes us. A little too warm in the sun ?
perhaps, yet only enough so to assure us that
that luminary was in a lavish and beneficent mood;
neither intent on restricting his life-giving warmth to a
bare sufficiency for one's needs ; nor engaged in a malicious
experiment how much of it human flesh and blood could
endure without broiling. And in the shade, the atmos-
phere was full of a primal freshness, as if it had just been
created, which it was enough of delight merely to breathe
and taste.
The graveyard was about two miles away. The road
thither wound through a pleasant variety of New England
scenery, wherein the tamest objects had a semi- wild look,
as if but half-subordinated to civilization, and ready, at any
moment, to lapse back into savagery, which was not with-
out its charm. Every farm had its ledges, thickets, swamps,
and outlying wastes, covered with rambling, untutored
vegetation; alternating with green meadows and fertile
fields, and mingling a spice of rudeness with the gentler
SIIILOII. 143
traits of the scene. Tiny lakelets smiled and scintillated
in the valleys ; here and there a late-blooming apple-tree
scattered the fragrant snow of its petals "over a green hill-
side. Overhead, arched a sky without a cloud ; depth be-
yond depth of illimitable, dazzling blue. And the quietude
was perfect, though a quietude so voiceful! Sweetened
only not disturbed by twitterings of birds and dreamy
hum of insects, soft whisperings of leaves and babblings of
wayside brooks.
Through all this light and glow, this warm color and
various melody, this fresh, joyous, abundant life, the funeral
procession, with its hearse and coffin and mourners, crept
like a black, devouring shadow. A sorrowful enough sight,
at best, with its hard realities of human waste and woe ;
but how immitigably bitter to all such as are insensible to
the comfort breathed through the inspired declaration,
" That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die ! "
For one miserable moment, I tried to identify my mind
with Mr. Warren's, and look at the landscape through his
eyes. It was as if I had viewed it through a smoke-
blackened glass. Without the hope of a Perfect Day yet
to dawn, through whose splendor no funeral train shall
march, all the glory of the opening June seemed but a
hollow mockery of joy, beside that trailing shadow of
death and gloom.
The burial ground occupied the rounded summit and
slope of a hill, by the roadside. It was a stony, barren
spot enough, notwithstanding that a few daisies and thistles
did their small best to make it beautiful ; obviously, the
founders thereof had not thought it worth while to waste
any soil capable of a present yield of grain-sheaves, upon
the prospect of the future harvest of immortality. There
was a sufficiently abundant crop of grave-stones, however ;
which stony outgrowth was to be found in every stage of
freshness and decay, from the disagreeably new, sharp-
cut, white, modern monument, to dark, time-graven, moss-
Ill SIIILOH.
grown head-stones, fast crumbling away and mingling their
dust with that which they had so ineffectually sought to
memorialize. TKese seemed to have their allotted period'
for flourishing and decay, not less than the weeds and flow-
ers, albeit, of somewhat longer duration.
We all gathered around the narrow niche in the damp
ground, and watched the coffin lowered to its place, and
listened to the solemn words of the Committal, and heard
the dread rattle of the three-fold fall of earth on its lid
" earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," and gave
thanks for the good examples of the faithful departed, and
prayed to be raised from the death of sin unto the life of
righteousness. When Mr. Taylor's voice ceased, there
were a few moments of deep, uncovered silence ; then, two
men seized their spades, and began to " fill up the grave.
With the fall of the first shovelful, came the dull thud
of a large stone on the coffin, cruelly wounding the white
dove, and inflicting a yet deeper -hurt upon Mr. Warrren's
sensitive heart. He gave an irritated start, knitting his
brows ; then, as a second hollow sound smote his ear, he
rushed forward, and caught the man's arm.
" Good Heavens ! " he cried, bitterly, " is there no
earth, in all Shiloh, to throw on my dead child, but that ! "
There was an embarrassed silence. Mr. Taylqr, with
Ms features working convulsively, stooped and began, in a
blind, unreasoning, mechanical way, to pick out the
stones from that side of the pile nearest him. One or
two of the bystanders felt constrained to follow his exam,-
ple, though with manifest reluctance and a latent fear of
making themselves ridiculous ; but the great body of prac-
tical-minded farmers shook their heads over such inconven-
ient acuteness of feeling, and waste of time and labor; and
Major Burcham officiously laid his hand on Mr. Warren's
shoulder, and tried to draw him aside, with some common-
place, reiterated assurance that the " soul was gone, and
the body only an empty casket, sir, only an empty casket ! "
SHILOH. 145
and was shaken off with an angry rudeness that consid-
erably ruffled his dignity. At this juncture, William Her-
man stepped forth and showed himself the same cool-
headed, quick-witted, and kind-hearted character, here,
that I had found him to be in the sick-room.
" Miss Essie," said he, quietly, " your barn is nearest ;
is there any straw in it ? "
" Oh ! plenty, thank you ; " catching his idea at once,
and feeling a quick and grateful relief, that was shared
by everybody within hearing. " Bring as much as you
want, please."
The straw was soon brought, two or three offering to
help, and the coffin covered to a sufficient depth to soften
and deaden any fall and sound of stone or earth. The
grave was then rapidly filled, and rounded over ; most of
the people waiting until the work was finished ; a custom
which, though it has a sufficiently stoical look to unac-
customed eyes, seems to have its root in the heart's ten-
derest and softest feelings. We do not readily leave our
most treasured things to be disposed of by strange and
careless hands.
When all was done, the concourse broke up slowly, and
dispersed itself over the graveyard, taking advantage of
the opportunity to review places consecrated by the ashes
of forefathers and compatriots, now intermixing indistin-
guishably, and some of them, doubtless, reappearing above
the earth in the shape of grass and flowers, to show how
much of old material is inevitably blended with the fresh-
est novelty, of life, nature, or art. Mrs. Divine and Mrs.
Prescott stood gravely by a group of half-a-dozen, or more,
head-stones, where sons, brothers, and husband had fallen
together ; and I strayed off by myself to the oldest portion
of the ground, into which the most ancient life of Shiloh
had subsided, and began trying to restore some of the in-
scriptions, by scraping away the mosses and lichens from
the half-obliterated letters, taking a quaint and sad pleas-
7
14:6 SHILOH.
ure in bringing back to a temporary legibility and possibil-
ity of recognition, some name which had long ago faded
out of the village memory, and so cheating Oblivion a lit-
tle longer of its prey. Very commonplace names they
were, belonging to that long roll which the world willingly
lets die ; not one of them being able to impart to its mon-
ument any historic interest or poetic immortality, to repay
me for my trouble. Yet I worked on, well pleased to see
them take shape and meaning under my fingers ; and
thankful to every one of their owners for having added
something to the quaint impressiveness and the thought-
fecundity of the place, by depositing his ashes there, and
causing the vaguest shadow of his shade to flit across
my imagination.
In some cases the dates alone could be restored, the
forlorn little human identities being quite lost ; which
gave me a curious impression that not people, but Years,
had laid themselves down under the sod ; as glad to be
done with sunshine and snow, calm and tempest, as their
human bedfellows with toil and pleasure, battle and bi-
vouac. It was pitiful to notice, I thought, following out
the idea, how few of them had signalized themselves by
any beautiful or noble deeds any great wrong righted, or
wide redemption achieved that might tend to exalt their
memory above others ; in fact, the greater part of those
which individualized themselves in my recollection, did it
in virtue of the mischief they had wrought. The most of
them, however, were as uninteresting as their mortal com-
panions, and perhaps, after all, were the more to be
really reverenced, on that account. The sterling useful-
ness of doing quiet duties in quiet ways, unobtrusively
and uncomplainingly, is one which, though the world
may make little account of it, .God will surely bless and
abundantly reward. Of such humble, unattractive lives,
is the Book of Life chiefly made up, I imagine.
A numerous group of head-stones, all bearing one fam-
SHILOH. 147
ily name, set me upon another train of thought. It was
good to see in what close and quiet proximity they lay
there ; whatever difference of age, or position, or opinion,
whatever personal antipathies, or jealousies, or misapprehen-
sions, had kept them apart in their lives. I doubted not
that I had chanced upon the type of a spiritual reality.
The souls of the dead, probably, mingle in the great com-
pany of the Departed, without a thought of the dislikes
and repulsions that made some of them so disagreeable to
each other on earth. A common glory or a common gloom
unites them in a close fraternity of hope or despair, joy or
misery.
Finally, I ascended the topmost swell of the hill, and
sat down on a fallen stone to consider the view, made up
of a pretty curve of road, mottled with tree-shadows;
two or three meadows, with grass so green that it seemed
. to have a lustre in it ; a bit of forest ; and an open, blue
eye of Rustic's Pond, mirroring the nearest objects with
a fidelity that might make one doubt which was the sub-
stance, which the reflection ; that trite material of which
Nature, everywhere and endlessly, makes fresh, sparkling
pictures, each with its own peculiar and exceeding charm.
Here, Mrs. Divine came to look for me.
Who can tell when the day begins to wane ? There
seemed not one sunbeam the less, no fainter tints, no deeper
shadows, yet, as we turned homeward, we felt a nameless
something in the air, and- saw and heard it in every hue
and tone, telling us that the day was fading its face al-
ready turned toward the oncoming Night.
And who can tell when his life begins to go down the
hill ? Few ever realize that they have passed its topmost
"point, until they are already far down the slope ; in sight
of the Valley of Shadow at its foot !
HEKB AND THERE.
you were less ready to play the part of a
viaduct, Francesca, I do not know but I should
take to writing to my father's spirit. I remem-
ber being profoundly affected, when I was a
school girl, by the information that among the
posthumous papers of a certain shy, reticent as-
sistant teacher, whom nobody ever seemed to un-
derstand or fraternize with, had been found a
large package of letters written to an early friend, over
whose grave the grass had grown green for years. This
friend had been her only confidant during her life ; and
after her death, the lonely survivor had gone on, writing to
her just as if she had been alive ; every week adding a
closely written epistle, duly signed, sealed and addressed,
to the growing pile ; through whose whole sombre texture
ran a touching story of long, wasting disappointment and
heart-ache, like a crimson thread. Without this resource,
doubtless her poor, proud, sensitive heart would have bro-
ken somewhat earlier than it did ! The recollection moves
me, even now. There is an exquisite pathos in the lonely
girl's fidelity to the one friendship of her life ; in the confi-
dence which death could not break, nor the slow lapse of
sorrowful years wear away. I can almost see the disem-
bodied spirit bending tenderly over each letter as it was
deposited in its place, and reading its contents with a face
of still brightness ; ^pitiful for the momentary affliction of
SHILOH. 149
her earth-bound friend, but rejoicing in the knowledge of
the exceeding glory for which it was so tenderly preparing
her.
Nevertheless, I am glad that I am writing for living
eyes and a living, human sympathy. For no others, I am
certain, should I feel free to set down so many minute and
apparently trivial details, as are necessary to a clear idea of
this Shiloh-life and my growing connection with it.
The fortnight following the burial of Maggie Warren
was fruitful only in commonplace events ; some of which,
however, require brief mention.
Mr. Taylor spent some days in Shiloh, visiting indus-
triously among the people, and trying to kindle in them
some small spark of interest in response to his own glowing
enthusiasm. They all liked him, even the most prejudiced
and indifferent among them, he was so earnest, so genuine,
there was such a cheerful alacrity in his manner, such a
fresh, breezy buoyancy in his tone. There was no resisting
the cheerful contagion of his hopefulness, or the steady,
stealing influence of his bright, ardent, energetic talk. He
contrived to throw such an air of reasonableness, and even
of practicability, over whatever he proposed or planned,
and he had so ready a response to every objection, that, so
far as words went, he soon had everything his own way.
Some of those who had been most adverse to Mrs. Pres-
cott's movement, and had stigmatized it as the purest folly,
were swept along on the swift current of his assertion and
argument almost to the point of thinking that it might be
a good thing, after all ; and if, on reflection, they were in-
clined to smile at him as visionary, and at themselves for
their momentary conversion, they respected him, none the
less, for the purity of his motives and the unselfishness of
his zeal. Others, belonging to that vast multitude which,
in religious enterprises, lets " ' I dare not ' wait upon ' I
would,' " shook their heads with a kind of mournful pity
over the obstacles and the disappointments they foresaw in
150 SIIILOI-I.
his path ; but they were deeply touched, nevertheless, by
his generous confidence in himself and in them, and there
was not a grain of contempt infused into the pity. And all
this, despite his ways were unlike their ways, his thoughts
very different from their thoughts, his standards far re-
moved from their standards ; despite, too, his city breeding,
and his often amusing ignorance of rural customs and agri-
cultural lore. In these large, low, firelit farm kitchens ;
where the grim shade of the tenacious, old-time conserv-
atism lurks longest, and opposes the most steady and de-
termined resistance to innovation ; his visit left an influence
like that of a fresh breeze from a mountain top, or a sun-
beam struggling through a fog. And as both these airy
visitants, in whatever narrow, sombre, or sordid place they
chance to stray, immediately create for themselves a certain
congruity and fitness in being there ; so Mr. Taylor seemed
at once to harmonize with his surroundings : every segment
of his character, in virtue of some curious, unsuspected
agreement of apparently diverse angles, dovetailed into the
Shiloh-life, as if it had been made for it.
Having finished his visitation, and taken it for granted
that everybody encouraged him, because nobody could
long have the hardihood to maintain an attitude of dis-
couragement against his strenuous hope and zeal, he went
his way to arrange for the removal of his family hither ; it
being understood, however, that he should officiate on the
intervening Sundays.
A day or two after, I saw, from my window, Essie
Volger approaching the house. She reined her shaggy
little Canadian pony deftly up to the gate, sprang lightly
from the buggy to the ground, fastened the horse to a post,
greeted Uncle True cheerily, whistled to Leo, and had well-
nigh crossed the threshold before I could get down to meet
her.
" Ah ! Miss Frost, it is such a lovely day ! " she began,
" too lovely, by far, to waste indoors ! "
SHILOH. 151
" So my senses have been telling me."
" Pray listen to them ! For, though I cannot say,
' My boat is by the shore '
my buggy is at the door, and if you will consent to receive
this first, formal call of mine in that, you can be enjoying
a drive at the same time."
She took me to the bank of the Housatonic ; at this
point, a clear, rapid, curving stream, forest-shadowed on
one side, and quickly losing itself among grassy and
wooded hills. Much of the way was by a steep and hilly
road, across which the boughs of the trees met and inter-
laced; with here and there picturesque glimpses of the
winding, shimmering stream below. At the river's brink,
we quitted the buggy and strolled down the wooded bank,
listening to the rippling current, and gathering ferns and
flowers. Such an excursion is a ready promoter of ac-
quaintance ; I came home feeling that years of association,
however enjoyable, could add but little to my knowledge
of Miss Essie. Not that her character is so shallow, but
because it is so clear. Sometimes, the waters of a fountain
are so pellucid, allowing the shells and pebbles of its bed
to be distinctly seen, that a careless observer- is easily de-
ceived in regard to its depth. And not every one, seeing
her so frank, so open, -so sparkling, too, would give her
credit for the real depth and strength of her pure, womanly
nature.
It was a little thing that gave me the opportunity of
measuring it more accurately.
"This dear old river!" she exclaimed, dipping her
fingers into it, caressingly. " It is like a friend ! I have
known and loved it from childhood."
" Are you sure that it is the same ' old river ? ' " I asked.
" Recollect that, though you may always have seen the
same shape of flood, you have never looked twice upon the
same waves."
152 SHILOH.
The thought seemed to strike her. " Never the same
waves ! " she repeated, musingly ; " never the same waves !
"Where, then, are those I saw so long ago ? "
" Gone. Swallowed up by the vast, distant ocean.
Where are the friends of your early days ? "
She looked at me earnestly, and her cheek glowed.
" They are not gone ! I see every one of the old waves
in these : if I did not, I should not care for them. And
the old friends ! it is for their sakes that I love the new
ones ! Should I care for the new, if I had not loved the
old so well ? They taught me to love Love, as the former
waves taught me to love the River ! "
Mrs. Danforth made me her promised call ; and from a
large mass of vivacious, often witty, but utterly immemor-
able talk, I gleaned a few facts which throw a clearer light
on her character, and the reason of her sojourn in a place
so apparently uncongenial to her education and tempera-
ment as Shiloh. Her husband is gone to Europe, to exam-
ine into certain business transactions, which may, and may
not, have a disastrous termination ; and, during his absence,
it was thought desirable for herself, and almost indispensa-
ble to the physical well-being of her children, to find some
retired and healthful spot, where she could live in a natural,
simple way, so far as it was possible to one of her sophis-
ticated habits and tastes, free from the cares, the excite-
ments, and the expensiveness of fashionable life.
" And I thought, when I came here," she went on,
laughing, " that I should live in Shiloh on the let-alone
principle entirely. But bless me ! I was never made for a
recluse. There are times when I must talk to somebody, if
it is only a tin-peddler, I am absolutely pining for the
music of my own voice, and I don't care who knows it ! I
was in one of those moods when Mrs. Prescott first came to
me, to bespeak my assistance for her Sewing Society ; and
when she held out the prospect of a Fair, by and by, I tell
you, I could not resist the temptation. For if there is any-
SHILOH. 153
thing I really enjoy, next to knitting worsteds (and one fol-
lows as naturally after the other as a horse's heels after his
head) ; and if there is anything for which I have a true
genius, it is putting through Fairs. I have had something
to do with every large movement of the sort in New York,
for the last ten years ; and like Alexander, I am burning
for new worlds to conquer. And I suspected I should have
some novel and rich experiences in a place like Shiloh.
And when I went to Mrs. Seber's that day, and saw that
queer company, with their old fashioned gowns, and their
quaint phraseology, above all, when I encountered the
Vocabulary I beg her pardon, but that is the only name
I can ever think of, in her connection ! I was convinced
that I should find plenty of amusement in a taste of Shi-
loh life, if not much profit ; so I determined to ' go in,' and
have a good time. I suppose you felt the same way."
" Well, no, Mrs. Danforth, I confess that I was so
foolish, or so mercenary, as to have an eye to the profit,
too."
She looked extremely puzzled.
" I mean," continued I, rather lightly, for I felt the ab-
surdity of making a very serious matter of her careless talk,
" that sort of profit which is supposed somehow to accrue
from the doing of one's duty, in that state of life where-
unto one is called."
For a moment she seemed almost confused. Then she
said, somewhat more earnestly than her wont, " Do not set
me down for such an unmitigated heathen, Miss Frost. I
exaggerate my own defects. Not even the prospect of any
amount of laughing matter, would have made me accept
the Presidency of that Society, if I had not been sure that
I could do them good service. Still," she added, dropping
back into her usual careless manner, " I do not know as I
should have been won over so easily, without the promise
of a spice of fun in the good work, and the expectation of
an opportunity, ere long, to disport myself in my natural
7*
154: SHILOH.
element ; namely a Fair. So you can credit me with half
heathenism, after all."
Which I am afraid I did, in spite of Bona's whispered
warning, " Judge not, lest ye be judged."
I was deeply impressed, however, by the fact that Mrs.
Danforth, like myself, though from a different motive,
had come to Shiloh resolving to stand aloof from its social
life. In neither case, had the resolve been kept. In both
instances, it had, plainly, been broken of deliberate choice.
I could not find the first trace of that grim finger of Fatal-
ity in it, upon which so many persons seek to throw the res-
ponsibility of their doings when their tendency is evil, or
their results disastrous ; for it is impossible not to notice
that all such are ready enough to assume the credit of
whatever good they accomplish. Plainly, too, Shiloh was
not to be a " place of rest " to Mrs. Danforth, much more
than to myself. Instead of repose, God had given us work.
Was that, then, a better thing ?
The Sewing Society held its regular meetings ; and leg-
islation being over, for the present, a tolerable degree of
harmony characterized its labors. If, in the opinion of its
President, amusement was the chief end of life, she knew
how to give, as well as get ; indeed, it was currently re-
ported that certain heretofore intermittent and intractable
members, now attended regularly and worked with docility,
just for the sake of hearing Mrs. Danforth's talk ; or, as
one of them said, with an unconscious recognition of the
fact that its charm was more in the manner than the mat-
ter, and addressed itself quite as much to the eye as the
ear, " to see her talk."
Death did not reap his full harvest in Mr. Warren's
household. The fever shortly appeared in the dwellings of
two of his neighbors, neighbors, too, of that marsh, on
whose vicinage Mrs. Divine had charged the origination of
the disease. In one instance, it ran almost uninterruptedly
through an entire family ; the father and two children
SHILOH. 155
died, and the mother struggled blindly back from the very
threshold of the grave into an atmosphere of such desola-
tion and loneliness, that she knew not how to be thankful
for the staying of the Destroyer's hands. Of course, it
was difficult to draw the needful supply of watchers from
the hard- worked and scattered neighborhood ; and my ser-
vices were again called in requisition. It soon came to be
well understood that, when other assistance was not availa- f
ble, Winnie Frost could be counted on with certainty ; and
a native delicacy of feeling, which I should scarcely have
looked for in such a quarter, prevented me from being
called upon until all more legitimate resources had been
tried and failed. Beyond these two houses, however, the
fever did not pass ; and the latest cases were of a mild
type, easily controlled, and quickly conquered ; but not
until these humble services of mine, freely given wherever
asked, had brought me very near to the Shiloh heart, and
won for me a degree of affectionate respect and considera-
tion which often brought tears to my eyes, and gave me a
deeper insight into the hidden harmonies of God's govern-
ment of the world. There are sweetnesses only to be dis-
tilled from bitternesses !
I have also made the acquaintance of most of the hills,
dales, meadows, woodlands, and other natural objects of
interest, to be found on the Divine Farm, or in its near vi-
cinity. The various prominences of Chestnut Hill afford
many pretty views ; through the most striking of wliich
the distant Housatonic goes winding and shining, like a
narrow strip of a bluer and more lustrous sky. But I have
found no prettier haunt, anywhere, than the brook-lit glen,
before described ; and there I have spent many an hour,
book or portfolio in hand. For it is a dreamy spot, with-
out them ; and, as yet, I do not dare to dream !
In many of my rambles by day, and in all of my night-
walks to and fro from sick beds, Leo is my silent, watchful,
trusty attendant ; giving me a pleasant sense of compan-
156 SHILOH.
ionship and protection, without any drawback of con-
straint. Mr. Divine's flattering introduction did him no
more than justice ; his strength, intelligence, and faithful-
ness are really wonderful. He is delighted to carry my
shawl, book or basket ; he bears with ease many a burden
that would be very wearisome to me. He can be sent
home the swiftest of messengers ! with an explanatory
slip of paper, to fetch any article forgotten or unexpect-
edly required. He knows the nearest neighbors, and most
intimate friends of the household, by name, and can be dis-
patched to any one of them with a note or a parcel. He
can be left anywhere, in charge of anything, and the watch
and ward will be patiently, conscientiously kept.
Nor is Leo so unobservant of my moods as might be
supposed. Often, when my book slips from my fingers,
and my eyes stare into vacancy (or some less profitable
quarter !) till they are dim with unfelt moisture, it is Leo
that recalls me to myself, with his head laid on my knee,
in token of sympathy, or his nose thrust into my hand, by
way of remonstrance. And his wistful eyes say, as plainly
as any tongue could do, " Would it not be better to drop
that, now, and go home ? "
Not long since, Aunt Vin and I divided a certain night-
vigil between us. I took the first watch ; and when it was
over, Leo (whom I had retained for that purpose) escorted
me home. To my surprise, I found Mrs. Divine quietly
reading by the kitchen fire.
" I generally sit up till midnight and after," she ex-
plained. " It's about the only time I get for reading, and
I can't live without that. And I thought may be you'd be
chilly when you come in, and a little fire wouldn't be
amiss."
Then she looked at Leo. " That dog takes an uncom-
mon fancy to you, Miss Frost."
I. (thoughtfully patting Leo's head). ' Happy ' says an
Eastern sage ' happy he that hath a dog for his friend.'
SHILOH. 15T
MRS. DIVINE. TJmph ! it needn't have taken a sage to
say that !
I. You did not hear him out. He adds, ' Happier he
that hath a dog alone ! '
MRS. DIVIXE (contemptuously). A sage ? Nothing but
a cynic ! Leo, there, is wiser. He would say if he could
speak that he'd rather have you for his friend than half-
a-dozen dogs !
To which argumentum ad canem neither the Eastern
sage nor I had anything to say.
Pardon this digression if a digression it be ! In coun-
try life, animals hold an important place. Dogs, horses,
chickens, may fairly be counted members of the social
circle.
On the second Sunday after the one of which I have
given such faithful and voluminous account, Ruth Win-
not's birdlike voice again charmed my ear, and recalled to
my memory the resolve made, at Bona's instigation, a fort-
night before ; which, I am ashamed to say, I had suffered
to slip from my mind, amid the multiplicity of my interests
and occupations. My faithful Mentor did not fail to im-
prove the opportunity to administer a reprimand and an
admonition.
" Remember that your talents were not given you," she
concluded, " to be buried in a napkin, when you cease to
care for them, nor to be exercised merely for your pleas-
ure or that of your friends ; their possession involves a fear-
ful responsibility. God expects to receive His own again,
with usury."
That very evening, I sought out my hostess. "Mrs.
Divine, tell me something about Ruth Winnot, please."
"Ruth Winnot!" repeated the old lady, wiping her
spectacles, preparatory to taking a wondering view of me,
" there's nothing to tell, that I know of, only that she's
Farmer Winnot's daughter, and lives in that red house, up
on the hill, there."
158 . SHILOH.
"But what makes her look so sad? "
" Well, I guess it's on account of her feet."
" Her feet ! " I repeated, in amaze.
" Yes. Didn't you know she had crooked feet club-
feet, some folks call 'em. She was born so."
" And why were they never straightened ? "
"Well, her mother couldn't make up her mind to see the
child suffer ; some mothers can't or won't do that, you
know, even when it's for their children's plain good. If
God had felt like that, I wonder where mankind would be
now ! And Ruth has grown up so delicate, that the doc-
tors don't advise the straightening, at present. But she's
awfully sensitive about her feet, poor thing ! She never
goes anywhere, hardly, except to church ; and she always
takes good care to get there before other folks come, and
waits till they are gone, before she leaves."
" Ah ! yes," said I, " I remember that she remained in
the gallery all alone, on the day of Maggie Warren's fu-
neral, when Alice and I went down stairs. I wondered at
it, then."
"She always does so. And her mother told me she
couldn't bear to have a word said to her about her feet,
even by her ; and Alice who is more intimate with her
than anybody else says that she never heard her so much
as hint at them, in the most distant manner. But I don't
think there's any sense in letting her go on in that way. I
told her mother it would be real good for her to be made
to talk about them (a thing you can't talk about, always
seems twice as bad as it is), and that she ought to try and
overcome her dislike to going among folks. She's getting
into a downright unhealthy, morbid way ; and something
ought to be done about it, I think. Come, there's another
chance for you to do good, Miss Frost, and you seem to
be on the lookout for all such."
The next morning I despatched the following laconic
epistle to Uncle John ; having before my eyes the fear
SHILOH. 159
of sundry pishes ! and pshaws ! that I had heard him
utter over Flora's letters; wherein demands for money,
and commissions, were so mixed up with foreign matter
that he declared himself unable to get at what was
wanted, except by a careful process of sifting and tak-
ing notes :
"Shiloh, June 15, 186
" Dear Uncle : Please send up my piano, at your con-
venience, marked, ' Care of Reuben Divine, Mumford de-
pot, &c.' Also, my music-stand, with contents. The
roses have not budded yet, but I have planted the
seeds.
" Your affectionate niece,
" WINNIE FROST."
To which, in due course of time, I received this answer :
" New York, Wall St., June 16th, 186
" Dear Niece : Piano sent to-day, as per order, freight
pd. Enclosed please find check for fifty dollars ($50), on
acct. for two full-blown roses, to be delivered as per agree-
ment. Glad you can write a sensible letter.
" Your affectionate uncle,
"JOHN FROST."
I smiled to see that this document had been signed,
from force of habit, " John Frost & Co. ; " but the writer
had bethought himself in time to draw his pen through the
words indicating copartnership, and save me from the dis-
mal conviction that the nearest relative I had in the world,
had sunken his personal, flesh-and-blood identity in the
mere abstraction of a firm. Yet the smile was inextricably
entangled with a tear ; to be sure, it did- not need my
uncle's prompt compliance with my request, nor his check,
to assure me that he loved the child of his dead brother,
in the depths of his heart ; but he was so undemonstrative
a man, outwardly, that it required an effort of the reason
and the will, sometimes, to hold fast to that truth. " Deeds,
not words," was the motto of his affections.
160 SHILOH.
The piano that piano which I never intended to touch
again ! was duly installed in the " out-room ; " and I inau-
gurated its mission (for it has one !) by playing a polka or
two for " the boys " a term which Mr. Divine seems to
apply indiscriminately to his grown-up sons and his hired
men, a nocturne for Alice, and two or three sweet old
Scotch melodies for the elder members of the household. I
dared not yet trust myself to sing, that was too full of
stinging memories !
Then, I set out to find Ruth Winnot.
XVI.
RUTH WINNOT.
(emphatically). You know you cannot
expect to get much, without giving some-
thing.
I winced. Confidence was the one thing I
was unprepared to give.
MALA (chiming in with my mood). You
know the giving will be like pressing on a
raw sore ; and the getting will not heal it.
BOXA. No, only help to heal it. As whole acres of Per-
sian roses are required to make a single ounce of pure ottar ;
so the soul's balm is the slow product of a long course of
right living and thinking, every separate act and thought
of which contributes its own minute but precious particle
of sweetness to the rich result.
MALA. But, after all, how hard it is to have to take up
with hurt and healing, instead of happiness !
BONA. How hard it is for the roses to be plucked and
pressed, and to have their sweetness concentrated and pre-
served, instead of perishing utterly from the earth by the
natural process of decay !
MALA. Nonsense ! I am talking of a living, beating,
human heart. Of course, the roses are inanimate things,
and feel nothing.
BONA. If they did feel, might they not reasonably pre-
fer the short pain of the process that makes them imperish-
ably useful and delightful, to a few more hours of idle
162 SHILOH.
bloom in the sunshine, and then to die unredeemably ?
And like the ottar of roses, the sweetest Christian graces
are the product of painful processes ; but they are ever-
lastingly lovely and fragrant, continuing to sweeten and
beautify the earth, by their memory and their influence,
long after their owner has entered into the "better country."
As" for happiness, it seldom comes otherwise than incident-
ally ; it is as frequently found sitting by the wayside, in
the paths through which Sorrow leads us, as elsewhere ; and
re oftenest entertain it, as Lot did the angels, unawares.
This, and much more, did my companions say to me, as
I toiled up the steep slope of Chestnut Hill. The twilight
was creeping stealthily along the edge of the forest, and
gathering under the trees ; but the sky was still tender
with the glory of sunset, and the earth had a look of veiled
splendor. So far as my impressions go, these Shiloh sum-
mer-days have neither beginning nor end. I wake at an
early hour, to find the sun shining brightly into my
room unhindered by any barricades of brick walls, which
must needs be surmounted before he can look at me. I live
through some smooth-gliding, unreckoned hours, softly
colored by a gentle lapse of quiet incident, and I frequently
go to bed while there is yet enough of daylight to show me
the way thither. When I get a letter from Flora, full of
Sai-atoga excitement and midnight gayeties, I rub my eyes,
and vaguely wonder if I am asleep, or if I died three weeks
ago, and was transported to a new planet, and new condi-
tions of existence !
The red homestead of the Winnots, ringed round with
bossy maples, is another of those quaint, ample, sloping-
roofed structures ; through whose shadowy vista one gets
a glimpse of colonial times, or of the thunder-clouded days
that preceded the Revolution. It was a gorgeous bit of
color, to-night ; with the western splendor in its windows ;
the rose-bushes heavy with bloom clinging to its sides ;
and the smoke from its huge stone chimney aerialized into
SHILOH 163
delicate, rose-tinged haze, as it floated upward to the sky.
There were flower-beds in the front yard, too ; bright with
a goodly show of pinks, button-roses, sweet peas, marigolds
and other old-fashioned flowers, the legacy of our English
forefathers, and bearing touching witness to the fact that
those stern-browed Puritans (whose portraits time and cir-
cumstance seem to delight in making grimmer and harder,
day by day), had, at least, one soft trait in their characters;
inasmuch as they could not tear their heart-roots from their
native soil, without bringing along with them some com-
vpanion-growths, to give a familiar, home grace to the new
land. And this, too, notwithstanding it was, to them, the
land of promise !
Over one of these beds Ruth Winnot was stooping, with
some sort of garden implement hi her hand. The creaking
of the gate, as I swung it open, was plainly a startling and
unwelcome sound. She threw one scared glance at me, and
another at the house, as if to certify herself that escape was
impossible ; then, she rose to her feet, and awaited my ap-
proach, while the color came and went in her cheeks, like
the flashes of a northern aurora. For one moment, the
sight made me hesitate in the line of conduct I had marked
out for myself.
MALA. Go on. What can it possibly matter to you
whether you succeed or fail ?
BONA. Go on. By God's grace, you shall succeed and
not fail.
Without stopping to consider why it is that, on certain
occasions, both the good and the evil in me unite in push-
ing me forward, or holding me back, though I was struck
by the fact, I went to Ruth, and said, taking her hand,
" You did not expect to see me here this evening ; but
I hope you will make me very welcome, nevertheless. The
truth is, I fell in love with your brown eyes, two Sundays
ago ; and I have been wishing to get another look at them,
ever since, just to satisfy myself that they really are as
1 64 SHILOH.
lovely as they seemed to me then. Turn to the light,
please, here, this way, and let me see them again. Ah,
yes there was no illusion about it ; they are, in truth,
just such as some of the old masters always gave to the
Virgin. And your hair is exactly the color that befits the
eyes. If I were an artist, I should ask you to sit to me."
She looked at me with a changeful blending of surprise,
delight and doubt, in her face ; precisely what I expected
to see. I had understood, from Mrs. Divine's statement,
that her painful consciousness of deformity, unwisely in-
dulged and fostered, had made her forget, or undervalue, *
whatever compensating grace or talent had been vouch-
safed to her ; and I reasoned that she needed just that kind
and degree of encouragement which would spring from
the knowledge that she was, otherwise, rarely beautiful,
and could, in spite of her defect, charni the eye, and at-
tract the regard of a stranger. There was no danger of
making her vain ; the recollection of her deformity would
counteract that tendency ; but it was really necessary that
she should be taught rightly to estimate the advantages
she possessed, and made acquainted with her own power
of pleasing ; in order to enable her to face her kind with
some degree of confidence. There was plenty of common
ground left, I thought, somewhat morosely, for her to
stand upon with them ! For surely, each one of us is an-
swerable, in his measure, for the perpetuation of that sin
which brought disease and deformity into the world ; and
wofully superficial is the pride of such as fancy that they
have the right to look superciliously down upon these its
unfortunate progeny. Till this entire human nature be
straightened, each and all of us must be, in some wise,
crooked. And the outward deformity is far less deplorable
than the inward. / The vital point to us all is, to learn our-
selves, and to teach others, ho'w to convert these grievous
burdens, heavy to bear! these multiplying hindrances,
weary to surmount ! into crosses, borne cheerfully for
SHILOH. 165
Christ's sake, steps by which we daily climb nearer to
Him!
Ruth's eyes fell, tinder my intent gaze ; while astonish-
ment and pleasure seemed actually to have taken her breath
away. She tried to find some words of answer ; but her
voice failed her, and only a few incoherent syllables escaped
her lips.
" So nobody ever told you that you were beautiful be-
fore ! " I said, smiling. " Well, I should not, if I thought
it would do you any harm."
" It has done me good," she faltered, " you don't know
how much good ! " And she burst into a sudden passion
of tears. When she lifted her head, there was a return of
doubt in her face. " Are you*only trying to flatter me ?"
she asked, with a searching look.
" I am no flatterer, Ruth," I responded, gravely. " In
good truth, I was irresistibly attracted by your face, when
I first saw you ; and I am really desirous of knowing you
better. Indeed, I came here this evening, with Jhe inten-
tion if I found encouragement enough of asking you if
we might not be friends."
" I suppose so if you are in earnest," replied she, evi-
dently confounded by the request. " But it is so strange ! "
she went on, with a kind of slow wonder, " nobody ever
seemed to care for my friendship before but Alice. And
you a city lady who know so much and must have
troops of friends I can't understand it ! "
" It is not necessary that you should," I responded,
quietly. " The best and closest friends understand each
other none too well ; and there must be a large element of
faith in any friendship worth talking about. It is as vital
a necessity as it is in religion. All you have to do is just
to look into my eyes, and make up your mind whether you
can trust me, or no."
She gave me a shy, yet sufficiently penetrating, glance,
and then mutely offered me a kiss by way of answer.
166 SHILOH.
" It is a compact, then," said I, accepting the gage Tam-
iti& ; " and I promise to be faithful to you, Ruth, and
helpful, so far as in me lies. That is about all I can prom-
ise ; for I have perversities of temper and worries of heart
which will sometimes make me preoccupied and unrespon-
sive. But be sure, when you see my face clouded, that the
shadow comes from things with which you have nothing to
do, and which you need not trouble your innocent heart
about."
" I understand that well enough," she replied, with a
wise little shake of the head, and a smile that was bur-
dened somewhat with sadness. " I know I am not like-
ly to do anything to give you either much pain or pleas-
ure ; and I don't expect to be taken very far into your
confidence. I shall be just like a little pet dog to you ;
glad to be noticed, patient when I am turned off; and all
the tune trying vainly to understand what is in your
mind."
I was compelled to recognize a degree of appositeness
in this simile, even while it pained my ear. There was
something in Ruth's soft brown eyes, curiously like the
dumb, beseeching, pathetic expression of an intelligent
dog's face, the look of an undeveloped, yearning, strug-
gling genius, dimly conscious of things above and beyond
it ; to which it was meant to aspire, yet without in the least
knowing how. It went to my heart, when I first saw it ;
and I now resolved that, God helping me, before Ruth and
I had done with each other, that look should have departed
from her face.
" I will not offer any counter prediction," I rejoined,
" though my oracles of futurity read very differently from
that, Ruth. Humility is so good and safe a thing that you
may keep it while you can." I turned to the flower-bed
for a change of subject. " So you love flowers ? As well
as music ? "
"Nearly, not quite. ^Let me give you some." And
SHILOH. 167
she quickly made me a bouquet from the plants nearest
her.
All this time, we had been standing in the yard, and
Ruth had not moved more than a step or two from the spot
where I first encountered her. Now, she cast a troubled
glance at the open door, and a shadow crossed her face.
Plainly, she saw the necessity of asking me to enter the
house; as plainly, she disliked to move in my presence.
But in this matter, I had determined to show no mercy. I
drew my shawl closer around my shoulders, and remarked
that the evening air was " really quite chilly."
" Will you come in ? " she returned, with a heightened
color, and a visible effort at cordiality. *
" Thank you," replied I, turning with her, and putting
my arm around her waist. She walked better than I had
expected. There was no limp, only a kind of awkwardness,
in her gait ; and she wore her dress so long as entirely to
conceal her feet. I was inwardly indignant that any mis-
taken tenderness should have allowed her to become so
sore over so inconsiderable an infirmity, and to put it like a
barrier between herself and her kind.
" Ruth," I asked, abruptly, but in the most matter-of-
fact way, " how far can you walk ? "
She started and tried to shrink away from me, as a
mimosa might have done ; but I held her fast, and waited
for my answer in the most uncomprehending manner.
" I don't know I never walk much," hesitatingly.
" So I should judge from your pale face " (repressing a
smile to see how very far from a " pale face " it was, at this
moment). " You look altogether too much like a shade-
grown plant; exercise would be good for you. Were you
ever in that glen, down yonder?"
" Yes, once or twice. It is a pretty place."
" It is a pretty place, and there is a lovely view from
the hill beyond. I want you to go and look at it with me,
sometime."
168 SHILOH.
She looked distressed.
" Cannot you go ? " I continued, mercilessly. " Or does
it give you pain to walk ? "
She winced again, and her sweet lip quivered touchingly.
But she made an attempt a very tremulous and unsuccess-
ful one to adopt my own tone in the matter, since there
was no escape for her.
" No, it does not give me pain," she answered, in a con-
strained voice. " I could walk as far as most people, I
think, if I were accustomed to it."
" Then I shall make it my business to see that you are
accustomed to it," said I, very decidedly. " Sometimes, I
want a companion in my walks, not always. I know what
wretchedly bad taste it is, but there are times when I prefer
my own society to the best that can be had. The truth
being that I am so constituted that I actually need frequent
seasons of retirement ; for self-communion and self-renewal.
Without them, I seem to lose all that is best in my own in-
dividuality : breathing constantly the atmosphere of other
people's thoughts destroys whatever is fresh, vigorous, or
characteristic, in my own. But when I do want a compan-
ion, I shall come for you. And I am certain you will not
deny me ; for I intend always to begin or end by taking
you into Mrs. Divine's, and playing you something sweet
on my piano."
Her eyes brightened. " You have a piano ! " she ex-
claimed, breathlessly, " and at Mrs. Divine's ? "
" Precisely. And I expect to have the pleasure of play-
ing your accompaniments on it. I was as much charmed
with your voice, on the morning of that eventful Sunday,
as I was with your eyes, in the afternoon. Each was per-
fect, in its way."
She looked at me dubiously. " I thought .J. could sing,"
she answered, with a shade of irrepressible sadness in her
voice, " before I heard you ; now I know better. And I'm
SHILOH. 169
sure you can't take any pleasure in hearing me, I suppose
you have heard all the first singers of the world."
I selected silently a rose-bud or two frofn the bouquet she
had given me, and held the rest of the flowers toward her.
She extended her hand for them mechanically, looking into
my face with a puzzled and inquiring glance.
" I do not see why I need care for those common flowers,
while I have the rosebuds," I said, carelessly. " And I ad-
vise you, when you next visit your flower-bed, to dig them
all xip. To be sure, they are very sweet and pretty, in their
way, but they are not quite like roses, you know."
For some moments, she seemed to be groping blindly
about for my meaning ; then a quaint little smile evinced
her comprehension. But it soon faded into gravity : ob-
viously, she was struggling bravely with herself. At last,
she lifted a very shy, but still resolved, glance to mine.
" I see it is foolish for me to feel so about it, but I am
very much afraid to sing before you, for all that. Still I
will try to overcome it, now that I know I ought. I sup-
pose I must make up my mind to be a sweet-pea, as I can't
be a rose ; or, rather, to sing like a wren, since I was not
made a nightingale."
" My dear Ruth," I answered, speaking after Bona's dic-
tation, "I suspect that the difference in value between a
sweet pea and a rose, or a wren and a nightingale, does not
amount to a farthing, in immortal currency. The question
in Heaven is not which of these it is that makes a little per-
fumed space, or a tone-embalmed atmosphere, around it ;
but whether each gives forth freely and cheerfully the
best that it has. And there is another comfort. For,
though a sweet-pea was never known to grow into a rose,
nor a wren into a nightingale, through any amount of effort
or of patience, there is no telling what such a voice as
yours may not become, with the needful training."
" Where am I to get it ? " she answered, mournfully.
A HISTORY.
v ^55fei .j
~\ HE opportunity for which I had been preparing
so assiduously, and which I had expected
to ripen only by slow and unnoticed de-
grees, being thus unexpectedly put into my
hands, I scarcely knew what to do with it.
The pride of the, independent farmer's daugh-
ter was sure to rebel, I thought, against any
appearance of patronage, any intrusive offer of
service. While I hesitated, Bona came to my relief.
" You know I told you at the outset," said she, " that
you cannoc expect to gain much without risking some-
thing. The. rule holds good in confidence, as in every-
thing else."
Instead of answering Ruth's question, therefore to
which, in truth, she did not seem to expect an answer I
made a blind, desperate plunge into my personal history.
I did not stop to settle beforehand how far into its depths
I should venture let circumstances decide that for me !
neither did I count the cost of the undertaking, though a
O ' O
vague apprehension of its probable sum total made me
shiver, and gave a hollow, forced tone to my voice.
" Since we are to be friends, Ruth," I began, " it is
right that you should know a little more of me. My father
was a scholar, and somewhat of an antiquarian and a vir-
tuoso beside, with his eyes always between the two covers
SHILOII. 171
of a book, or on the point of a pen for he eked out a some-
what scanty income by various kinds of literary labor. It
was the great disappointment of his life, I. think, that his
only child should have been a girl ; nevertheless, when my
mother died, and left me a year old -babe upon his
hands, he immediately became the most patient and ten-
der of nurses and teachers. He made himself what poor
amends he could, however, for my mistake in sex for such
he evidently considered it by giving me precisely the ed-
ucation that he would have given his son, if he had been
so happy as to have had one. He instructed me in the
dead languages while I was yet in pinafores, and filled my
young brains Avith all sorts of antiquarian lumber, which
is of scarcely more practical use, in this headlong, irrever-
ent nineteenth century, than an ancient battering-ram
would be in a modern siege. He took good care, however,
to supplement this curious primary course with some very
thorough training in the modern languages and in music ;
which latter study I completed in Italy, where the last
years of his life were spent, and where he died.
" ' Pulvis et umbra sumus omnes,filia carissima meaj he
used to say to me, in his quaint, discursive fashion ; " and
in my case, the dust is fast disintegrating, and the shadow
deepening. And inasmxich as the major part of my in-
come dies with me, I shall leave yoii but little, beside my
name, which you will get rid of as soon as possible (that
is what it is to have a daughter!), my memory, which I
"hope you will cherish a little longer, and my faith, being
that of the one Catholic and Apostolic Church, which I
trust you will hold fast through life unto death. This last
portion of your patrimony I conceive to be of such value,
that it consoles me much for the smallness of the remainder.
Nevertheless, it is not that sort of property which can be
appraised and inventoried, and bought and sold, in the
market ; neither is it to be counted, humanly speaking, a
bread-producing possession. And though it is in nowise
172 SHILOH.
to be doubted that your Uncle John will care for you as
if you were his own, after my death, since he hath been
the best of brothers to me, in my life, yet the vicissitudes
of this world are many, and the ups and downs of Ameri-
can society patent to all ; and there can be no certainty
that it may not, sometime, be needful or expedient for you
to earn your own bread. Moreover, it is ever the part of
true wisdom to provide for the worst, while expecting the
best. Therefore, having first given you a solid foundation
of that knowledge which best disciplines the mind and
strengthens the memory, while it refines the taste and de-
lights the heart ; I have thought it well to add thereto a
superstructure of the languages of Modern Europe (soft,
effeminate offspring of vigorous and sinewy sires), and of
music (which I see you love better to study as a science
than to practice as an art, whereof your music-master doth
somewhat complain) ; and between them all, I hope to have
made you independent of any mischances of fortune sap-
iens dominabitur astris. If the Woman's Rights move-
ment which, from lack of time, and intei'est, I have not
given the strict analysis and consideration it demands
ever brings forth better fruit than much darkening of coun-
sel with words ; I believe you might fill the Professorship
of Ancient Languages and Literature, in a female college,
with credit to the institution. In any case, I trust you can
teach your sex to be something better than dolls at home,
and butterflies abroad. But he or she who setteth up to
be a teacher of others, carissima mea, must needs be thor-
oughly furnished to that end himself. Therefore, to
which point all this discourse tendeth, take heed that
your next translation into the German hath somewhat
more of the Teutonic, and somewhat less of the Latin, fla-
vor in it ; and be not guilty of the heinous sin of further
vitiating a scion of one of the best and strongest of the
ancient stocks.
" And now, go and practice your scales as if your din-
SIIILOII. 173
ner depended on their smooth and flowing execution ;
there is no telling if the supposition may not, some time,
in some sense, become a certainty. Which, though it be a
mournful enough prospect for an earthly father to contem-
plate, anima mea, is not the less likely to be the purest
manifestation of your Heavenly Father's tenderness ! "
How clearly the attempt to sketch my father for an-
other, brought him before my own mental vision ! with his
tall, bent figure, his fine, keen, intellectual face, his gentle
manners, his quaint, rambling, bookish talk; a man at
once wise and simple ; learned and reverent ; studious and
genial. All my old life defiled before me, in a series of
sharp, vivid pictures, as I talked. I saw again a large, low,
shadowy room, which was the scene of my earliest recollec-
tions ; in the midst, a table covered with faded green,
whereat my father studied and wrote, the walls lined
with books, the drawers and cabinets stuffed full of coins,
medals, ores, gems, drinking cups, missals, and a variety of
obsolete treasures, with an interminable pedigree, the
table, chairs, and floor heaped with manuscripts, draw-
ings, encyclopedias, and all sorts of learned litter. I saw
myself a somewhat grave and thoughtful child, with the
shadow of motherlessness over me creeping and rummag-
ing among this literary lumber almost at my will ; never
rebuked except for deliberate mischief; and often falling
asleep with my head pillowed on some rare old blackletter
folio or quarto, the Chronicles of Cooper and Froissart,
Caxton's " Pylgrimage of the Sowle," Breton's " Pleasant
Toyes for an Idle Head," or it might be a three-century-
old Plautus, profusely adorned with wood-cuts, or a tall, thin
Somnium Scipionis, the marvels and monstrosities of
whose illustrations and illuminations reappeared in my
dveams; I saw myself in my father's arms repeating after
him, in the twilight, texts from the Greek Testament and
verses of sonorous Latin Hymns, while I was yet too young
to learn them from the book ; and I had already become
1T4 SHILOH.
as familiar with all terms of endearment, in both languages,
as any daughter of Pericles or of Virginius might have 1
been ; and in precisely the same way by hearing them
constantly from my father's lips.
I saw myself foraging in the book-shelves, a little later on,
for such mental food as best suited my youthful appetite ; and
seldom going much amiss, though occasionally victimized
by cunning title pages ; for my astonishment at finding
that the Diversions of Purley were anything but diverting,
and that the Apes ITrbance did not treat of bees, could
only have been equalled by that of the North of England
farmer, who bought Ruskin's disquisition " On the Con-
struction of Sheep-folds," with an eye to the necessities of
his own flocks, and found that it had nothing to say of any
inclosures but such as are for the behoof of Popery and
Protestantism ! Then, I saw myself sitting reverently at the
feet of the mighty masters of Ancient Philosophy and Song,
all difficulties and obscurations being swept aside, and all
beauties brought into strong light by my father's ever pre-
sent help ; while the evening hours ran golden and sweet
to the melodies of Milton, Dante, and Schiller, or the har-
monies of Mozai't and Mendelssohn and Beethoven; their
last moments being ever consecrated by a chapter read
from the Book of Books and a joint repetition of the
Prayer of Prayers. What a safe, peaceful, happy life it
was ! I never knew how happy until I had left it far
behhid.
The "scene then changed. Leaning upon my father's
arm, I drank in the sun of Italy, and felt her " marvelous
wind." Day after day, I threaded the narrow streets,
roamed through the vast art-galleries, knelt in the time
enriched churches, gazed, wondering, up into the soaring
Dome, stood, tear-blinded by the cross in the Coliseum,
went down into the tombs, and climbed the hills, of
ROME !
Somehow, almost imperceptibly, amid these mingled
SHILOH. 175
wrecks and triumphs of the ages, my father and I had
changed places. From the supported I had grown to be
the supporter; he now leaned upon my arm. Then, the
walks became shorter, the visits to studio and gallery less
frequent, the lessons and readings irregular : one day, the
voice that had led me, step by step, through all that is best
in life or books, faltered and fell, over the familiar page.
" Draw the curtain, figliuola mia" it murmured, feebly,
" and let in more light."
I saw myself, in that light, under the foreign sky
among strangers alone! Between my father and me,
God's hand had let fall a thick, impenetrable curtain. On
his side, the full light of eternity on mine, the darkness of
desolation and the shadow of death !
I did not know that there were tears on my cheeks
tears due to this gliding inner panorama, and not to the
words I had spoken until Ruth lifted her hand timidly,
to wipe them away. Then I went on.
" While my father talked thus, my heart used to thrill
and glow with the pride of independence, and I was men-
tally resolved that, whenever it should please God to write
me down ' orphanecl,' I would be indebted to no hand, nor
brains, but my own for my daily bread. So I studied, con
amore the love of books having grown and strengthened
in me by as natural a life-process as that which gives
breadth to the leaf and fulness to the ilower. And I prac-
tised, with a purpose, for I was made a musician, not born
one, as you are, Ruth, all my acquirements, in that line,
are the result of patient labor and skilful training. But
when, on my arrival in America, I saw the pain in my
Uncle John's face, as I began to talk of my plans for sup-
porting myself a face more like my father's than anything
I had expected to see this side Heaven ! I gave them
all up, almost without a word or a struggle : that look and
that likeness made a moral coward of me. To be sure, I
comforted myself with the belief that they were only held
1TG SHILOII.
in abeyance, for a time ; but that was four years ago, Ruth,
and I seem now to be no nearer to their realization, than
then. My home is made homelike enough to give me no
good excuse for leaving it ; though it must inevitably lack
that -nameless property which chiefly constitutes a home,
and which was never missing from even the most tempo-
rary abode where my father and I sojourned together.
However, I have assiduously kept up the practice of music ;
partly out of regard for my father's memory, and partly, to
please my aunt and cousin till lately. When I came to
Shiloh, I thought I had done with it forever."
Ruth opened her mouth to give utterance to an expres-
sion of wonder; but none coming to hand sufficiently
strong for the occasion, she shut it again, and only
looked at me as if she thought I had taken leave of my
senses.
" Yes," I went on, slowly, " for all my music had be-
come so inwrought with the memory of one who who is
evermore dead to me, though he is y v et alive that it was
only a source of pain, an instrument of torture. To es-
cape from it, and similar associations, I came to Shiloh."
Heaven only knows what an effort these few words cost
me. Each one seemed to be di-agged up from the depths
of my heart, slowly and with difficulty, as dead bodies are
drawn from the waves. And Ruth Winnot's eyes looked
as if she were assisting at such a dismal operation. There
was in them both pity and dread, the pity and the dread
of one who, for the first time, is brought face to face with
a calamity, hitherto known only by description. Yet, even
amid my pain, I had an intuitive perception that my confi-
dence had conquered her; from henceforth I might do with
her almost what I Avould. I saw, too in a limited, out-
line way, yet clearly, so far as my discernment went that
through pain we acquire power for good ; power to discern
deeply, to influence strongly, to help wisely. Those joy-
blossoms, without whose fragrance and bloom my life had
SHILOH. ' 177
seemed destined to be all an emptiness, had, in their fall-
ing, left some fecund germs behind, which were already
developing into fruit that might be more soul-satisfying
than any blossoms. I began to discover that there was no
earthly loss which, even on earth, might not be made, by
God's grace, to bring forth some richly compensating
gain.
" I am so sorry ! " faltered Ruth, after a few moments
of pregnant silence, wiping the dew from her eyes, " it-
must have been so hard for you to sing on that Sunday ! "
" It was only hard at the outset," I answered. " As in
most other duties which we are constrained by the Holy
Spirit to undertake, against our own inclinations, the pain
and the struggle were over as soon as I had fairly set my-
self about the work. That gentle force which, while we
resist it, seems like an unfriendly power, tearing us away
from things easy and pleasant, and thrusting us upon
things difficult and thorny ; becomes, the instant we yield
to it, a friendly arm to lean upon, a faithful, helpful guide
unto purer enjoyments than any we leave behind. I am
thankful that I was made to sing on that Sunday. In good
truth, the occasion and the circumstances of that singing
were so different from anything that ever came in my way
before, that there was really no good excuse for old as-
sociations to thrust themselves into the matter. And the
event wrought in me an entire change of purpose."
She looked at me inquiringly.
" It would take too much time and too many words to
tell you how it all came about. But Shiloh or my expe-
riences therein had already taught me that no life need be
utterly forlorn while it is still capable of being helpful, no
more than one which is still capable of being helped ; these
two truths, Ruth, have roots that strike down deep into every
heart, and penetrate all the foundations of society. It was
reserved for that Sunday to show me that I had no right
to bury in a napkin, or suifer to rust through disuse, any
178 SIIILOII.
talent which might sometime be available for the service of
God and the help of man. With which last conviction,
Ruth, you had somewhat to do."
" I ! " There was a world of astonishment and ques-
tioning in the tone.
" Do you remember telling me that you should ' never
sing again ? ' Well, immediately there rose before me a
vision. I saw a meek, rapt, Madonna face, making a kind
of glory in some shadowy church-choir ; and I heard a
pure, clear, soaring voice, leading the song of praise in
such wise as to make it seem that the heavens were opened,
and the strains of angelic choirs pealing down to earth.
Could it have been your face, and your voice, Ruth ? "
She sat looking at me, with eyes dilated and lips apart,
breathless, trembling, eager, doubtful.
" I do not know," I went on, "whether I shall ever see
my ideal songstress, in the flesh ; but, Ruth, when God
sends us such visions, He means iis to take the first step
be it never so short and, seemingly, ineffectual a one to-
ward bi-inging about their realization ; the second step will
immediately become clearer. In this instance, the first
step was to send for my piano. And the second well,
the question you asked me so long ago, and which I did
not then answer made the second easier to me."
There was the beginning of a look of comprehension in
her face.
"I have sometimes wondered of late," I proceeded,
" why it was that so much musical culture had been wasted
upon me, since I am not to win my bread 'by its aid ; and
inasmuch as I have no innate, spontaneous love for the
practice of music, (which is, be it understood, a different
thing from loving music itself). But if I am to be instru-
mental in training up one singer to sing worthily unto God,
in God's house, the problem is solved. And the end is
worth all the long preparation."
Was it worth all? Humbly, not captiously, I asked
SHILOH. 1Y9
that question in the silence of my own soul. There was
no response, only an echo, and still a question " All ? "
Then I took both her hands in mine. "Dear Ruth,"
I said, softly, " shall we help one another ? Will you be
my pupil in music, and let me be your pupil in whatsoever
God means me to learn through you ? "
She bowed her head on my lap, and her long-drawn,
choking sobs, with each one of which some weight,
some doubt, some anxiety, seemed to be lifted from her
heart, shook the silence. When she raised her head,
her face was radiant. Her first words came brokenly,
nevertheless.
" It seems like a miracle, it is so sudden and so beau-
tiful ! And it makes everything so plain ! I used to have
such blind longings such dumb pains such miserable fits
of depression such wonderings why I was born. I see
now that I was just like a poor, little seed buried too far
underground ; it wants to swell, to sprout, to grow. But
it cannot lift or pierce the heavy mass of earth that holds
it down. All its struggles only make it feel more uncom-
fortable under the constraint. By and by, some kind pass-
er-by, seeing the earth stirred slightly by its vain attempts
to put forth what is in it, lifts off some of the crushing
weight, and lets in the sun's warmth and the dew's fresh-
ness. And it sprouts, and blossoms, and bears fruit, and
is happy. That is what you have done for me, Miss
Frost ! "
Before I left her, the hours of lessons, study, and prac-
tice were all settled upon, to begin on the morrow.
When I reached home, I went directly to Mrs. Divine,
whom I found in her usual corner of the kitchen hearth,
with a pile of just mended stockings in her lap, and a book
in her hand.
She looked up as I entered ; and I plunged into busi-
ness, at once.
" Mrs. Divine, I have just made an arrangement with
180 SHILOH.
Ruth Winnot, that waits your approbation ere it can go
into effect. I should have consulted you beforehand, if I
had supposed it could be brought about so soon. She
is to come here twice a week for music lessous, and twice
every day for practice on my piano. Have you any ob-
jections ? "
She laid down her book, and took off her spectacles
very deliberately, before she answered. Her first words
were certainly irrelevant.
" Miss Frost, do you think you'd burn if you was put
into the fire ? or drown, if you was thrown into the
water?"
" So you take me for a witch ? " I responded. " Thank
You."
" Umph ! you had better thank the Lord that Cotton
Mather died before you was born ! "
" But about these lessons, Mrs. Divine ? "
" Solomon said there was nothing new under the sun,
arid may be there ain't ; the sun covers a good deal of
ground. But to see Ruth Winnot coming here twice a
day or, indeed, showing herself anywhere in broad day-
light will be something new in Shiloh, at least ! Step up
to the light, here, and let me see your shadow that is, if
you've got any! There are two kinds of witches; some
cast no shadow, and some cast two. The double-dealers
are the worst, I reckon," with a humorous twinkle in her
eye.
" I am afraid," said I, tacitly declining to touch the sub-
ject of the shadows, " that such constant use will disturb
the strict order of your parlor a little, would it not be
better to transfer the piano to my room ? "
" The out-room was made for use," she returned, senten-
tiously. " If it wasn't, what was it made for ? "
"But Mrs. Prescott likes to keep it so immaculately
neat ; I am afraid she will be put to a great deal of
trouble."
SUILOH. 181
" Of course, Priscilla will follow you round with a
broom and a dust-pan," she rejoined, taking snuff com-
posedly ; " but that pleases her, and needn't displease you.
There's room enough in the world for most people's crotch-
ets, if you only think so. But it won't hurt Ruth to give
her a hint not to leave things lying around and askew ;
there's nothing lost by tidiness, if it isn't overdone. And
I'm real glad you've got that poor girl to think she can
come out of her shell, though I can't make out how you've
done it."
" It is not I, Mrs. Divine. She loves music, and that
draws her."
" As the bucket draws the water ! But if there wasn't
a pole and hand in league with the bucket, it wouldn't do
much toward quenching anybody's thirst, I reckon. You
are behind the music, and the Lord is behind you. You
are doing His work, Miss Frost ; and I hope you'll find
the wages sweet sweet enough to take that look out of
your face ! "
The conversation was taking a direction that I did not
care to follow. I was glad, therefore, to hear Alice Pres-
cott's step in the door.
" "Well, Alice," said Mrs. Divine, " here's news for you !
Miss Frost is going to give Ruth Winnot music-lessons,
and she's coming here every day after 'em. What do you
think of that ? "
The answer did not come readily ; and the first look of
surprise soon faded into a hurt and sorrowful expression,
which puzzled me. I could not see what Ruth Winnot's
music-lessons had to do with it ; yet it shadowed my satis-
faction for the moment, and haunted me until I slept.
XVIII.
THE MUSIC LESSOR.
RAY and sullen was the morning, with
occasional spurts of rain. An easterly
storm was setting toward Shiloh, and all
the tongues in the trees gave forth melancholy
notes of warning. Nevertheless, Ruth Win-
not was punctual to the moment. While the
tall kitchen clock was still telling the hour of
nine, with strokes slow, solemn, and reverber-
ant as those of a passing bell, doing its best to impress its
hearers with the fact that the death of an hour is a matter
of serious and weighty import, Alice Prescott appeared
at my door to notify me of her presence below. The an-
nouncement was briefly made, and the messenger turned
quickly away. But not before I had observed that her
face wore the same grieved and discomfited expression
that had struck me on the preceding evening. I laid a
hand on either shoulder, and forcibly detained her.
" What is the matter, Alice ? -Have I done anything
to hurt you ? "
" Oh, no," she answered, letting her eyes drop.
" So far, so good. But thei-e are sins of omission as
as well as commission. What have I failed to do that you
expected or desired ? "
"Nothing." Butthere was a shade of pain, almost
amounting to petulance, in the tone.
" I see there is something out of joint," I said, after
SIIILOH. 183
a moment's consideration of her downcast, half-averted
face, "but I will not press the subject now. Only, you had
better improve the respite in making up your mind to a
full and frank confession ; for I give you fair warning that
I shall be sure to find out what the trouble is, whether you
tell me or no."
I did find out, sooner than I expected. As I passed the
half-open door of Mrs. Divine's room, at the foot of the
staircase, the loud tones of Mrs. Prescott's voice, sharp to
a degree of snappishness, came to my ear with a distinct-
ness not to be shut out.
" Some folks will go a mile to give a beggar a shilling,
who wouldn't throw a cent to one that was starving at the
door ! And some folks are born to good luck they and
their kin to the third and fourth generation ! But I
wasn't. Nobody'd ever think of giving my Alice music
lessons, if she had come into the world without legs or
arms, and deaf and dumb into the bargain ! "
It was impossible not to smile at the idea of such a stu-
dent of harmonics ; yet my predominant feeling was not
one of amusement. Mala hastened to improve the oc-
casion.
" See there ! " exclaimed she, mockingly, " that is what
you get for not minding your own business ! "
BOJTA. Who was it that said : " Wist ye not that I
must be about" not my own, but "my Father's bus-
iness ? ".
MALA. Umph ! your business in the musical line is like-
ly to be extensive ! You will be expected to give music
lessons to ev.ery Miss in Shiloh, with* or without a particle
of musical talent.
I (shrugging my shoulders). The expectation will be
cut off, then.
BOXA. Whenever it is, clearly, an unreasonable one.
MALA. As it is in this instance. Mrs. Prescott is jeal-
ous, on Alice's account ; and jealousy is always unreason-
able.
184 SHILOII.
I (emphatically). And it is a quality that I partic-
ularly detest ; and toward which I will show no mercy.
BOXA. But, in this case, is there not a little occasion
for the jealousy ? Mrs. Prescott would, naturally, feel hurt
that her daughter living under the same roof with your-
self should be overlooked, while her friend is so notice-
ably sought out.
I. But Alice has no talent for music.
BONA. Perhaps she has a talent for something else.
I (impatiently}. Her sole talent is for reading. She in-
herits that from her grandmother ; though her appetite is
by no means so omnivorous as hers. But it is even more
absorbing. She shuts herself up in a book as if she were
locked inside an oaken chest ; she becomes deaf, dumb,
blind and immovable, as soon as her eyes fall on the page.
I do what I can to gratify her. by giving her the free use
of all my books, all that she will read, that is ; for her
taste runs chiefly to novels and poetry, and she does not
even choose the best of either.
BONA. You might educate her taste, then.'
I (diilsfully). Must I turn teacher to everybody that
comes in my way ?
MALA. Perhaps Mr. Divine's hired man would like to
learn Latin !
BONA. There is no occasion for the reductio ad absurdum,
supposing that to be it a point which remains tb be estab-
lished. Many a Yankee ' hired man ' has both the wish and
the capacity to learn Latin, and you might be worse em-
ployed than in teaching him. Knowledge I cannot too
strongly impress it ypoii you always imposes responsi-
bility. To know, may be merely to hoard up facts as a
miser does money ; to impart, is the secret of usefulness.
Whenever a full mind meets an empty one, it is a call to
teach, not to scoiF; when refinement encounters roughness,
it is a call to influence, not to shun ; when a higher nature
comes in contact with a lower one, it is a call to lift up, not
SHILOH. 185
to thrust down. Whenever God places you among people
less cultured, less accomplished, less refined, or less heaven-
enlightened than yourself, be sure that He maketh you to
differ, chiefly, that you may be instrumental in lessening
that difference.
MALA (with a sneer). Which means, being interpreted,
that you must not only give lessons in music, vocal and in-
strumental, to Ruth Winnot, and lessons in Latin and
Greek to the hired man ; but lessons in the elements of
criticism and the canons of taste to Alice Prescott, lessons
in meekness and urbanity to her mother, in etymology to
Aunt Yin, in good nature and liberality to Mrs. Burcham,
in simplicity to Mrs. Danforth, etc., etc., ad infinitum. I
wish you joy of your labors !
Weary of the discussion, I ended it by opening the
door of the parlor. Ruth had removed her bonnet and
shawl, and Avas standing in the middle of the room, with
clasped hands, looking at my piano as if she believed that
all things beautiful, harmonious, and delightful, were boxed
up therein, and could be brought forth by the strong mag-
netism of her fixed gaze. What a different face 1 it was
from the one which had met me on the previous evening !
That was full of pallor, gloom, depression, hopelessness,
this was flushed, bright, eager, expectant. That might
have served as a model for a statue of despair ; this for a
picture of hope. The change was so striking that I could
not help an allusion to it.
" Ruth, do you know the meaning of your name ? "
" Xo, do you ? Tell me, please ! "
" It means, ' satisfied.' When I first saw you, I thought
it a misnomer, but I think, now, there is a prospect that it
may fit you excellently well, some day."
"I am not so sure of that," she replied, archly.
" When I can sing as well as you do, I shall be more than
satisfied, proud. You will have to find me a name that
signifies ' conceit,' if you want a perfect fit, Miss Frost ! "
186 SHILOH.
It was good to see her so ready and so gay. Yet I
scarcely recognized the Ruth of yesterday in the Ruth of
to-day. Her own apt and touching metaphor recurred to
me with renewed force. She was, in truth, like a deep-
buried seed, which, when the superincumbent weight is op-
portunely removed, finds the blessing of its long, sore, un-
availing travail within itself, in being able to put forth
stalks and leaves in a single night.
" I do not fear that," I responded. " The true mu-
sician, like the true artist or 'the true Christian, finds his
standard rising ever faster than himself. The increasing
distance between the two keeps him humble."
She looked very grave for a moment. Then she said,
entreatingly, " Won't you play me something ? "
" Business before pleasure, if you please," responded I,
opening the piano and taking possession of the music-stool.
" That is to say ; lessons first and play afterward, is the
true order of things. Look over that pile of songs, and
see if you can find anything you know. First, I have to
get a clear idea of the quality and capacity of your voice."
She obeyed like a child. When she had selected " Auld
Robin Gray," and laid it open before me on the rack, she
interrupted the first chords with the question, " Where is
Alice ? "
" She is somewhere about the house, I suppose."
" May I go and find her ? She was my first friend, you
know, my only friend before you came, and I want her
to share in everything good that comes to me. Do you
mind having her here ? "
" Certainly not, if you do not mind it. But most peo-
ple prefer to have no spectators or auditors to their first
singing-lessons. The initiatory exercises are far from melo-
dious, Ruth."
" Oh, I don't mind Alice ; and she needn't stay if she
doesn't like. But I don't want to begin without her, just
as if I meant to shut her out of the matter entirely."
SHILOH. 187
Alice being found and seated in an eligible position, I
played the accompaniment to " Auld Robin Gray," and
Ruth sang it, taking all things into consideration, sur-
prisingly well. Of course, she could not fully understand,
nor adequately interpret, all the long patience of sorroAV
and the subtile consolations of duty which are shadowed
forth in its exquisite words and music ; but her voice was
so sympathetic, and her musical instinct so fine, that she
immediately caught and imitated whatever expression I
gave to the accompaniment, and some of her tones were
marvellous in their pathos, bringing tears to my eyes.
Did God subject her to the long, life strain of deformity, I
wonder, just to put those tones in her voice ; as a tuner
tightens the strings of his instrument well nigh to break-
ing,, in order to bring them up to the desired pitch ? Had
He made her life, up to this time, little else than a fever of
pain, shame, and longing, that she might be attuned to
manifold accordance with the hidden sorrows of all lives,
and the intricate and the involved harmonies of His mys-
terious Providence ; and so made capable of showing
forth to the world, through the subtile significances of
sound, what unutterably rich, grand, and sweet chords are
formed from the combinations of sorrow, patience, faith,
and love ?
Testing Ruth's voice by the scales, I found that it ran
easily from G below the staff to B above, a present com-
pass that gave promise of excellent things in future. I
had a pupil whom it would be a delight to instruct. The
real drudgery of music-teaching was spared me ; sh.e
could already read plain music, with considerable facility,
at sight.
I gave her a singing-lesson first ; then one on the piano.
She took both with an ease and readiness that seemed
like almost unerring intuition. I quickly saw that she
would give all diligence to the practical part of music;
but precious little heed to the theoretical, if she could help
188 SHILOH.
it. She would prefer to act upon its principles, without
taking the trouble to understand them.
Not so with Alice. Her interested and thoughtful face,
showed plainly that she fully comprehended all my expla-
nations and directions : and she was particularly responsive
(so far as looks went, for Alice is no talker) to every spir-
itual analogy I brought forth, or to any historical or biog-
raphical details that occurred to me in connection with the
lesson.
When I said, " All really beautiful and touching musi-
cal compositions have more or less modulations into the
minor key ; which shows the intimate relation between life
and art, and illustrates the truth that human lives derive
their richest harmonies from disappointment and depriva-
tion and pain," it was Alice's face that lit up most under-
standingly and seemed to follow out the thought.
When I explained that in ancient times music was a fa-
vorite study of monks and friars, and that one of those de-
vout men, Guido a Benedictine of the tenth century
named the seven tones of the diatonic scale, Ut, Re, Mi, Fa,
etc., from the first syllables of each line of an old Latin
hymn, the words of which were ;
" Ut queant laxis -Resonare fibris,
Mir& gestorum .Tfojnuli tuorum,
Solve polluti Labii reatum,
/Sancte Johannes!"
it was Alice, not Ruth, that asked, "Why 'Ut' was
changed to 'Do'?"
And when I answered, " I do not know precisely ; it is
supposed because ' Do ' gives a more open vowel sound, but
I should like to think that it was selected because it is a
part of the first syllable of the Latin word Dominus or
Lord by some equally holy man, who would fain conse-
crate the musical scale by beginning and ending it with the
thought of God ; at any rate, it will not hurt us to have
SHILOH. 189
that association with it," Alice's eyes kindled softly, and
she fell into a long fit of musing. I grew interested in my
silent, yet sympathetic, listener.
When the piano-lesson was over, I inquired, " Ruth, how
old are you ? "
" Seventeen almost eighteen," answered she, looking a
little surprised.
" Are you aware that she who does not commence piano-
music until she is eighteen has a deal of hard work before
her, if she accomplishes anything woi'th her while ? The
joints and muscles have already lost somewhat of their first
flexibility, and two hours of practice will not profit her so
much as one hour would have done at an earlier age.
'Which fact, by the way, has a bearing on other things
than music. Affections lose their spring and pliancy as
well as muscles, Ruth, and habits stiffen not less inevitably
than joints, as many a ninth-hour disciple of Christ has
found, to his cost ; struggling with the miserable inaptitude
of a mind and heart that have not been trained and fitted
for their work by the practice and the tenor of years. But
I am wandering from the point. How much time and pa-
tience have you to bring to the study of music ? "
" All the time that is necessary," she answered. " And
as for patience, I shall not need any, I love music so
much ! "
I shook my head gravely. " Excellence in any pursuit
is the late, ripe fruit of toil, and toil must needs be weari-
some, at times : the willingness of the spirit cannot always
prevail over the weakness of the flesh."
"You cannot frighten me, if you try," she rejoined,
cheerily. " I have some little idea of what is before me,
for I learned to read music, and to play the accordeon,
without any teacher, and it cost me some patient study, I
assure you."
" I do not wish to frighten you, Ruth. I only desire
that you should commence the study of music as the Church
190 SHILOII.
exhorts her children to enter upon the holy estate of mat-
rimony, ' discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of
God.' I do not want to be instrumental in adding to the
innumerable company of musical inexperts, girls who
treat the divine art of melody precisely as they do their
worsted-work, taking it up and laying it down according as
convenience suits or inclination prompts ; with no thought
of time to be redeemed nor talent to be accounted for, and '
utterly regardless of its claims to respect as a means to
greater usefulness in the world, and a neAV and noble branch
of service entered upon for God. The legitimate fruit of
which desultory and irreverent culture appears in the slov-
enly, inaccurate, disjointed playing that one hears every-
where, I have gotten to expect it so invariably, that the '
wonder is when I hear it not. A young lady, whose cheeks
would tingle with shame if she were forced to exhibit her
room in disorder, or her work-basket filled with a life-accu-
mulation of unfinished beginnings and dismembered parts
of garments, or herself in a dress that was not thoroughly
neat, complete, and en regie / does not scruple in the least
to bring before a roomful of strange people a musical com-
position in rags and tatters, jagged beginnings and ends of
melodies, and parts of harmonies cruelly rent asunder and
unlawfully patched together. She seems wholly uncon-
scious that such a performance, for every lover of music,
stamps her character with feebleness, inaccuracy, indolence,
and a lamentable lack of conscientiousness, just as certainly
and indelibly as a riotous room, a tangled, scrappy work-
basket, or disordered attire."
" Like 1 ? " questioned Ruth, archly.
" Like no one whom we have the mutual honor to know,
Ruth. I am too newly come to Shiloh to be able to point
my remai'ks with personal illustrations. Nor do I care to
find an original for my sketch ; I am only anxious that it
shall in nowise resemble you. There is so much involved
in any study, Ruth, beside the mere acquisition of knowl-
sniLon. 191
cdo-e. First, there is the manner. If we are exact and dilr
o y
gent in its prosecution, we form habits of accuracy and in-
xlustry that we shall be likely to carry into every other pur-
suit, to our manifold advantage ; whereas, if we prosecute
it loosely and indolently, the habits thus acquired cling to
us and impair our efficiency in everything else. Then, the
object by the way, what is your object in studying
music ? "
Ruth looked down, and hesitated. " I know that is not
what I ought to say," she answered, finally, "but I am
afraid it is just my own pleasure and improvement. Mu-
sic is my chief delight ; and then, I am ambitious a
little."
" These may answer for secondary motives, if there is a
better primary one to keep them in due subordination."
" I suppose you mean the glory of God," she replied,
in a low voice. " But, Miss Frost, I really can't see how
my music is to help that, except when I sing in church."
" I suspect I should be no clearer-sighted, Ruth, if my
father had not taken such pains to teach me how possible
. it is to make all our doings, in a certain sense, religious
acts : in much that I say, you are only getting his ripe
wisdom at second-hand. He used often to quote to me
that matchless verse of George Herbert :
' A servant with this clause,'
(the said clause being, ' For thy sake?)
Makes drudgery divine,
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.' "
Alice drew a long breath, and her eyes lit up softly.
" Will you repeat that once more, Miss Frost-? "
I complied, doing my best to bring out the full beauty
and vigor of the lines.
She repeated them over again, in a dreamy undertone,
and then said, " I have it now. Thank you."
192 SHILOH.
" You have the words, certainly. But are you in pos-
session of their whole wealth of meaning ? We all know,
to be sure, what sort of a transfiguration the hardest and
coarsest duties undergo when done for the sake of one we
love, often exchanging their squalid, unlovely, repulsive
aspect for one that is positively winning and delightful,
but do we comprehend so readily all that is implied in
sweeping a room ' as for Thy laws ?' I think white Avings
of angels would hover delightedly over the work ! The
servant, so sweeping, would bring into active exercise all
the Christian virtues ; namely: Obedience, he is obedi-
ent to the law, ' Servants, obey your masters,' and to God,
the Lawgiver ; Humility, he is not above his work, he is
only solicitous that it shall not prove that his work was
above him ; Meekness, he bears with his master's reproofs
and his own mistakes, patiently; Faithfulness, he does
his task thoroughly, putting his broom into all the corners
and hidden places, ' as seeing one who is invisible ' inspect-
ing his work ; Honesty, he takes nothing from the room,
not so much as a pin from the floor, that does not belong
to him ; Diligence, he is careful not to waste his master's
time, nor God's; Contentment, instead of fretting and
repining because he has to work, or because the work is of
a homely sort, he feels the blessing of having work so
plain, so immediate, so free from difficulties and entangle-
ments, that he cannot well go wrong in it ; Trust,^ he be-
lieves that his Lord knows what work is best for him now,
and will give him other and higher work so soon as he is
fit for it ; Hope, he remembers joyfully the rest that rc-
maineth, and the glory that shall be revealed ; Lastly
that crowning grace! Love, he is full of kind thought
and delicate consideration for those to whose comfort he is
ministering, careful to leave the master's easy-chair just at
the angle he likes best, the mistress's work-table free from
dust, the invalid's couch where the light falls softest,
everything so arranged as to give the greatest satisfaction
SHILOH. 193
to the eye, the deepest repose to the mind. He can, if he
will, consecrate his work with prayer, and sweeten it with
thoughts of our Saviour bending His sacred head over a car-
penter's bench, and St. Paul plying his trade of tent-
maker. How truly such sweeping makes both the room
and the action ' fine ! ' Now take that same potent ' clause '
into the study of music, and see how inevitably a Christian
must be a better musician than a worldling other* things
being equal."
" Still," suggested Alice, " one might think it right to
learn just enough of music to make home pleasant, with-
out having any strong musical bias, or expecting ever to
become an accomplished musician."
" If one does, Alice, one will be likely to prove conclu-
sively, in one's own person, how little advantage results
from any study of importance, which is not taken up se-
riously, and carried on regularly, with a view to the great-
est proficiency that is within the student's reach. If there
is no strong natural bent, the more need of persistent study
and practice ; the pleasantness of home will not be much en-
hanced by a soulless, slovenly, disjointed performance. The
real inoperativeness, or insincerity, of this motive generally
appears when marriage and motherhood' bring new cares
to the player or singer. The sweet accomplishment of har-
mony, which was to add so rich a charm to the home-pre-
cinct, is dropped and forgotten so soon as the musician
really has a home, for whose delight and discomforts she
is, mainly, responsible."
Alice looked troubled. "You would not think it
right," said she, " for a mother to neglect her children for
her music ? "
" Certainly not. But the mothers of whom I am speak-
ing lavish time enough upon their own and their children's
finery, not only to keep up their music, but to make con-
tinual progress in it. Yet which accords best with that
sweet ideal of motherhood which we all hallow in our
9
194 SIIILOH.
hearts ? she who spends an hour or two f each day in
embroidering, tucking, and trimming her child's garments,
making its babyhood unlovely with pride, and its maturity
sinful with extravagance ; or she who surrounds its young
life with an atmosphere of soft, melodious, spiritualizing
sounds, training it early to comprehend the laws and the
significances of harmony, and bringing it, by easy and im-
perceptible degrees, into lovely accordance with all that is
good and sweet and ennobling in art or in nature ? Which
of them will the children reverence most ? Which will
they rise up to call ' blessed,' when death paralyzes alike
the fingers that ply the embroidery-needle and the fingers
that wake the white, singing keys ? Which memory will
send the sweetest, most pathetic strain down through their
future lives ? Easy it is to answer ! the garments that
we have worn fade quickly from our recollection most
emphatically they ' perish in the using ;' but the melodies
that sweetened our childhood, the songs that we sang with
our mother in the twilight, these are among the things
which our hearts cherish to their latest throb ! "
" Do you think it is wrong, then, to trim our garments
and make them pretty ? "
I could not help smiling. " Do you really think that
' trimming ' and ' making pretty ' are convertible terms,
Ruth ? Any artist will tell you that much of the trim-
ming, which costs us so much time and money, is only a
making ugly. But, allowing that its end is beauty, and
that it always accomplishes that end, is there no distinc-
tion to be made between the high beauty and the low one ?
The beauty of lovely melodies is infinitely greater than the
beauty of lovely garments ; the former, therefore, should be
first sought after to beautify our homes. The real trouble
is, that women do not rightly divide their duties. Con-
sciously, or not, we each make to ourselves two catalogues
of the day's labors ; one under the head of ' Things that
must be done,' the other of ' Things that may be done.'
SHILOH. 195
Then we put the tucks, the flounces, and embroideries, the
rich cakes and pastry, and the fashionable calls, under the
head of ' Must,' and the music, the reading aloud of the
best authors, and kindred duties, under the head of ' May.'
The body must be pampered ; the mind may be fed, or
starved, as it happens. Thence come endless toil of the
most slavish, exhausting, unsatisfying kind, continual de-
terioration, and the sharp gnawing of discontent."
There was a long pause. " Do you think, then," said
Alice, timidly, " that no one ought to learn music, who can;
not give some regular time to it daily ? "
" That would be too hard a saying. Where there is
genuine talent, and the way open, it might do to begin by
devoting all the odds and ends of time to the work, and so
making a kind of regularity of irregularity. If this were
done patiently and scrupulously, I think God would, ere
long, give the regular time needful. If it did not come, I
should consider it, in most cases, a clear indication that the
music must be given up."
" What ! when there is real talent ! " exclaimed Ruth in
amazement. " Do you think God ever gives a talent which
he does not mean us to cultivate ? "
" Rarely ; I never knew such a case, yet it may exist.
Given talent, energy, patience, and faith ; and the opportu-
nity for growth and the opening for usefulness generally
follow. But if there be, anywhere, a heart heavy with the
sense of germs of talent undeveloped, denied all time and
space for unfolding, kept down by illness, or by a multi-
tude of homely, yet genuine and pressing duties ; let it
take comfort in the certainty that God means it to attain,
by this thorny road of constraint and privation, unto high-
er and heavenlicr things than it might have won in the
freest exercise of its talents, even unto the sweet patience
of hope, the repose of unquestioning obedience, the bless-
edness of sacrifice. ' They also serve who stand and wait,'
says Milton of the celestial host."
196 SHILOH.
Alice's face lit up radiantly. Ruth looked half-scared,
half-exultant. " Such a life would be a bitter one for me,"
she said, with a slow shake of the head. " I tasted it be-
fore jon came, and I did not find out the sweetness nor the
comfort in it. I am so glad you came, Miss Frost ! " giv-
ing me a quick, impetuous caress.
" That reminds me that we have not yet agreed upon
the terms of payment for these lessons."
She looked utterly confounded. " I thought " she be-
gan, and then stopped.
" You thought I was to give them freely and uncondi-
tionally ? Not altogether. ' If ye hae nae purse to fine, ye
hae flesh to pine,' says the old Scotch proverb. I have a
mind to play Shylock with you. I shall exact a llesh-and-
blood payment."
Ruth opened her eyes at me in speechless amazement.
Alice only smiled. I was beginning to remark the latter's
quickness of comprehension wherever any spiritual analogy
was implied. I had already learned that her faculty of ob-
servation was unusually keen and delicate ; it even annoyed
me a little, at times, to see that every emotion which dis-
turbed the surface of my consciousness, appeared to have
its answering ripple on hers. Not, evidently, because she
sought to inspect or to analyze my feelings; the power
seemed to be most involuntarily exercised, and was even a
source of embarrassment. Often, when her eye met mine,
she colored and turned away, as if there were such a crime
as spiritual theft, and she had been detected in it. In a
loved and trusted friend, such facility of comprehension
would be invaluable, sparing one much painful travail of
speech ; but in an indifferent person, it came near to being
an intolerable nuisance. And, up to this time, I had not
taken as the phrase goes to Alice Prescott. She was
afflicted with such an overpowering and inveterate shyness
oftener taking the form of stiffness and unresponsiveness
than of open confusion of face that one's course of ac-
SHILOH. 197
quaintanceship necessarily ran slow ; and I had easily slid-
clen into the habit of letting her very much alone. Yet I
had found myself watching her, now and then, with an in-
explicable curiosity ; a vague suspicion that the depths of
her life might be worth sounding, if one only had the means
and the inclination ; and a dim wonder if my own disinclina-
tion were not the sickly, noxious outgrowth of spiritual in-
dolence, rather than a manifestation of that most rare and
righteous quality respect for another's individuality. And
when I had gotten thus far, Mala always sneered or railed,
and my thoughts wandered from the subject.
After a momentary enjoyment of Ruth's astonished
face, I went on.
" Flesh and blood are figurative terms, dear ; they stand
Itere for labor and love. The time will come when you, in
your turn, will be competent to teach and help some wait-
ing, wistful soul, quick with musical power, yet knowing
not how to develop it : promise me that you will do it, for
my no, for Christ's sake. These are my terms, Ruth."
Her brown eyes filled slowly with tears. " Oh ! Miss
Frost, you knew you surely knew that you did not need
to ask that ! " she exclaimed, half-reproachfully. " Of
course I should do it ; I could not help doing it ! Don't I
know how it feels to long for a teacher, and culture, and
growth, and not to have them ! "
Then she stood upright, dashing away her tears. " Oh !
I will promise more than that," she went on, passionately,
" for you know you have not gone to the root of the mat-
ter, Miss Frost ! Whenever I meet some poor, proud, dis-
couraged, and deformed creature, who would reproach God
for making her, if she dared, and who shrinks from every
human eye as if it had an arrow in it I will try what can
be done to lift her up and help her. If she has any grace,
or beauty, or talent, or good gift of any kind, I will find it
out and hold it up before her, to prove to her that God is
still good, and to encourage her to work and pray ; while
198 SHILOH.
my own ready help and sympathy and tenderness, shall
make her ashamed of ever having distrusted man." And,
she added solemnly, after a moment, " I will, so help me
God!"
I drew the excited, enthusiastic speaker toward me, and
kissed her, through my tears. Alice laid her head on the
piano and sobbed aloud.
Ruth was the first to break the silence, passing quickly
from the extreme of exaltation to a half-playful mood ;
showing the real buoyancy and elasticity of her spirits, in
their natural play. "My first scholar is close by," she said,
laying her hand on Alice's head " thoxigh she isn't of that
sort, you know. As soon as I know enough, I mean to
give Alice lessons. Unless," she added, as if the* idea had
suddenly occurred to her, "you are going to do it your-
self."
Alice turned crimson. " I could not think of troubling
Miss Frost so much," she said, hastily ; " it is quite enough
for her to have to teach one of us. I am content to wait
for you, Ruth I shall only get her teaching at second-
hand. Besides," she continued, looking at me in a doubt-
ful, deprecating way, " she would not think it worth while ;
I am afraid I have no natural talent for music."
I hesitated, touched by her wistful look, yet doubtful if
encouragement were the right thing to give her.
" Sometimes, the means seem to justify the end," I said,
at last. " One may labor so assiduously and so lovingly as
to create a talent where it did not exist. But the training
should begin early, to do that, in music. If you were nine,
instead of nineteen, I should not hesitate. As it is, I con-
fess that the expediency seems doubtful; that is, if you
have anything better to do. In Ruth's case, the strong
native bias will go a great way ; besides, it is her voice that
I chiefly count upon to repay culture ; it is not too late to
work upon that, to good advantage. If she learns enough
of the piano to be able to accompany herself tolerably well,
SHILOH 199
it is all that I look for. In your case let me see your
hand, Alice."
She gave it to me with a bewildered face.
" I am not a fortune-teller, though it does look a little
like it," I said, smiling at her amazement. " But there are
musical hands, Alice Ruth has them. The fingers ai'e
long, the joints firm, yet flexible, the movement rapid and
forceful. Now yours really! it is the oddest circum-
stance ! Where do you suppose I saw the duplicates of
your hands, Alice?"
" Indeed, I cannot imagine."
" In Italy, I met one of our sweetest poetesses there.
She had just such hands as these small, white, cool, soft,
they seemed to melt in my grasp as if they were made of
mist, with nails not quite perfect in shape, too, because,
as she told me, with a little laugh of vexation at herself,
she had the habit of biting them in her youth, and suspect-
ed she sometimes did it still, when s'ue was in a brown
study ! But there was no music in them, Alice, except
such as flowed from the point of her pen ; which is, after
all, the sweetest, richest music far wider in its scope and
influence than any music of tone simply. For poetry is the
highest of all the arts."
Alice looked down shyly, yet with something bright in
her face. Ruth gave her a smile and a meaning glance.
Then she said to me, nodding her head :
" You have hit Alice exactly. She used to bite her
nails in school many a time have I scolded her for it.
And she makes verses, too."
XIX.
ALICE PKESCOTT IIST A NEW LIGHT.
was as if scales fell from my eyes. Those
three words, "Alice makes verses," carried a
spell in them. All that had seemed strange, in-
complete, or incongruous, in Alice Prescott, be-
came at once natural and comprehensible. Her
character fell into its place in the harmony of the
universe.
That intuitive comprehension of the thoughts
and feelings of others, under which I had been so restive,
I now saw to be the rightful dower of the poet ; whose in-
sight must needs be of that fine, penetrative quality, to
which all of earth, and much of heaven, is open. The
youngest poet whose song ever won the ear of mankind,
has always sung intelligently of many things wherewith lie
could have no intimate, personal acquaintance ; but which
he comprehends as perfectly by intuition and sympathy as
other men by experience. He is not only moved, but com
polled, often against his own wilf, and to the damage of
his own comfort, to .live much in other lives, to feel the
warmth of their sunshine and the chill of their shadow, to
be thrilled with their passions and shaken by their conflicts. .
Where his own experience falls short, theirs serves him in
good stead; and, by the help of delicate intuition, ready
sympathy, and instinctive perception of things so slight and
subtile as to escape other observation, he is enabled to catch
201
every note that humanity gives forth tinder the touch of
Life, and to weave it deftly into his songs.
Others of Alice's characteristics, too, hitherto unnoted
in this chronicle, came crowding forth to get the benefit of
this new light, and reveal themselves in their true colors
and proportions. She was subject to fits of absence of
mind, from which not even her mother's shrill voice aroused
her, until it had been two or three times exerted, and had
gained acuteness by impatience; and there were whole
days when she seemed to walk in a dream ; doing what-
ever she did in the most mechanical, unreasoning fashion ;
listening to your words with ears fast locked against every
sound, and looking you in the face with eyes that had no
more sight in them than a blind man's. Often I had found
her sitting in the porch, or on the garden bench, with her
gaze fastened on the distant hill-tops ; and, at such times,
it was plain that I ci'ossed her field of vision without pro-
ducing any image on her mind, if I did upon her retinas.
I had inwardly stigmatized her, therefore, as listless, indo-
lent a dreamer and an idler in a world heavy with reali-
ties, and teeming with work for hand and brain. I now
inferred that these were moments of inward life and sight,
full and active in proportion to her outward immobility ;
the depth of her abstraction being the visible sign of the
intensity with which she contemplated the flow of her own
ideas, and the avidity wherewith she received and assimi-*
lated intellectual nutriment from scenes and events which
passed for an actual void with her neighbors.
She was quick and skilful in the feminine accomplish-
ment of needlework. She had a natural aptitude for the
lighter and more fanciful parts of dress-making and mil-
linery ; and a ready knack at turning to good account old
laces, ribbons, and other debris of the wa*rdrobe, that seemed
little short of miraculous; yet was only the result of a
quick eye for latent beauties of form and color, and a happy
facility in combining them. In short, she had both taste
202 SHILOH.
and imagination, and could not help lavishing them wher-
ever there was material for them to work upon. But for
the coarser matters of the domestic routine, she appeared
to have an innate and ineradicable aversion. She " shirked "
them (her grandmother said) ; but it was plain that she did
it involuntarily, rather than of deliberate purpose. When
she^was forced to it, she took them in hand aptly enough,
but with a certain fastidious, arm's-length haste, that the
distasteful duty might be quickly done with ; or she work-
ed dreamily, with a mind afar off. So I had set her hastily
down as a vain and frivolous girl, with her head chiefly
running on matters of dress, and cherishing in her heart
an unwise contempt and distaste for life's every-day duties
and burdens. I now saw that this judgment must needs
be greatly modified ; though it might still be true, in a
mild degree, for Alice was too young a poetess to have
discovered the essential poetry latent in life's most prac-
tical affairs, the beauty that grows beside its commonest
walks.
Yet she possessed something that might soon lead to
the discovery the art of practical arrangement. She had
that mysterious happiness of touch, by which all the hidden
capabilities of things are brought forth and made to minis-
ter to comfort or to taste ; -a charming attribute in the
mistress of a household, enabling her to organize a delight-
ful enough home out of apparently barren and incongruous
elements. Whatever Alice touched seemed to fall inevita-
bly into lines of grace. A room where her hand had been,
wore a cosy, habitable aspect, curiously in contrast with the
starched propriety of Mrs. Prescott's arrangement. The
bouquets that she arranged looked as if the flowers had
spontaneously grouped themselves together in obedience to
their own lovely and mystical affinities. The dishes of fruit
that she brought to the table, wreathed with their own
leaves, or with buds and blossoms exquisitely adapted to
them in fragrance and color, might have served as studies
BHILOH. 203
for an artist. These works suited her ; they seemed to be a
spontaneous outgrowth, rather than the result of conscious
volition. Within their sphere, her fancy was inexhaustible,
her invention akin to magic. It was a mystery where she
got the trait ; it was innate, of course, but not hereditary,
unless derived from some very remote ancestress, whose
name has dropped out of the genealogical table that Mrs.
Divine keeps in a convenient niche of her memory, ready
to be produced and consulted, at the shortest notice.
The pleasant illumination thus thrown upon Alice's
character fell rosily over her person also, and transfigured
that to my outer vision, as it had the former to my mental
view. She was not beautiful : beside Ruth's rare and ar-
tistic loveliness the rich glory of her auburn hair, and the
shifting light and shadow of her brown eyes, the pale,
cool tints of Alice's face looked like a crayon sketch beside
a brilliant painting. Nevertheless, my glance now lingered
with pleasure on the graceful contour of her head, the in-
tellect crowning her brow, the mystic depths of her
thoughtful, far-gazing eyes, the harmonious lines of her
womanly, yet most petite figure, for Alice is small enough
to have fairy blood in her veins. Always a little inclined
to genius-worship, I began to feel a half-reverence for the
shy, silent girl, whom I had been accustomed to regard
with indifference. I was humbled to the dust by the dis-
covery of my long blindness !
"The point that is made against you," said Bona,
quietly, " being simply that you cannot recognize your
own ideal of incipient genius, when it is taken out of the
domain of imagination, and walks beside you daily in the
humble garb pf a plain, shy New England maiden, amid
the homely duties of a New England farm-house ! "
The next moment I was ready to laugh at my own cre-
dulity, and satirize my late-budding enthusiasm. " Don't be
a goose ! " I said to myself, severely. " As if every girl in
Christendom does not, during the fertile period of her
204 SHILOH.
teens, try to make verses ; and succeed well enough to sat-
isfy her own crude taste, and that of some partial friends !
As if you, yourself, had not made a few trembling attempts
of the sort, which you treasured carefully, for a year or
two, as possible gold, and threw away, at the end of that
time, as most certainly lead ! "
" Besides," added Mala, masquerading in the garb of
common sense, " you know your imagination is prone to
fly away with you, and to drop you, not into the valley of
Diamonds, but that of Disappointment. It is absurd to
dream of finding two geniuses in this little out-of-the-way
place, granting that Ruth Winnot is one, which is more
than I believe. And, amid all this labor and thought for
others, what is to become of the rest that you came to Shi-
loh especially to find? You know you need it."
BOJSTA. Not yet. Rest that is, inaction would be far
more wearisome to you than any work. The toiling hand
lightens the burdened heart; the busy life relieves the
brooding mind. The rest " remaineth."
Wonderful is the quickness of thought ! All this, if
not in detail, yet in substance, passed through my mind
while I still held Alice's hand, and before Ruth could
have had much time to wonder at my delay in reply-
ing to the bit of information wherewith she had favored
me. . In truth, I was too much surprised by it, and too un-
certain how much it might be worth, to make any im-
mediate, pertinent answer possible ; and my words must
have Seemed to ignore it completely, when they came,
though, in reality, they were not uninfluenced by it. If
Alice really possessed the poetic faculty, it was another
reason why she should not waste her strength on a task un-
suited to her.
She sat, meanwhile, with downcast eyes, looking both
distressed and scared. I suspect she feared an immediate
demand for a specimen of her verse-making. Obviously,
it was a relief to her when I only asked,
SIIILOH. 205
" Alice, would it be much of a disappointment to you
not to take music-lessons, now or later ? "
She met my eyes with unusual directness and frankness.
" I think it would a little ; I thought I should like it very
much. But," she added, with a very sweet, docile look,
"I can trust your judgment about it, Miss Frost. It shall
be yes or no, just as you say."
" Decidedly no, then. I believe that the most you could
hope to do, would be to learn enough of the principles
and resources of music to enable you to understand and
enjoy it more perfectly, when you hear it from others ;
no worthless acquisition, to be sure, but you can accom-
plish the same tiling, in an easier way. Since Ruth is will-
ing, you can make it a rule to be present at her lessons,
and listen to the instructions she receives. You will thus
learn a good deal of the science of music ; you will see the
objects she is working to attain ; you will understand the
nature and the amount of the difficulties she has to over-
come, and the value of the successes she achieves ; and
whenever her time of triumph comes, you will rejoice in it
as if it were your own. Thus, she will get the help and
comfort of an intelligent, adequate sympathy, born of
knowledge ; and you will get the benefit of her labor,
without the time and fatigue. A theoretical knowledge
of music will be an advantage to you, if you are " (a po-
etess, I was about to say, but I reconsidered the matter,
and substituted) "if ever you are thrown into musical
society."
Alice gave me one of her quick, penetrating glances :
she comprehended, instinctively, that there was something
more in my thought than appeared in my words. Ruth
looked dissatisfied.
" You don't know how much I wanted Alice for a fel-
low-student," she said, dolefully.
" Take heart," I rejoined, smiling, " she may fill that
position yet. Alice, ha\e you any talent for languages ? "
206 SHILOH.
" I don't know," answered she, " I never tried."
" I was intending to request Ruth to take up the study
of Italian, also," observed I, " and to ask you to join her
in it. It is, eminently, the language of music ; the day
will come when she will find it necessary, or expedient, for
her to sing in it, and I wish to save her from the inconve-
nience and the wearisomeness not to say, the absurdity
of using words without meaning to her. It is, also, well
worth learning for its literature. Certain master-pieces of
epic and lyric poetry can only be studied satisfactorily by
its aid ; for though history, philosophy, and morality,
may be translated without serious detriment, that chill pro-
cess is fatal to the ethereal essence and subtle grace of
poetry. Who would know Dante and Tasso and Petrarch,
face to face, and heart-throb to heart-throb, therefore, must
know them through the clear, soft medium of the lan-
guage they loved ; vainly we try to pour their thought
into any other mould !
" Under other circumstances, I might prefer to have
you commence this branch of study with a different lan-
guage ; but you and Ruth wish to work together, and
there is often profit, as well as pleasure, in such compan-
ionship. If you like the study, and develop a talent for
it, we Avill try something else, by and by."
Alice's eyes had grown very bright through this long
speech. She now said,
" Thank you. I shall like it so much ! "
Ruth made a comical little grimace. "You do well,"
said she, " to couple us together, in this business. I am
not a bookworm by nature, as Alice is, and the sight of her
quickness and studiousness will shame me into doing my
utmost. There is no doubt that she will learn fast enough ;
Alice can turn her hand to anything."
" Finally," said I, " I .have ventured to cut out a little
work perhaps play would be the fitter phrase, for us all.
I propose that we shall spend certain hours of each week
SHILOH. 207
together, in reading aloud. We will take turns at the read-
ing, and try to make sure that none of the depth or the
sweetness of our author escapes us, by comparing impres-
sions as we go along. Do you accede to the proposal ? "
" I accede to anything and everything," replied Ruth,
good humoredly. And she added, in a half-arch, half-cares-
sing way, " What is the use of objecting ? You would be
sure to coax or reason me into it, after all. You have ways
there is no resisting, Miss Frost."
Further talk was precluded by the abrupt entrance of
Mrs. Prescott. Care sat upon her brow, as usual ; and she
made no delay in discharging herself of her mission.
There is this excellent quality (among others) in Mrs. Pres-
cott ; her straightforwardness is unquestionable. One feels
confident, upon very short acquaintance, that there are no
byways in her character. She never holds forth the gloved
hand of policy ; she knows nothing of the crooked walks
of diplomacy. What she has to do, she does openly ; what
she has to say, she says plainly. Her faults lie as close to
the surface as her virtues, her motives are as patent as her
acts. In her own characteristic phrase, she " always likes
to speak her mind."
" I suppose your lesson is over, I haven't heard the piano
going lately," she said, in her rapid, crisp way, implying as
much 'of an apology as she often condescends to make. " I just
came in to tell you that some of us ladies are going down
to set Mr. Taylor's things to rights a little, this afternoon.
They were put into the house this morning, and there they
lie in heaps. And to-morrow is Saturday, and Mrs. Taylor
can't get here till noon, so she won't have much time to
get in living order for Sunday. I guess she'll like to havo
things straightened round some, if it ain't done just exactly
as she'd do it herself. And I'd like to have you go along,
if youJre willing ; of course, we shouldn't expect you
to do any hard work, but we would like your advice
about arranging things. Mrs. Taylor mightn't like our
208 SHILOH.
ways; she's used to city style, I guess. Mr. Taylor is
there, to tell us which furniture goes in the parlor, and
which in the keeping-room, and what they use in their own
room. That is about all he is good for, I guess, though he
did come on to ' make a beginning,' as he says. It's my
opinion that it would be all beginning, and no end ! You
ought to have seen him this morning, sitting on a box and
looking at the muss. He had unpacked three boxes, and
piled the things all in a heap, and was just taking breath
before he begun on another ! It's a mercy I happened in,
or he'd have had everything out, and stirred up on the
floor, in a mess. I told him he had better wait until this
afternoon, and have some help. He looked as much
relieved as if I had brought him a house all in apple-pie
order, with a dinner smoking on the table. So I brought
him home with me, and he's out in the meadow, talking to
father. Will you go with us, Miss Frost ? "
" Certainly, if there is the smallest possibility of my
being of service. I really was not aware, however, that
there were two ways of arranging furniture, one for the
city, and another for the country ; I thought individual
taste ruled in that mattei', and that the greatest attainable
amount of comfort and beauty was the universal aim."
" Umph ! that shows you haven't used your eyes.
Whenever I go into a city house, which I don't do
often," with an intonation, slightly flavored with con-
tempt, " it always looks to me as if they'd put all their
best things right where they'd get used up the quickest, -
chairs and tables and sofas where you couldn't stir without
hitting against their corners ; and china, and all sorts of
knick-knacks, where you couldn't miss of knocking them
off. Xo\v, that isn't our way up here; at least, it isn't my
way. What's worth saving, I like to save. Why, I've got
the mahogany table, that father gave me when I was first
married and went to housekeeping, packed away up garret
now, -just as good as new, though it's been moved twice ;
there isn't a pin-scratch on it anywheres."
SHILOH. 209
I did not in the least doubt it. To any one who had
had an opportunity of Mdtnessing Mrs. Prescott's daily
battle with dust, dirt, and decay, in their innumerable
forms; and her many and marvellous solutions of the ever-
returning problem how to make the few things she could
bring herself to use, serve as substitutes for the multitude
that it would have broken her heart to summon forth from
their life-long inaction ; it was not difficult to believe in any
marvel of preservation that had been achieved under her
own strict domestic rule. My faith was strong that, if she
could only be spared to cherish it, that beloved mahogany
table would survive the crumbling of empires, and resist
the tooth of Time ; and, outliving the earth itself, would
be no very preposterous candidate for admission into that
extremely material' heaven, which certain dust-clogged
imaginations are so fond of presenting to our view. .
I left the subject of the table untouched, however, and
confined myself to the business in hand.
"I hope you intend to be impartial in your invitation,
Mrs. Prescott. Cannot these two friends of mine find an
opening for their respective talents, somewhere in the after-
noon's work?"
Mrs. Prescott" stared in undisguised amazement.
" I mean to have Alice go," she said, with a mixture of
austerity and amusement ; " I'm going to paper the keep-
ing room down there, and she's got to help me. As for
Ruth, I should like to have her go, of course ; there's not
the least danger of our having too much help ; many hands
make light work. But if you can get her to go, you'll do
more than I think you will that's all I've got to say about
it."
And Mrs. Prescott walked off, not to waste time on a
subject of so little importance.
Ruth looked at me imploringly. " You don't mean it,
Miss Frost ! you know I can't go ! "
I hesitated. Immediately, Alice rose and went quietly
210 SHILOH.
out. I could not but marvel at the fineness of her instincts.
Doubtless, she understood, as well as if I had told her so,
that her presence was, at that moment, a constraint upon me.
Struggle against it as I may, my affections, my sympathy,
and my emotions, will always refuse to utter themselves
freely in the presence of a third person, a looker-on, no
matter how congenial to me may be that person's self, nor
how thoroughly in sympathy with the spirit of the moment.
Then I put my arms round my excited companion.
" Ruth, it is the first favor I have asked of you. And I
have set jny heart upon it."
She burst into tears. " Of course, I 'cannot i-efuse, if
you insist, when you have done so much for me. But you
don't know what a trial it will be to me ! I can't bear all
those eyes ! "
If it had really been a favor for myself, in any narrow
sense, I could not have insisted. But it was for Ruth's
own sake that I steeled myself.
" You need not look at any eyes but mine, and they
intend to keep very tender watch over you. Xot because
of anything I have done for you, that is nothing, but to
show me that you love me, Ruth ! "
And so, finally, she promised.
XX.
THE GAVYXNE PLACE.
r N nearly every New England village, I find,
there is some one dwelling that enjoys a sinister
distinction over its .neighbors. Either, it had its
foundation in some ugly . and ominous circum-
stance ; or it is stained through and through
with an ever-darkening story of horror ; or a dim
shadow of mystery lurks in its corners ; or it is
pervaded by the faint, misty, elusive scent of
ghostly revelries. Now and then, there appears to have
been a sufficient germ for this luxuriant, legendary foliage,
in some actual fact. Oftener still, it has grown out of the
gray old sti-ucture by a process analogous to that which
has covered its roof with moss and its walls with mould ;
without any more fertile soil wherein to have taken root,
than the bare fact that its builder came of an unknown
stock, or that it has, at some period of its history, stood for
a long time untenarited. And an empty house, in a quiet
New England town, is the lawful playground of the im-
agination, the readiest material for all the latent supersti-
tion of the place to work upon. The winds take up their
abode in it, and fill it with solemn whispers capable of mani-
fold interpretation, birds and bats people it with vague,
flitting forms, its chill, damp, vault-like atmosphere is
thrillingly suggestive of ghostly occupants, dry-rot gets
into its timbers and gnaws away at their heart like the
212 SHILOH.
tooth of an uneasy conscience, its silence is full of inexplic-
able sound, its darkness flashes with mysterious light,
its very exterior is believed to have some indefinable pecu-
liarity. Strange whispers originating no one knoAvs where,
and swelling no one knows how are afloat concerning it ;
and people who do not believe them in their hearts, are
ready enough to give them currency with their lips. By
and by, children are afraid to pass it after nightfall ; and
their elders glance at it half-curiously, half-nervously,
reasoning vaguely within themselves that, where there is
so much of inference, there ought, for consistency's sake, to
be some small residuum of fact. The eerie character of the
house is established. It will take years of commonplace
occupancy to obliterate its claim to a dismal distinction ;
and a long course of the plodding prose of daily life to dis-
pel the half-poetic charm that environs it.
Mrs. Prescott's house is of this class. Its one undenia-
ble peculiarity is, that it has never had either a birth or a
death under its roof; a curious enough fact, in a dwelling
that is nearly a century old ; but explicable by the shifting
character of its occupancy. It has missed, therefore, some-
what of that gentle consecration of love and grief, which
makes the walls of a genuine home half sacred in their
aspect and influence, and a dim recognition thereof is,
doubtless, latent in the feeling with which it is regarded.
If you ask, generally, of its history, you will be told that
it Avas built, and first occupied, by a strange, silent family ,
that came nobody knew whence, lived nobody knew ho\v,
and went nobody knew whither. To this will be appended
the vaguest tale with hardly enough of definite outline to
be anywise transferable to paper of three fair daughters,
who were visited one by one, with some inscrutable and
malignant fate ; and waxed unutterably wan and spirit-like
under its touch ; and slowly faded out of existence (but not
in the house, its mysterious immunity from death must
needs have prevented that) ; and whose spirits had been
SHILOH. 213
seen flitting through the dense shadow of the orchard, 011
moonlight nights. If you push your inquiries more par-
ticularly, however, you will succeed in extracting as much
information about this unknown family as could reasonably
be expected to survive it ; in a community where it had not
sojourned long enough to establish, by means of inter-mar-
riage, birth, death, and familiar intercourse, any abiding
claim upon its sympathies. The real truth seeming to be,
that the Gwynnes (for such was their name) had once
known better days ; had here found a brief foothold upon '
the slippery bank of Oblivion ; and, sliding thence, had
made that final plunge beneath its dark waters, beyond
which none but attached friends and hound-scented lawyers
would care to follow them. After them, came a number of
tenancies, of the briefest individual duration ; and then, a
long period of emptiness and neglect, during which rumors
and conjectures thickened around the deserted dwelling,
not less rapidly than the dust gathered on its floors, and
the mosses and lichens on its roof.
Finally, Mr. Prescott, his health having failed him in a
neighboring town, pitched upon it as a convenient residence
for the remainder of his own fast lapsing life; and one,
moreover, where his wife, in the event of her being left a
widow, would be within easy reach of the kindly offices
and sympathies of her paternal home. If the shrewd New
Englander had any unacknowledged idea of cheating death
of his lawful prey, in his own case, by removing to a house
that was reported to enjoy an immunity from his dread
visitations, the event proved, to the " great edification of
curious lookers-on, how equally inevitable were the stroke
of doom, and the mysterious spell that hedged round his
dwelling. Mr. Prescott died, suddenly, at a wayside inn,
while on a short journey ; and, in curious confirmation of
the received theory that death was, in no shape, to enter
that charmed precinct, he was never again permitted to
cross the threshold of his home. For, on the arrival of
214 SHILOII.
his remains, it was found that their natural course of decay
had been so hastened by the extreme heat of the weather,
as to make it inexpedient to admit them within the dwel-
ling. They rested, therefore, in the broad, cool shadow of
the maples in the dooryard ; while knots of friends gathered
near, and prayers were said, and hymns sung, and all the
sombre routine and paraphernalia of woe went on around
them according to their dismal wont ; and then, they went
forth to seek admittance into that narrow, but hospitable
house, which opens its doors to all comers alike, and refuses
not its kindly shelter to any amount nor degree of material
or moral pollution.
In due course of time, the increasing years and cor-
responding infirmities of Mrs. Divine, and the troubles that
befell Mrs. Prescott in managing her farm, brought about
the removal of the latter to the old homestead, and the con-
solidation of the two households. It was then duly whis-
pered around that either Alice or her mother had been
selected for the Destroyer's next stroke, and that it had
become inevitably necessary for the unconscious victim to
seek out an available spot wherein to die, the Gwynne
Place, as everybody knew, being absolutely ineligible to
such an undertaking ; a prediction which, I scarcely need
say, still awaits fulfilment. Its terrors are now, however,
transferred to "William Dunn, whose future career will be
honored with an amount of interest, on this account, that
would scarcely have been accorded to it, upon its own
merits. If any casualty happens to himself; or if measles,
scarlet fever, or any of the ills which childhood is heir to,
makes a break in the line of his progeny, during the next
few years ; that will be accounted the occult cause for the
expulsion, of which Mrs. Prescott, in her zeal to provide
her clergyman with a suitable abode, is only the blind,
irresponsible agent.
All this or as much of it as could be told without jar-
ring upon Mrs. Prescott's sensibilities we made known to
SHILOII. 215
Mr. Taylor, while our little party of five traversed the
" short cut across lots " between the Divine homestead
and the Gwynne Place. Mr. Taylor had stayed to dinner,
which accounts for his presence with us; and I had
made sure of Ruth by going after her. At first, she had
been silent and ill-at-ease ; sending shy, surreptitious
glances around her, in the evident expectation and dread
of surprising a look of pity, of contempt, or of dislike, up-
on some unguarded face ; but, of course, finding none, and
constantly growing brighter and more courageous thereby.
And Alice, as might be expected, had been quick to under-
stand and to second my efforts to make her feel that we
were glad to have her with us ; without treating it as if it
were an unusual occurrence, calling for either question or
comment. So she had gradually drifted to her natural
place among us ; and her spirits, having flung aside their
dreary, habitual weight, were fast rising to the sunny level
of the scene and the time, into harmony with the shining
verdure, the singing brook, the merry chirp of insects, the
rich warm glow of the early-afternoon sun.
For her sake I made an unwonted effort to be gay. I
seized eagerly, therefore, upon every chance for merriment
afforded by the peculiarities of the house which Mr. Taylor
was so soon to occupy. I ran rapidly over a list of divers
charms and counter-charms in repute among different na-
tions, from the horse-shoe of the Saxon to the monda of
the African ; discussed, in a serio-comic manner, their effi-
cacy and adaptation to the case in hand ; and deplored the
impossibility of procuring a fetich of gorilla's brain, or the
tail of a leopard, to imbue Mr. Taylor's heart with courage
proportioned to his probable or possible needs ! I rattled
on lightly enough, no doubt, considering the many points
where the subject touched unavoidably upon serious
things ; but my one object was to bring out the fitful
smiles upon Ruth's face ; and whenever her gleeful, bird-
like laugh rang out over the meadow (it is astonishing how
216 SHILOH.
joyous her laugh is, when her voice seems to be possessed
with the very spirit of melancholy!), I congratulated my-
self upon so much gained, and cast about for some fresh
absurdity to utter. In due time I found my reward.
Ruth began to answer, as well as to listen and laugh ;
and her gayety, when it came, was far more genuine and
spontaneous than mine.
Mr. Taylor listened to us, for awhile, with a very
amused face. Then it grew so burdened with thought
that Mrs. Prescott, concluding that he stood in need of en-
couragement, came to the rescue.
" It's all nonsense," she began, in her quick, decided
way. " I can assure you, Mr. Taylor, that the house is as
good a house, and as quiet a house, as there is in Shiloh.
I lived there four years, and I never heard a sound that I
couldn't find a good reason for ; nor saw anything more
ghostlike in the orchard than a white cow, or calf, or some-
thing of that sort. And as for the ' spell ' that Miss Frost
makes so much of, I don't believe a bit more in that ! If
you live there long enough, you'll die there, I guess. I
only wish you might, you and all your family ! "
The letter of this wish, in spite of its unmistakable
friendliness of spirit, provoked so general a smile, that Mrs.
Prescott felt herself called upon to add an explanatory re-
mark or two, which, however, did not greatly mend the
matter.
" You all know what I mean, well enough. St. Jude's
hasn't had a rector for over a year or two, at a time, since
'twas built ; and I'd like to have one stay long enough to
die here once, that's all."
" Thank you," said Mr. Taylor, bowing half-courteously,
half-humorously. " I only hope Shiloh and I may suit each
other well enough to make such a length of sojourn desir-
able. But I ought to assure you, Mrs. Prescott, that the
evil reputation of the premises has no terrors for me. And
as for the ' spell,' Miss Frost, I have no desire to break
SHILOH. 217
it ; however, that must be as the Lord wills. But I must
confess that my thoughts wandered a little during your
careful resume of available counter-charms ; and I really
forget which or how many you recommended for my adop-
tion. I was thinking how universal is this belief in ghosts,
spells, signs, etc. Even the worst sceptics in religious mat-
ters often partake of it. And I was puzzling myself with
the question, whence it springs. In most cases, I imagine
it is the result of an unconscious craving after some power
behind nature, and superior to her inalterable laws, which
may be disposed to take an occasional interest in human
affairs. There are times when natural laws seem so hard,
so chill, so unsympathizing, as all law must, without love
behind it, we are glad to escape from their hands into any
others which are capable of voluntary action. In short, I
suppose it is the igorant, unrenewed soul's spontaneous
reaching out after God. If men only knew it to be such,
how much better it would be for them ! "
" And I have been thinking," replied I, " that these
same superstitions have their value as an involuntary con-
cession to the spiritual part of man. Men do under-
stand and all the materialistic philosophy that was ever
taught, cannot persuade them to the contrary that there
is both within and without them, somewhat, a power, an
essence, or an influence, which, while it works harmoni-
ously enough with and through the laws of matter, is not
obedient to them, but immeasurably above and beyond
them. Superstitions do not come of the earthly, sordid
part of man ; they have little or nothing to do with the
faculties that are employed in adding barn to barn, and
field to field ; they belong, however mistaken or degraded,
to his spiritual nature, and are born of his spiritual needs ;
and therefore I am inclined to concede them some slight
claim to respectful consideration."
" And I think," said Mrs. Prescott, sharply, " that they
are a great deal too foolish to waste so many words about.
10
218 sniLoii.
But here we are ; and now work, and not talk, is to be the
order of the day. At "least for those who can't do both at
once. And I always find that when my tongue is still, my
hands move the fastest."
The Gwynne Place had certainly nothing in its exte-
rior to warrant its occupying so much space in our talk,
or in this letter. It was simply a gray, reverend farm-
house ; with a long ' row of maples in front, and a large,
dense orchard in the rear. Time and weather had left legi-
ble enough traces upon it, and it had the forlorn look of
emptiness about it ; but otherwise, it was a house as little
suggestive of ghostly tenants as could well be conceived of.
We found its interior in a perplexing state of topsy-
turvity ; but Mrs. Prescott set to work, with her usual
energy and directness of purpose, and soon cleai'ed a space
for action. Then she produced, from some quarter, a kettle
of paste, several rolls of wall-paper, scissors, and brush ; and
set about measuring, cutting, trimming, pasting, and hang-
ing, as if she had been born to the business.
Ruth, too, threw herself into the work with a cheerful
alacrity and heartiness that it was good to see. Having
first helped Mr. Taylor to clear the parlor, she found the
carpet thereto appropriated, satisfied herself that it required
no other fitting than a little turning in on one side, rum-
maged about for a hammer and tacks, and went down
upon her knees and commenced operations at once. The
quick, sharp sound of her hammer echoed through the
house ; and it was followed by a cheery little carol from
her lips, that seemed to bubble up from the very well-
spring of joyfulness. I could not help stopping to watch
her a moment, she looked so bright and happy ; and she
did her work so easily and so well, with a simple, uncon-
scious grace that gave it the easy charm of play.
" Ghosts would not endure the spectacle for a moment,".
I was saying to myself, when I was startled by a deep,
unexpected voice behind me ;
" Well ! if I ain't dumbpounded ! "
XXI.
SETTING TO EIGHTS, WITHOUT AND WITHIN.
( COKING round, I saw Aunt Vin's calico sun-
bonnet jerking spasmodically in the doorway ;
while the wearer thereof was taking in the
whole scene, with an amazed glance.
" Is that Ruth Winnot ? " she proceeded,
after a moment, " or is it a pectoral allusion ? "
" How do you do ? " said I, holding out my
hand. " Speak for yourself, Ruth, and tell Miss
Rust whether you are a spectral illusion, or not."
" My very own self, Aunt Vin ! " declared Ruth, merrily,
holding her hammer suspended over a nail, while she spoke,
and then bringing it down sharply, by way of point to her
sentence. " If you doubt it, pinch me, and see if I don't
cry out like real flesh and blood ! "
" That would be concussive evidence," returned Aunt
Vin, drily. " But, bless me ! Miss Frost ! what sort of
hokers-pokers have you been a-trying on the girl? I
shouldn't have known her, if I'd have met her anywhere's
out of Shiloh. She used to look ' like Patience on emolu-
ment, sp'iling with grief;' now, she's a good deal more
like a ' butterfly, born in a bowery.' She'll be the sinecure
of all eyes, this afternoon, I guess."
Ruth's face fell. That was exactly what she dreaded
most. I hastened to give a different color to her thoughts.
"Do not be turning Ruth's head with your compli-
220 SHILOH.
merits, Miss Rust ! If she is pretty enough to attract
everybody's gaze, it is not necessary to tell her of it ; I
cannot afford to have her spoiled with vanity, yet."
Aunt Vin stared hard for a moment ; then, her grim
features slowly relaxed into a smile, and her head jerked a
kind of austere admiration.
" You ought to have been a dippermat or a fileofficer !
You're deep enough to beat Talleyrant and Michael Velli
at their own game ! "
Then she turned to Ruth. " Well, anyhow, I'm just as
glad to eee you here, as if I had sore eyes, and you was
some sort of patent delirium. And the sight of your
industry is real respiring ! It reminds me that it's high
time I was set about something, myself. I'm always
restful and uneasy when I ain't to work at something.
Who is the queen-bee pro temporal of this hive, Miss
Frost ? "
I could not answer. Aunt Vin's opening sentences had
sent me in haste to the window, to laugh my irrepressible
laugh unseen. Ruth saw my condition, and came to the
rescue.
" I can't say who the queen-bee is, Aunt Vin; but you
will find Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Prescott in the other room,
if you want directions. Or you can set yourself to work,
as I.did. One can't go much amiss, in this house ; there is
work enough for all that come, and more too, I fancy."
" Oh, you'll have an enforcement soon," replied Aunt Vin,
encouragingly. " Essie Volger's on-a-root now, I guess ; I
saw her horse at the gate, as I came along. And there's
two or three unmentionables, we'll ct.ll 'em, who're sure
to come ; just to see that your carpet goes down concisely
straight, Ruth ; and to take a look at Mr. Taylor's goods
and chatters, and make sure that he hasn't got any more
carpets and curtains and pots and kettles, and other perso-
nal defects, than the law allows," she added, dryly, as her
vibratory sun-bonnet disappeared from the doorway.
SHILOII. 221
Ruth and I looked at each other, and gave way to the
irresistible contagion of repressed mirth. She was the first
to recover herself.
" Aunt Vin is a great deal too good to be laughed at,"
she observed, wiping her eyes ; " my conscience rebukes
me every time I do it. But she does say such absurd
things ! what is one to do ? "
" Only to take care that she does not see the laugh, and
feel hurt by it. I respect Aunt Yin's character from the
bottom of my heart, Ruth, her active kindness, her ready
sympathy, her voluntary assumption of tasks which others
shun, are worthy of all honor ; but her vocabulary is
fairly a subject for mirth, I think ; if the laugh is un-
mingled with any disrespect toward herself. But I must
not linger here any longer, laughing at that, nor enjoying
the pretty spectacle of your bright activity : it is time I
followed her good example, and found something to do."
" Not away from me ! " exclaimed Ruth, in affright.
" If you desert me now, when all those people are coming,
I'll never put faith in you again."
The difficulty was settled by the appearance of Mr.
Taylor, with a pile of muslin curtains in his arms.
" I am ashamed to bring you these, Miss Frost," said
he, surveying them dubiously, " but such are Mrs. Pres-
cott's orders. To be sure, they are all the parlor curtains
we have, or are like to have, but that last wash seems to
have established their claims to go on the retired list. For-
tunately, life is possible without parlor curtains. Relieve
my mind by saying that you will have nothing to do with
them."
" And burden my conscience ? No, no, Mr. Taylor, you
have brought me a job after my own heart, and I cannot
resign it so easily. I have a genius for darning and patch-
ing, as you will allow when your curtains are made to look
' maist as weel as new.' "
" A sure sign that you are destined for a poor man's
222 . SHILOH.
wife," said a cheery voice at my elbow. " Leave the cur-
tains, Mr. Taylor, and I will help Miss Frost to rejuvenate
them ; that is, if she will accept of my coadjutorship."
" Thank you, I could not wish for a better. How do
you do, Miss Volger ? "
" If I were sure you would ' give it the right interpreta-
tion, I should say ' None the better for seeing you ' at my
house, I mean. In other words, much the worse for ndt
seeing you. Is that poor, little call of mine never to be
returned ? I shall heap coals of fire on your head by mak-
ing you another."
" I devoutly wish you would ! It would be a refreshing
oasis of real kindness in the dreary desert of visiting eti-
quette. But I am coming to pay my debt no, to see you
very soon. Do you know my friend here, Miss
Winnot ? "
Ruth looked up shyly from her work, and flushed crim-
son ; but there was something very reassuring in the frank
cordiality of Miss Essie's smile, and the easy grace with
which she stooped to shake hands. The cheery glow of
the smile was quickly reflected on Ruth's face ; and the
flush went almost as fast as it came.
" Yes, I know Miss Winnot by sight," said Miss Es-
sie, "but not nearly so well as I wish I did. I see her, at
church, perched ' up aloft,' like the cherub that takes care
of poor Jack ; and singing like one, too ; and I had a
vague impression that, when she got through, she spread
her wings, and flew up into the seventh heaven, or some
place equally out of the reach of ordinary mortals. And
to find her here of all things in the world ! nailing down
carpets ! But it is a gratification to have such satisfactory
evidence that she is at home in the sphere of humanity,
and does not live above the toils and interests of common
life. And I consider it a highly providential circumstance
that we meet here to-day, for I want to consult her about a
project I have in view."
SHILOH, 223
Ruth dropped her hammer, and waited, with a puzzled,
yet pleased, expression for what was to come next. Evi-
dently, she was amazed to find herself drifting thus swiftly
and quietly into the strong current of active life ; from any
pleasant participation wherein she had believed herself to
be distinctly marked out by the baleful shadow of deform-
ity, and from which she had held so persistently aloof. Yet
no sooner did she appear, than her place among the work-
ers and the interests of the outside world opened to her, as
if by magic, and her tenure seemed accounted a fixed fact !
It only goes to show how universal are the ramifications of
human interests; how many and kindly the twining ten-
drils of affection. No one need to be a recluse, except by
his own fault. If he find himself constantly overlooked and
ignored, in the general interchange of charities, it is nearly
certain to be the result of some incapacitating defect in his
own sympathies ; some chilling inafiability of manner, or
heavy, inert unresponsiveness of feeling. But Ruth had
none of these. Like the angel with whom Jacob wrestled
of old, she was ready, when once fairly overcome, to bless
you with any required amount of affectionate regard.
" You do wonders with that accordeon of yours," JMiss
Essie went on, after a moment's pause ; seeing that she was
to get no other answer than the waiting, listening look in
Ruth's eyes ; " it is a mystery to me how you get so much
music out of it. If there is as much shut up in every other
instrument of the sort, what a life-long imprisonment it
undergoes ! But I wanted to ask you if it would grieve
you very much to have your accordeon displaced by a
melodeon ? "
I gave a little start. Ruth's face beamed with pleasure.
" It would not grieve me at all, Miss Volger ; I should
be delighted. I have only used my accordeon in church,
occasionally, because it was a little a very little better
than nothing. It helped to fill up, as we had so few voices ;
sometimes, you know, there is nobody but Eben Hyde
224 SHILOH.
and me. But is there really a prospect of our having a
melodeon ? And who is to play it ? "
Miss ESSIE. There is just that a prospect. I know
where a second-hand melodeon in perfect order, and really,
as good as new can be bought for fifty dollars. Mrs.
Danforth promises to give ten, I will give as much more,
and I mean to try my luck at begging, for the balance.
Such an onslaught as I shall make on the double-barricaded
pockets of our Shiloh farmers, next week !
MALA. There goes your cherished plan into fragments !
Miss Essie will get the melodeon, and play it ; and you
will have neither lot, nor part, nor worst of all ! cre"dit,
in the matter.
Miss ESSIE (icith evident efforf). And I have taken a
vow that nobody shall escape me. Every man, woman,
and child, that I meet is to be button-holed, and discoursed
to upon the blessedness of giving. " Small sums thankfully
received ; large ones " with incredulity ! Have you either
a large, or a small one, to.give me, Miss Frost ?
MALA. It is too much to be asked to assist in your own
discomfiture ! Since she has taken the work out of your
hands, let her get through with it as best she can.
I (coldly). I don't know. I will think about it, Miss
Volger.
Essie looked disappointed and chilled, and bent over her
work, interweaving her needle in and out among the threads
of a darn, with great precision and persistency. Ruth
drove a nail or two, plainly with a divided mind, and then
broke out afresh.
" I do hope we may get that melodeon ! it would add
so much to our services ! But who will play it, Miss
Volger ? "
"I had thought of asking Miss Frost to do us that
favor, while she stays in Shiloh," replied Essie, in a formal,
spiritless way ; " I have heard that her playing is something
wonderful."
SHILOH. 225
MALA (pricking up her ears). Ah! you are not to be
ignored entirely, it appears ! Perhaps you can afford to do
something for them, after all.
Box A (icith extreme ^severity). It is your glory, then,
not God's which is in question !
I (reproachfully). You know I took so much pleasure in
the prospect of making Him an offering of the melodeon ! and
that I reserved Uncle John's check for that express purpose !
BOXA. An offering to Him ! it looks more like an offer-
ing to^Self! Otherwise you would rejoice to see that the
Holy Spirit had stirred up another heart to activity in His
service; and would willingly stand aside and give it way.
So the Lord's work be done, according to His will, what
can it matter who does it ?
MALA. But, in many cases, you know you could do it so
much better than any one else !
BOXA. That you can never know. God, surely, un-
derstands the adaptations of His instruments to the end
He has in view ; and His strength can be made perfect in
their weakness. Can you ever Tje sure that you have been
taken into His counsels, and that your end and His, are the
same?
I (gloomily}. What, then, am I to do, in this matter ?
BOXA. Say, rather, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to
do ? " Contribute, in your proportion, to the purchase of
the melodeon ; and save the balance of your check for any
future needs, to which the parish may not so readily respond.
MALA. It looks so much more generous to give fifty
dollars in a lump, than to dole it out, little by little !
BOXA. Looks so to whom ? God ?
Mala was, plainly, disconcerted.
BOXA. Moreover, let Miss Essie play the melodeon, if
she can do it tolerably, as no doubt she can. It is her
rightful place, if she cares for it, not yours. Christian
courtesy and humility alike demand that you, an outsider,
should not thrust yourself, or allow yourself to be thrust,
226 SHILOH.
into any position which can be filled as well, and more
legitimately, by another. There is always enough of quiet,
unostentatious, yet most true and laudable, service, to be
done for God, which no one will dispute with you. Save
your strength for the point where it is most needed. Strive
to be, in the Church, what gravitation is, in nature, itself
unseen, but keeping all things, whether small or great,
active or motionless, in their appropriate places and doing
their appointed work.
I sat, gloomily unresponsive, staring out of the window.
BONA (gathering her forces for a formal assault}. Perhaps
the Christian grace, of all others the hardest to attain, is
humility. To stand aside, when we have fought the battle
well-nigh to the end, and let another bear off the spoils and
the honors of victory ; to sow prayerfully, and water
patiently, and cheerfully resign the increase to an after-
comer ; these are the things which show the stuff we are
made of ! We can conceive most reverently be it spoken !
that the Son of God Himself, if He had been required to
give up His great work of redemption to an ai-changel ;
after He had meditated ovev it, aiid prepared for it, and
" desired it with desire," from the silent reaches of eternity;
would have felt a momentary unwillingness to resign, not
the praise, not the gratitude, not the glory, but the tender
joy of self-sacrifice, the deep-down, bitter-sweet delight of
vicarious suffering, the thrilling ecstasy of success. But
2le would have conquered it, you know !
There was a brief struggle. Then I brought my eyes
and my thoughts back to the work in hand. As soon as I
could command my voice, I said, as cordially as possible,
" I have been thinking over that matter of the melodeon,
Miss Essie ; and when you have made your threatened as-
sault on those pockets, will you do me the favor to let me
know the amount of the deficiency ? "
" Oh ! certainly, thank you ! " she exclaimed, recover-
ing her wonted ease and animation of manner, at once.
But further conversation was stopped by a fresh arrival.
XXII.
DISCOKDS.
HE new comers were Mrs. Burcham and Mrs.
w Shemnar, the one keen, brisk, alert, vig-
orous ; the other slow, bland, smiling, and
vapid. The former walked straight into the
room, her sharp black eyes taking instant note
of all that it contained ; the latter sank down
on a box just outside the door, complained of
the heat, and fanned herself with her sun-bon-
net, while her light blue eyes wandered slowly and half-
absently from one object to another.
Both looked surprised at sight of Ruth Winnot, and
each gave her a characteristic nod ; the one sharp and
crisp as a gust of winter-wind, the other sultry and turbid
as the breath of a morning in dog-days ; but neither made
any remark. For which unexpected piece of consideration,
or mark of indifference, or uncertainty how to deal with so
unusual a fact, or whatever it might be, I was so grateful
to them that I gave both an unwontedly cordial greeting.
Which emboldened Mrs. Burcham (though it may be ques-
tioned if she stood in need of such encouragement, and
would not have done the same thing without it) to come
and bend over me, inspecting my work.
It is singular how spontaneous and inevitable is the ten-
dency of soine persons to arouse antagonism, provoke dis-
cussion, ii d elicit electrical sparks of ill-humor, wherever
228 SHILOH.
they present themselves. The acrid quality of their own
moral atmosphere diffuses itself insensibly around them,
and is returned upon them again and again ; as the air of
a confined room continually comes back to be re-inhaled,
and still farther corrupted, by lungs that have already viti-
ated its healthful, vitalizing properties. It is probable
enough that these unfortunates never quite understand the
nature or the caiise of their infelicity, nor by what natural
and inalterable laws their own uncomfortable moods are con-
tinually reflected back upon them, but go through life ascrib-
ing the opposition they excite and the ill-temper they evoke
to causes entirely outside themselves. Either they believe
that the world is, everywhere and always, the unlovely,
bitter, hostile, and provoking thing they find it ; or they
fancy that it cherishes some unaccountable spite and ran-
cor toward them, and grow ever sourer and more acrimon-
ious thereby.
Mrs. Burcham belongs to this class. She not only has
the gift of making herself -disagreeable in a marked and
peculiar degree ; but the added power of detecting and
bringing forth, as by the touch of a loadstone, all the la-
tent disagreeableness of others. She and Mrs. Prescott
rarely meet without . a shower of sparks, as when steel
strikes flint ; Essie Volger often comes in collision with her
in a way that evolves more clash than harmony ; and more
than once in Sewing Society matters, I have avoided irritat-
ing friction only by declining to enter into any discus-
sions.
So innate, and apparently involuntary, is her propensity
to oppose, to battle, to condemn, that I have been driven
to account for it by the supposition that her ancestors
must have sprung, somehow, from that hot-headed race
of warriors which cropped up out of the ground wherein
Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth ; and that the hered-
itary instincts have not been greatly Aveakened by a long
interfusion of years and alien blood.
SHILOH. 229
" Mercy on us ! " she exclaimed, lifting the worn and
torn portion of the curtain upon which I was at work,
" what in the world are you doi.ig with those ragged
things ? "
" Mending them, Mrs. Burcham."
She turned to the part which had been restored, and
examined it minutely.
" Well ! it's a wonderful specimen of mending, there's
no gainsaying that," she said, at length, but rather as if
she grudged the, admission. " Still, I must say, I think it's
a frightful waste of time."
" I cannot quite agree with you," replied I ; " I do not re-
gard anything, in reason, as a waste of time, which adds
to the comfort or the tasteful appearance of a home. The
sense of sight calls for some gratification, as well as the
other senses."
ESSIE VOLGER (taking up the subject with animation).
If Miss Frost had embroidered a pin-cushion, or a tidy, to
give to Mrs. Taylor, you wouldn't have called it a waste
of time. Yet it would have cost more work, and not have
been doing her half so real a service.
MRS. BURCHAM. Umph ! I've neither tidies nor mus-
lin curtains in my parlor. My curtains are of green paper ;
it didn't cost much to get them, and it won't cost much to
replace them when they're worn out. And what is good
enough for me, is good enough for my minister's wife, I
guess.
It is impossible to do justice to the tone in which Mrs.
Burcham said " my minister." It seemed to imply that
Mr. Taylor belonged to her absolutely, body, soul, family,
and possessions. I am in doubt to this day whether Bona
or Mala had most to do with my rejoinder; certainly it .
sprang from no inconsiderable depth of feeling of some sort.
"The rule admits of a much wider application than
that, Mrs. Burcham. In a certain abstract sense, what is
good enough for the beggar at your door is good enough
230 SHILOII.
for you ; and what is good enough for you is good enough
for the king ; and what is agreeable to one portion of man-
kind ought to be agreeable to the rest. Therefore, since
the Esquimaux delight in raw meat and train-oil, let us
order them for dinner to-morrow."
ESSIE. And a seal-skin suit to eat them in !
MRS. BURCHAM (seeing a loophole of escape, and making
for it). You forget the difference in climate, Miss Frost !
I (quietly closing the aperture in her face]. You forgot
the difference in taste, habit, education, Mrs. Burcham !
ESSIE (hurrying to make the fastening secure). Be-
cause Mrs. Taylor has been accustomed alt her life to do
without cows, sheep, poultry, a dairy flowing with milk
and butter, a cheese-room lined with cheeses, a cellar
stored Avith apples, cider, vegetables, pork, presses burst-
ing with blankets, quilts, comfortables, linen, and whatever
goes to make up the completest idea of farm-house plenty,
you would think it unjust and unreasonable that you
should be required to dispossess yourself of all these
things. Because Polly Sykes has no curtains at all to her
windows, neither paper, muslin, nor anything else (ex-
cept she makes an old newspaper do duty, now and then),
is that a good reason why you should give up yours ?
So, if Mrs. Taylor has been accustomed to think her par-
lor incomplete without snowy muslin curtains, tastefully
looped back from the windows, and books on the table,
and pictures on the wall ; and she has been able to get
them, or has had friends kind enough to give them to her ;
do not grudge her the pleasure of having them, nor Miss
Frost's time in mending them.
I (giving a last turn to the lock). Or, If you really
think it should be " share and share alike," send her half
your cows, hens, butter, cheese, etc., etc., and take half of
her curtains in return.
ESSIE (flinging a gibe through the keyhole}. Mending
thrown in !
SHILOH. 231
MRS. BURCHAM (her black eyes flashing ominously). I
don't object to Mrs. Taylor's having embroidered muslin
curtains if she wants them, and can afford it ; I can't.
And if she don't mind their looking like the last gasp of
would-be gentility, before it gives up the ghost ! But I
own I do hate to see time wasted. And I did think yours
and Miss Frost's ought to be too valuable to be flung away
on old worn-out things, that must go to pieces in another
wash or two, anyhow. But you ought to know best about
that. If it isn't, all right.
ESSIE (musingly). To be sure, it would be better to
buy new ones, they might last longer, and I think we
might accomplish it, if you would be so good as to head
the subscription, and take it round.
MRS. BURCHAM: (reddening with anger). Thank you,
Miss Volger, but I believe I can spend my time better
than in encouraging my minister, or his wife, to strive after
the pomps and vanities of the world ; things he's bound to
preach against, if he does his duty.
ESSIE (in apparent soliloquy, holding up a very dilap-
idated curtain, and gravely surveying it). Um " pomps
and vanities ! " Decidedly more vanity than pomp, I
should say ! Light as a feather, and thin as a spider's
web ! Several holes and a border around them ! Plenty
of openwork and nexl to nothing to hold it together!
Ventilation amply provided for; protection dispensed
with ! Benevolently designed to let candle-light out
and sunlight in ! Well, yes, vanity enough, in the sense
of want of substance, and to spare ! .But as for
AUNT Vi^r (severely, from the doonoay, having caught
the last sentences in passing). Essie Volger! you must be
inside yourself to be a-holding Mr. Taylor's things up to
ludicule, like that ! I'm ashamed of you ! And as for the
curtains, I'm sure they look well enough, after they're
mended, if they was a little decapitated, to begin with.
" Aunt Viu ! " screamed Essie, hysterically, " I never
232 siiiLoir.
thought of ridiculing the curtains. I was merely trying
to convince Mrs. Burcham that they do not come under
the head of the pomps of this world."
" I should think not," returned Aunt Vin, emphatically.
" Seems to me they'd go better among the fortifications of
the flesh. Though, to be sure, you've put in those patches
and darns so nicely that they ain't even risible from here.
But when I do get nigh enough to extinguish 'em, they go
to my heart. They show so plainly how ministers have to
save and pinch to get along and keep up a decent appari-
tion before folks, for it won't do for ministers to go shab-
by, they nor their houses, they've got to look respectable
outside, though they've got nothing inside but the heads
of their next concourse and an appetite ! And what 'toils
and hardships they have to endure, and no thanks to no-
body ! Poor creturs ! they have to do the most work for
the least rumination of anybody I know of!"
And Aunt Vin went back to her work, shaking her head
most lugubriously.
Mrs. Burcham started to follow her, but stopped in the
doorway to say,' petulantly,
" I'm sick of hearing people talk about ministers' toils
and sacrifices ! As if they weren't well paid for it ! "
Now this has been a sore point with me, Francesca,
ever since I found Cousin Will in that miserable little fos-
silized parish of Redburn, in a community of well-to-do
farmers, going without eggs, milk, or butter, for weeks to-
gether, to say nothing of things even more necessary ; in
short, patiently solving the problem how little could keep
body and soul together ; and in imminent danger of sun-
dering that long-suffering pair, some frosty morning, by a
very slight miscalculation. I suddenly flashed out, there-
fore :
" Do you really think they are well paid for it, Mrs. "
Burcham ? When you send for a clergyman, at dead of
night, to baptize your sick child, do you pay him for it ?
SHILOH. 233
When you desire him to come five miles into the country
to preach a sermon over it, and three miles in another di-
rection to see it decently buried, obliging him to hire a
horse and carriage for the transit, do you pay him for it ?
When he visits you in your desolation, and teaches you
how to assume the garments of praise for the spirit of
heaviness, do you pay him for it ? When he leads you,
step by step, down into the valley of the shadow of death,
never letting go your hand until he has put it into the
strong, tender one of Christ, do you pay him for it ? And
while, year after year, he watches for your soul, as one who
must give account ; battling with your indifference, bearing
with your asperities, patient with your infirmities, gentle
with your prejudices, sorrowing over your lapses into sin,
carrying you daily before the throne of grace, and wrestling
with God, as Jacob of old, for a blessing upon you and
yours, do you pay him for it ? Or are all these things
' in the bond ' whereby Shiloh (Shylock were the better
name, methinks !) agrees to receive him as her clergyman,
and to pay something less than four hundred dollars for
his services ? Does that mean service by day, service by
night, service in sickness, service iu health, service of head
and heart, service of prayer and teaching, service of care,
of counsel, of warning, of forbearance, of consolation ?
Are all his kindly affections and quiet charities, every
timely admonition, every sympathetic tear, every pro-
duct of brain and hand, reckoned as bought and paid for
by that four hundred dollars ? Does nothing remain for
friendliness, for generosity ? *For four hundred dollars, is
he supposed to have become so poor, abject, slavish, that
he has nothing left to give to another, either of the warmth
of his heart, the utterance of his lips, or the prayers of his
soul ? Are none of these his ? are they all ' i' the bond ? '
All sold to Shiloh for four hundred dollars ! And an ex-
cellent bargain ! He is ' well paid ! ' '
MRS. BUECHAM {looking somewhat aghast). Of course I
didn't mean all that, Miss Frost !
234: BHILOII.
I. "Will you be good enough to tell me what you did
mean, then ?
MES. BUKCHAM (stammering). Why a you know a
that a we have a right to expect that our minister
shall visit us in sickness, and attend our funerals, and all
those things, because we all help to support him, you
know.
L Help to support him ! There it is ! Every other
laborer is supposed to support himself by his labor; a
clergyman is said to be " supported by " his parish. He
never earns a fair salary, but his people "give him a com-
fortable support ! " Did it ever occur to you to say that
you helped to support your grocer, butcher, shoemaker,
physician, lawyer, Mrs. Burcham ? Did you ever base on
that ground a claim to overweight in every pound of sugar,
gratuitous supplies of meat, several pairs of shoes per year
as a bonus for your patronage, night-visits never to be
charged in the bill, and briefs and travelling not to be in-
cluded in the fees ? Yet a clergyman has his regular work,
for which he receives a stipulated payiflent, just as much
as any of these, writing of sermons on week-days, officiat-
ing in desk and pulpit on Sundays, care of Sunday School,
baptism of infants, regular visitation of parish, and perhaps
burials of his own congregation (which he has a right to
expect will be so arranged as to cause him no expense). If,
in addition to these, out of the largeness of his heart and
his zeal for his Master's service, he chooses to hold himself
at the beck and call of every conscience-stricken soul* every
sick woman, every dying man, every corpse, every mourner,
every poverty-pinched household, within a radius of five
miles of his dwelling ; though such claimant never entered
his church nor gave a sixpence toward his salary ; let it
be so accounted of as a favor, a deed of brotherly kindness,
a loving gift of a generous heart, to be gratefully received
and thankfully acknowledged, and not as a service set
down in the bond, and duly paid for ! Do not assume that,
SIIILOH. 235
because he is paid for conducting public worship, he is also
paid for kneeling at your bedside and commending your
soul to God. In the first place, love, sympathy, private
prayers, are not bought and sold in the market. In the
second place, if they were, they would command a higher
price.
MRS. BUECHAM (having recovered herself}. You speak
very contemptuously of that four hundred dollars ; I sup-
pose it does seem small to any one with extravagant city
notions. But it is more than half the families in Shiloh
have to live upon. Major Burcham and I haven't spent
over three hundred, this last year, all told.
Miss ESSIE. Did you reckon all the milk, butter, eggs,
potatoes, early vegetables, pork, rye, etc., that you used, at
the market price ?
MKS. BURCHAM (carelessly}. Oh ! we raise all those
things, you know !
ESSIE (tcith a fiery spark in her eye). But Mr. Taylor
does not raise them, you know ! He has his sermons to
write, and he must hold himself in readiness to respond to
your calls in sickness, trouble and death. He buys them,
and you sell them to him at the highest market prices.
You do not think them worth reckoning among your living
expenses ; they form a large item in his. If they really
cost you nothing, why not let him have them at the same
cheap rate? Come, I'll be one of fifteen or twenty to
furnish Mr. Taylor with everything of ordinary farm-growth
that he needs during the coming year. If we do not feel
the loss of what we use ourselves, nor make any account of
it, we shall not be ruined by an additional fifteenth or
twentieth of his consumption.
There was a dead silence.
Then Mrs. Shemnar said, with her weak little laugh,
" It's all very well for rich people like you, Essie Volger, to
make such a proposal, but "
ESSIE, (interrupting her}. That shall not stand in the
236 SHILOH.
way for a moment. I will give two shares, or three, in
proportion to my means.
Another silence. Essie waited for some moments, while
the flush slowly faded from her cheek ; then she resumed
her work, and her full, red lip took on its most scornful
curve.
BONA (softly). Do you not see that all your discussion,
carried on in this spirit, is worse than useless? Mrs. Bur-
cham and Mrs. Shemnar will remember all your gibes and
stings, and forget your reasoning.
I (choking down an irritating remark that was rising to
my lips). Well! a truce to discussion! No doubt Mrs.
Burcham will find her own graceful and effectual way of
showing her regard for Mr. Taylor ; even though she does
not join in our curtain-mending, nor accept your proposi-
tion in regard to the farm-produce, Miss Essie. Probably
she realizes, not less fully than we, that his happiness and
that of his family depend, from henceforth, very much upon
the kindness, sympathy, and forbearance, of this people.
She feels that whatever we do to make his abode a " House
Beautiful," will, like all kindly, unselfish work, react favor-
ably upon ourselves. Any parish which does its best to
provide its clergyman with a pleasant and convenient
home; thereby freeing him from petty annoyances and
cares, and enabling him to give his mind more unreservedly
to his intellectual and moral work ; will surely find its ac-
count, not only in the heartier, more thorough and more
helpful ministrations it will receive, but in its own warmer
interest and affection, and its more vigorous life. And there
will be, between it and its minister, a continually increasing
interchange of kindly deeds, delicate consideration, grati-
tude, sympathy, love. Very different from the parochial re-
lation which exists where the clergyman is expected to visit
constantly, and never be visited; always to sympathize,
yet ask for no sympathy ; to pray for all, and be prayed
for of noiie ; to study the welfare of each individual in his
BHiLorr. 237
cure, while no one takes thought for him ! I wotild not
quarrel with the first-mentioned parish, if it did assert that
it ' gave its clergyman a support ; ' since it would doubtless
be equally ready to declare that its clergyman gave, in re-
turn, his labor and his love the best of his thought and
life. And I feel sure that Mrs. Burcham will do what she
can to make Shiloh such a parish.
MBS. BURCI-IAM (accepting the overture}. Of course, I
want Mr. Taylor to have everything convenient and com-
fortable, and I'm willing to do anything in reason to make
it so. But I shan't do much toward it, if I stand here
talking all the afternoon. Mrs. Shemnar, you and I might
as well take that bedroom in hqnd. I'll go and look up
Mr. Taylor, and find out what's to go in it.
In obedience to which beneficent inspiration, the two
ladies walked off. Shortly after, Mrs. Seber, Mrs. Banser,
and Miss Bryer arrived, and undertook to reduce the
kitchen to order. Another small party set about impart-
ing a look of orderliness to the second floor. Aunt Vin
had already installed herself in the pantry, and was scrub-
bing, polishing, and arranging, con amore.
The long summer afternoon wore on. Once I was called
to the sitting-room by Mrs. Prescott, to give my voice in
some question of arrangement; and as I halted in the
kitchen on my return, I was pleased to hear Ruth Winnot
babbling away like a meadow-brook to Essie Volger, while,
now and then, her laugh gurgled merrily through both
rooms. Coming nearer, and seeing her face uplifted and
aglow, and her eyes dancing with merriment, I could
scarcely rid myself of the impression that the wan and
mournful Ruth had somehow been spirited away, and this
bright, merry, sparkling creature substituted in her place.
I was even a little saddened by the sight ; as if I had found
a bird singing its song, and building its nest, in a flickering
strip of winter sunshine, mistaking it for the dawn of an
unending summer.
238 SIIILOII.
At six o'clock everything was complete ; the old house
prepared for the new life which 1 was to be lived in it ;
which, nevertheless, would not be much unlike many other
lives it had known (since it must be woven of the same
human warp and woof) ; yet would be well worth living
through, notwithstanding, with the peaceful light of piety
shed over it, and immortal hope shining far on into the
dusk.
There is no resisting the natural gravitation of a farm-
house toward the kitchen. It was there that we all assem-
bled, by tacit concurrence, when the work was done ; and
it was there that I said :
" It seems to me it would be well to sing the Gloria
in Excelsis now, by way of pleasant finale to our after-
noon. We will baptize the old house in a stream of har-
mony, making short work with ghosts and spells, and
washing away whatever discordances of feeling, temper,
opinion, or faith, may cling to the walls. Lead off,
Ruth."
Ruth lifted up her voice with fervor, Essie joined in
spiritedly, I took the alto, Mr. Taylor supplied the needed
background of a bass, and other voices fell in or stayed
out, according to inclination or ability. The glorious old
song of praise rolled its rich tide through the rooms, pene-
trating to the darkest corners of garret and cellar, and
leaving everywhere, I hoped, some helpful, healing, reviv-
ing influence.
Then, the party scattered. Before Miss Essie took her
leave, she invited Alice and myself to tea with her the
next afternoon ; and managed to include Ruth in the invi-
tation, with so much tact and cordiality, that the would-be
recluse promised to go before she knew it, and was left in a
state of infinite amazement because she had done so.
When all had gone, save our own little party, Mrs.
Prescott drew me aside into the pantry. Loaves of bread,
piles of biscuit, a tempting variety of cakes, balls of but-
BIIILOH. 239
tcr, triangles of cheese, brown-paper parcels, and baskets
of fruit and vegetables, were marshalled upon its shelves ;
in sufficient force to ensure to Mrs. Taylor some weeks
of easy and inexpensive housekeeping. Mrs. Prescott
pointed them out, and named their donors, with a mix-
ture of feelings. Mrs. Danforth had covered herself with
glory.
" She said she'd never heard of such a thing in her life,"
said my guide, " but, as soon as she found out what I
wanted, she was ready to send everything she had in the
house."
To one -small card of gingerbread, however, with a
kind of Uriah Heep air about it, she gave a withering
glance.
"I would just like to chuck that out of window,"
she said, spitefully. " Would you believe it ? that's all
Mrs. Burcham brought, and she as well 5ff as anybody in
the parish, if not better ! The truth is, some give liberally
and some don't give at all ; and all share the credit. Mr.
Taylor sees his pantry well filled, and thinks everybody
has had a hand in it, and believes he's in clover. But he
won't live here long without finding out who his friends
are, that's one comfort ! "
A comfort that has its reverse of discomfort ?
Mr. Taylor was to spend the night at the Divines ; not
to disturb the newly-created order of his dwelling, before
its mistress's arrival. Therefore, windows were shut
and doors fastened ; and finally, standing on the broad,
irregularly-shaped doorstep, he turned the key on the si-
lence within.
" How strange," said Alice, softly, " to have a home full
of promise, and not one memory ! "
XXIII.
two
LEO.
HAT the evening was not dull, after our busy
and fatiguing afternoon at the Gwynne
Place, was chiefly owing to "Leo. The
suppers incident to summer farm life an
early one for the women and guests, and an-
other for the "menfolks" returning at dusk
from their labor being over; Mr. Taylor was
formally presented to that black incarnation of
canine majesty, as I had been, on the night of my arrival
in Shiloh.
" May be you'll think it's almost an impertinence, now ;
but you won't when you see what comes of it, one of these
days," said Mr. Divine, with a good-natured twinkle in his
eye. "Leo's friendship's worth more than that of a good
many humans in your congregation, Mr. Taylor."
" Indeed ! That may be saying a good deal for the dog,
Mr. Divine ; but it is not saying much for the ' humans.' "
" Isn't it ? " returned the farmer, with his low, mellow
laugh. "When you come to know Leo better, may be
you'll change your mind. For my part, I know lots of
folks that 'ud be a good deal better members of society, if
they'd be only just half as careful to do their ditty, as far
as they know what 'tis, as Leo is to do his'n. If he hasn't
got a soul, he's got a bigger and a cleaner conscience than
most men. Why, I don't think he's shirked work or dis-
obeyed an order five times since I've had him ; and that's
agoin' on seven year, now."
* SHILOH. 241
" Indeed ! " said Mr. Taylor, beginning to look in-
terested. " Not one sin per year against his conscience
that is a clean record !' I wish mine were as fair ! "
and the clergyman sighed.
By and by, Mrs. Divine brought forth cakes, apples, and
other convenient refreshments, for her guests ; whereupon
Philip, the younger of her sons, conceived the brilliant idea
that Leo might be made to act as waiter. Accordingly, the
basket of apples was put into the dog's mouth, and he was
bidden to " pass it round." Two or three mistakes, at the
outset, such as depositing the basket and its contents in
my lap ; and then setting it on the floor and daintily pre-
senting an apjale to Alice with his teeth, provoked much
mirth; as well as the proud gravity with which he per-
formed the task, when it became clear to him precisely
what was Avanted: while his quickness in catching the
idea seemed truly wonderful to one not acquainted with his
capacity for far better things. Mr. Taylor's admiration,
therefore, was extreme and enthusiastic.
" The most intelligent animal I ever saw ! " exclaimed
he. " I've seen trained dogs, of course, and I know how
they become so accomplished by dint of a long course of
whips and starvation. But a great, noble fellow like that,
who understands what you say, and takes an idea almost
as quick as it is presented to him, I declare ! it's enough
to make one believe in the transmigration of souls ! What
would you sell him for ? I suppose he is worth a good deal
of money."
" Sell him ! " repeated Mr. Divine, laughing quietly,
" Sell him ! I'll tell you how near I came to selling him
once, and what I was offered for him ; and then, perhaps
you'll tell me what you'd take for him, if he belonged to you.
You see I've got a brother that lives down to Point,
Long Island ; and he wrote me last fall that there was a
gentleman in his neighborhood who wanted to buy a right
smart, knowing Newfoundland ; and if I was willing to sell
11
242 siiiLoii,
Leo, he thought I could get at least fifty or sixty dollars
for him, and perhaps more. Well, just about that time I
happened to be pretty hard pushed for money ; I had a
note coming due in a month, and nothing to meet it with.
I'd got to sell something, and in short, I made up my
mind that I could spare Leo better'n anything else, though I
hated awfully to part with him. So I and Leo went down to
Point. When we got there, the gentleman a 3Ir. Fife
had gone to York, to spend a day or two ; and there was
nothing to be done but wait till he come back. Well, the
next day was fine, the sun bright and warm, the water
dancing and shining like quicksilver, so brother took me
out a sailing. Leo followed me into the boat, but there was
five of us on board, my brother and three of his children,
besides myself, and I thought he might be in the way ; so
I ordered him out, and told him to stay behind. He don't
often disobey orders, as I told you ; but the water down
there seemed to set him most crazy, he'd never seen any-
thing bigger than our rivfcr before, and he wanted to be
in it all the time. So, after we'd got out a piece, lo and be-
hold ! there come Leo swimming alongside ; and trying to
look, the rogue ! as if he thought that was what was
meant ; and if he wasn't wanted in the boat, there couldn't
be the least objection to his going outside, as convoy ! I
began to scold, and was about to send him straight back ;
but the boys pleaded hard for him, and brother said he
guessed we might as well take him on board, seem' he
wanted to go so bad ; and I finally gave in, and Leo came
over the side, as happy a dog as ever you see. .
" Well, we sailed along, as nice as you please, for an
hour or so ; and brother and I got -to talkin' about old
times, when we was boys together, and didn't take much
notice of what was going on ; when, all at once, we found
that the sky was all clouded over behind us, and a storm
trotting up in our rear faster than any race-horse. Of
course, we put about right away, but that brought the
6HILOH. 243
wind dead ahead, and blowih' mighty strong ; and 'twas
slow work beating back towards the Point. Then, the
storm broke on us,- whew ! I never knew what wind was
till then; it seemed as if 'twould blov us out of water.
Brother took another reef in the sail, and we staggered
along a bit ; and then, just as we were going to come about
on 'tother tack, there was a whiz and a bang and a crash,
and our mast was snapped off, close to the deck, as clean as
a whistle ! Mast and sail both overboard ! Brother hur-
ried to cut 'em all clear, for fear they'd swamp us ; and
then ! I shall never forget the look in his face as he
turned round and gasped out, ' The oars ! good heavens !
we've forgot the oars ! '
" Well ! there we was, drifting out to sea as swift as
wind and water could carry us, and nothing to do but fold
our hands and calc'late how fast they were adoin' it!
Nothing in sight, indeed, we couldn't . see three boat-
lengths through the storm ; for the rain began to pour
down in sheets, now, though, to be sure, that brought
down the wind a little. But 'twas getting so cold, I
thought 'twouldn't take long for us all to freeze as hard
as rocks, in our seats, if we didn't go to the bottom
first. And I began to think 'twas about time for me to be
settling up my account with this world, when Leo I sup-
pose he saw the trouble in my face crept up and began to
lick my hand. Brother saw him, and his face brightened a
little. ' How far can Leo swim ? ' says he, ' I don't know,'
says I, ' he's never been tried, that I know of.' ' If he
could swim ashore, now,' says he, thoughtfully, 'there
might be some chance for us : but no, it's too far ; he
can't do it. I don't suppose he'd even try.' ' He'll do any-
thing that I tell him to, if he thinks it's important,' says
I ; ' or he'll die atrying.' So brother wrote a line to his
wife ; and I rolled it up tight in my handkerchief, and tied
it fast to Leo's collar. Then I took his head between my
hands, and looked him right in the eye, and says I, ' Leo,
244 SHILOH.
old fellow ! if you can carry that letter ashore, to my sis-
ter Nancy, may be you'll save your master's life ; if you
can't, good bye, for you've seen your last of him ! ' And I
made him a sign to, go overboard."
Mr. Divine's voice faltered. Leo went to his side, and
laid his huge head upon his arm, looking up at him with
great, soft eyes, full of intelligent sympathy.
Mrs. Divine took off her spectacles, and wiped them
with great circumspection. " Father always breaks down
when he gets to that part of the stoiy, as many times as
he has told it," said she, with a somewhat hysterical laugh.
"And Leo knows the story just as well as he does, every
word of it. Watch him now, and see if he don't."
Mr. Divine proceeded.
" "Well, Leo looked me right in the eye, too, for a mo-
ment ; and if ever a dog's face said, ' Master, I'll save you,
or I'll die,' Leo's face said it then. Actually, it seemed to
me that there was tears in his eyes ! And then, he sprang
overboard, and was out of sight among the boiling waves,
in a moment.
" Well, when the storm came on, and we didn't come
home, you won't need to be told that my brother's wife,
Nancy, began to get scared. And she kept agoing to the
door and looking out, to see if she couldn't hear or see
something of us ; and finally, as she opened the door for
another look, Leo dragged himself across the threshold, all
dripping, looked up in her face, gave a mournful soi't of a
howl and fell over on the floor at her feet, just like a log.
Nancy thought that the boat had surely capsized, and we'd
all been drowned ; and Leo had just made out to swim
ashore, but only to die of exhaustion. You can guess
what a state of mind she was in, till one of the children
said, ' Mamma, what's that on Leo's collar ? ' So then she
found brother's note. You may be sure she didn't waste
much time ! She sent the children one way, and went an-
other herself; and pretty soon all the neighbors were out
SHILOH. 245
after us with boats and lanterns, for the storm was now de-
creasing fast. They found us, of course, or I shouldn't be
here to tell the story !
" When Nancy got back home, Leo was lying just
where she left him, looking a good deal more dead than
alive ; but she found he still breathed faintly. So she and
the children pulled him up to the fire, rubbed him and
wrapped him in blankets, poured warm milk and brandy
down his throat, and got him so that when I came in, he
could just raise himself up on his forelegs and lick my
hand. But it was three or four days before he got that
swim out of his bones. As nigh as we could calculate, he
must have swum from eight to ten mile that night, in that
heavy sea. And I've always thought that he never could
have done it, if he'd nobody but himself to think of. But
he couldn't fail his master. He couldn't make up his mind
to stop and rest, or give up and go under, with his errand
undone."
Never was dog's face so eloquent as Leo's while this
narrative was going on. It was almost human in its ex-
pressiveness. Plainly, he comprehended every word, every
detail. And when Mr. Divine paused, he reared his mag-
nificent head and looked round upon us with the calm dig-
nity of conscious worth.
" Well ! " continued Mr. Divine, " the story was all
round, next day, of course; and Mr. Fife heard it, and
came to see me. He offered me seventy-five, and a hun-
dred, and a hundred-and-fifty dollars, for Leo ; and I can't
say how high he'd have gone, if I hadn't cut him short by
telling him that I'd about as lief sell him one of my chil-
dren."
" I should think so ! " burst out Mr. Taylor, very em-
phatically, but with a little unsteadiness of voice.
" So," concluded Mr. Divine, " I brought Leo home
with me, and sold a couple of cows instead. Poor econ-
omy, I s'pose ; but when feeling gets into the accounts, it's
246 SHILOH.
apt to play the mischief with the balance ! Anyhow, I've
never been sorry. Leo and I won't part, now, till one or
t'other of us dies."
There was a moment's silence.
" Leo," yawned Phil, lazily, "just hand me another ap-
ple, will you ? "
And Leo, with a half-sigh, as if deprecating so sudden
a descent from the heroic to the commonplace, brought him
the basket.
XXIV.
LIFE'S QUIET PLOW.
OU desire me to tell you something of my
heart-life, Francesca. I know not that I
have any, in your sense of the term. Ex-
cept by that daily battle between Good and
Evil to which no anguish and no sorrow
bring lasting truce ; and of which, surely, I
send you voluminous report my heart gives
little sign of life. I think it is slowly healing
(or dying, I am doubtful which) down there, in the dusk
and the quiet ; but I resolutely refuse to make any investi-
gation of the process. It is sore enough still, I suspect, to
the touch.
In one thing, I can discover a little improvement. My
mind no longer insists upon a daily, hourly wandering
through the silent Forum of my Past, mournful with the
ruins of vanished glory. The duties and cares of the Present
continually start up by the way, and turn it back from that
dreary, unprofitable journey. Between Sewing Society in-
terests, and night watchings, and daily lessons with Ruth
and Alice, etc., etc., it finds enough of travel and of inter-
est within its immediate sphere. The thousand little pre-
sent plans and anxieties crowd in ; and slowly, but surely,
crowd out the heart-depressing tendency to dwell upon the
recollection of past sorrow. It is the old story of Gulliver
and the Liliputians, told over again and enriched with a
new meaning. Though the sorrow is a giant, and not to
248 SHILOH.-
be altogether expelled; yet its enemies are many, and by
weaving myriads of minute chains about it, they are able to
keep it down. Kind thanks to the busy little toilers ! If
they have not all been taken into the Divine counsels, they
must- in some way derive their power and efficacy from the
Divine Beneficence.
But what changes come over us, as we go on our life-
journey ! I remember when I thought it would be heaven
to enjoy, all day, and never to work! Now I am of the
opinion that a higher heaven would be to work all day,
and never be tired ! Yet the weariness deepens and sweet-
ens the rest !
There it is, Francesca ! There seems to be nothing final
in opinion or in feeling. No sooner do I come to a conclu-
sion, you see, than some little after-thought steals in to
modify it. No wonder brains that try to solve life's prob-
lems unaided by those two potent affirmative signs, " God"
and "Trust," get bewildered and go fearfully astray.
Without these, they can never get a final answer. What
they take to be one," soon turns out to be the beginning of
a new term.
Since my last jotting-down, life has flowed very quietly
with me. Some few of its ripples, however, deserve charac-
terization.
First, in order, if not in importance, the tea-drinking at
Essie Volger's came off according to appointment. She
lives in a large, white, maple-shadowed, open-hearted look-
ing mansion ; somewhat antiquated in point of style, but
comparatively modern, in point of date ; yet old enough to
have made its place good in men's familiar knowledge and
everyday interests. It differs from the prevailing Shiloh
pattern, chiefly, in having a portico in front and in lacking a
lean-to behind. Its outward expression is one of dignified,
yet not ungenial, comfort and amplitude ; and the sight of
the interior only deepens it. The furniture is older than
the house, Mr. Volger having deep-rooted prejudices in
SHILOH. 249
favor of his old-time belongings, not to be easily eradicated,
even by the potent influence of his only and idolized daugh-
ter. He is a different type of farmer from Mr. Divine, less
genial in manner,* mo re reserved in speech, of a ruggeder
texture both without and within. The glance of his eye is
keener, the grasp of his hand looser, than those of my large-
hearted host. Doubtless, he is shrewder at a bargain, closer
in calculation, more astute of policy. Certainly, his affairs
thrive better. The Divine acres are diminishing in number,
year by year ; the Volger estate threatens to swallow an
entire district.
Mr. Volger's daughter, only, brings anything resembling
an illumination to his face. She is the sunshine of his heart,
as well as of his dwelling and farm. Witnessing the cheery,
widely-diffused influence of her joyous and active tempera-
ment, one is half persuaded that the corn grows and the
grass greens by it. One moment, she is out in the ten-
acre lot, picking corn ; another, down by the brook, gather-
ing wild iris ; the next, out on the lake fishing ; anon, bring-
ing in wood from the woodpile ; then, in the kitchen con-
cocting a favorite dish (too abstruse to be entrusted to
Hagar, the black cook) ; next, at the piano practising new
music ; by and by, up on the haymow, hunting hen's nests ;
soon after, in the parlor, entertaining friends ; and finally,
saddling or harnessing her dumpy little Canadian pony,
and riding or driving off to Clay Corner, or " up street ; "
nodding, as she goes, to every man, woman, child, negro,
Irishman, and whatever other varieties of human nature
are to be met with, on the road. Everybody knows her ;
everybody smiles at sight of her; everybody who has a
trouble that seeks outlet, a difficulty that needs to be
talked over, a joke that wants to be laughed at, a sorrow
that craves sympathy, a message designed for anybody on
her way (or even a little out of it), stops her on the road,
and presses her remorselessly into the service. She brings
the mail ; she goes for the doctor ; she carries prescriptions
250 SHILOH.
to be filled ; she delivers messages and parcels ; she has an
eve ifter stray cattle ; and she gives every footsore travel-
ler a lift ; and every ragged, unwashed urchin, playing at
marbles or mud pies, by the roadside, a ride. Her spirits
are often so vivacious and wildly effervescent as to seem ut-
terly careless of boundary-lines : yet in virtue of some in-
herent sense of propriety, never step over them. She is
not exactly lady-like, in the conventional sense of that
much abused term ; but she is something far more health-
ful, efficient, and delightful. She would seem to have
been created for some Arcadian state of society, where that
term is as yet unknown, or that meaning still unfolded.
Her exact type is rare enough, even in New England ; I
doubt if it is to be met with elsewhere.
It is manifest that she was a charming hostess. An
hour with her checked off more milestones from the jour-
ney of acquaintanceship than a day with most people.
She soon put Alice more at her ease than I had ever seen
her (to be sure, they are far-away cousins, and fast friends) ;
and Ruth quickly felt, and responded to, the frank cordial-
ity of her manner, and the breezy vivacity of her spirits.
Yet there was a marked difference in the character of their
mirth ; Essie's was that of a heart which had never known
sore cross or heavy sorrow ; Ruth's, even in its brightest
flow, never lost some subtly pathetic quality.
After tea, we rambled doAvn to the shore of the lake
aforementioned, which bounds one side of the farm. We
were guided thither by a funny little brook, that prattled
and gambolled, like a child, all through the meadows, and
then tumbled headlong down the hillside, in order to fling
itself, laughing, into the placid bosom of the lake, as on to
a mother's breast. A light skiff lay by the bank ; and Es-
sie rowed us out into the sunset light, and sent a merry
" Halloo ! " over the shining water, to wake an echo sleep-
ing somewhere among the hills. The answer came back
soft and subdued, as if from the lingering influence of a
SHILOH. 251
happy dream ; and then Ruth's tender, pathetic voice
hushed ft to silence and to sleep again with the lovely mel-
ody of " Allan Water." In the evening, there was music ;
and I was agreeably surprised to find that Essie plays un-
usually well as playing goes with a smooth, gliding
touch, and much taste and feeling. So well, indeed, that
after we had arrived at that point of familiarity where it
ceased to be an impertinence (a point quickly reached with
her), I ventured to tell her that it was a sin and a shame
that she did not play even better ; that is to say, a better
class of music, with a deeper comprehension of musical
ideas ; a profounder knowledge of the depths from which
they come, and those to which they address themselves.
This brought forth much musical talk, and comparison of
studies and masters, to which Ruth listened like one en-
tranced, and Alice with her usual quick insight, making her
lawful prey of analogies and metaphors : which resulted
in an agreement that we that is, Essie and I should take
up the practice of duets together, beginning with Beet-
hoven's symphonies. By reason of which tuneful copart-
nership, we have come to be " Essie " and " Winnie " to
each other.
We discussed the melodeon, too, and to cut that mat-
ter short it is now doing its best to engender and pro-
mote harmony in that little loft of a gallery at St. Jude's,
under Essie's skilful fingers. She entreated me, humbly
and earnestly, to play it ; but I steadily declined, mindful
of Bona's emphatic discourse on that head. Her musical
ability was amply sufficient for the need, and there was no
excuse for me to thrust myself into the matter ; and so de-
prive both the parish and herself of the benefit of whatever
increase of interest or of energy might be developed in her,
by the position. I attend the rehearsals, however, by re-
quest ; and am made, by tacit concurrence, a sort of musi-
cal director.
Next, there has been an arrival of uncommon interest
252 SHILOH.
in Shiloh ; causing something more than the usual ripple of
interest and talk consequent on the advent of a stranger,
in a community so small, so remote, and so largely made
up of life-long residents, the fabric of whose daily lives,
moreover, is woven of threads too even and too sober-
tinted to allow of many home-made excitements. The new-
comer is an artist, with the peculiar, though indefinable
air of his 'class about him ; and but recently returned to
his fatherland, after an absence of some years spent chiefly
at Rome in the study and exercise of his art. He first
came hither in company with a friend of Mrs. Danforth,
for a day's fishing ; but he was so charmed with Shiloh's
quietude, freshness and isolation, in short, with its exces-
sive ruralness, that he forthwith looked up a boarding-
place for himself and his easel, established the twain there-
in, and is said to divide his time about equally between
painting and rambling over the country.
I have met him but once. A few evenings ago, I found
him seated in Mrs. Danforth's moonlighted porch, listening
to the fluent, sparkling talk of the mistress of the mansion ;
who at once presented to me, " Mr. Cambur." The moon-
light revealed distinctly enough albeit, it here whitened
them into marble, and there darkened them with deeper
shadows than ever daylight gives features clearly and
finely cut ; a wide brow, deep-set eyes, a straight nose,
and a mouth apparently capable of much and varied ex-
pression, though thickly veiled by a brown beard.
The talk soon turned toward Italy ; and as I listened to
the artist's fresh, animated narrations, awaking and bright-
ening my own fond reminiscences of that pleasant land, I
seemed to be there once more ; a part of its vai'ied, pictur-
esque life ; breathing the ethereal gold of its sunshine, and
soothed by the kindly balm of its air. His enthusiasm cul-
minated in the exclamation,
" Surely, no one who has lived for any length of time
in Italy, and felt the charm of its sky and its atmosphere,
SHILOH. 253
and the loving-kindness of its earth, need count himself
homeless, though some tremendous catastrophe should
sweep every other country from the face of the globe ! "
" You are talking nonsense," rejoined Mrs. Danforth, with
her characteristic frankness ; yet accompanying the words
with a gesture that divested them of any appearance of
discourtesy. " It is all very well for artists and poets who
make their living out of the picturesque, to rave about It-
aly. But for people of sober minds and pursuits, with so-
ber predilections for cleanliness and comfort, any American
home, even^this hideous, square, white pine-box over our
heads ! is vastly to be pi-eferred to those shiftless, dingy
Italian farm-houses, or great, grand, cheerless Roman paW
aces. To my taste, age is no recommendation in a house.
I don't want to spend my life in scrubbing off my great-
grandfather's smoke and dust, mould and grime ; nor in
fighting the rats, mice, moths, roaches, and other vermin
he congregated under his roof; any more than I want to
wear his shoes and his periwig, or set up his skeleton in my
dining-room. On the contrary, I should like a new house,
newly furnished, once in five years. And as for the his-
toric associations upon which you lay such stress, they used
to make me feel as if the air in Rome was a great deal too
thick and heavy to breathe ; it had been used over so many
times since the days of the Caesars as to seem to have no
healthful property left ! I hope it will be a long time be-
fore our new, fresh, vigorous country shows any of that
sort of picturesqueness that you artists love so Avell ;
made up of one part, age ; two parts, decay ; three parts
dirt ! "
" Amen ! " said Mr. Cambur, heartily. " Beautiful as
Italy surely is, I do not want to see her features or her life
duplicated here. Our country has her own genius, mission,
destiny ; let her work them out in her own way ! "
As the talk went on, I found that he knew many of the
artists who most frequented my father's study, in Rome,
254: SHILOH.
and could give me their subsequent history ; so many, in-
deed, that I began to wonder that I had never encoun-
tered nor heard of himself, while there.
" You would not remember me if you had," he replied.
" Reflect that the later years of your stay in Rome were
the earlier ones of mine ; and .that I was but a beginner in
Art, worshipping both her works and her workers humbly
and afar-off. To be sure, I am little more than that,
now: I will venture to say that the name of Gambia-
is so strange to the trumpet of Fame as never to have
reached your ears," and he ended with a peculiar, mean-
ing glance at Mrs. Danforth.
" If it has not," said she, laughing, and returning the
glance with one equally expressive, " I am sure Miss Frost
will say, after she has seen your pictures, that it is Fame's
own fault. I shall bring her to your studio some day, and
you must show her ' Dreams.' "
" With great pleasure," he replied, bowing. " Only,
let me suggest that the said ' some day ' does not arrive
until next week. I am expecting a box of pictures, art-
curiosities, etcetera, shortly ; then, my studio will be in bet-
ter order for the reception of such visitors, and I shall have
more to show you."
" Too much, I suspect," said I. " In looking at pictures,
I am always troubled because I am asked to look at too
many ; and expected to begin to comment as soon as I be-
gin to look. Whereas, when I find a picture that I like,
that suits my mood, that has anything at all to say to me,
I want to sit down silent before it for an hour. And I do
not want to look at anything else, till next day ! "
" I promise you that you shall look at my pictures in
just your own way," said he smiling ; " at least, so far as
I am concerned."
"And I promise you that you shall not!" exclaimed
Mrs. Danforth, with humorous earnestness, " that is, if I
am your companion."
SHILOH. 255
Throughout the conversation, I was tantalized by one
of those strange memories or resemblances, I could not
tell which, at once so pertinacious and so elusive. Some-
thing in Mr. Cambur's face, or voice, or manner, had a curi-
ous familiarity in unfamiliarity, for which I could not
account. I took my leave without finding any clue to
it, and was haunted and perplexed by it half the way
home.
Moreover, Mrs. Taylor arrived duly ; and the Divine
household, including Winnie Frost, did itself*the honor to
wait upon her very soon. A blithe, active, black-eyed little
woman ; fresh and naive in many of her A\ r ays as a child ;
yet with a sufficient fund of wholesome common sense about
her an excellent addition to the joint stock. She straight-
way individualized her home by a few careless touches, and
interfused into its atmosphere some new and delightful
quality ; as if she had brought a trunkful of sunbeams, or
a few boxes of mountain dew, and flung them around at
random. She is, plainly, the delight of Mr. Taylor's eye,
and the joy of his heart, as plainly, she is the balance-
wheel of the domestic and conjugal machinery ; after her
advent, I felt more at ease about his future career in Shiloh.
With so wise a counsellor and so ready a sympathy at his
hearthstone, I fancied that his chances of daily contact with
wayside thorns would be considerably diminished, and his
certainty of daily cure very much increased.
The character of the twain may be further elucidated
by an anecdote that went roaming about Shiloh, soon after
their housekeeping commenced; eliciting much laughter;
which, nevertheless, was often curiously entangled with a
tear. It arranges itself, almost inevitably, in the dramatic
style.
SCENE. A. chamber in the G-wynne Place. Time.
Sunday Morning. MRS. TAYLOB, sola, with a bandbox be-
fore her.
MRS. T. Why ! what can have become of my bonnet ?
256 SHILOH.
I certainly put it here. (Rummages in closet and bureau.}
Not to be found ftnywhere ! what does it mean ?
Enter MR. TAYLOR.
MB. T. Why, my dear, what is the matter ?
MBS. T. I can't find my bonnet my best bonnet, I
have looked everywhere. It must have been stolen. I
thought you said thieves were unknown in Shiloh.
MB. T. (with the air of one well pleased to be able to give
a satisfactory, explanation). Oh ! is that it ? I quite forgot
to tell you I gave it away.
MBS. T. Gave it away !
ME. T. Yes, dear, to that poor Mrs. Simmons, whose
husband was buried last Wednesday, over at Fox Swamp.
She said she had no bonnet to wear to the funeral, and she
did -not know how, nor where, to get one; it really was a
sorrowful case. So. I thought how fortunate it was that
you were in mourning, and I came home and got yours,
you were gone up to Mrs. Divine's to tea that afternoon,
you know. I meant to haye told you, of course ; but, I de-
clare ! I forgot all about it.
MBS. T. (cheerily}. Well, never mind, she is welcome.
I only wish it had been my second best ; I think that would
have answered for Mrs. Simmons very well ; it would cer-
tainly have corresponded better with the rest of her ap-
parel. But I must make it do for the remainder of the
summer.
MB. T. (hesitating). I I really am afraid I gave that
away, too. To Mrs. Simmon's sister, you see, one needed
a bonnet as much as the other ! And I thought you would
have time to make another before Sunday, you make bon-
nets so easily, out of almost nothing
MBS. T. (parenthetically). Sometimes it is difficult to get
the " almost," though !
MB. T. (continuing). But what a memory I have ! I
ought to have told you, of course. I am so sorry !
SHILOH. '257
MRS. T. (rather constrainedly). May I ask what else of
mine you gave away ?
MR. T. (pathetically). Do not speak in that way, my
dear, or I shall Avish there never was such a thing as a bon-
net ! I gave nothing else away, of course, nothing. Ex-
cept ah ! yes, one of your veils, I think it was the second-
best, this time. I remembered that you could not make
veils so easily as bonnets, my dear.
MES. T. Thank you for your consideration ! ( Then sink-
ing into a chair and laughing hysterically). It is too good
a joke ! I haven't a bonnet to wear to church, except my
sun-bonnet ! Would you advise me to wear that, or stay
at home ? , .
MR. T. (seeming not to see the point of the joke, but,
apparently, beginning to perceive something, more to the
point}. I declare ! It is too bad ! Strange that I should
have forgotten it so entirely ! I promise you, my dear,
that I never will touch anything of yours again, without
asking you first ! Upon honor ! '
MRS. T. (wiping her eyes and choking down her laugh-
ter). Thank you, dear. That would be the better arrange-
ment, I think. But never mind, this time. I will run up
to Mrs. Prescott " acrost lots " and see if I cannot bor-
row a bonnet of her, for to-day.
FIXALE. Mrs. Taylor appears at church in Mrs. Pres-
cottfs second-best bonnet, and looks as if she had donned
her grandmother's head-gear, by mistake.
At present, however, " our little minister's wife,"
(which, in Shiloh parlance, is synonomous with " our min-
ister's little wife,") cannot te expected to take any active,
regular part in parish work ; even the most exacting of
the parishioners admit that. The absorbing and never-
ending business known, hereabout, as " doing your own
work ; " added to the care of a great, fat, roly-poly baby,
nearly as large as herself ; furnishes employment for most
of Mrs. Taylor's energies within her own immediate
258 SHILOH.
sphere. Yet scarcely the less is the influence of her
bright, cheerful spirit, her active good-will, her warm in-
terest and sympathy, her inherent tact, felt as a power in
the parish. And the little she is able to do in Sunday
School and Sewing Society, is doubly appreciated ; because
it is something more than is hoped for, instead of some-
thing less than is Expected.
It would be unpardonable were I to omit to state, in
this connection, that Mr. Taylor has already experienced
the benefit of his introduction to Leo. Every morning,
before breakfast, 'a scratch is heard at the kitchen door of
the Gwynne Place. Being opened, Leo enters majestically,
delivers a pail of new, warm milk toJYlrs. Taylor, and gra-
ciously offers a paw to her husband. Then, he goes
straight to the cradle and puts his nose in the baby's
face. She catches hold of it with avidity, pokes her tiny
fingers into his eyes, doubles up her fists and rains puny
blows upon his great head, pulls his long ears, kicks up her
chubby feet, and coos and crows at him in an ecstasy of in-
fantine delight. Never is Leo so softly benign of aspect
as in these moments. He lays aside his stateliness as a
garment ; his bushy tail swings gently from side to side ;
his eyes smile ; there is something deeply tender, even to
pathos, in his look. Plainly, that innocent baby-face stirs
his large, loving heart to its depths.
He is loth to leave his small friend, when Mrs. Taylor
comes with the empty pail ; and his distress is augmented
by the fact that she sets up a shrill scream of protest as he
turns away. Nevertheless, obedient to the call of duty,
he takes the pail in his mouth and trots briskly home-
ward.
Parish matters, in general, flow with tolerable smooth-
ness, so far ; though there are growing indications of a crit-
ical and unfriendly spirit in the Burcham quarter. Mr. Tay-
lor's foibles and they are numerous get small considera-
tion at their hands. Theirs are not the minds to discern
SHILOH. 259
the true proportion of good in a chai-acter like his, nor to
realize how very small a part of him it is that is heavy with
the soil and the weakness of the flesh, and trails in the dust,
of the world. It is far easier to discern the spots in the sun's
disc, than to estimate the good done by his light ; less diffi-
cult to point out some spot where his rays do not penetrate
than to number the myriads of animate and inanimate
things that are cheered and vitalized by their influence.
Still, I do not expect any worse trouble from this faction
than a continual, irritating friction ; chiefly, it must be
acknowledged, because its interest in Church affairs is not
so strong, nor so sensitive, as to urge it into any violent'
quarrel in their behalf!
At large, the . little stir of life and interest caused by
Mr. Taylor's advent, newness, and energy, is fast settling
back into the old, sluggish quietude. Mrs. Prescott, to be
sure, works on with unflagging zeal, and is, unquestionably,
the salt of the parish ; without whom, there would be a dire
dearth of that active and preservative substance. At present,
she is going about armed with a subscription paper designed
to raise funds for painting, papering, and otherwise improv-
ing the little church on the hill ; which seems to have so
thoroughly engrossed the major part of her thoughts and
affections. She has even pressed me into the service, aver-
ring that there are hearts (or pockets) hereabouts, which
will open more readily to the knock of a comparative
stranger, with the indefinable, but easily recognized air of
the city about her, than to her own sharp, well-known rap.
So, in the rattling and rusty, but still strong and hearty,
Divine wagon, upon an odd, cumbrous, movable seat, de-
nominated a " chair," drawn by the fat, sleek, staid horse
accounted safe for " woman-driving," and which Mrs. Pres-
cott complains of as much too safe, even to the point of in-
tolerable laziness ; we drive round the country, stopping
here and there to tell over again the story that we have
told so many times before, as to have exhausted invention
260 SHILOH.
in trying to vary it ; and receiving fifty cents, or it may be
a dollar, by way of liberal response. In some places, we
get, in addition, much good will, pressing invitations to
take refreshment, and whatever amount of gossip we have
time to listen to ; in others, the understood fare of beggars
few words, cold looks, and scant courtesy.
But now, I really have something to tell you ! To
think that here of all places in the world ! when I
thought I had left the little, blind god, with all his belong-
ings, forever behind ! But I will not, as the Shilohites say,
" get ahead of my story."
One bright morning, a week ago, Mrs. Divine's voice
came up the staircase,
" Some one to see you, Miss Frost."
I descended to the kitchen, and at the fai'ther end
which serves as a sort of reception room I found a slight,
pale, gentle-looking girl, awaiting me.
" Miss Carrie Thome a niece of Miss Caroline Bryer's,"
said Mrs. Divine, seeing me look inquiringly at my visitor,
who was quite unknown to me.
" Ah ! I am glad to meet her. Is your aunt well, Miss
Thorne ? "
" Quite well, thank you." And, after a moment's pause,
she added ; " Mother sends her compliments to you, Miss
Frost, and would like the pleasure of your company to tea
this afternoon."
I was so taken by surprise that I had said, " Yes, cer-
tainly, thank you," before I was at all conscious what I
was about. The invitation 'was so unexpected, the
" mother " such a very unknown quantity, the messenger
so quietly prepossessing, the whole thing so unprecedented !
If I had happened to have noticed the expression of Mrs.
Divine's face, I should probably have given a different an-
swer. She now asked, in a tone that instantly drew my
attention ;
" Is your mother expecting other company, Carrie ? "
SHILOIT. 261
" Oh, no, ma'am. Only " (and she spoke as if from the
fulness of delight) " Rick is coming up."
" O h ! " said Mrs. Divine, prolongedly. " Is he going
to stay long ? "
" Only until to-morrow. He will drive up from Haven-
ton to-day, and back to-morrow morning. I will tell
mother you are coming, Miss Frost thank you." And
Carrie Thorne departed.
Mrs. Divine and I remained looking at each other in
silence, until the sound of her light footsteps died away.
Then she burst into a laugh a laiigh with something more
than merriment in it.
" I wish you joy of your invitation, Miss Frost ! I hope
you'll spend a very pleasant afternoon ! "
" Mrs. Divine, what does it all mean ? Who is this
' mother ' ? "
"Who? Mrs. Thorne? She is Caroline Bryer's
sister."
" Well, what else ? I see there is something behind."
But Mrs. Divine's tongue which generally runs over
the catalogue of her neighbors' virtues and foibles readily
enough, and deals out their family history with most un-
reserved, yet not unkindly, veracity now seemed glued to
her mouth.
" Well ! " said she, at last, " I can talk fast enough about
my neighbors, when I know them well, and am sure I shan't
make mistakes. But I don't know Mrs. Thorne well, and
I might give you wrong impressions. To tell the truth,
the Bryers are a queer family, take them all in all though
Caroline is as nice a person as you'll find anywhere ; and
any one can see that there's no harm in that little Carrie,
that's just gone from here. Her mother's a widow, and
has lately come home to live. She isn't one of our sort,
nor one of your sort, either, Miss Frost."
" What sort is she, then ? "
" I can't say. If you go up there, you can find out for
262 SHILOH.
yourself. I reckon you're capable of taking her measure,
without any help."
" I cannot .conceive," said I, in a tone of vexation,
" what made me accept the invitation ! Only there was
something so winning in that pale girl's face and voice,
that it made me forget everything else. But I can send an
excuse."
" Oh, no ; go, by all means," returned Mrs. Divine.
" You like to study human nature, and there's several sorts
up there. There's two idiots a man and a woman to be-
gin with."
" Yes," interposed Mrs. Prescott, who had entered, and
found out the subject of our discourse, " I can tell you
something rather funny about that. The Bryers first came
to Shiloh when I and my sister Susan were young girls ;
and we heard, in some roundabout way, that there were
two unmarried sons in the family. So we joked each other
about them, as girls will, declaring that we should set our
caps for them, and win them for husbands. Well, the eld-
est one came first Mortimer, you'll see him there, Avith
his hair all over his shoulders, and his head hanging down,
and as silent as a gravestone, he hasn't altered much, only
that he's grown old. So I said to Susan, ' You can take
that one, Sue, he" don't suit me ; I'll wait for the next.'
And when the next one came, 'twas the idiot ! "
while I
The
AMONG THE BEYERS AND THORNES.
SET forth for the Bryer Farm in the dreamy
hush of a warm summer afternoon. The breeze
had swooned away in the tree-tops, and gave no
sign of reviving life. The shade was not a
" broad contiguity," but an irregular succession
of dark, isolated patches on the arid and dusty
higliAvay. I was fain, therefore, to pause for a
moment at the farm gateway, and take breath,
reconnoitered the premises.
house stood at a considerable distance from the
road, in the midst of a verdant mosaic of meadow, orchard,
and cornfield. Originally it had been of the better sort of
farm-houses ; and its white, expansive front must have been
a pleasant sight, seen through the green vista of a long
avenue of maples and beeches, leading up to the vine-
wreathed porch. But both the house and its surroundings
had plainly fallen an easy prey to Time's omnivorous tooth.
Its original white was merged into a dingy gray; its
shingled roof and sides were loose, warped, and weathcr-
gnawn ; and the missing base of one of the pillars of the
portico had been replaced by a rough section of a log, with
the bark still on. The avenue had become a grass-grown
lane, through which a brown thread of footpath went wan-
dering in a vague, aimless way, and seemed to owe its final
arrival at the cracked door-stone chiefly to the agency of
204 SHILOH.
some happy chance. This lane was bordered on one side
by a row of scrubby quince trees ; on the other by a long
line of crumbling stumps, among which three or four grey,
decrepit maples stood disconsolately, unable to close up
their ranks over their fallen comrades, and waiting, dumb
and lonely, for their own stroke of doom. The fences were
either falling down or rudely patched ; and the gate whereat
I stood had the look of an "exhausted sentinel keeping
watch over the brief bivouac of a defeated, wasted, and
flying army.
Houses often have as distinct and individual an expres-
sion as faces of men. In this one, I soon discovered a quaint,
curious resemblance to the only one "of its inmates with
whom I was tolerably well acquainted Miss Caroline
Bryer. Like that gaunt, antiquated virgin, with her air
of decayed gentility, her manner of antique stateliness, and
her cherished remembrances of bygone prosperity and dis-
tinction, the shabby old dwelling seemed to be inwardly
pluming itself upon obsolete glories, and to be trying to
keep itself alive upon the insufficient nutriment of aristo-
cratic reminiscences.
I was somewhat dismayed to find, upon examination,
that my choice of entrance upon the scene lay between
climbing a stone wall and opening the aforesaid gate,
designed, it would appear, for the admission of carts arid
wagons, rather than for the use of the human species, and
in such a dilapidated condition that it was probable it would
fall to pieces at an unaccustomed and \inskilful touch. But
if there had ever been a smaller and more manageable one,
as a certain irregularity in the stone wall seemed to indi-
cate, it had vanished long ago, and left not a wrack be-
hind. I was relieved from the dilemma, however, by the
opportune appearance of the face and bust of Carrie Thorne,
in the open upper half of the front door ; looking, for the
moment that she stood there, framed in vine-leaves and
thrown out into strong relief from the dark background of
SIIILOH. 265
the interior, as if some lovely ancestral portrait had de-
scended from, the walls and hurried to the threshold to bid
me welcome. She waved her hand in token of speedy help,
ran swiftly down the lane, wrought the incredible miracle
of causing that crazy gate to revolve upon its rusty hinges
without burying us both in its ruins, and led the way back
to the house.
A very different picture now filled the doorway the
full-length figure of Miss Bryer herself, clad in old-fashioned
garments of rusty black, and with a general air of rustiness
about her rustiness of joints, of voice, of manner, of garb
in admirable keeping with the rusty old roof over her
head. Yet let me not be understood to say one disrespect-
ful word of the mild, stately, decayed gentlewoman; the
story of whose life, if fully and rightly told, would put to
the blush myriads of lives that are lovelier to outward
view. Wealth and position slipped early from her grasp.
Idiocy put its woful mark upon the younger members of
her family. Human love lingered for a moment at her side,
and then passed on neglectful. Joy waved her a careless
adieu ; disappointment met her with a mocking salutation.
Death made her motherless. Despair cast her down and
ti % od her under foot. Then Duty came to her side, and
whispered solemnly in her ear. Necessity raised her up,
and sternly bade her move on. Care fastened its burden to
her back. Quietly she gathered up the scattered fragments
of her life and love, heaped them on the hearthstone of her
heart, and kindled them into blaze and warmth for the
narrow, stinted lives of her infirm, irritable, exacting father
and her imbecile brother and sister. By that quiet fireside
these poor paupers of existence find ever undisputed room,
and steady, if not vivid, glow. We will trust that, while
only intent upon their comfort, her own self-denying spirit
fails not to catch some soft, reflected light, some healing
warmth.
She gave me a characteristic greeting ; kind without verg-
12
266 sniLon.
ing upon cordiality, ceremonious without being cold. Behind
her stood the two half-wits, one with a gaping, staring,
vacant face; the other silly, simpering, shuffling, restless.
Both were past youth ; neither would ever seem to be
really old. Complete childishness of expression neutral-
ized the effects of gray streaks in the hair, and wrinkles
creeping into the face. They were scarcely less children
now, after the lapse of forty or fifty years, than when they
first opened their eyes upon the earth. For them, neither
sorrow, ciime, care, or responsibility, exist. Yet it goes,
far to vindicate the course of God's providence in this
world, and to reconcile us to the ministry of griefs and
trials, to feel that none of us, whatever our lack or our
burden, "would willingly change places with them.
It was evident that these irresponsible old children were
kindly cared for ; their gannents were clean, though plain,
their persons in perfect order. Miss Bryer introduced them
w T ith a slight wave of her hand, and a melancholy, depre-
cating tone of voice " Betsey and Simeon, my poor sister
and brother." Obviously, she -was nervous about the im-
pression they might produce upon a stranger, but she was
too kind-hearted to rob' them of their childish gratification
in the sight of a new face, or to interrupt their settled habit
of following her about the house, like her shadow.
Then she opened the door into a large, dim parlor.
" I am glad to see you in our poor old house, Miss Frost,"
she said, with a half sigh, as she placed me a chair. " It is
not what it was once, neither are we, the house and the
family have gone down hill together, but if you can put
up with such entertainment as we can give you, you are
very welcome. Sit down a bit ; I suppose Eliza is expect-
ing you to come right to her room, but you have had a
warm walk in the sun, and you had better rest a little and
cool yourself off before you go up."
" Cool yourself off before you go up " " before you go
up," repeated the two idiots, one after the other, in such
SHILOH. 267
manner as to give the exact effect of a double echo of Miss
Bryer's words.
The unexpected iteration startled and confused me to
such a degree, that it was not until after the lapse of a
moment or two that I bethought myself of the necessity of
making my hostess some reply.
" Thank you," I said, struggling to seem unobservant
and at ease. " I did find it rather warm walking in the
sun even for me, and I am accounted among my friends a
sort of salamander."
" Count among my friends a sort of Sally Amanda "
" sort of Sally Amanda," echoed the half-wits, catching up my
phrase, and inevitably travestying it ; since it did not hap.
pen to come within the limited scope of their comprehension.
I gave an irrepressible start, and for a moment could
not conceal my discomposure. It had not occurred to me
that the idiots would find my sentences as available for
repetition as their sister's.
Mrs. Bryer sighed heavily. " You must not mind it,"
she said, in a low voice ; " they don't know any better."
Then she took up the broken thread of our talk. " I
hope Mrs. Divine is quite well and Mrs. Prescott and
Alice. I told Eliza she ought to have invited Alice, too ;
but she said she never thought of it. The truth is, Eliza
has not lived with us long, only a year or so, and she
keeps herself so secluded that she has not found out who
her neighbors are. But she begins to see that Carrie needs
to go out more, and to have some society, the girl is get-
ting listless and low-spirited. And I suppose," she added,
betraying an inward consciousness that Mrs. Thome's sud-
den overture to me stood somewhat in need of explanation,
" she thought she would like Carrie to get acquainted with
you, I have often spoken about you to her. But if I had
known about her invitation in time, I should have seen that
Alice was included in it. However, Eliza is apt to act out
of her own head, without notice or warning."
268 8HILOH.
" Out of her head, without notice or warning" " out of
her head without notice or warning," echoed the idiots,
lugubriously.
I cast a glance at Carrie Thome's slender, girlish figure,
waiting for me in the doorway, with an involuntary feeling
of surprise that I should have been sought for as an asso-
ciate for her. The next moment I sighed deeply. The dis-
parity, J knew well, was not so much outward as inward ;
not of years, but of feeling. To a surface-gaze, we might
still seem well mated enough, as mating goes, but I felt in
my heart that experience of life and sorrow had separated
us by half a century.
Nevertheless, if it was for Carrie Thome's sake that I
was here, I would try not to defraud any reasonable antici-
pation. So I rose and went near to her, in token that I
placed myself at her disposal.
She immediately conducted me up the crooked, oaken
staircase to a large, front chamber furnished as a parlor,
with considerable taste, and even an approach to elegance.
Here sat a woman, with her sewing on her lap, whom, at
the first glance, I took to be young ; at the second (becom-
ing aware of certain skilful devices of toilet, as well as of
unmistakable maturity of expression), to be old ; and it was
not until the third, and a prolonged one, that I settled into
the conviction that she was still in the. border-land between
youth and age, so far as years were concerned, but hope-
lessly gray and old and worn in some sort of bitter knowl-
edge and experience. She rose and received me with an
ease and self-possession that evinced considerable ac-
quaintance ~with life and manners ; and quietly explained
that she had taken the liberty of sending for me because
she believed that my father and her deceased husband were
formerly friends, though finally separated by the chances
and changes of life. She had even met Mr. Frost once
herself, and the impression upon her memory was so pleas-
ant that she desired to know his daughter. And as she
SHILOH. 269
never went out, on account of delicate health, she had ven-
tured to entrust Carrie with the duty of a preliminary call,
and to ask me informally to tea. Her act being thus
relieved of any doubtful character, and brought within the
pale of social observance ; she passed easily to other themes,
showing in all some refinement, some cultivation, and a
rare and ready tact that could make up for any deficiencies
in either.
Still, I was conscious of some involuntary distrust of
her, from the very first. An unaccountable Conviction that
her claim to my father's acquaintance was not genuine took
possession of my mind, and would not be dislodged ;
though she answered, or parried, all my questions with such
consummate skill as to leave me no reasonable ground for
the belief. Somehow, she had possessed herself of a toler-
ably correct resume of his early life, and the places wherein
it had been spent ; and any inaccuracies were easily charge-
able to a defective memory, or to the facility with which
false impressions are given and received. I listened,
assented outwardly, and inwardly disbelieved.
To be quite frank with you, the moral repulsion or
whatever it was appeared to be mutual. At the moment
of our meeting, Mrs. Thome's face expressed, for one swift
instant, doubt, disappointment, and perplexity; the next,
she had drawn on her mask of easy affability, and nothing
but cordial interest and pleasure was thereafter suffered to
peep from beneath it. Yet I was conscious, now and then,
that a keen, furtive glance was resting upon and analyzing
me ; though I never once succeeded in surprising it.
Carrie, meanwhile, had seated herself at a window, and
was looking down the lane with an eager, expectant face.
Suddenly, she started up, exclaimed, " O mother ! Rick is
coining ! " and darted down the stairs. In another moment
or two she was at the end of the lane, fulfilling her self-
elected office of gate-opener. A handsome light carriage,
drawn by a span of spirited horses, soon came through and
270 SHILOH.
stopped ; the driver reached forth his hand to assist her to
a seat at his side, and then drove up the lane in dashing
style. In a few moments, he entered the room, with
his sister hanging on his arm, and was duly presented to
me by his mother. Seeing how completely these two lives
were absorbed in his, I looked at him with some feeble stir
of interest.
But, to my surprise, I saw no new acquaintance in
Frederick Thorne. Although his name, in the familiar form
current in Shikh, had failed to strike any chord of associa-
tion ; my first glance disclosed the fact that he was identi-
cal with a certain young " Mr. Thorne " whom I met last
winter ; but of whom I had known nothing, nor sought to
know, save that he was a student at College, and a
classmate of the eldest son of the Kenmores, with whom
he was spending the holiday vacation. They are near
neighbors and intimate friends of my aunt, conse :
quently, I saw a good deal of him during his stay. In
truth, I had to endure some little good-natured teasing on
the score of the very open and boyish admiration where-
with he chose to honor me. I happened to be out when he
made his final call, and Flora did more than justice, I sus-
pected, to the keenness of his regret at being prevented
from saying farewell in person. And so, having made but
a faint and transient ripple on the surface of its flow, he
passed out of my life, and out of my memory, as well.
Yet it was pleasant to meet him again, just now and
here. The sight of his open, handsome face was like a
cheery window-gleam by night, to a traveller over an
unknown road. His delight at the unexpected meeting was
so. evident, too ; and so frankly, yet courteously expressed ;
that it was impossible not to be grateful for it, and to share
it in some degree.
Moreover, Rick Thorne could scarcely appear otherwise
than to excellent advantage by the side of his mother. His
countenance was so full of frankness, joyousness, and careless
SHILOH. 271
good-humor ; while hers was so reserved, so cool, so concen-
trated. His manner was as frank as his face, only tempered
by a fine, natural courtesy ; hers, soft as velvet, yet some-
how suggestive of claws underneath. Years of intercourse
might not avail to sound all the deeps of her character ;
but a very short acquaintance would suffice to read him
through and through ; a sunny temper, an easy-going,
generous, affectionate nature, a fine taste and some fancy,
more capacity for emotion than thought ; made to be some-
body's spoiled darling all his life, and certain to do neither
much harm nor much good in the world. In its essence, a
selfish character; but not, necessarily, in its develop-
ments ; one that we feel instinctively was never made for
life's sorrows, nor its storms, nor fitted to endure any of the
forms of martyrdom which await those who have the
strength and the will to enter into its conflicts, and fight
its battles.
It is not a character that appears to advantage on paper,
I know ; but it has its charm, and possibly its value, in real
life. Seen by the side of one so old in the world's ways,
and so skilled in the world's strategies as Mrs. Thome's, it
could not be otherwise than delightful and refreshing. I
gave myself up to the enjoyment of it with the more heart-
iness, in order to escape from the other. Seeing this, Mrs.
Thorne took up her work, and quietly exchanged the posi-
tion of actor for that of spectator ; in which she reminded
me of a spider lying in wait for incautious flies.
Rick's talk was lively, unreserved, and careless, almost
to boyishness. After the topics growing out of our last
winter's acquaintance were exhausted ; it ran much upon
his personal tastes, pursuits, and exploits. He was espe-
cially eloquent about his drive up from IMventon, and ex-
patiated at some length upon the excellent qualities of the
" span " which had brought him. Mrs. Thorne heaved an
involuntary sigh, and her brow showed a deep wrinkle. It
did not escape her son's notice.
272 SHILOH.
" You need not look so glum, mother," said he, frankly.
" I suppose I might have come up with one horse, but
there's twice as much fun in driving two. And I didn't
run in debt for it, this time. I won ten dollars in a bet
last week ; so, you see, I could afford to give myself a
treat."
The frown on his mother's brow deepened, and she
threw him a warning glance. I was amused to think how
completely it was wasted. The character of her son was of
the sort which would inevitably reveal itself.
Tea was shortly announced. It was served in the long,
oak-ceiled kitchen ; within the depths of whose capacious
fireplace the handful of sticks which had boiled the tea-
kettle still blazed fitfully. Yet so remote the fire, so wide
the yawning, black throat of the chimney, and so free the
draught across the table (standing between two open
doors), that the flame seemed not to add one more fervid
breath to the sultry summer afternoon. On the contrary,
the old fashioned fireplace, with its broad, uneven hearth-
stone, its smoke-blackened jams, its cavernous oven, its
sooty back, its swinging crane, garnished with pothooks
.and trammels (on one of which the teakettle still simmered
drowsily), its sturdy andirons, its - h ray bed of ashes, its
ruddy coals, and its half-consumed sticks, falling apart and
sending up alternate jets of smoke and flame, contributed
an element of picturesqueness to the scene that I should
have been sorry to miss.
The half-wits did not appear at the table, a banish-
ment effected, doubtless, by the agency of Mrs. Thorne ;
though not without having left a grieved and doubtful
shadow upon Miss Bryer's face. But an equally noticeable
and disconcertinrg presence was not to be thus averted,
that of Dr. Bryer, the master -of the house. He was already
seated at the right of the tea-tray, gaunt and grim, his
naturally stern, harsh, and arrogant traits of countenance
seeming to have been intensified by old age and infirmity ;
SHILOH. 2T3
as in certain ancient portraits, the fading of light and color
serves but to bring into greater prominence the severe, in-
flexible expression of the face, and to harmonize it more
perfectly with the known character of the original. His
garments were rusty, and carelessly put on ; and a broad-
brimmed hat, with two or three turns of coarse twine
around it, by way of band, deepened the shadow of his
overhanging brow.
o o
" You will please excuse father's hat," said Mrs. Thorne,
apologetically. " Old people have their whims, which must
needs be indulged ; and it is one of my father's never to
take off his hat except when he goes to bed. Indeed," she
added, jestingly, " it is purely a matter of supposition, on
my part, that he does it then, for I have not seen him with-
out it for years. I must also premise that he is quite deaf,
so much so that he does not expect strangers to talk to
him ; he has hard work to understand voices to which he is
accustomed."
Then she raised her voice. " Father, let me. introduce
you to Miss Frost."
" Xonsense ! " returned the old man, in a harsh, querel-
ous tone, " you're out of your senses, Eliza ! Who^ ever
heard of frost on the first of July? And after such a
sweltering day, too ! But why don't you introduce that
young woman ? "
Mrs. Thorne repeated her introduction in a still louder
tone.
" Corse ! " said her father, eyeing me sharply. " I am
glad to see you, Miss Corse ; I hope you are .very well."
An.d then, evidently taking it for granted that whatever
was inaudible to himself must needs be so to others, he
muttered, distinctly enough, " Corse ! Good heavens,
what a name ! Might as well be Corpse, and done with
it!"
Rick's face grew red, and he hastily lifted a glass of
water to his lips. The rising laugh, however, was not to
12*
274 SHILOH.
be swallowed with the water ; the twain met in his throat,
and after a momentary struggle for the right of way, the
laugh conquered." There was a choke, an explosion, a scat-
tering shower, and Rick darted to the window.
Mrs. Thorne sent after him a look of smothered fury,
that would have made her fortune on the tragic stage ;
then, she smoothed her face into deprecation, and turned to
me. " Miss Frost, I am sure you will excuse my father, on
account of his age and infirmities. But as for Rick, I am
ashamed of him. There is no excuse for his untimely levity,
unless it be that
" That he couldn't help it," interrupted Rick, coming
back to the table. " Nothing like the truth to wipe out an
error. And Miss Frost would have laughed, too, if she had
dared. I saw it in her eyes. Nevertheless, I humbly beg
her pardon and yours."
Mrs. Thome's look softened involuntarily. Her son's
handsome face and frank, graceful manner, would have dis-
armed a sterner censor.
Dr. Bryer, meanwhile, liad addressed himself to the dis-
cussion of the edibles on his plate, in serene unconscious-
ness of his blunder, or its effects. He now intermitted his
agreeable occupation long enough to inquire, " How did
you come up, Rick ? "
" Drove up, sir. Had a splendid team " began Rick,
preparing to enter into the subject with enthusiasm, and at
some length.
" Plenty of steam ! " interrupted his grandfather, gruff-
ly. " I'll warrant it ! enough to have sent you to spit out
your mouthful of cigar-smoke in Kingdom Come, if there
had been a cow on the track, or a rail askew. I thank the
Lord I never yet patronized any of those inventions for
breaking people's necks. To be sure, young men's necks
ain't good for much except to be broken, now-a-days. The
railroads save the sheriff some trouble, I suppose."
With which gracious remark the old doctor applied
SHILOH. 275
himself afresh to his biscuit and butter; and the talk
became general. In the midst of it, he launched a new
inquiry.
" Getting on well at college, Rick ? Head of the first
division, eh ? "
His grandson's face fell a little. " Not exactly, grand-
father," he answered, more seriously than his wont ; " to
tell the truth, it's about as much as I can do to hold my
own in any division. I reckon study doesn't run in the
Thorne blood ; if it does, it has skipped a generation."
" Zouiids, Rick !" exclaimed the old man sharply, " you're
too old to be skipping demonstrations. Why in the name
of sense don't you face your work like a man, and not
shirk it like a boy ? "
Rick gave a rueful shrug of the shoulders, but attempted
no defence; nor did his grandfather seem to expect
any.
" You will observe," said Mrs. Thorne to me, blandly,
" that we do not think it worth while to correct my poor
father's mistakes, when it is not absolutely necessary. The
attempt to explain would only lead to fresh errors, and we
think it better to let the subject drop in any way he
pleases."
" What's that you're saying, Eliza ? " suddenly demand-
ed the old doctor, suspending operations, and eyeing her
suspiciously.
Mrs. Thorne bit her lip. " I was saying that we would
drop the subject," she replied, rather shortly.
" Dropped what f " queried the old man, evidently at a
loss. "Did it break?"
Carrie tittered, Rick laughed, and no one could repress
a smile. Dr. Bryer looked angrily from one to another.
His eldest daughter hastened to explain. Putting her lips
close to his ear, she repeated her sister's words, in slow,
distinct, and not ungentle tones, that found easy access to
his understanding.
276 SHILOH.
" Oh ! with all my heart," he responded, dryly. " Es-
pecially as it won't bear much handling. Addled eggs and
addle pates it is as well to let alone," he added, with a caustic
glance at his grandson. Plainly the spectacle of the latter' s
easy temper and sportive ways annoyed and irritated him.
Having himself led an active, energetic, aggressive life from
early youth ; in rough and often hostile contact with the
world ; repaying every jest with a jibe, and every scoff with
a scowl or a blow ; he could not understand Rick's sun-
shiny, laissez-faire existence, nor the touch of Sybaritism in
his nature, nor his good-humored endurance of his own
biting taunts and sarcasms. He marveled that a young
man, with all his life-battles yet to be fought, and his for-
tunes to be made or marred, should be so gay, so self-
indulgent, so inconsequent. If he could, he would have
thrown him at once into the middle of the fight ; unsuspi-
cious that he was as little likely to receive downright blows
as to give them (since the world invariably softens a little
to persons of his make) ; unknowing that sorrow and trial,
however much they might refine and spiritualize his char-
acter, could never make him strong with the kind of
strength he coveted for him. Especially was Dr. Bryer
disgusted with his grandson's fastidious niceties of toilet :
the cut of his coat, the tie of his cravat, and the polish of his
boots, he reckoned up against him as so many positive sins.
His joyousness and his amiability he threw into the same
category. These were not the faults of his own youth,
therefore the doctor had no indulgence for them. If IJick
had been fiery and reckless, or determined and vindictive,
he could have had .patience with him, and hope of his
future ; but for a handsome, amiable, indolent youth, whose
worst vice was cigars, and whose highest ambition was to
be dragged ignominiously through college at the tail of a
"Third Division," he entertained nothing but contempt.
If ever he felt the charm of his manner, he rebelled against
it. He overlooked the good in him, because it was so
sniLoii. 2YY
largely negative in its character ; and he despised the evil
in him, for the very same reason.
His last stinging remark, however, was not without a
momentary effect. Rick's face flushed, and he seemed on
the pqint of making a hasty rejoinder; but his mother laid
her hand upon his arm with a firm, warning pressure, and
Miss Bryer nervously sought to create a diversion by be-
sieging me with tea-table attentions. To do Rick justice,
his resentment was but a flash ; and by the time I had suc-
cessively declined cheese, dried-beef, pickles and jelly (some
of them twice over, for Miss Bryer's anxiety confused her
recollection), his wonted good-nature resumed its easy sway,
and he was ready to follow up the assault with reinforce-
ments of cake loaf-cake, queen-cake, seed-cake, and I know
not what beside.
I shall record but one other tea-table topic. In some
reminiscence of New Orleans, Mrs. Thorne suddenly men-
tioned the name of Venner, and my start of surprise did
not escape her notice, nothing does !
"Do you know them?" she asked.
" The bankers ? Only by reputation," replied I, evas-
ively.
She looked at me with keen scrutiny. "It was the
youngest partner that I knew well," she went on, " Mr.
Paul Yenner. A fine young man. Did you never happen
to meet him ? "
" I think I have in New York. But he was not then
connected with the house of which you speak."
" Indeed ! " rejoined she, with a tone of surprise. " I
understood him to say that he had grown up in it."
I made no reply. What need to discuss the matter ? Of
course she labored under a misapprehension, but many a
worse one, involving it may be, the happiness of a life
has had to pass without correction.
Mrs. Thorne looked dissatisfied and curious. " I get
an occasional letter from him even now," she continued,
278 SHILOH.
with her eyes fixed on my face, as if bent on finding the
clue to my first involuntary manifestation ; " for the busi-
ness in which he is my agent is still unsettled, and he keeps
me informed of its progress."
"Ah, indeed?" said I, doing my best to assume that
mildly interrogative tone wherewith politeness so thinly
masks indifference.
She made another attempt. " By the way, did I not
hear a rumor that he was married, or about to be ?"
" Very possibly," answered I, gazing absently out of the
window, and thinking, not of Mrs. Thome, not of Madame
Rumor, but of Paul's face as I saw it last as I see it now,
and shall see it, I fear, always, changing slowly from sur-
prise to doubt certainty anguish; and vanishing, stern
and reproachful, into the gloom. "Will he wear that face at
the altar, I wonder ? And was it the far-off swinging of his
wedding-bells that made the air so close and heavy that
sultry summer afternoon overflooded with melody, even
to faintness, as sometimes with perfume ! Well ! what
could it possibly matter to me !
Mrs. Thorne gave it up, and rose from the table.
" Carrie," she said, presently, " it promises to be a fine
sunset ; suppose you and Rick take Miss Frost over to
enjoy it from Sunset Rock. A spot," she added, turning
to me, " where the departure of day is witnessed to great
advantage, with whatever glories of light and cloud it
wraps about it, from which circumstance it derives its
name."
SUNSET PICTURES.
HE Bryer mansion and its immediate acres oc-
cupied the flat crown of Chestnut Hill. To
the west began a gentle slope into a*wide,
undulating vale, robed with the varied green of
forest, field, and meadow, and jeweled with tiny
sheets and threads of water. On the brow of
this slope was a great, rough, irregular mass of
rock, Avith mosses and ferns clinging to its sides'
and a thrifty young oak rooted in a seam at its top ; under
whose boughs we sat down to view the marvelous pictures
that sun and cloud were jointly making. Overhead the
sky was clear and rosy. To the right, large masses of
cloud were rolling up, their bossy fronts ruddy with the
sun-glow, but stretching far back, dense, sombre and, threat-
ening. In the western horizon the sun hung low a blood-
red ball of fire. Just beneath- him, within a hand-breadth,
as it seemed, of the horizon's rim, sti-etched a long, narrow
line of cloud, straight and black and shai'p as if drawn
with ink. Toward this the sun was slowly descending.
" How strange," said Carrie Thorne, suddenly, "to
think that the sun which seems and is setting, to us, is
really rising upon another hemisphere ! "
" I am better content to forget it," I answered, speak-
ing out of an uncontrollable bitterness of heart (Ah ! those
wedding bells !). " To-night, it only saddens me to know
280 SHILOH.
that other and fresher eyes discover, in the vanishing rose
and gold of our sunset, the waking glory of their morn-
ing."
She looked at me with a gentle surprise. " I do not see
why it should," she said, simply. " It makes me glad to
think that there is morning somewhere, if not just over
me." Then she went to gather some wild columbines
growing in the clefts of the rock ; and, lured on from one
tuft of ruby-colored, honey-laden blossoms to another, dis-
appeared from sight.
Rick had thrown himself upon the rock, a little apart ;
and was watching the sky in silence, with a face whose
quiet gravity might have beseemed a death-bed vigil.
Gifted with a quick sense of beauty, and impressionable
as water, his eyes dwelt admiringly on the sunset's change-
ful splendors, while his mood involuntarily reflected the
spirit of the hour and scene.
Meantime, the sun sank steadily. Ere long, his bright
rim touched the black strip of cloud, and vanished behind
it, blotted, as it were, from the universe. The landscape
shuddered, and the sky grew livid. From the dusky
cloud-bastion on the right, came a low roll of thunder, as
if in solemn protest. In the boughs above us, a hidden
bird gave a scared, iineasy twitter ; and a breeze that had
slept in the tree's top since morning, woke from its long
dream, and stirred, and sighed. Rick threw me an awe-
struck, appealing glance ; as if to fill up the measure of
his sombre delight with the certainty of another's sympa-
thy ; but he neither spoke nor moved. I was deeply grate-
ful to him for his silence. At that moment, a talkative or
a fidgety companion would have been intolerable.
Suddenly, a faint red gleam shot from beneath the eb-
ony cloud ; and on the instant the sun's lower rim emerged,
and slowly grew upon our view. The spectacle now be-
came wondrously and weirdly beautiful. The straight,
narrow cloud drew a belt of inky blackness across the sun's
SHILOH. 281
broad disc ; above and below which, the uncovered por-
tions of that luminary glowed radiantly, two distinct
hemispheres of crimson splendor. Gradually the black
belt crept up ; little by little, the lower hemisphere broad-
ened ; the upper one diminished ; and the sun reappeared
to view. Round, red, and majestic, he hung for a few mo-
ments above the horizon, bathing the earth and sky in his
departing glory. Every glimpse of water became a spot
of roseate sheen ; every leaf and grass-blade had its face of
ruddy glow and reverse of purple dusk ; even the gray
tints of the rock whereon we sat showed dimly through a
lustrous, rosy veil. Thus regal, calm, and glorious, the sun
sank finally from sight,
" Beautiful ! beautiful ! " exclaimed Rick, drawing a
long bi-eath, and starting up. " I never saw anything like
it ! Airl I doubt if ever I do again ; however, a single
sunset like that may well suffice one for a lifetime. But I
would give a good deal to know what you saw in it, Miss
Frost ! Something more than sun and cloud and color, I'll
be boun'd."
Involuntarily I held out my hand to him. " Let me
thank you fy m st for keeping so still. Most people would
have talked, and I could not have borne it. You shall
have my thoughts gratis, since you are pleased to want any-
thing so worthless. I was only thinking how often a hu-
man life passes suddenly behind as black and opaque a
cloud as did the sun yonder ; and I was wondering how
many of them would partially emerge, and forever present
to the mind's eye the spectacle of two hemispheres of
brightness, with a black belt of sorrowful experiences and
memories between them. I did not think it worth while
to puzzle myself with the still harder question how few of
them would ever come out wholly from the cloud, to shine
in undimmed and unrestricted brightness for awhile before
sinking finally into the grave."
He gave me a more penetrating look than I had thought
282 SHILOH.
him capable of. " If it were my life," he said, with un-
wonted energy, " it should come out from the cloud ! It
should come forth radiant, not to sink into the grave, but
to make a new morning for the new sky and the new earth
that are waiting for it."
I drew back, with a subtle, intuitive impression of some
latent meaning in his words, felt, but not understood. lie
paused for a moment, and then went on, more slowly, but
in a tone expressive of even deeper feeling. " Do not for-
get what Carrie said just now, that the sun which is setting
to one, is rising to another ; and try to derive a little cheer
from the reflection that, in human life also, joy often begins
to rise in the very spot where, from one point of view, he
seems to have set forever."
Both truth and comfort were in his words, if I could
have stopped to take them. But I passed them over
unheeding, intent only upon detecting and defining that
other suspicious, elusive ingredient ; which, however, con-
tinually escaped from my crucible of thought in formless,
intangible vapoi\ A loud peal of thunder startled me in
the midst of the attempt. Rick and I looked round simul-
taneously. Behind us stretched a dense, dull .gray canopy
of clouds, lit up, for an instant, with the vivid glare of
lightning; a chill, sullen wind breathed drearily in our
faces ; and two meadows beyond, between us and the
house, we could see and hear distinctly the heavy march of
the rain.
" So thaPs what the clouds have been up to in our rear,
while we were busy with those in front ! " said Rick,
with undisguised vexation. " A very well executed flank
movement, it must be acknowledged ! But an exceedingly
unhandsome trick on the part of the elements, nevertheless.
What has Carrie done with herself, I wonder?"
" I suppose we are to run for it," said I, gathering up
my skirt, preparatory to flight. But Rick stopped me.
"It won't do," said he, decisively. "You will run
SHILOII. 283
straight into the rain, and your discomfort in being soaked
will not be mitigated by the consideration that you are
'neither sugar nor salt' except in a figurative . sense.
There is a hole under the rock a cave, if you like that
better where I have found shelter from many a shower, in
my boyhood ; and it is large enough to hold us all, if I
remember right. At all events, it is our only chance of
escape. This way the path is a little rough let me help
you down."
I hesitated. The "hole under the rock" had not an
inviting sound. Besides, I had no mind to seek its shelter
until I was certain of Carrie's company.
"I beg your pardon," said Rick, a little impatiently,
fairly lifting me from the rock on which I stood to the one
below, " but I see that I must take the matter into my own
hands, if you are not to get wet ; and I do not propose that
you shall, under my charge. There is a raindrop, now !
And there is Carrie down below all in good time ! Run,
Carrie, for the ' oven,' " raising his voice, and accompany-
ing the injunction with an expressive gesture.
She nodded, and darted around the corner of the rock.
At sight of her and the raindrops, my hesitation vanished,
and I followed with alacrity. We were soon in the cave,
an oven-shaped cavity formed by the overlapping of the
rocks. Its ceiling was only just high enough to admit of
our sitting upright ; but the lateral space was ample. It
was beginning to be dusky, of course; though the opening
faced the western sky, and would catch its latest gleam.
An hour passed swiftly enough. There was even a
degree of enjoyment in our situation-. Almost any event
which transcends ordinary rules a little, without violating
them, is a pleasant break in a monotonous life.
Moreover, circumstances like these give a strong impe-
tus to acquaintance. Barriers of strangeness, of reserve,
of shyness, melt down insensibly. Rick, Carrie, and I,
were soon talking- together with much of the ease and con-
284 SHILOH.
fidence of old friends. Both of my companions gained
thereby. Carrie showed an amiable, unselfish nature, sweet
and sound to the core ; and Rick, more manliness of
thought and aspiration than I had given him credit for.
Naturally, our talk took a tinge of gravity from the sunset
we had just witnessed ; deepened by the loud roll of the
thunder, the beat of the rain, and the growing duskiness of
our retreat.
I mention these incidents that you may understand how
inevitably they stimulated the growth of feelings that, oth-
erwise, would scarce have blossomed so soon, that might
have perished in their unquickened germs.
At the end of an hour, the flashes of lightning that had
lit up our cell from time to time, ceased ; and the thunder
died away in a faint far-off muttering. But the rain still
fell heavily. Taking an observation, Rick gave it as his
opinion that the shower had developed into a settled rain,
and that we were "regularly in for it."
" And so," he continued,' buttoning up his coat, " the
next thing is for me to go up to the house, and bring clown
a lot of outsiders for you end Miss Frost to go home
with."
" Outsiders ! " laughed Carrie, " what do you mean ? "
" Outsiders, sweet sis, is a generic name for things to be
worn outside, shawls, rubbers, overcoats, etc." And Rick
put on his hat, preparatory to launching himself into the
rain.
At this moment a faint " Halloo ! " penetrated our
hiding-place.
" By all that's opportune, a rescue ! " exclaimed Rick,
dashing out, and returning it with a will.
In brief space of time, a nondescript figure appeared at
the mouth of .the cavern. It had long, gray hair, keen
black eyes, slouching garments, and a saturnine face ; in
short, it was Mortimer Bryer, the hero of Mrs. Prescott's
anecdote, who had not before deigned to show himself to
SHILOH. 285
me. He was heavily laden with " outsiders," which he dis-
pensed, with as few words as possible ; then, taking Carrie
on his arm, under an umbrella, he marched off at a great
pace. Rick hoisted another over me, and we followed as
fast as possible, but were inevitably distanced in the race.
Mrs. Thorne met us at the door with profuse regrets
and condolences. We had a merry drying by the kitchen
fire, and plenty of vivacious talk from Rick afterward. I
accepted, perforce, an invitation to spend the night ; for all
the celestial reservoirs Deemed to be emptying themselves,
as a preliminary step to a thorough renovation. At a tol-
erably late hour, Mrs. Thorne conducted me to a large,
dusky room, filled with grim, old-fa.shioned furniture. I
slept in a high-post bedstead ; over which a heavy canopy
and hangings of dark chintz brooded like a cloud. Beside
it, stood a tall, high-backed chair, in such a position as to
seem intended for the reception of some ghostly watcher.
Perhaps it was this that made sleep so unresponsive to my
call, and gave me ample time to think how strange it was
that Mrs. Thorne should know Paul Venner !
IX THE BOWlfu.
HE morning was so clear and fair as to give
color ' to the fancy that nature was trying
to make sweet amends for the storm of the
preceding night. After breakfast, I announced
my intention of proceeding immediately home-
ward; but Mrs. Thorne managed, somehow, to
set its fulfilment aside, and to substitute a plan
to visit some natural curiosity called " The
Bower," in a neighboring bit of woods. This involved the
necessity of waiting for the grass to dry, and another hour
or two of Bryer and Thorne society, with a considerable
preponderance, I thought, of Rick's. In due time, how-
ever, we set forth, Carrie linking her arm in mine, and her
brother in advance. Half way across the first meadow we
were stopped by Mrs. Thome's voice.
" Carrie ! " she called, with her head out of the Avin-
dow, "I want you, just for a moment or two. I forgot to
measure your belt. Go on, Miss Frost, she will overtake
you directly."
- We went on, of course, but I had a singular feeling, for
the moment, that Rick and Carrie and I were only puppets,
whereof Mrs. Thorne pulled the wires !
" The Bower " was worth seeing, nevertheless. A lux-
uriant, wild grapevine had run up and down and across the
6HILOH 287
boughs and trunks of contiguous trees, and woven a^ hut-
like enclosure, with but a single narrow opening ; all of
green verdure without, all a brown network of vines with-
in, supported by mossy pillars of tree-trunks. Inside was
a rustic seat, not in the best repair.
" Sit down," said Rick, after having tested its strength
by a vigorous shake ; " Carrie will be here soon. She will
consider herself defrauded, no doubt, in not hearing your
first exclamation of wonder ; she would be doubly disap-
pointed, if we did not wait for her." And Rick folded his
arms, leaned against one of the gray pillars, and seemed to'
lose himself in thought. Some indefinable feeling made me
careful not to disturb it. I sat silent, listening for Carrie's
step, wondering how lon'g Mrs. Thorne would deem it ex-
pedient to keep her, and inwardly resolving that my move-
ments should never again be woven into the intricate web
of her designs.
And yet, what possible object could she have in throw-
ing Rick and me together ? So utterly fruitless was my
investigation in that direction, that I began to think my-
self needlessly suspicious ; and to settle down into the be-
lief that things had taken their natural course, after all,
uninfluenced by my bland and easy hostess, except as
she was naturally desirous of fit companionship for her
daughter.
Then, secure in his intense and prolonged absorption, I
suffered my eyes to rest upon my companion, and was new-
ly and vividly impressed with his wondrous personal beau-
ty ; a beauty similar in kind, though not at all in expres-
sion, to that which old masters give to Our Lord, blended
of both masculine and feminine traits. The exquisite
mould and outline, of his form and countenance had the
superadded charm of perfect health, the richest vitality
animating the most symmetrical mechanism. He stood
where both face and figure continually caught fresh lights
and changeful tints from the flickering play of sunbeams
288 SHILOH.
falling through the wind-stirred roof of foliage; as if to
typify how capable was his inner nature of imbibing pleas-
ant hues and cheerful gleams of light from all points ; and
making me feel that, as a matter of artistic propriety, he
ought always to be so placed as to receive the greatest pos-
sible amount of material and metaphorical sunshine. Fate
would do him as much wrong in withholding them, I
thought, as in denying to ordinary men a sufficiency of
air to breathe. His features ought always to reflect the
glow of a cheerful and happy spirit ; the frown of sorrow,
of care, or of anger, would be as much out of place among
them, as on the careless, open brow of a child. Yet the
light veil of thought which now shadowed them, was
rather a beautificr than otherwise. Indeed, it did more
than shadow ; it informed them with a deeper and more
delicate intelligence, and subtly suggested (with what
amount of truth I know not) some latent, finer temper
of being.
Seeing him thus, it occurred to me how easy it would be
for a thoughtless, inexperienced girl to lose her heart to
him. I could even conceive that it were possible for a wo-
man gentler, tenderer, more generous, and more disinter-
ested than myself to lay down her life and love at his
feet ; content for them to be trodden in the dust, if by that
means his way might be made smooth and easy to the hap-
piness that she could so much better bear to do without.
There are women who might fitly be wedded to the horse-
leech ; they are satisfied (for a time, at least) to " give
give," asking little or nothing in return ; with them it is
enough for happiness to watch the abundant, jinobstructed
outflow of their own hearts. The motherly instinct is
strongest in them. Their supremest delight is to cherish,
to nurture, to nourish, whether with milk of breast, love
of heart, toil of hand, or ache of brow ; and, till children
come to divert the feeling into its more natural channel, it
sets strongly toward lover and husband. Such an one
SHILOH. 289
might ask nothing better of Providence than the opportu-
nity of devoting hei-self to this beautiful, amiable, joyous
creature, who would always retain, even in mature age,
somewhat of the characteristics of youth ; and, reversing
the natural order of the relation of woman to man, she
might be content to spend her days and strength in remov-
ing the thorns from his pathway, and warding off from
him the strokes of sorrow and of trial. I might even be
capable of it myself, if he were 1 my brother. But my hus-
band if ever I have one must be more ready to shield
than be shielded. He must have that deepest grace
which comes from power, tempered with gentleness. He
must be strong with moral strength, and wise with heaven-
ly wisdom ; and whatever sort of face he wears, it must be
transfigured with the inward beauty of an earnest, loving
spirit, a disciplined will, and a symmetrically developed in-
tellect. In short, he must be like but what am I think-
ing of ! like no one that I have ever seen, except through
the beautifying, magnifying glass of ideality a truth dis-
covered too late. And yet ah ! yes, my father ! how
often has thy memory arisen between me and bitter, sweep-
ing distrust of mankind ! how tenderly does thine image
set itself to rekindle the failing fire of faith in human good-
ness, on the hearthstone of my heart ! Better man than
thou no woman need dream of, nor desire to find !
I had forgotten everything the Bryers, the bower,
Rick's presence, Carrie's absence everything but my
father's face, smiling upon me more tenderly than Italian
skies ; my father's voice, rich and sweet with the honey of
wisdom, hived through long, serene years of patient
thought and loving research. It cost me no small effort,
therefore, to grasp the present again, and bring it home to
my mind with the necessary distinctness, when Rick sud-
denly broke the silence.
" Miss Frost, may I ask you how long you are to re-
main in Shiloh ? "
13
290
" I really cannot say. Some weeks longer, certainly."
" And I may not be able to come up again for three
months ! "
Accepting the remark as conclusive, I did not answer
it ; but sought covertly to take out a tear from each eye,
that had welled up from the deep fountains so lately
stirred. Rick drew nearer, and spoke again.
" I have read some\vhere that parting is ' sweet sorrow.'
But it can only be so, I fancy, to those who are certain, or
hopeful, of meeting again. When and where may I ex-
pect to meet you again, Miss Frost ? "
" We will leave that to time and chance, if you please,"
I answered, lightly.
" Time and Chance," he responded, shrugging his shoul-
ders, " are not the deities I should choose to preside over
this matter. To be sure, they have been kinder to me, in
bringing about this most unexpected meeting, than I had
dared to hope. But they are capricious divinities, at best.
Mere acquaintanceship can invoke them, if it likes ; but
they will not do for a stronger feeling."
Instinctively, though vaguely, I comprehended that
something was impending which it would better please me
to avert. I rose, therefore, and moved toward the entrance,
remarking, carelessly, " I think we may as well 'go. I
have done the ' Bower ' thoroughly ; I took it all in, roof,
floor, foliage, tendrils, green grapes, mosses, cracks in the
seat, and gaps in the walls, while you were in a brown
study just now; and I have waited for Carrie as long as
she can reasonably expect. I doubt if she is coming at all ;
probably your mother detained her until she thought it too
late to start."
My action only seemed to precipitate the communication
it was designed to prevent. Rick placed himself directly
in "my path, and put forth a detaining hand.
" Not yet," said he, hurriedly. " Listen to me a moment
indeed you must. I have no right, I know, upon so short
SHILOH. 291
*
an acquaintance, to tell you that I love you, and yet," he
stopped and drew a long breath, " it is true ! "
Dismayed, confounded, at so sudden and unlooked-for
a crisis, I stood silent, uncertain what tone it were best to
take. He went on, with scarcely a moment's pause.
" Still, if I had known when and where I might expect
to see you again, I would not have spoken now. But I
could not make up my mind to part from you a second
time, and leave our future meeting, and future relation, to
mere accident. I was loth enough to do it last w r inter.
Yet my feeling for you, then, was only admiration, esteem,
liking, the dawn of love, while now! There are hours,
you know, that do the work of weeks, of months. Such an
Hour was yesterday's sunset, and those delightful moments
in the cave, and this morning's quiet talk in the porch.
Under such influences, love springs up as quickly as Jonah's
gourd, though not, I beg you to believe, with so evanescent
a growth. But I did not, I do not, mean to press my suit
upon you now. You cannot feel more strongly than I do
that you ought to know me better before trusting your
happiness in my hands. Indeed, I acknowledge frankly
that, at this moment, I am not worthy of you. Not
because my life has any depths which I would hide from
your eyes, but because it has, as yet, no heights which
I can point out to them with pride. I only ask your per-
mission to pursue the acquaintance so happily begun, so
fortunately continued. Give me opportunity to show you,
not only what I am, but what I can be, with the stimulus
of your eyes upon me. Give me time and opportunity
to win your love." .
The unexpected manliness and generosity of this speech
touched me. . Nevertheless, I had decided that it would be
better not to treat the matter seriously. So I said, quietly,
dropping, for the first time, the formal " Mr. Thorne," by
which I had always addressed him,
" Rick, how old are you ? "
292 SIIILOII.
He looked surprised, even as was natural enough a
little annoyed. " I am I shall be twenty-one in three
months."
" And I am past twenty-four." I spoke in a tone to
imply that there was an end of the matter. And again I
rose to go.
" If you think that makes any difference to me," said
Rick, quickly, " you mistake me much. I love you just as
you are, I would not have you any different, by a day or
an hour. And I promise you that the outward discrep-
ancy if there is any shall totally disappear in a year or
two. If you will only let me, I will make your life so
happy that youth shall linger with you, loth to go, long
after its usual time for flight. And the -care of your hap-
piness, the thinking and planning and working for it, will
so quickly bring out all the manhood in me will make me
so steady, so grave, so mature, that I shall soon seem the
elder of the two. Ah ! see what you will thus do for me !
you will give me. higher aims and new strength. Without
you, my life will' remain objectless, valueless. With you
arid through you, all pleasant possibilities of growth, of
achievement, of usefulness, of happiness, open to me."
No doubt he believed what he said. For the moment I
half believed it, too. The warm tide of his earnestness
bore me on with it irresistibly. And suddenly Mala stood
beside me, whispering in my ear.
"What better mission than this does tho world now"
hold for you ? " she asked, with an indescribable mixture of
seriousness and sarcasm. " Your life is bereft of its future ;
why not devote it to bettering the future of another!
You will never love again, with the depths and heighths
of your nature : why not be content with the quiet, careful,
elder-sisterly affection that you might bring yourself to feel
for Rick Thorne ! Be his providence, and take his destiny
into your hands. Repeat the grand miracle of the creation ;
breathe vital, inspiring, strengthening breath into this beau-
SHILOH. 293
tiful clay. Supplement his grace with your strength, his
brilliancy with your depth, his amiability with' your con-
scientiousness, his easy temper with your steadfastness, his
impulsiveness with your patience. In short, make a MAN
of him, and find your reward in your work. Many a better
woman might be glad of the chance."
BOXA (with slow emphasis). Perhaps you have all those
good qualities in the measure required. I hope so. For,
very strong you need to be to undertake the work of God's
good providence ! Very deep, to be able to sink the lie
you would live out of the reach of your own self-condem-
nation ! Very conscientious, to walk unscathed through
the fiery furnace of wedded life, bare of undoubted wedded
love ! Very steadfast, to keep memory always muzzled,
and regret ever at bay ! Very patient, to wait till good
comes of doing evil ! Many a better woman might shrink
from the trial.
MALA (going on, after a moment, as if Bona had not
spoken}. You ought to consider yourself, too, somewhat.
Home, in the sweetest sense of the word, you have none.
Your family ties are few, and Time will make them fewer.
Your duties are vague and scattered a bit here, a bit
there. ' Your objects take no definite hold on the future.
In pity to yourself, give yourself a home, a tie, a duty, an
object, for life !
BOXA. A home unhallowed a tie with a rotten thread
. in it a duty full of an endless discouragement an object
quick with a gnawing dissatisfaction.
The words came faintly, as if from afar.
MALA (Impatiently). Well ! suppose it is all true what
nave you better now ? You cannot be worse ofl" than you
are.
BONA (drawing near). And if ever Paul Venner
I started and shuddered. " Rick," I said, drearily, " it
cannot be. The truth is, I have no heart to give you."
" You are engaged ? " he asked, quickly.
294 SHILOH.
" No ; but I was that is to say, I came very near to
being so once."
" I see. You have had a bereavement, or a disappoint-
ment. No matter grief yields to time I can wait.
Hereafter, when "
I interrupted him. " There are cases when apparent
harshness is true tenderness. This is one of them. I tell
you frankly, that there can be no hereafter in this matter.
It must be ended, now and here."
He looked at me quietly and shook his head. " I have
no doubt you believe what you say. You are cruel upon
principle. But I shall cherish hope, though you give none.
Some day you will find your heart empty. Then, seeing
my love so ready, so patient, so true, you will open the
door and let it in."
" Hush, Rick ! How can I make you understand with-
out giving you needless pain ? Our natures were never
made nor meant to be joined together. In all that you
have said to me, there is an intuitive, probably an uncon-
scious, recognition of this fact. Such a union would have
no firm foundation in natural fitness. Doubtless, I might
have loved you very tenderly as a sister, very faithfully as
a friend, but as a wife, wifely never ! Say no more
further words on this subject can only be painful to both
of us."
He looked at me fixedly for some moments then turned
away his face. I heard a deep-drawn breath, almost a sob.
If he would only stand aside from the entrance and let me
vanish quietly ! As it was, I could do nothing but avert
my gaze and wait. There was a long silence, which the
birds filled up at their leisure.
By and by, he lifted his head.
" At least, we can be friends," said he. " You will let
me write to you. You will allow me to keep within the
sphere of your good influence. Be what you just "said you
might have been my tender sister, my faithful friend ! "
SHILOH. 295
I sent a prophetic glance down through the future. He
would begin by sending me mournful outpourings of hope-
less love ; his letters would pass through the several grada-
tions of tender melancholy, devoted attachment, easy friend-
liness, uneasy indifference (briefly struggled with), and
finally cease. I had watched the course of two or three
such friendships if they deserve the name among my
acquaintance ; there was no room for self-deception as to
their way, their influence, or their end.
MALA. Well ! what harm ? The matter will thus be
disposed of without giving him any sudden wrench, any
severe, racking struggle. And his friendship will be very
pleasant while it lasts. And he will never take deep hold
enough of your life to be missed when he is gone.
BO^A.- And he will have lost all faith in himself, bein^
7 O
proved so weak ; all faith in any human love, having seen
the slow fading out of his own. Far better for him to
wrestle with it and conquer it nobly, as love, than to sit
down supinely and wait for it to waste away, under other
names, into nothingness ! No man was ever harmed by
conquering a misplaced or unrequited affection f but many
a heart has been irretrievably vitiated by indulging one,
harboring it long under divers disguises and through many
transformations, growing tired of it, arid finally losing it by
the natural process of decay. Over the grave of such a
love no fragrant memorL'S blossom, no soul grows tender,
no life grows pure and strong !
I turned to Rick. " Forgive me if I seem inapprecia-
tive, ungrateful. It. is just because I am your true friend,
at heart, that I beg to decline the outward relation ; at
least, until you have come to feel only friendship for me.
If I did otherwise, how could I look your future wife in the
face ? "
" My wife ! " he repeated, bitterly, " I shall never have
any."
" Allow me to hope and believe that you will ; and all
20 SHILOII.
the sooner that you are not encouraged to waste any of the
best of your heart upon me, under the mask of friendship.
The affection which we conquer, we keep intact for a better,
brighter, holier occasion ; that which we indulge unwisely,
we are apt to fritter away piecemeal."
" Ah," returned Rick, " if you were only as wise for
yourself as for me, you would "
Carrie's voice cut the sentence short. She was coming
along the path, singing a cheery snatch of song. Yielding
to a sudden, foolish impulse, Rick dashed through the side
of the bower, a seemingly impervious mass of vines. I
looked after him with a momentary fear ; but the flexible
branches had yielded and closed again, as if only a bird had
passed. Almost immediately, Cai'rie appeared at the
entrance.
" Where is Rick ? " she asked, in wonder.
" Looking for the fauns and dryads," I responded, di'ily.
" They will acknowledge him as of kin when he finds
them ! lie went through that wall of vines, just now, in
such a manner as to establish an indisputable claim to their
relation ship."
" Ah ! " said Carrie, with a knowing look, " he has hid-
den, and means to surprise or to frighten me. It is an old
freak. How could you betray him ?
I was delighted with the plausible explanation. " Let
us steal a march on him, and go home," said I.
Carrie would have preferred to wait. She had a mind
for her brother's society, and did not suspect that, just then,
he had no mind for hers. Novertheless, as she is one oi
those gentle, self-sacrificing beings, whose chief use of their
wills is to furnish pleasant parallels to other and stronger
ones, she yielded. Quickly we left the wood shadow and
seclusion behind us. I drew a breath of relief as we
emerged from it into the open meadow and the sunshine.
XXVIII.
DKEGS.
HE worst part of our nature is seldom slow
to revenge itself upon the best. After
any strain of moral heroism, comes an
inevitable reaction. The soul that has strug-
gled up the Mount of Trial leaning on the arm
of the Holy Spirit, is wofully apt to slide down
the corresponding declivity in the grasp of
Satan. Sometimes, I think, the devil even joins
in the good work of pushing us up, that the impetus thus
gained may enable him the more easily to thrust us down.
He helps to build up our characters to some lofty height of
virtue, in order that they may the more surely topple over
into some small neighboring pit of vice. He does not
scruple to aid us in girding up our loins to the battle, that
the bivouac may fall more completely under his control.
I left Bona in " The Bower." On the way back, I took
bitter counsel with Mala. She offered a possible solution
of the problem that perplexed me ; also a suggestion or
two, upon which I acted in due time. .
As we neared the house, I observed Mrs. Thorne seated
ut her window, sewing. It is a noteworthy circumstance
that she is always sewing, in a characteristic fashion. She
sets stitches with the ease and regularity of a machine,
and with as little apparent interest in the process. She un-
dertakes nothing that exacts close attention thought of
*13
298 SHILOH.
brain as well as motion of hand ; she chooses rather straight
seams, bands, and hems, work which keeps the fingers
busy and leaves the mind free ; which furnishes ready ex-
cuse for dropping her eyes, upon occasions, yet allows
them full liberty to wander when there is anything to re-
ward observation.
She regarded Carrie and me from her outlook with
some surprise, some perplexity. Doubtless, Rick's non-
appearance with us struck her as a somewhat singular cir-
cumstance. Possibly, too, she discerned something in my
face or manner suggestive of unexpected complications ; for,
in matters affecting her own interests, her perceptions are
as quick and subtle as the electric fluid. Nevertheless, by
the time I had ascended to her room (leaving Carrie in the
porch below, looking out for her brother), I might as well
have tried to read thought or emotion in the immovable
features of the Sphinx. Save for the bland smile that ever
plays about her lips affording as much real warmth to the
heart as a phosphoric glimmer would to the finger-ends
she was absolutely statuesque.
" Mrs. Thorne," I began abruptly, " did you ever hap-
pen to hear of my cousin Wilhelmina Frost ? "
She searched her memory rapidly, " No, I believe not.
Why do you ask ? "
" Because, madam, she is better worth your acquaint-
ance than I am. She is young, beautiful, accomplished,
and chiefest grace of all ! rich. Perhaps you are not
aware that there were three of the Frost brothers. The
eldest left home early ; he led a wandering, erratic life for
years ; he married late, in India. lie died there, not long
since, leaving a large fortune to his only surviving child
a daughter ; and both to the guardianship of her, and my,
uncle John Frost. According to the terms of her father's
will, she resides alternately with him and the relatives of,
her mother. She is now with the latter in a western
city."
SHILOH. 299
" Ah ! " said Mrs. Thorne, meditatively. The tone
indicated that she had, at last, found the key to a
puzzle.
" Moreover," I went on, with a blind, bitter, foolish ir-
ritation ; partly due to the natural revulsion of feeling,
overwrought during ray recent interview with Rick, and
partly to my utter detestation of the motives and designs
which rightly or wrongly I now attributed to Mrs.
Thorne in bringing us together ; " moreover, she is
heart-free (so far as I know, at least) which I am not. Or
it might be more to the point to say that my heart all
that is best of it is dead and buried."
Scarcely were the words spoken ere I repented of them.
What folly to lay bare the hidden workings of my life,
its secret grievances, trials, disappointments, to a woman
like Mrs. Thorne, a mere calculating machine, without
7 O t
heart, sympathy, or conscience, who would at once pro-
ceed to incorporate them with her own schemes and use
them unscrupulously to further her own ends, if she found
them anywise capable of such subserviency ; or else throw
them out on the highway, to be ground into the dust by
every passing wheel. However, having given myself up,
utterly, into the hands of Mala, for the time, I could think
of no better way of mending the matter than by aiming a
threat at Mrs. Thome's maternal pride, and so enlisting it
on my side. I went on, therefore, with still intenser bit-
terness, because mingled with self-contempt.
" However, as you may imagine, this is a part of my
history which I do not care to put into the possession of
Madam Rumor. If I find it there, by any means directly
or indirectly traceable to this conversation, I shall consider
myself at liberty to offset it with a part of your son's,
namely, that I have just declined the honor of his
hand."
She gave so genuine and unmistakable a start of sur-
prise, that, for a moment, it confounded all my conclu-
300 8HILOII.
sions. She had not expected this climax, then ? Or, was
it merely that she had not expected it so .soon ? I inclined
to the latter supposition, inasmuch as, after that first gleam
of surprise had passed, and the momentary Hush of resent-
ment which succeeded it had faded from her cheek, I fan-
cied I could detect, in her countenance, the serenity of easy
acceptance ; not altogether devoid of satisfaction. Proba-
bly, as matters had turned out, she was relieved to find
the affair ended so soon, and thus. It would save trouble.
While she reflected, I stood regarding her with a chill
and creeping of the flesh ; as at something not quite hu-
man. A curious piece of flesh-and-blood mechanism, in-,
formed with thought and will, but entirely destitute of af-
fections, sympathies, emotions ! It was plain that she con-
sidered the subject purely in a material way, as a question
of social or pecuniary advantage and loss; for her, its
moral or emotional side did not exist.
I am aware that my sketch of Mrs. Thome's character
may justly be accused of exaggeration. It is all the truer,
on that account. There are people whom it is nearly im-
possible not to overdraw. Abhorrence, like anger, can sel-
dom be restrained within absolutely just limits. Take it
with what abatement you think fit.
When she spoke, it was in the smoothest, blandest of
tones, carefully ignoring everything in my words or man-
ner that might have constituted a cause of offence. " I am
very sorry to hear it. Not that I blame you in the least,
my dear, of course you could have done nothing else un-
der the circumstances, but I regret that Rick should have
been so precipitate, and that you should have been so an-
noyed. But he is very young and impulsive, and you are "
she hesitated a moment, and I fancied there was a faint
tinge of sarcasm in the tone wherewith she finished the
sentence " very attractive. I think you can afford to for-
give him for the compliment (for such it was, after all), not-
withstanding it was a little ill-timed. Allow me to say,
SHILOH 301
furthermore, that it gratifies me to know that your rejec-
tion was based on grounds quite disconnected with his
merits, and that I shall, of course, respect every confidence
with which you have honored me, and so we will dismiss
the subject and forget it ! "
She paused, as if expecting a reply, but as I made none,
she continued, after a moment,
" Let me trust that this untoward little incident may
not interrupt the course of the acquaintance so pleasantly
begun. Rick leaves us this afternoon, you know, and will
not return for some months. And Carrie takes such a
fancy to you ! you seem to have bewitched both my chil-
dren ! And I own that I had hoped for much benefit to
Carrie from your society. ' She really has none, at present.
I am, perhaps, needlessly particular about her associates ;
but I want her to retain the tone and manner of the sphere
in which I moved so long, and I am afraid she might lose
it, if she mingled too freely with Shiloh people. Not,"
she hastened to say ; as if conscious that this implied too
sweeping a censure, or she might have seen the involuntary
curl of my lip, " not that I suppose there are no persons
here with whom she might fitly associate ; but, as I never
go out myself, I have no means of knowing who they are,
so I have preferred to keep her at home altogether. If re-
port says true, your heart opens freely enough to any claim
upon its kindness if not upon its deeper affection. Do
me the favor, as an old friend of your father, to number
her among your friends, or proteges ! "
To say truth, I never felt less inclined to confer a favor
in my life, " That," said I, coldly, " must be as circum-
stances determine. Friendships are apt to take their own
course."
" True," she returned, with imperturbable good-humor,
" and I think yours will set towards Carrie, if allowed to
take its own course. She is both lovable and loving, ca-
pable of blind adoration and unquestioning trust to a de-
302 SHILOH.
gree which, to a person as old and worn and disillusionized
as I am, seems absolutely Quixotic."
I was well aware of it. And it was an endless riddle
to me how a character so gentle, so trustful, so affection-
ate as Carrie's, and one so frank, careless and buoyant as
Rick's, could have sprung from the dark and tortuous wind-
ings of Mrs. Thome's nature. Neither, it was certain,
could be in her confidence, nor aid directly in her pro-
jects. Still, I would promise nothing, on Carrie's behalf;
though I foresaw, clearly enough, that if she chose to seek
me out, and cling to me, I should not have the heart to
cast her off. The worst of it would be that I should sus-
pect that the seeking was partly, if not mainly, the result
of the mother's promptings ; and I should be sure that
it was entirely in accordance with the mother's aims.
But why did Mrs. Thorne desire the continuance of the
acquaintance ? "VVonderingly I asked the question. Mala
furnished me with an answer -conjcctui'al, of course. Mrs.
Thome's cold egotism quietly swallows or rejects whatever
comes in its way, men, women, events, possibilities, ac-
cording as they can, or cannot, be made instrumental to
the attainment of her own ends. With hei', feelings, sen-
sibilities, principles, prejudices, affections, go for nothing,
except as they count for or against her own game. My re-
jection of Rick weighed not the value of a grain of dust
against the possibility of my being of future use to her.
Through me, Rick might yet be presented to the young
heiress with whom she had, at first, confounded me.
Through me, Carrie might be brought into contact with
a sphere of society that she had no other present means of
reaching unto. Mrs. Thorne would put no card out of her
hand which might ultimately win her a trick. So I rea-
soned, with what disgust, both at her and myself, it is im-
possible to say !
Rick's voice now sounded from the porch, low, listless,
dispirited. With it Carrie's gentle, loving tones went
SHILOH. 303
twisting in and out, in silken threads of regret, explana-
tion, and sympathy. Evidently she believed that his mood
was due to that recent running away from him, of which
she fancied herself to be guilty never once imagining,
guileless little soul ! that it was he who had fled from her,
blindly, recklessly. His replies were vague and preoccu-
pied. He was glad enough, doubtless, to find that he was
supposed to be the victim rather than the culprit ; and that
explanation was to be received instead of given ; but his
mood did not clear up, and Carrie was disconsolate and re-
morseful. Seldom is mortal blessed with such entire devo-
tion and unlimited faith as she gave to this brother. In
her eyes, he could have no fault. That was the one prin-
ciple at the centre of all things. So secure was she of his
right, that she took it for granted that . she, and everybody
else, was wrong.
Mrs. Thorne offered no further opposition except such
as the merest courtesy required to my departure. The
whole household, with the notable exceptions of Dr. Bryer
and the saturnine bachelor, Mortimer, assembled in the
porch for the ceremony of leave-taking. Mrs. Thorne,
with her most gracious air of the courteous hostess ; Miss
Bryer, with real kindliness of heart under her formal man-
ners ; Rick, leaning with folded arms against the dilapi-
dated pillar, and looking after me moodily ; Carrie, hanging
round me affectionately to the last moment, promising to
come and see me soon ; and, finally, the idiots, catching up
every farewell word and courteous phrase, and repeating
it over and over, like a couple of parrots.
I went slowly down the hill, and wondered if it were
true that only a day and night had passed since I climbed
it ! A day and night of quick-flowing events of interest
approaching to excitement of something which, if it were
not pleasure, went, far to fill its place, in a monotonous life.
I felt a strange dislike to go back to the old, quiet routint 1 .
Doubt and discouragement took possession of me. Woul.l
304: SHILOH.
not my life have been richer, at least, if not happier, if I
had admitted into it that prospect opened to me by Fred-
erick Thorne ? Had I really done well in refusing so de-
cisively his love his friendship the opportunity for doing
him good ? I declare to you, Francesca, that, as I went
moodily down the hill that day, I could not tell !
Of one thing only was I tolerably certain that I thor-
oughly despised myself. After taking so high a tone with
Rick, it was humiliating to have descended into the depths
of meanness with his mother. Yet, as human beings are
prone to do, I excused myself by blaming her. There are
some natures (I argued) that inevitably soil and degrade
whatever comes in contact with them. There are certain
moral atmospheres, through which we are quick to detect
evil and slow to recognize good, or they hopelessly confuse
and confound the two. It must be a mind of steady poise
or of very little susceptibility to influence, that can main-
tain such intercourse without harm. I felt that I detested
Mrs. Thorne, and all the more because some perverse part
of my nature had shown itself so unexpectedly amenable
to her influence.
In such a mood, I reached the gate of the Divine home-
stead. As usual, Uncle True was at the woodpile, chop-
ping wood. Mrs. Prescott was also there, picking up
chips in her apron. Both watched me as I came up the
road, and Uncle True laid down his axe.
" Good mornin', Miss Frost. Had a good time ? "
" I don't know yes I believe so."
" Sorry you ain't sure on't, 1 ' returned he, wiping his
brow. " Howsomever, it's a door that's got more'n one
hinge to swing on, a good un, a bad un, and another be-
tween 'em that's neither one nor t'other, but passable.
And that's the hinge that things swing on the most,
thank the Lord ! "
" I don't see what there is to thank the Lord for in that,"
said Mrs. Prescott, shortly.
SHILOH. 305
" "Wall," replied Uncle True, " Agur, the son of Jakeh,
did. He said, ' Lord, give me neither poverty nor riches' ;
and I kinder think he meant suthin' more'n the sort of pov-
erty and riches you carry in your pocket. I reckon most
on us might pray, ' Lord, give me neither a good time nor
a bad 'un, but jest kinder passable,' with good reason.
For, you see, in a good time we're apt to forget the Lord
that sent.it ; and though a bad 'un may drive us to think
of Him a leetle more, still wall, we don't any of us exact-
ly hanker arter trouble, you know ! "
" Children don't cry after picry, as a general thing,"
responded Mrs. Prescott, drily. Then she turned to me.
" Well, what do you think of Mrs. Thorne ? " she asked,
abruptly.
" Mrs. Prescott, I don't think of her at least, not
now."
" Umph ! " said Mrs. Prescott, " any one who can't
translate that into, ' Least said is soonest mended,' had
better go and sell his head for a soap dish ! " And, put-
ting a final chip into her apron, she marched into the
house.
Uncle True gave no heed to this little episode, but went
on with his own train of thought, not stopping to supply
the missing links. " There's that bird, yonder, in the ma-
ple ; there's no doubt about his havin' a good time, is there
now ? Jest hear him sing ! "
There was no question about it, whatever. His song
was the distilled essence of a spirit jubilant within.
" As long as he gits any sort o' stuff to peck at, and
ain't actooally gobbled up and carried off and made a
meal on, he seems to think his time's good 'nough. But
we human critturs is more onreasonable. Some on us want
fine clothes, and some on us want fine victuals, and some
on us want larnin', and most on us want our own way.
Now, that bird is satisfied with the Lord's way. He
builds his nest of what comes nighest to hand, and
306 SHILOH. '
ain't partic'ler what sort o' feathers he lines it with. He
don't growl, nor grumble, nor fret, nor swear, if he has to
take up with a caterpillar instead of a gi'ound worm for
breakfast, nary one on 'em sticks in his crop to spile his
song. He'd abeout as soon have rye as wheat for dinner ;
and he's willin' to sing the same hymns his forefathers did,
way back to Noah's ark, and to larii 'em to his children.
I wish more of us had his sense, or his religion, or his
instinct, if that's what you'd ruther call it. I think
t'would pass for either on 'em pooty well."
And Uncle True set up a stick on end, and sent the
halves flying in different directions with one swing of his
axe, by way of climax to his speech.
" Still," said I, after a moment, " a bird's life is not
quite like a human life. The latter has so many more outs
and ins, responsibilities and duties, and takes so many un-
expected shapes, and has to be looked at from so many dif-
ferent points of view."
" Um ! " said Uncle True. " You see that little cloud
up yonder. What does it look like to you, now ? "
" A little like a dipper."
" I was thinkin' t'was suthin' like a shovel. Wall, now
the wind has jammed in the handle, and puffed out the
body, what is't like ? "
" Like a shield."
" I was agoin' to say the ace of spades. But it don't
matter what shape it takes, nor what it looks like to you
nor me, so long as it keeps like its Lord about the
Father's business. Which I take to be for a cloud to
gather up all the damp it finds floatin' around loose, and to
go where it's sent, never doubtin' that it's the Lord that
blows it, and not a senseless wind (for the wind's the breath
of His mouth !) ; and then, to drop down wherever lie wants
it to, and refresh the earth."
I went thoughtfully into the house. I suspect it was
greatly due to Uncle True that I found Bona there in my
closet, " the door being shut."
SIIILOH. 307
Not that Mala was absent. The twain discoursed with
me, at some length ; but I have given so faithful a report
of the circumstances which formed the text of their dis-
course, that its tenor is easily divined. And I confess that
I am in haste to have done with the subject. Turn it
which way I will, I find no comfort in it : it leaves me
with a heavy weight of self-dissatisfaction, and (as a nat-
ural consequence) of dissatisfaction with everybody else.
XXIX.
AN AFTERNOON AT THE SEWING SOCIETY.
HAVE been thinking, Francesca, how oddly
Life often leads us to the very point we meant
to shun. He who enters upon any path, aiming
at whatever goal, foresees little of the way by
which it will lead him. I did not imagine that
O
la grande passion would get into, this sober
chronicle ; to say truth, I had a set purpose of
keeping it out. Yet there it is, in spite of me.
And its right to its place is all the more indefeasible, doubt-
less, for the reason that I cannot now discover (and never
may, this side of the veil) what is its special business there.
In real life, events do not arrange themselves with the unity,
the continuity, the steadily unfolding plot, of the critic's
pet novel. Half the scenes and characters with which our
days are filled might be spared, we are wont to think, with-
out affecting the result. Possibly they might, if God's
purpose in them were the bringing about of certain marked
events, rather than the training of immortal spirits. The
good or evil work they do, in tempting, restraining, devel-
oping, and disciplining us, is none the less real that it often
passes for a void in our experience. "
And yet, it would seem that we ought to recognize God's
hand even more certainly in these scattered, inconsequential
events starting up in our path unexpected and undesired
than in those which are the more legitimate offspring of
SIIILOII. 309
our own efforts, and work harmoniously into our plans.
The eye of faith, methinks, studying them carefully, would
catch a hint here, a clue there, to show that His pui*pose
was shut within, if it did not shine through, them ; and
would be made plain to our sight, and beautiful and just to
our comprehension, in the great Day of Revealing.
To be frank, however, I made my visit to Bryer Farm
the subject of no such study, to no such comfortable end.
Its only present fruits were mortification and regret. And
on the morrow I woke as from a long, involved, oppressive
dream. The events and personages that had stood out in
such bold relief from the surface of the two preceding days,
now assumed so vision-like a consistency as to seem un-
deserving of serious consideration. Most gladly I turned
my back on them. Life settled to its usual flow, and seemed
not more monotonous than was morally wholesome.
IH the afternoon the Sewing Society had its weekly meet-
ing. To my surprise, I found Came Thome there. The
surprise was, by no means, a pleasurable one. It showed
that my late adventure was not all a dream ; and it afforded
fresh evidence of Mrs. Thome's determined and pertinacious
character. She would leave no channel untried by which
her daughter might find a way into my affections, or, at
least, into my interests. Yet Carrie herself was so plainly
guiltless of any ulterior design that it was impossible to be
unkind to her, even with the vision of her mother looming
in the background. She brightened up at sight of me as if
I had been the sunshine of her existence, and immediately
came to put herself under my orders. She seemed to have
come hither with the single object of keeping near me and
constituting herself my slave ; led by that simple, enthusi-
astic admiration, akin to worship, arid beautiful because so
disinterested, which a young girl often cherishes for a wo-
man a little older than herself.
In response to her entreaty that she might be made of
use, I led her to the work-table. " Take your choice of
310 SHILOH.
patchwork and plain-sewing ; or, if you have any gift or
grace at fancy-work, set yourself about some ' airy nothing '
or other, for Mrs. Danforth's fair."
" Mrs. Danforth's fair ! " repeated that lady, suddenly
flashing all her diamonds before my eyes, " I should just
like to know when that name was given, and who stood
sponsor ! "
" Impossible to tell. It is like a hundred other things
current in the community, everywhere received, and no-
where acknowledged. Easier to find the source of the Nile
than theirs. Never mind ; the name fits, does it not ? "
" Fits like a duck's egg in a hen's nest ! "
" The simile does you credit. For, if the idea of the fail-
did not actually originate with you, you have so kindly
adopted it, and kept it warm, that I really think no one is
so fairly entitled to the honor of its paternity."
" All right ! " replied she, good-humoredly. " It can
pass for ' Mrs. Danforth's fair ' till it brings a hundred dol-
lars, or two, into the treasury ; then, see how quick it will
become the ' child of the regiment,' that is to say, of the
Society ! "
" Likely enough," I rejoined, laughing. " Only, Mrs.
Danforth, I promise you that you shall wear your honors
undivided, so far as I am concerned." And I attempted to
move on.
" Not so fast ! " she exclaimed, catching me by the arm.
" There is a twang in your voice that does not escape my
observation. Have you anything against my fair ? "
m " No, since it is not mine."
" Well, if it were yours."
" The supposition is not to be entertained, for a mo-
ment."
" Why not ? " she urged.
" Because Miss Essie is waiting for me to help her about
marking that quilt."
She gave me a look of keen scrutiny. " There is more
SHILOH. 311
than that in the way ; I see it in your eye. Come ! out
with it ! "
I drew her aside. " Mrs. Danforth, if you will insist
upon making me say what you will not like to hear ; at
least, let me say it where it will not do you a mischief.
Since a fair has been decided upon, by vote of the Society ;
I am not disposed, by so much as a word or a look, to lay
a straw in its way. I will even do what I can for it, in the
way of preparation ; I hope never to be classed among
those who cannot engage in any work, or forward any end,
unless they are allowed to do it just in their own way.
Still, if the truth must be told, it is not a work that com-
mends itself very strongly to my sympathies, and not at all
to my better judgment. Do not ask me, therefore, to take
any active part in its management. I cannot attempt to
persuade people that they are giving liberally to God and
His Church, when they are only spending money, more or
less foolishly, upon their own pleasure. Neither can I
convince myself that I am doing God service by selling
' chances ' a softer name for lottery tickets."
Mrs. Danforth shrugged her shoulders. " The motive
makes the deed," said she.
" Why not the deed the motive, as well ? Easy to fit a
bad deed with a good motive."
" Murder, for instance ! " she returned, with the air of
having uttered a poser.
" Certainly. It puts a good man beyond the reach of
the sorrows and vicissitudes of earth."
"How, if it's a bad one?"
" It prevents him from adding to the catalogue of his
sins, and so increasing his condemnation."
" Goodness gracious ! What have you to say for rob-
bery?" '
" The robbed has an opportunity to exercise the virtues
of patience, forbearance, and self-denial. The robber in-
tends to do good with his money, to found a hospital or
build-*-or remodel a church."
312 siiiLoii.
Mrs. Danforth raised her hands and her eyebrows.
" Two birds and one stone ! Only I am in doubt whether
I am the stone or one of the birds ! But what is the use of
taking it so seriously ? I do not believe that ever a young
man was made a gambler by buying a chance in a pin-
cushion. And people will spend money foolishly, anyhow ;
they scour the whole earth for an opportunity to do it ;
why not give them one where the money will be converted
to some good purpose ? "
" That is to say, why should not the Church make
money out of the vices of the world ? "
" How you do put things ! If the world won't give to
the Church dii'ectly, it must be made to do it indirectly,
no thanks to it, of course ! but the Church gets the money
all the same, and does good with it."
" Perhaps so. Still, I incline to the opinion that Christ
expects His people, by their liberality and self-denial, to
support His Church ; and not the World, either directly or
indirectly. To be sure, they need not decline the latter's
contributions ; but neither must they descend to worldly
methods of securing them. They should prefer to make up
any deficiency by greater love, faith, perseverance, and
self-sacrifice, on their own part."
"Well, is not that just what we are doing?" exclaimed
Mrs. Danforth, triumphantly. " Some of us, certainly, are
working hard enough, and self-sacrificingly enough, to de-
serve some little credit for labors of love. Many cannot
give money, but they gladly give work where it brings
money. You would think it a righteous act if they put
their work in a fancy store for sale, and gave the pro-*
ceeds to the Church, why not, then, in a fair ? "
" Such arguments have convinced many, Mrs. Danforth,
and I respect their conviction, but I do not find them
quite satisfactory to my own mind. If fairs were conduct-
ed in the sober manner, and on the equitable principles of a
sale, if they were disconnected with every unlawful or
SHILOH. 313
doubtful practice, tending to confuse the ideas of right and
wrong in those who take part in them, above all, if they
were unattended with the putting forward of young girls,
as saleswomen, in a manner from which every instinct of
delicacy should revolt ; and which, moreover, can scarcely
fail to give them a disrelish for quieter, safer, more prayer-
ful methods of work, my objections might cease. But, in
those very things, I suspect, lies the secret of the fair's suc-
cess, and of the readiness of many to engage in it. With-
out them, it would be but an indifferent mode of raising
money. But why waste more words ? both our minds are
made up. Besides, it would take the whole afternoon to
discuss the subject, in all its bearings. Had we not better
leave it where it is at least, until you get this present fair
off your hands ? "
"With all my heart. Only, if those are your senti-
ments, I am obliged to you for your consideration in declin-
ing to proclaim them on the housetops. A division in the
camp, just now, would be a disaster, indeed ! But you
shall not always escape me so easily. Some day, when dis-
cussion is safe, I will corner you and convert you to
fairs ! "
" If you can ! " returned I, coolly.
Toward the close of the afternoon, Mr. Taylor appeared.
Having made the tour of the room, and said a pleasant
word to each of the workers, he came to my corner. " I
congratulate you, Miss Frost, upon an enlarged prospect of
usefulness."
I looked at him inquiringly.
"At last, I have succeeded in scraping together a Sun-
day School class for you."
" Indeed ! I was not aware that you had any such task
in hand. I suppose you must be thanked."
" As you please. Perhaps you think it should have
been done sooner. But the old teachers had the first claim,
I thought. The old teachers and the old scholars naturally
14
tJ14 SIIILOH.
went together. And new scholars are not always to be
had for the asking, I find. However, by the opportune
arrival of two, and by a judicious weeding of the old, I
have been able to collect a class of five for you to begin
with, next Sunday."
" Is there no one else who w r ould like it ? "
He looked surprised and disappointed. " Am I to un-
derstand that you would not like it ? "
" Not quite so bad as that. Only, I should like permis-
sion to do better if I'can. I have a theory that the best
class for a teacher who really means work, and loves it, is
the one that she gathers for herself, from the wayside, by her
own personal magnetism of smile, voice, touch. No other
will interest her so deeply, task her resources so thoroughly,
or reward her labors so abundantly. For 'some time, I have
had it in my mind to gather such a class from the waste
places of Shiloh. I take shame to myself that I have not
set about it sooner. But I will commence at once, if you
will give me permission."
" Not only that, but my heartiest thanks," said Mr.
Taylor, shaking my hand warmly. "I wish there were
more of your mind. Half my burden would roll off my
back. But have you had any experience of this sort of
work?"
" Yes, sir, a little. I once taught in a Sunday School in
one of the worst districts of New York. Every new teacher
was sent into the streets, literally to pick- up his or her
class out of the gutter. Some of the matei'ial thus brought
in was as rough and gnarled and heterogeneous as could be
imagined ; and it was occasionally necessary to call in the
police to keep chaos from coming again."
" I wonder," observed Aunt Vin, without the smallest
intention of satirizing the civil force, "that some of the
' light-fingered sentry' didn't pick your pockets."
"They did. But new and suspicious comers were
searched at the door, before their exit, if anything was
SHILOH. 315
missing. And a few Sundays generally smoothed down
the roughest of them, in a manner to seem little short of
miraculous. It gave one new confidence both in God and
human nature."
" But, Miss Frost, isn't it rather like taking the clergy-
man's own work right out of his hands, to go round hunt-
ing up children for the Sunday School, in a regular parish ? "
" I claim the right to answer that question," said Mr.
Taylor, quickly. " No, Mrs. Seber, most emphatically, no !
A clergyman would need a hundred hands, and as many
heads, to do all of such work that cries out to be done.
Moreover, a layman or a laywoman can often do it better
than he. These wild children are apt to be afraid of him ;
they scatter at his approach like so many blackbirds. But
let some pleasant-faced, soft-voiced lady stop and speak to
them in the street, tell them a story, and promise them a
picture-book, a cake, a penny, whatever tempts them most
(I hold that nearly any bribe is lawful, at the outset),
if they will come to her class next Sunday, and ten to
one she gets them. Their way is thus made clear to
them. No strange teacher to be encountered, they have
felt the touch of the hand that is to lead them and feed
them, and are sure that they like it. Of course they
"will not all follow any one man or woman; one will be
taken by one face, another by another, this will yield
to one inducement, that to a different one, but I believe
that all might be brought in, if there were only scouts
enough out after them. The child's heart being won, the
parents are, of coui'se, visited and asked to consent ; some-
thing about their circumstances and way '-of thinking is
learned and reported to the clergyman; and his way is
made straight for him to visit them and do them good.
As straight, that is, as any way can be, in these crooked
paths of earth. If laymen only felt their duty in this
matter ! "
"But everybody hasn't the time for such business,"
316 SHILOH.
objected Mrs. Burcham. " Now, I like a class in the Sun-
day School, I have always had one, but, good land ! I
shouldn't have, if I had to go round and hunt it up in that
way ! "
" For such teachers," said I, " there are the ready-made
classes. That reminds me, Mr. Taylor, that you have one,
awaiting a teacher. Let me recommend Miss Thorne."
Carrie blushed, and at first, declined. But she finally
accepted. And I fell straightway into a brown study of
the ramifications and results of influence. Extricating my-
self, with an effort, I went in search of Mrs. Danforth, and
drew her aside. " I believe your children are not in the
Sunday School. May I have them as the nucleus of a
class ? "
She held up her hands in amazement. " Well ! that is
what I should call by its right name, if I were not pre-
vented by a due regard for decorum ! What do you mean ?
Did I not hear you say, awhile ago, that you were going
out into the highways and byways, to 1 rake in the offscour-
ings of the earth ? and you begin with me ? Compliment-
ary, to say the least of it ! "
"Mrs. Danforth, you quite mistake the matter. In this
favored corner of the earth there are no 'offscourings.'
Shiloh recognizes only different degrees of prosperity,
some of them tolerably low down in the scale ! He Avho is
lowest, balances matters by increased independence and
sensitiveness. If it were whispered about that Miss Frost
designed to make up a class from the children of 'poor
'folks,' not a child would be permitted to enter it. None
of us are poor'folks, please to understand, except when we
are asked to give something to support the Church, and
then, most of us are ! But we are not to be confounded
with paupers ! Self-respect is the last thing that dies in a
genuine Yankee. But, you see, if Mrs. Danforth's Effie and
Gordon are in my class, not a word can be said. Let me
have them, just for a little while, please ! I will take good
SHILOH. 317
care that they receive no harm; and their presence and
influence will do much to insure the success 'of my experi-
ment. Pray consent ! " .
Mrs. Danforth is the incarnation of good-nature. Des-
pite her ingrained pride, and her occasional hauteur^ no
woman of my acquaintance finds it so hard to say " no " to
a direct appeal for help. She looked half-amazed, half-
pi*ovoked, but amusement prevailed at last. Bursting into
a loud laugh, she said, with a most expressive outward
gesture of her jewelled hands,
" Take them ! take all ! But don't send them home to
me with vermin outside their heads, nor Yankee phrases
inside them, or the compact does not hold good a moment
longer. But what would Mark Danforth say if he knew I
had let his children go into a Ragged Class ! Shouldn't I
get ' Hail Columbia,' and every other tune that would send!
a body quickly to the right-about-face ! "
XXX.
GATHERING IK.
}EXT morning, I began the real work of
gathering in. The first step was easy-: it
took me to a house where I had twice
watched, and where Death had prepared the
way for me. The sad-faced widow promised
me her little Jamie without a dissenting word.
Only, she feared that his wardrobe was not all
that could be desired. A suggestion that its
deficiencies might be supplied did not brighten her face.
I stopped next before a rough, weather-browned house,
in the midst of a potato field ; above Avhose low roof a
huge stone chimney rose like a Avatch-toAver. Here, I had
often noticed, in passing, two- or three neglected looking
children playing around the bar-place which served in lieu
of gate. The premises seemed to be. deserted, now ; never-
theless, I knocked at the door, and, getting no answei*,
lifted the latch. It admitted me into a small, dingy
kitchen. A sturdy boy sat on the hearth, amusing himself
by sifting ashes through his fingers into his "hat ; near the
window was a cradle with a sleeping babe in it ; and by
its side sat a pale, quiet, little girl, rocking it with a pa-
tient foot and face, as if she had come unusually early to a
comprehension of what was to be her chief business in life.
Both stared at me.
" Where is your mother ? " I asked.
SHILOH. 319
" She's gone a-washin'," said the girl.
4 " And left you to take care of baby and brother ? "
The small hero in the ashes resented the implication.
" She takes care o' baby, but she don't tetch me, I
can tell ye ! I takes care o' myself," with immense
dignity.
" And he loill get inter the ashes," added the small
woman. " Though mother said he mustn't, and she'll give
it to him, when she gets home." The prediction being ut-
tered, not with a righteous exultation over merited punish-
ment, but in the sad tone of a prophet heart-heavy with
his own foresight.
"Did you ever hear the story of Cinderella?" I in-
quired.
Libby shook her head ; Bob vouchsafed no answer.
" If you will come here," said I, addressing the latter,
" I will tell it to you."
He looked tempted, but doubtful. He was balancing
the attractions of stories and mischief. I settled the mat-
ter by lifting him quietly by the collar, giving him a little
shake, to clear him of the ashes, and setting him down on
the other side of me, remote from the hearth. He put his
finger into his mouth, and looked at me, speculatively.
He was uncertain whether to take offence or not. With-
out giving him time to decide, I commenced the story of
Cinderella with variations. The heroine's worst trial was
a boy-brother, ingenious in methods of torment, and with
a perverse inclination for ashes. The fairy godmother gave
him wonderful gifts ; but, precisely at the wrong moment
they turned to ashes in his hands, or his mouth. The de-
tails were harroAving, and the finale was made to suit this
new version. When I finished, the eyes of my audience
were like saucers.
Then, without more pause than was necessary to discon-
nect the two, I told the story of Samuel. It was not re-
ceived with the breathless, wide-eyed interest awakened by
320 si-iiLoii.
the other ; but, having won the ear of my audience with
that, it listened quietly and soberly to this.
" Tell me another," commanded my male auditor, when
I stopped.
" Not this morning. But if you will come to me, in
the church, next Sunday noon you and Libby I will tell
you another, with pleasure."
His face fell.
" And I should not wonder if it would be about the
tigers and crocodiles in Africa, that eat up women and
children," I went on.
He looked eager. " Shan't I have ter larn lessons ? "
" Not unless you choose."
" Then I'll come," pronounced he, decidedly.
" I'm afraid mother won't let us come," said the little
woman, sorrowfully.
Not to burden my narrative with too many details, I
left a note for the mother, begging her to let the children
come to me ; and departed, in the firm conviction that the
young rascal who stood kicking his heels together on the
doorstep would give her no peace until he had worried a
consent out of her. Which proved to be well-founded.
My next visit was to a red-haired vii'ago, who had just
set her foot into the middle of a pie sent her by a kind
neighbor, as the readiest way of resenting the implica-
tion that she needed charity ; while the bearer stood by,
crimson with mortification and discomfiture. She lost no
time in giving me to understand that " stuck-up city folks,"
meddling with what was " none o' their business," need not
look for much better treatment at her hands. Neverthe-
less, by dint of a few good-humored, but sharp retorts,
which seemed greatly to her taste, I got her first to listen
to me, then to ask a question or two, and finally, to say,
grumpily ;
" If Mr. Taylor wants my younguns in his Sunday
School, he'd better come arter 'em."
SHILOH. 321
" I think he has called," replied I. " He did not find
you at home."
" 'Twouldn't hurt him to come again, would it ? "
" Doubtless he will come again, in due time. You
must recollect that he has been in Shiloh only a few
weeks."
" Who's agoin' ter be in yer class ? "
" I have but three promised positively Jimmy Lang "
(her lip curled), " and Mrs. Danforth's two children."
" Mis' Danforth ! that's the city woman down on Hope
Plain ; ain't it ? "
" The same."
" Did ye ask her if she was willin' ter hev' her young-
uns go with mine ? "
" Did I ask you if you were willing that yours should
go with hers ? "
" Um ! Be they all go'n' ter set in the same seat ? "
" Certainly, if the seat will hold them."
" What's yer idee in gittin' up sech a class ? "
" To keep myself out of mischief on Sundays."
Her stern features relaxed into a smile. " I guess ye'll
make it out, if they're all- like my Jim an' Bess. Ye'll
hev' yer hands full, with them two younguns, an' no mis-
take ; they're as full of the Old Nick as an egg is of meat.
If ye think ye kin git any on't out on 'em, ye kin hev' 'em,
an' welcome."
" Thank you ; I will try. Please give me their names
in full." And I wrote them down with great satisfac-
tion.
Shiftlessness reigned absolute in the dwelling . which I
visited next. It creaked in the crippled gate (swinging
painfully on one hinge), it looked out of the patched, dingy
windows, it greeted me in the* pots and pails round the
doorstep, it had made the kitchen its headquarters, and it
smiled me a good-natured welcome from the mistress' face.
She was a woman athirst for knowledge. Before I had
14*
322 SHILOH.
fully explained the object of my visit, she interrupted me
with,
" Ye're from York, ain't ye ? "
" I am."
"Bornthar?"
" No, not in the city."
" Lived thai- long ? "
" Four or five years."
" Didn't ye like the place ? "
" I did not dislike it."
" What'd ye leave for, then ? "
" On account' of my health."
" What ails ye ? "
And so on, for full three quarters of an hour, yet in a
manner quite free from any taint of impertinence. By the
end of which time, I had given her all pressingly needful
information relative to my origin, education, friends, age,
means of support, the cost of my garments, and a hundred
appendant matters of interest. In requital, she graciously
allowed me to write down as my scholar a certain white-
haired, pug-nosed girl, Mehitabel Baker by name ; and,
to all appearance, a second edition of the mother.
But all this was scarcely more than preliminary skir-
mishing. The true tug of war was to come, I imagined, at
Mr. Warren's. I wanted to capture Jack for my class, and
I had reason to know that he was made of material as slip-
pery as his father's was unmalleable. To win the adhesion
of the one and the consent of the other, would be no easy
task. At sight of the little brown house, I gathered to-
gether my forces, and reviewed my weapons, as ior a bat-
tle. Nor did I forget to invoke higher aid. God has put
into the hands of His children two powerful agencies, labor
and prayer. The first we use moderately, the other we are
prone to neglect. Yet it is, I believe, the mightier of the
twain. Used in conjunction with the other not flown to
as a last and only resource, when that has failed it would
SHILOH 323
be powerful, I think, for all things. The two were meant
to go together, as the helve with the hatchet. Divorcing
them, no one has a right to complain that either is ineffi-
cient.
During all these weeks, I have not lost sight of the
"Warrens, though my intercourse with them has been
limited to a few moments' chat at the door, or the gate, in
passing ; and there has been no occasion for bringing them
into these chronicles. After Maggie's death, the small
cares and petty business of life flowed in and tilled up the
vacant place, to outward appearance. A deeper shade of
gravity on the mother's face ; a look of fixed abstraction,
easily kindled into irritation, upon the father's ; these were
the only ripples on the surface of Life's sea, to show where
a soul had gone down. Neither of them inclined to talk of
her much ; the one had been so long unused to sympathy
as to have lost the impxilse to seek it, the other shrank from
it as fi-om friction on a sore. Yet the voices of both soft-
ened to me, I fancied, as to none other ; and it needed no
words to show that they never saw me without a memory
of their dead daughter in my arms.
I found Mr. Warren, as was his most frequent wont,
smoking a clay pipe at the one point of ingress to the
house, namely, the kitchen door. He moved aside for me
to enter, but remarked, as he did so, that there was " no
one within. Mrs. Warren was washing, out under the
woodshed. Could he do anything for me ? "
" Truly you can," said I, seating myself on the door-
step. " I came expressly to ask a favor of you."
" Am I to grant it ' unsought, unseen,' as the children
say ? " asked he, good humoredly.
" I I well, yes."
He gave me a keen look, " That moment of hesitation
was fatal to you, n said he. " To a frank, spontaneous ' yes,'
I would have given a blind consent, but not to cool calcu-
lation. Since you take time to consider, so must L"
324: SHILOH.
" It does not matter," said I, trying not to show my
disconcertion. " I only came to beg Jack of you for my
Sunday School class. I am naturally desirous that it should
reach a respectable number, the more, that I have under-
taken to gather it on my own responsibility, unprompted
and unhelped."
"You choose your phrases well," returned he, with a
cynical smile. " To an old sinner like me, the vice of am-
bition, and the sturdy, everyday virtue of independence,
are better motives to allege than a simple wish to do good."
I was provoked into a satisfactory directness. " What
need to bring my motives into the matter, unless they
were inimical to you or Jack, which you well know they
are not? The question simply is, whether as a personal
favor, or out of regard for nu, or from indifference, or for
any other reason, good or bad, secret or acknowledged
you will let me have Jack ? "
" Miss Frost, woujd you not object to send your son to
be 'taught what you did not believe ? "
" Not unless I had something better to teach him that
I did believe."
" What right have you to assume that I have not ? "
" What have you taught him, Mr. Warren ? "
He made a kind of grimace. " Little enough, to be sure.
But he is too young yet to know about these matters. He
cannot understand either the dogmas of religion t or the
systems of philosophy."
" Of philosophy, I grant you. He may be a good deal
older without being much more apt ! But of religion, yes.
Those ideas of a God, a Hereafter, Human Responsibility,
Reward and Punishment, an Atonement, etc., whereat
gray-headed sages and philosophers so stick and bungle,
are always comprehensible enough to a child. I never
knew the dullest to profess any difficulty in understanding,
nor hesitancy in receiving, them. Indeed, most children
catch at them readily, if there is opportunity, even when
siiiLon. 325
there is no direct effort to inculcate them. If jou are wil-
ling to make the experiment, we will find out, on the
spot, whether Jack has them; or whether, having them
not, he makes any difficulty of understanding and accept-
ing them."
Mr. "Warren puffed away in silence for some moments,
then he uplifted a stern call of " Jack ! " It found that re-
markable urchin in some remote corner of the premises,
and brought him hither, at breathless speed, with mixed
feelings of awe and curiosity. There was a tone in his
father's voice, to which he was unaccustomed; and he
doubted whether it boded him good or evil.
Not to linger on this part of my story, a few questions
served to show that Jack, being gifted with somewhat un-
usual powers of memory and observation, had a tolerably
correct notion of the Christian scheme, derived from vari-
ous chance sources of information. He knew who made
him and all things, believed that God saw him at all
times, and was especially conscious of His clear-seeing eye
upon him when he had been doing wrong, and afraid of
His wrath, his idea of the Heavenly Father being plainly,
somewhat colored by his experience of an earthly one.
Also, knew the main incidents of the life of Christ and the
object of it, had read about Him in the Testament at
school. On being asked if he believed the Testament,
averred that he did ; though a similar inquiry with refer-
ence to Mother Goose and other stories, elicited only a dis-
dainful curl of the lip. Furthermore, under considerable
pressure, acknowledged that he expected to go to hell, if
he died just as he was, knew he was a bad boy, but
couldn't seem to get to be any better, though he sometimes
tried. And having thus made his Confession of Faith,
Jack was dismissed to his work, or play, or mischief, to
wonder within himself, doubtless, what it all meant.
Mr. Warren smoked on silently, seeming to be the prey
of bitter and corroding thought. After a little, as he said
326 SHILOII.
nothing, I remarked, drily, that it appeared I had not much
to teach Jack, in the way of Christian doctrine. The most
I could do was to show him how to- apply his knowledge to
his own heart and life, by faith, so that lie might continue
his struggle to be a better boy more successfully. And I
inquired, furthermore, with somewhat sarcastic emphasis,
if he (Mr. Warren) had any new truths to impart to him,
likely to afford him more efficient assistance in the good
work, than those old ones, which had so imperceptibly
made their way into his understanding ?
" Pshaw ! " said Mr. Warren, impatiently. " Take him,
in Heaven's name, and do what you like with him ! Since
he cannot come to the study of these subjects with an un-
prejudiced mind, as I had hoped, why, let him leai'n what
he can of one side before he takes up the other. It will
not make much difference in the long run. I read the
Testament, too, when I was a boy but it did not pre-
vent me from turning out what you, I suppose, would call
an infidel."
" Or an unbeliever," said I, composedly. " What rea-
son have I to call you anything else ? In all our acquaint-
ance, you have never shown me anything but unbelief.
Of your creed, if you have one, I know nothing."
He reflected a moment, then he burst out with, " I do
not believe in the inspiration of the Bible."
I could not repress a smile. " There it is ! " said I,
" you see you know not how to say anything but ' I do not
believe.' Now, creed comes from credo, I believe. The
Mohammedan has one, so have the Chinese and the Afri-
can. It is only philosophers and sceptics, lost and bewil-
dered amid the mazes of their own imaginations, or dwarfed
to the stature of their own dust-clogged reason, that have
to content themselves with negations."
He looked a little piqued. " Wait a moment ; I have,
at least, one article of belief, if that constitutes a creed.
I believe in a God or a Somebody, or Something, which
SHILOH. 327
may as well be called by that name as- any who made the
universe, and governs it."
" Dp you also tremble ? " asked I, audaciously. Not
in truth, that I risked anything. I knew well that, the
sharper the repartee in which I indulged with Mr. "Warren,
the better he liked it.
" No, I don't," said he, with a grim smile. " And,
therefore, it is fair to conclude that I am not what you so
politely insinuate."
" I gladly accept the conclusion. As for your creed, it
is good, so far as it goes. Which is about as far, I take it, as
the most uncultivated savage would go, before he tried to
embody this Deity in, or to represent Him by, an image of
wood or stone, the work of his own or some other hands.
Go on ; let me see how you do that. Do you accept the
pantheism of Spinoza, or the materialism of Hume ? "
" Which would you recommend ? " asked he, coolly, be-
tween two puffs of his pipe.
" Hume, by all means." I replied, rising. " For it is
most fit that a man who begins by getting rid of the Gos-
pel, a Saviour, and all that the renewed heart holds most
dear, should end by getting rid of himself and everybody
else as does that most subtle and abstruse philosopher !
For, having proved to his own satisfaction ! that he has
no identity apart from the perceptions conveyed to him, he
goes on to say that if any one has a different notion of him-
self, he cannot longer argue with him ! See to what absurd-
ities men are reduced, who reject the revelation of God,
and the guidance of the Holy Spirit ! "
And I turned to go.
" Sit a moment longer," urged Mr. Warren, " I want to
ask you a question, or two."
" To what purpose ? " said I, still standing. " It will be
the old story endless discussion and no result. Besides,
I do not care to treat serious matters any longer in this
light way."
328 SIIILOH.
" I won't discuss," returned he, " I will only question-
And you may be as serious as you like."
I sat down reluctantly.
" Seriously, now and honestly Miss Frost, do you
believe the Bible, every word of it ? "
" Yes, I do."
MR. W. And yet, you are, I take it, a pretty well edu-
cated woman ; as much so as if you had been through
college ?
I. I cannot say as to that, I only know that, in most
respects, my father gave me the same education that he
would have given a son.
ME. "VV. And you have traveled in Europe ?
I. Yes, and elsewhere. But to what end this cate-
chism ?
ME. W. I am coming to it. I can understand how these
ignoramuses around us can believe in the Bible's absurdities
and impossibilities ; but it passes my comprehension how a
thoroughly trained and informed mind can do it.
I. Lord Bacon was a profounder thinker than Voltaire.
And Bishop Butler was a more learned man than Tom
Paine.
ME. W. Have you read the " Age of Reason " ?
I. Yes, my father would have me read it, under his
supervision.
ME. W. And what do you think of it ?
I. I think it as shallow a work as was ever palmed off
oh a credulous public for a product of profound thought.
ME. W. (raising his eyebrows). A sweeping assertion.
I. Not at all. The book is nowhere profound. You
can read it all through, from title-page to finis, at one sit-
ting, and not once need to pause and reflect ; nor have a
worse headache at the end than a shilling novel would
give you.
ME. W. So you classify books, as some do wines, by the
amount of headache in them !
SHILOH, 329
I. No, not quite. But I think it might not be amiss to
rate them according to the amount of heartache they cure.
I doubt if the " Age of Reason " ever cured any ! Whereas,
the Bible has cured more heartache, and cured it more
thoroughly, than any other book known. Notwithstanding
its difficulties and obscurities what you are pleased to call
its absurdities and impossibilities, the fact remains that,
for hundreds of years, every kind of human, misery has
gone to it, as to a well of consolation, and found what it
sought. Is there nothing in this fact, oh, contemptuous
scoffer at its claim to Divine inspiration ! to make you
pause and reconsider your dictum ? There are older books
than the gospels, why have they not equal power ? There
are works of stronger fascination as mere specimens of hu-
man genius, why have they not the same effect ?
Mn. W. (thoughtfully). Probably, because none of them
profess to answer so categorically those three great ques-
tions that continually haunt and perplex the human mind,
" Whence came we ? Why are we here ? " and " Whither
do we go ? " Most people prefer to take up with any ap-
parently authoritative answer than to have none at all.
I. Unwittingly, you have said more for the Bible than
you can say against it ! To admit that it is, after all, the
one answer to those questions which best satisfies the uni-
versal mind, the loftiest and the lowest alike, though
human wit and wisdom and genius have exhausted them-
selves in vainly trying to find out a better, is tantamount
to admitting that it is inspired. If of human origin, why
does no other work displace it ? Other books die, and are
forgotten. Early scepticism is well-nigh lost Celsus and
Julian are best known by the refutations of Origen and
Cyril. Early moralists are shelved in learned libraries.
Early historians are superseded by works embodying their
substance. But the Bible remains intact. Though a moun-
tainous mass of commentary, criticism, and discussion, has
been written upon and against it, nothing has ever sup-
330 8HILOH.
planted, nothing permanently injured it. Does this fact
also go for nothing, oh, bold contemner of its truths ! that,
during all the long march of the ages, with the help of
their accumulated light, knowledge, experience, and skill,
human labor and human genius have failed to prbducc any
work which so embodies its gist, incorporates its wisdom,
exhausts its meaning, or weakens its influence, as to super-
sede it ? The existence and the power of the Bible in the
world are stubborn facts for sceptics. It has been truly
said that it is a standing miracle.
MR. W. Are not some of your remarks equally applica-
ble to Homer and Virgil ?
I. Who reads them, beyond a certain educated class ?
Who cares for them, in translations ? Will the time ever
come, think you, when a translation of them will be found
in every house, and the mass of mankind go to it for com-
fort and guidance in every sort of trial, bereavement, doubt,
difficulty ?
MR. W. Well, perhaps not. But our talk has drifted
away from the point where it started, and which interested
me most the influence of education on Christianity.
There have been more leacned freethinkers than Tom Paine.
Is it not true, after all, that men of the acutest minds and
the profoundest learning have been opposed to Chris-
tianity ?
I. Certainly. But the argument, if it proves anything,
proves more for Christianity than against it. For, in the
first place, men of mightiest intellect and vastest erudition
have given it their loving adhesion and service ; and, in
the second, see how little the adverse learning, power, and
genius have availed to injure it ! I think God has allowed
some of the finest talent to waste itself in attacking it, just
to show the futility of the work. Do you remember Vol-
taire's boast that, though it took twelve men to establish
Christianity, he would show that it needed but one to over-
throw it? Yet Christianity is stronger to-day than when
SHILOH. * 331
he assailed it. Whereas, Voltaire is but little read, even
by his own countrymen. No writer enjoys so wide a repu-
tation upon hearsay. The great proportion of those who
adopt his views and use his arguments, never read a line of
his works. They take them at second-hand. Lucky for
them that they do ! To be obliged to wade through some
five or six thousantl closely printed pages, wherein attacks
on Christianity are mixed up with all sorts of subjects, to
say nothing of gross indecency, ill-timed buffoonery, vehe-
ment denunciation, unscrupulous ridicule, one-sided, dis-
torted, inaccurate statements, and unwarrantable conclu-
sions, would go far to dampen the ardor of the devoutest
disciple, if it did not make him sick of the very name of
Voltaire ! The more, that he would find so little positive
belief, to balance unbelief. He would find Voltaire's creed
slipping through his fingers, as it seems continually to have
been doing through his own. For his later works show a
marked deviation from his earlier opinions; arguments
which he characterizes as sophisms at one point of his life
prevail with him, at another ; objections which he states
and answers here, overcome him there ; his mind oscillates
perplexingly between two opinions ; and the whole makes
nothing quite so clear as that very little was quite clear to
himself. In all his works, there is a most striking contrast
between the arrogancy of his processes of reasoning, and the
humility, not to say meanness, of the results. One is con-
tinually amazed that he should have trusted so implicitly
to human reason, if it could only lead him to such timid,
qualified, and sombre conclusions.
MK. W. (moodily). I cannot disprove your statements.
You have read more widely than I, even (bowing with
mock respect) of infidel writings. But it does not matter.
I pin my faith upon no man, nor school ; I judge for my-
self. I bring all things to the test of my own reason.
I. Does it tell you why and how an inanimate seed in
the earth springs up to life, and grows and bears fruit ?
332 ' SHILOH.
If not if you cannot discover the vital principle, nor
how it works why believe that the seed has life and brings
forth .fruit ? . Would it not be more reasonable to deny
both propositions, and plant no more seeds and eat no
more fruit ?
Mr. W. I don't see what you are driving at.
I. Your boasted reason cannot discdrn the vital princi-
ple of inspiration in the Bible, nor of supernatural power
in Christianity, though it lives and germinates and bears
fruit in countless human hearts. Deny that it exists, there-
fore, and refuse to yourself, certainly to others, if you can
its health-giving, life-giving sustenance.
MK. W. So does Mohammedism live and bear fruit.
I. True, for Mohammedism is a religion and a worship,
not a chill system of philosophy. It believes in God, and
does not wholly reject Christ. The Koran borrows much
that is good from the Bible. Its errors have their legiti-
mate fruit in the condition of Mohammedom to-day. Con-
trast it with Christian countries, if you would test the two
religions by their fruits.
MR. W. Ah ! I would like to read the Koran once !
I. Read something better, read the Bible ! Read care-
fully one of the gospels, or an epistle, and then read two or
three chapters of the " Age of Reason," and see if you do
not get a faint glimmering, at least, of the reason why one
lives indestructibly, while the other is on the high road to
oblivion.' Having done that, perhaps you will be willing to
try still another plan. Instead of puzzling yourself with
the mysteries, discrepancies, and obscurities of the Bible,
see what light it can throw upon the dark places of your
own nature, upon the follies, contradictions, and intricacies
of your heart and life. Though you may not be able to
understand and expound it, you will find that it very fully
understands and expounds you. Thereby you may get a
hint of the several offices of the Bible and the human mind:
the latter was not put into the world to explain and harmo-
SHILOH. 333
nize the former, but the former to explain and harmonize
the latter. Finally, if you still doubt the Divine origin of
the Scriptures ; try, for just one week, to live up to its sim-
ple, undoubted precepts. And if you find it even a harder
task to practice its plain parts than to comprehend its diffi-
cult ones, perhaps you will ask yourself the question how a
human mind ever happened to frame and enjoin a code of
morals so irksome to human nature, so opposed to the hu-
man will, and so impossible of perfect human attainment !
" And now," I concluded, " I must really go. Where
do you suppose I shall find Jack ? He has not yet been
asked if he will be my scholar."
"There will be no two words about that," said Mr. War-
ren, gruffly. " If I say he is to go, he goes."
" Nevertheless, I prefer to consult him. I want no un-
willing disciples."
Not to make a long story longer, I bribed Jack, unscru-
pulously. He had longings unutterable, I learned, after a
four-bladed knife. I did not hesitate to promise him the
best one procurable at Clay Corner, so soon as he could re-
peat to me, without error, the whole of the Catechism ; and
with the most unhesitating fluency, the Lord's Prayer, the
Creed, and the Ten Commandments.
XXXI.
THE STOLEN SKETCH.
3T more than a day or two after the expe-
dition recorded in my last letter, I made
one of a totally different character, in com-
pany with Ruth, Alice being away on a
visit. The day's programme comprehended :
first, a diligent gathering and pressing of
ferns, in the dense, dim. wood at the foot of
the glen, for use in winter decorations ; next,
the ascent of a neighboring hill, for the sake of the view
from its summit ; and, finally, a return up the glen to
the shady, rock-barricaded nook long ago described to
you, to which, last point Mrs. Divine promised to send
Leo, at noon, with a lunch-basket ; and where, moreover, we
purposed to spend as much of the afternoon as should seem
good to us, resting, dreaming, chatting, 'or reading aloud,
according to mood. Days thus spent out-of-doors, are
especially good for Ruth ; they are an important part of
my crusade against her home-keeping, sedentary habits.
Under their genial influences, the rose in her cheeks is
deepening fast, the light brightening in her eyes. Needless
to add that she grows more beautiful, day by day !
The 'first part of our programme had been faithfully car.
ried out, our books filled with ferns, the hill climbed and
the view enjoyed. We were now in the hollow, resting on
the basin's bank of luxuriant moss ; sometimes talking, but
oftener listening in dreamy silence to the fresh, clear voices
SHILOH. 335
of the foliage above and the water below. The hollow had
the essential charm of such a spot perfect solitude. We
might linger there for hours, unseen and undisturbed, shut
in by the interlacing boughs, the hoary rocks, the clear
basin on which their heavy shadow ever fell, 'and wherein
their forms were distinctly mirrored. In truth, so perfect
was the reflection, so faithful the reproduction of every
line, tint, and motion, that the basin seemed to hang be-
tween two forest solitudes, either of which might be taken
for the reflected image of the other. Stooping over the
water, we saw faces, too, bending forth from the green
foliage of that under world to meet our gaze, answering
to our smiles, our gravity, our gestures, moving their lips
to the sound of our words, and making us feel vague and
visionary by their very distinctness ; as if the truth and
vividness of their representation were so much abstracted
from our actuality. The notion made us gay, as became
shadows and unrealities, mirth being of so airy and eva-
nescent a quality as to associate readily with whatever is
illusive and unsubstantial ; while grief is heavy and opaque,
and must needs give an account of itself and justify its ex-
istence, before we give it leave to pass into our sympathies.
Ruth's eyes and cheeks were alight and aglow with
gayety and color, yet she was weary, too; the long walk
had been somewhat trying to her poor, little, crooked feet.
Seeing. this, I drew her head down on my lap, that she
might rest the easier, and began reading aloud Tennyson's
" Daydream " ; whose fanciful theme and easy-flowing meas-
ure were well, suited to the time, place and circumstance.
For, as the fairy-prince entered the spell-bound chamber, I
saw Ruth's eyelids droop slowly, and the long lashes rest
upon the fair cheek : the rippling water, the musical rhyme,
had lulled her to sleep. Nor could any " Sleeping Beauty "
of fairy-tale or poet's dream have been lovelier than she !
For some moments, I read on softly ; then, my thoughts
wandered, my voice died away, the book fell by my side,
336 SHILOH.
with one finger^ between ks leaves, external objects faded
from my sight, I had strayed as far into the Land of
Reverie, as Ruth into that of Dream.
Thus, a half-hour, or more, stole by. I was rous'ed by a
rustling tread in the open meadow, on the other side of the
stone fence ; in a moment Leo came over, basket in mouth,
and dropped, lightly enough, upon the soft moss. I raised
my hand with a warning gesture ; Ruth's slumber was still
so deep that I did not care to break it. The dog understood
and obeyed. He came noiselessly to my side, set down his
basket, and rubbed his head lightly against my shoulder,
by way of mute, yet cordial, greeting. He then surveyed
Ruth, for some moments, with a curious, grave intentness ;
as if he were wondering what sort of thing was this sleep
of mortals, which held them in such deathlike embrace.
Possibly, he contrasted it with the lighter slumbers of his
own race, broken by the softest tread, the faintest sound,
and, doubtless, greatly to the advantage of the latter.
Suddenly, he raised his head, dilated his nostrils, and
glanced suspiciously around. Then he ran quickly down
the brook's bank, alternately putting his nose to the ground
and lifting it in the air. I watched him idly, through the
intervening boughs. At a point a little below, where the
widening stream is crossed by stepping-stones, he seemed to
strike a trail : his manner became more assured ; he crossed
the brook swiftly, smelling at the stones as he went; and I
soon saw, by the waving of the ferns and bushes, that he
was coming up on the other side. Some moments elapsed,
and I was fast sinking into reverie again, when, suddenly,
there was a strange commotion behind the screen of foli-
age which topped the steep bank opposite me. Partly by
dint of straining my sight through the clustering leaves,
partly by means of suggestive sounds from behind them,
I made out that Leo had surprised some intruder upon
the scene : an acquaintance, however, it appeared, for the
dog was leaping and fawning upon him, with short, quick
SHILOH. 337
barks of unmistakable delight ; while the new-comer sought
to repulse him quietly, but in vain. At length a voice
exclaimed, in distinct, impatient, and not altogether unfa*
miliar tones :
" Down, Leo ! down, sir ! down ! "
Ruth opened her eyes dreamily; Leo's bark subsided
into a low whine.
The next moment the screening boughs opposite parted ;
in the opening appeared a young man's head and shoulders ;
on his face was an expression of mingled chagrin, amuse-
ment, and deprecation.
" Fairly caught in the act you see ! " said he, lifting- his
hat and bowing with a somewhat exaggerated humility.
" Trespassing and (ugly word !) stealing. The culprit
surrenders at discretion. He throws himself upon your
mercy, Miss Frost."
Ruth started up into a sitting posture, and gazed at
him with wide open eyes of amazement, still soft with the
haze of slumber. I saw him glance at her admiringly.
" Mercy ? " I repeated, dryly, " I doubt if my stock
on hand is equal to the demand. Take justice, instead; it
is the rarer article, Mr. Cambur."
" True," he rejoined, gravely. " If we could always get
perfect justice at the hands of our fellow-men, we should
not so often be obliged to ask for mercy. Well, I will try
the quality of yours ! I suppose I may come into eourt.
Criminals on trial do not usually stand outside, looking in
at the window ; though some of them, doubtless, would
not object to such a position ! You will take it as an evi-
dence of my guiltlessness of evil intent, I hope, that I volun-
tarily place myself completely in your power."
So saying the artist swung himself down the rock, by
the aid of a pendent bough, and sat down upon a huge,
outcropping tree-root at its base. The brook flowed and
rippled between us.
" There ! " said he, putting his hat on the ground be-
15
338 SHILOH.
side him, "that is the proper arrangement. This bank
serves for the criminal's box, that for the judge's bench. I
await your sentence, Miss Frost. I am curious to taste the
flavor of your justice."
I did not answer : my attention was fastened upon Leo.
He had followed the artist down the bank ; and, being for-
bidden by a second energetic " Down, Leo ! " to spring
upon him, he had cast himself at his feet, looking up at
him with great, piteous, imploring eyes, and giving vent to
his emotions by low, irrepressible sounds, mingled of bark,
whine, and howl, yet full of ecstatic joy. In short, he
seemed to have unexpectedly encountered the friend of his
heart, after a separation of months or years.
" I was not aware that Leo had the honor of your ac-
quaintance," I remarked, glancing significantly at the dog.
"I I, " the artist stammered and hesitated, drawing
his hand across his brow, " That is to say, dogs always take
to me, instinctively," he concluded, somewhat incoherently.
"I should think so," responded I, dryly, "if Leo's
present performance is the usual measure of their ' taking
to ! ' Do you always ' take to ' their names instinctively,
too?"
He reddened and bit his lip. "Leo? ah, yes, to be
sure ! " said he. " Well, you see, I once had a dog of that
name myself; and it seems to come to my lips spontane-
ously, whenever I speak to one of his kind. Odd that it
happens to be your dog's name, too ! "
" Very," returned I, with quiet irony. The explanation
was plausible enough ; but I was too well acquainted with
Leo's habitually reserved and dignified deportment toward
strangers, to believe, for one moment, that this was his first
meeting with Mr. Cambur. Still, if there were a mystery,
it was not my business to pry into it. The artist had a
right to the possession of his OAvn affairs ; the more indis-
putably, because there was something in his face and bear-
ing strongly indicative of inward integrity, and seeming to
SIIILOH. 339
be a sufficient guarantee that the ambiguity wherein he
chose to leave the present circumstance did not imply any-
thing wrong. Besides, Mrs. Danforth and her friend had
vouched, most emphatically, for his character and anteced-
ents. I took pity, therefore, upon his embarrassment at
Leo's persistent attention, so inevitably suggesting a pre-
vious acquaintance that he preferred to ignore, and made
an attempt to relieve it.
" Leo ! come here ! " said I. " Mr. Cambur can dispense
with your further attendance. Come to me, sir !"
To my extreme surprise, the dog only turned his head,
gave me a pathetic, pleading look, wagged his tail, and
resumed his adoring contemplation of Mr. Cambur.
That gentleman looked more annoyed than ever. " Go
to your mistress ! " he exclaimed, in a tone of impatient
command, accompanied by a gesture of dismissal ; but ad-
ding, with an immediate assumption of playfulness ; " No"
need to stand guard over me any longer, thou black consta-
ble ! I have given myself up to justice, and I shall bide
its course, parole cFhonneur."
At his first word, Leo rose, slowly crossed the brook,
and threw himself down by my side, with a heavy sigh and
a deeply wounded air.
" Now," continued Mr. Cambur, looking much relieved,
" I should be glad of the learned judge's decision, if it is
ready."
"We will put you on the witness-stand first, if you
please. What were you doing, over yonder ? "
" Urn sketching."
"The landscape, doubtless," observed I, in a slightly
satirical tone. " You might have chosen a better point of
view ; your look-out from thence could not have been ex-
tensive."
" If the truth must be told," he responded, with a mirth-
ful gleam in his eyes, " it was not so much the look-out as
the look-m which attracted me."
340 SIIILOH.
" Humph ! Let me see your sketch."
He looked steadily in my face, for a moment, as if seek-
ing to read my purpose there ; then, he shook his head du-
biously.
" Of course, you have a right to demand it," said he ;
" I do not dispute that. Only, listen to me a moment, first ;
I will make a clean breast of the whole matter. I have
been rambling over these hills and dales, all the morning.
I struck this brook in that dark wood, down yonder, and
followed it up ; crossing on the stepping-stones, below there,
and coming up on this side. Seeing this group of ti'ees, and
suspecting that a green nook was here concealed, with -a
pretty bit of rock and water, I looked in. Imagine my sur-
prise and delight at seeing two nymphs of the foun-
tain (for such I immediately pronounced them) seated
by its brim ; the one asleep, the other lost in thought.
Of course, I gazed, it is an artist's delight, nay, his very
life, to look ; by it he breathes, feeds, and has his being.
Spontaneously, the nymphs had assumed attitudes finer and
more picturesque than I could have hit upon, if I had tried
for months. In the basin below, the picture was repeated,
line for line, tint for tint, as if they were creatures
doubly existent on the earth and in the water, at the
same moment. The artist's instinct awoke within me. I
sought in my pockets for paper ; I found the blank page of
a letter; I laid it on the top of my hat, and sketched away
as for dear life ; trembling lest some chance movement
should spoil those charming attitudes, and change those
graceful lines, before I could fix them on paper. But my
unconscious sitters were immobile as statues the waking
one not less than the sleeper. As I sketched, I saw the fin-
ished picture before me ; every line, every color, perfect.
It hung in a gallery, richly framed, an admiring crowd of
spectators before it. Underneath was written, ' Dream
Reverie Reflection.' Treat it kindly, I pray you, Miss
Frost ; upon it I base my hopes of earthly immortality ! "
SHILOH.
He ended in a tone between jest and earnest, and handed
me the sketch across the ripple of the brook. Ruth looked
at it with me, leaning over my shoulder.
The figures were clearly, boldly outlined; the back-
ground not even hinted at, which Mr. Cambur explained
by saying he could come and sketch that, at his conven-
ience. My face was indicated by a few rapid strokes only ;
it was on Ruth's that he had concentrated his attention.
That had been drawn with a lingering tenderness of touch,
betraying how deeply his artist-nature had been stirred by
a thing so beautiful. The likeness was exact : Ruth's face
~ *
needs no idealizing ; it is, in itself, as fair and ideal a coun-
tenance as ever hovered in the outer haze of an artist's
imagination. The original blushed with pleasure, as she
looked at the sketch, drooping her head low; she could
not help seeing how lovely it was.
"I think," said I, after examining it carefully, "that I
must needs confiscate this. I have long wished for a pic-
ture of by the way, I suppose you must be introduced ;
Miss Winnot ! Mr. Cambur : "
(The artist rose and bowed low ; Ruth bent her head,
blushing) :
" But," I continued, " I did not care for a picture of her,
taken under the depressing, stiffening influence of a daguer-
rian gallery. Now, this sketch of yours will do very well.
Only, I wish the eyes were open ! "
" So do I," responded the artist. " Certain it is, that no
one who has once seen them open, could thereafter be
wholly satisfied with any picture which only represented
them closed. Miss Frost, I think this matter can be ar-
ranged to our mutual satisfaction. Permit me to keep my
stolen sketch, I am loth to part with it. Bring Miss Win-
not to my studio, some day, and I will make you a sketch
of her, in color, that cannot fail to satisfy you better than
this ; though I should need to dip my pencil into some
marvelous mixture of dawn red, sunset gold, and twilight
342 SHILOH.
h
shadow, adequately to represent her unutterable hair and
eyes ! I shall be richly rewarded for my labor, if I ani al-
lowed to keep a copy for myself."
And thus it was settled.
After a little more talk, I took up the lunch-basket and
lifted the cover, remarking gravely :
" I suppose artists never have a literal appetite, for
actual food ; as you observed a moment ago, they live on
looking, sketching, and the like. But Miss Winnot and I
are commonplace persons, with commonplac'e wants. We
have spent the morning in gathering ferns and climbing
hills ; we are tired at least, we were; certainly, we are
hungry. Leo, sable messenger of Providence and Mrs.
Divine ! has brought us seasonable food. Suffer iis to
partake thereof. You can look on, and sketch, as a com-
panion piece to the other, ' Refection ' ! "
He made a comical grimace.
" Or," I proceeded, taking out the contents of the
basket and spreading them on the moss, " if you think a
taste of the edibles will tend to make your sketch of them
more spirited, step across the brook, and seat yourself on
that moss-cushion."
What a merry lunch we had ! The artist brightened it
with the gleam of a certain quiet humor peculiar to him,
and Ruth her shyness being quickly overcome with the
responsive sparkle of an almost childlike gayety; while
sunshine and shadow and sylvan scenery gave each it's
kindly charm.
Ruth was soon the gayest of the party. Though more
commonly inclined to melancholy, she is yet quite capable
of that high carnival of the spirits which is its natural offset,
and richly compensates, by its brief brilliancy, for many
sombre hours. In truth, it would not be difficult to believe
that two maidens, the one mirthful, the other melancholy,
were magically bound together by the zone which clasps
Ruth's waist ; and that you saw their faces alternately,
SHILOII. 343
while their voices twisted together in one rich chord of
harmony. The fancy gains color from the fact that there
was always, even in the most joyous ebullition of her
spirits, some faint intimation of hidden mournfulness,
which was yet the bewitching final touch, the ultimate
charm, of her mirth. It was plain that the effervescing cup
must be quickly quaffed, ere its sparkle and piquancy were
over. The artist felt this, I saw. As became the professor
of an imaginative art, he was endowed with a quick,
spiritual insight into many matters not within the scope of
actual vision. He threw himself into the frolic with a zest
that betrayed his sense of its evanescent character. For
some flitting moments, we seemed to have strayed far
within the limits of Arcadia, leaving the dusty, cumbrous
habitudes of modern life at its golden gate. Or, our feet
had been lifted from the heavy soil of earth into a region
of myth and mirth inaccessible in ordinary moods and
moments ; and all the more eagerly enjoyed because we
knew it was so doubtful if ever again we should find the
way thither.
To say truth, the foregoing remarks apply better to
Ruth and the artist than to myself. I soon subsided into
little else than A mere spectator of their mirth ; encourag-
ing, but scarcely sharing, it ; seldom catching the ball of
jest and playfulness which they tossed back and forth,
through the flicker of the sunshine and the dance of the
leaf-shadows, except to save it from an untimely fall to the
ground. It suited me better to lean back against the trunk
of an overarching tree,- and watch the airy grace and skill
with which they kept it up. Thus, I happened to note how
Mr. Cambur's face, ordinarily somewhat graver and ma-
turer of expression than fairly belongs to his years, had
grown animated and youthful under the happy influence of
the moment ; and so, the clue to that perplexing resem-
blance, before spoken of and which had not been less
troublesome throughout this second interview was sud-
344 SHILOH.
denly supplied. Through the first gap in the conversation,
therefore, I sent the following quiet remark ;
" I have just remembered, Mr. Cambur, who it is that
you resemble so strongly."
He started as if it had been a missile of some sort.
" Ah, indeed? " said he, giving me a quick, keen glance.
" Yes : a young painter who came to Rome a year, or
more, before I left there, Mr. Archum, or Harry Archum,
as everybody called him ; for he was one of those frank,
genuine, generous youths, whose Christian name comes
most easily to the lips. He used to come often to my
father's study ; I remember him well. Your resemblance
to him is striking ; yet there is a marked difference, too.
He was yoiinger, slenderer, gayer, than you are, and he
wore no beard, only a light, curling moustache. Still, I
think you could pass for his elder brother. Do you not
know him ? I'
" Know him ? certainly, quite well," he answered, with
his eyes fixed on the brook, in a half-sad, half-meditative,
way.
" My father used to think him a most promising neo-
phyte in art," I continued. " Does he fulfil that promise ?
Is he doing well ? "
" Not so well as he ought to do."
" Indeed ? I am sorry to hear it ! Yet a friend of mine,
in Rome, mentioned a picture that he had recently painted
called ' Waiting,' I think in no measured terms of com-
mendation ; and I have much respect for her opinion in
such matters. . Have you seen it ? "
" I have."
" And how do you like it ? "
" Not very well ; that is, it does not satisfy me, at all."
I felt provoked. " I might have known better than to ask
you," I rejoined, caustically. " Artists are not much given
to the praise of one another's works. I never yet knew a
painter to bestow any hearty applause on a fellow-painter's
SHILOH. 345
picture, in his particular line of art ; nor a sculptor to turn
an admiring gaze upon anybody's lump of moist clay but
his own ! "
The artist might have been excused if he had shown
himself hurt or indignant at my speech ; but he only looked
at me with a curious, inexplicable smile. " When you
know me better, Miss Frost," said he, quietly, " you will
recall such part of that sweeping censure as you intend for
me. I do admire, heartily, whatever of truthful beauty or
of beautiful truth I find in anybody's work ; either in con-
ception, execution, or intent. So far from being captiously
or jealously critical of other men's labors, I hold that any
picture, or sculpture, or engraving, however imperfect,
which 1ms brought help, comfort, or aspiration, to one
human soul, has thereby acquired a gracious and inde-
feasible rio;ht to be." Pie ended in a tone that showed he
O
was deeply in earnest.
This lapse into seriousness was the inevitable turning-
point in our mood. The hour of careless gayety was over.
Our talk waxed grave ; possibly dull. I am sure it would
be so on paper.
Ere long, the artist rose. "Your sylvan hospitality is
so pleasant," said he, " that I am in danger of trespassing
on it too long. It is 'time for me to go back to my solitary,
shadowy studio. Pray remember, Miss Frost, that I am
at your service, in respect to Miss Winnot's picture, when-
ever you please to bring her thither. Addio I "
He bowed, and took his way down the glen. Leo
started up, and, after some hesitation, followed him. He
soon returned ; but with a more satisfied air. He had not
been dismissed, I fancied, without some compensating kind-
ness, a word to soothe, or a caress to delight, his faithful,
affectionate heart.
MALA (suddenly); Wherever there is concealment, there
is usually something wrong.
15*
346 SHILOH.
BONA. Is it out of the truth, purity, transparency, of
your own heart that that suspicion arises ?
MALA (insisting). But where there is nothing wrong,
there can be no necessity for concealment.
BONA. Say, rather, Where thei'e is anything really,
radically wrong, it is difficult, wellnigh impossible to con-
ceal it. If evil has taken up its abode in the heart, it is
sure to betray its presence in unguarded looks arid tones,
and in chance words. Whereas, the invariable language
of Mr. Cambur's features and bearing is as you have felt
intuitively, and acted upon that intuition truth, honor,
generosity, kindness of heart. Besides, there is a difference
between concealing and being silent. A man may have no
disposition to hide his affairs ; who yet does not feel called
upon to discuss them with every chance comer. Reticence
is oftentimes but the natural offspring of painful recollec-
tions. Mr. Cambur has a right to your charitable con-
struction of his silence, till you have better reason for sup-
posing him to be unworthy of it.
I. At all events, I will ask Mr. Divine where he got
Leo.
BONA. Would it not be more delicate and generous,
more in accordance with the Golden Rule, to leave the mat-
ter just where the person most concerned chose to leave it ?
To confess the unlovely truth, I turned a deaf ear to
this inquiry. Going home, I met Mr. Divine at the gate,
on his swift way to the barn, and put the question with
reference to Leo, not stopping for a second thought. The
answer was brief, definite, and conclusive :
"I got him of Major Burcham's Irishman, when he
wasn't much more than a pup."
It left me more in the dark than ever !
XXXII.
AN ARTIST'S STUDIO.
FORTNIGHT went by ere I claimed the
fulfilment of Mr. Cambur's promise ; but
it was not a fortnight fruitless in results,
as regards the growth of our acquaintance.
During its progress, the elfish force, or fate,
called Circumstance, seemed to delight in
throwing, us together at every turn. I called
upon Mrs. Danforth, and found the artist ten-
anting her porch, placidly awaiting her return from a visit
to a neighbor. I met him twice or thrice at Essie's ; for he
had early won the freedom of the Volger premises, and ap-
peared equally at home in the field discussing soils and
crops with the farmer, and in the parlor listening to his
daughter's piano. A thorough liking, which promised
to blossom out into warm and lasting friendship, sprang
Tip between him and Mr. Taylor, and I seldom went to
the Gwynne Place, without encountering him in sitting-
room or study, tossing the crowing, gurgling baby up
to the ceiling, or dissertating earnestly upon Italy and
Art to the clergyman. Lastly, by way of climax, I
came suddenly upon him, one morning, seated at his ease
beside Aunt Vin's cheese-press, regaling himself with choice
1 moi-sels of the curd, and listening, with an extremely di-
verted face, to the maker's conversation. I could not but
marvel to see how quickly all Shiloh had opened its doors
to him, how easily he had won a place in its friendly re-
348 SHILOH.
gard, and how readily he adapted himself to an unaccus-
tomed manner of life and a strange people.
In many of these encounters, Ruth had been with me.
It was rather on the assured footing of acquaintance,
therefore, than as mere art-visitors, that we finally knocked
at the door of Mr. Cambur's studio. It was opened by
the artist in person, palette in hand.
A painter's studio is a spot which, to our preconceptions,
at least, seems always situated a little way above the dust
and sordidness of the actual world, in a region of dream,
vision, and enchantment, enriched with beauties of scenery
and of being far beyond anything to be met with in the
domain of reality. It is a sort of half-way station between
earth and heaven, we think, from whence the artist paints
both, with pencils dipped alternately in remembrance and
in prophecy. And though the present example did not
fully realize this ideal (as in truth, no studio ever did),
but, rather, served to show that the steps by which Art
climbs to her grandest heights must all be taken toilsomely
Upon the earth, yet indications were not wanting that ifc
was a room marked out from the uses and pleasures of or-
dinary life by a purpose and a character of its own.
The windows were carefully darkened, save one, whose
upper half showed a small square of sunless sky, and ad-
mitted that partial light which, with its concomitant of
. strongly-defined shadow, best develops the pictorial char-
acter in objects, or imparts it to them. Near the middle of
the room stood an easel, with a picture just " sketched in "
upon it ; one or two others, awaiting but the final touch,
hung where the light visited them most kindly ; unframed
canvases leaned against the wall, turning their backs churl-
ishly on the visitor ; and pencil-sketches were pinned up
here and there, or made an artistic confusion on the table,
assisted by many curious little shreds from the skirts of '
Antiquity, gems, seals, coins, ivory-carvings, etc., found
in and about the soil of Rome.
SHILOH. 349
" At last ! " exclaimed the artist, with a genial smile.
" Yoxir welcome has been w r aiting for you long."
" I hops it has not cooled by the delay."
" Certainly not : it is too genuine for that. Sit here,
Miss Winnot."
He placed chairs for us, and, after a little talk, brought
forward such of his works as he cared to show.
The first was the picture of which Mrs. Danforth had
spoken, " Dreams." A beautiful girl, lost in a sunset
reverie that was all the detail to be put into words. But,
as you looked, you saw that not only the girl, but the
drapery, the sky, the atmosphei-e, dreamed, too. Gazing
upon it long, you also dreamed ; your ideas became vague
and visionary, your imagination spread its wings and
floated off unawares in the immaterialized gold of the
sunset air. For the atmosphere was the really wonder-
ful thing about the picture. Soft, rich, luminous, serene ;
neither mist, nor haze, nor sunshine, but with something of
the brightness, the softness, and the vagueness of each ; it
might have been the very ether wherein a poet dreams
and paints his ideal pictures.
Mr. Cambur next uncovered one half of a large canvas,
leaving the other still veiled.
" The cuiiain conceals \vhat was once a failure, and is now
an unsightly daub, which I spare you the discomfort of look-
ing at," said he, as he stood before the picture, arranging
the folds. " It was my design to paint a Wise and a Foolish
Virgin, believing that the aim and significance of the para-
ble might as clearly be brought out by two typical figures as
by ten. I succeeded tolerably well with the representative
of folly, but the other was wholly unsatisfactory: I have
rubbed it out, and am waiting until a better mood, better
influences, a whiter inspiration, shall enable me to take it
up again with a clearer probability of success."
He stepped aside, and the Daughter of Folly was re-
vealed to view ; fast locked in sleep, her graceful limbs all
350 SHILOII.
unstrung, a marvelous languor diffused throughout her
frame, and her empty lamp slow sliding from her uncon-
scious hand. Fair and foolish not wicked, that would
have made her unbeautiful ; merely a lover of pleasure,
of ease, of brightness : over whose soul no tides of living
waters had flowed, to quicken the spiritual life, or had
flowed in vain. A type of mere physical beauty, warm
with life and health, rich in color and grace, not devoid of
many soft and womanly attributes ; yet so manifestly of the
earth, earthy, that you sighed a.s you gazed, to feel how
utterly useless it would be to awaken her. She would but
half open upon you beautiful, soft, vague eyes, murmur
faintly, " A little more slumber ! " and close them again in
a deeper sleep than before.
We looked at the picture long and in silence. The
artist gazed upjon it also, with a thoughtful face.
" I suppose you know the story of Andrea del Castagno,"
said he, at length.
" I do not," replied Ruth, quickly. " Tell it to me,
please."
" Andrea del Castagno was a painter of Florence, who
lived and wrought in days when Art's power and progress
were greatly limited by the poverty of her means ; when
she was obliged to content herself with the comparatively
meagre and feeble effects produced by painting in distem-
per, as it is called ; that is, with colors mixed with gums,
size, whites of eggs, etc. Dissatisfied with the limited
resources of his palette, and ambitious of distinction, An-
drea was constantly dreaming of some "new method which
should more perfectly reproduce the subtile refinements of
Nature's coloring, the exquisite quality of her tints, the
transparency of her lights, the soft clearness of her shadows,
the far inward shining of gems and of human eyes ; and her
wonderful blending of them all, light beneath shade, color
gleaming through color : he dreamed and he despaired.
* About this time, came a rumor that a new and efficient
SHILOH. 351
method of preparing colors, by which all these effects might
be faithfully represented, had really been discovei-ed at the
north ; and, shortly after, there appeared in Florence a
young Venetian, Domenico by name, who was acquainted
with the process of painting in oil. Andrea quickly won his
friendship, his confidence, and his secret. Then he foully
assassinated him, that he might remain sole possessor of the
new art, in Florence. He returned to his studio and his
easel, unsuspected; and innocent persons suffered for his
crime. But, from that moment, all his work revealed, with
terrible power and distinctness, the fearful fact of a guilty,
remorseful soul hidden in the bosom of the worker. Day
by day, his pencil recorded that soul's history on canvas,
for the reading of future ages, its temptation, its fall, its
growing burden of horror and remorse, till, on his death-
bed, he confessed the special crime which had first stained
it, and henceforth colored all its conceptions."
" How strange ! " said Ruth, drawing a long bi-eath ; and
then giving the Foolish Virgin a look that seemed to ask
what possible connection could exist between that heedless
damsel and this story of crime.
The artist answered it as if it had been articulate. " My
story, Miss Wiunot," said he, "was intended to point the
moral that a painter's canvas reflects the character of his
life as perfectly as a mirror reflects his features. My Fool-
ish Virgin points it, also. "When I began that picture, I
was in Florence ; dissolved and lost in its inexpressibly
beautiful life, with its endless gratifications for the senses
of sight and hearing ; overcome by the Lotus-breath of its
stealing south wind, the heavy scents of its flowers, the
whisperings of its leaves and fountains, the lulling song of
its bells, .the rich languor of its sunshine. In short, I was
leading a dreamy, sensuous, self-indulgent life ; all whose
influences were favorable to the conception of the Foolish
Virgin and to that only. For it, I needed little more
than a rich profusion of color, a beautiful model, a south-
352 SHILOH.
warmed fancy; all these and all outside influences, as
well were easily made harmonious with the principal note
of my theme, and reduced to a perfect chord. But, for
the Wise Virgin, something more was demanded the
beauty of holiness ; and that is beyond the power of mere
pigments. It must be conceived in the clear regions of an
undefiled, heaven-enlightened imagination ; and wrought
out by the aid of an active, divine life-principle within.
Despite their many and glaring technical faults, this spirit-
ual beauty has never been so clearly represented on canvas
as in the works of Fra Angelico, the monk who ' never
began a picture without a prayer,' and whose whole ai't-life
has justly been termed 'a hymn of pi-aise.' Nowhere else
do we find faces of saints and angels so purged from all
earthliness, and so irradiated with heavenly glory. What
Paul Akers said of one of them, applies with nearly equal
force to all, ' It comes to me as beauty and purity im-
materialized, and my soul entertains it as a guest whose
footsteps shook not the threshold of sense.' If I could but
borrow of the gentle monk's pure inspiration, while I paint
my Wise Virgin ! "
" The source from whence it was drawn is still accessi-
ble," I observed, quietly. " But what was your concep-
tion of the Daughter of Wisdom ? "
" I scarce remember what it was / I can give you an
idea of what it is. I see her springing swiftly forth to
meet the Bridegi*oom ; her newly-kindled lamp is in her
hand, throwing a strong light upon her pure, noble fea-
tures, which are still further illuminated from within by
joyous anticipation. She looks straight before her, with
an eager, intent gaze, as if already catching sight of the
Bridegroom, in the distance, while her whole sovd goes out
to meet him : yet, with a tender, unfailing charity, she
touches her sleeping sister as she passes her by, loth to go
without a last attempt to waken and warn her. Her face
is so full of earnest impulse, and her figure of airy motion,
SHILOH. 353
that she seems actually stepping forth from the canvas
ah ! if I could only fasten her upon it ! "
" You will do it some day," said I ; " for the conception
is too beautiful to be lost."
Then, he set before us a female head, saying simply,
" The Call."
It was not needed. The fair, listening face, slightly
raised ; the eyes, gazing intently in the direction of the
voice just heard, and recognized; told their own story,
and told it so well that we looked and listened, too.
The next was also a head, '.' Repose." I had not looked
at it*" many moments, when, with the fine, quick insight
which belongs to the true artist, he laid it aside, saying,
" You do not care for it, I see. Yet artists rate it higher
than the other. They account it a tolerable success in the
department of color."
" I do not care for color, unless there is a soul a signi-
ficance under it," returned I, with more frankness than
courtesy.
Mr. Cambur turned a surprised face upon me, and his
eyes lit. " Not care for color!" he exclaimed, "why, it
is the darling child of light, the very crown and glory of
the material universe. To be consistent, he who does not
care for color should not care for light ; since, as color
without light is impossible, so light without color would
be unendurable. Color is to the eye what tone is to the
ear ; capable, in its combinations, of the most varied and
exquisite harmony. Color is the most vivid of all the
ideas that make up my conception of heaven. It is never
the form of the holy city the new Jerusalem, descending
fromGod which enraptures my imagination, but its in-
effable, entrancing glory and magnificence of color; the
yellow gleam of its golden streets, the fadeless green of its
tree of life, the dazzling whiteness of its gates of pearl, the
myriad changeful hues of its walls of precious stones -jas-
per, sapphire, jacinth, amethyst, and all the shining gems
.354 siiiLoir.
between, lit by the glory of God, and radiating colors too
gorgeous for mortal vision. What endless joy for the eye
is stored up in that splendor and opulence of color ! Take
it away from the inspired description, and see how much of
the charm is fled ! "
" True," said I. " But what if the color were only a
thin crust of paint ? "
He stared, uncomprehending. He had entirely lost
sight of the point where the discussion began. Recol-
lecting himself, after a moment, he said, with a good-
humored laugh,
"Upon my word, I had quite forgotten that unlucky
picture of mine ; do not set down my rhapsody for a tilt
in its defence. I am not such a fool as to attempt to argue
with the feeling stirred by my pictures, be it indifference or
dislike. Artists, as well as authors, must take such measure
of appreciation as is vouchsafed them, and be thankful. In-
appreciation " He hesitated.
" They can attribute to ignorance," said I, laughingly
finishing the sentence.
" ~No not always. Oftener, it is the offspring of a lack
of sympathy with their mood or intent. The worst of it
is, the critic himself seldom recognizes it for that. Instead
of saying, ' This picture does not suit me,' he pronounces,
' It is good for nothing.' The first he has an xindoubted
right to say, anywhere, of anything ; the last he should be
careful of saying unless he is reasonably certain that his
disapprobation has its deep foundation in the immutable
laws of life and art, and not in mere individual taste. But
here is something, Miss Frost, which perhaps will please
you better." *
He held up a pencil-sketch, the first rough jotting-down
of his ideas for a picture of Faith and Guidance. It repre-
sented a young girl, walking meekly along a narrow path,
lit, for a few footsteps in advance, by the small, bright
flame of a lamp in her hand. Beside her, but unseen, a
SHILOH. 355
watchful, protecting angel walked, too ; whose white wing,
pointing upward into the sky, cast a deep shadow across
her brow and eyes.
The artist gave the sweet key-note of the sketch, by
saying, quietly ; " I suspect that many of our trials are
but the shadows of angels' wings."
My eyes filled with sudden tears. If we could always
think that, how much easier to bear the trial !
This sketch interested me most of all, partly on ac-
count of the beauty and pathos of the subject ; and partly
because it still glowed with the fire of inspiration, bringing
the spectator closer to the heart and imagination of the
artist than the picture to be elaborated from it would ever
do. For this was genius in its first fervent heat, its swift
moment of effervescence ; unadulterated by any colder or
staler mood ; full of the animating power of a single, earn-
est thought. It affected me so deeply that I turned away,
not caring to see anything more. Here was the gospel
the good word for which I had come hither. Leaving Mr,
Cambur explaining another sketch to Ruth, I walked away
toward the window.
But, as I went, my skirt caught on one of the unframed
canvases standing against the wall, and threw it down, face
upward. I stooped to pick it up, and, involuntarily, my
gaze fastened upon it.
It was an exquisitely lovely female head ; the features
pure and delicate, the coloring rich and soft. But its chief
charm was in the expression of the face, an earnest look-
ing forth, blended with something of solicitude, something
of hope, something of submissiveuess, all held together in
that fine equilibrium so essential to a work of high art.
" This is the best thing I have seen yet," said I. "What
do you call it?"
"It is called " the artist hesitated long, and the word
seemed to be drawn forth, by Truth, from some exceeding
deep well, where it would fain have hidden itself " "Wait-
iris."
356 SHILOH.
" For what is .she waiting ? " I asked, after a pause.
" For whatever you please," returned he, smiling. " I
have long since learned that the interpretation of my pic-
tures varies with the eyes and the moods that look upon
them. They never tell exactly the same story to any two
persons, the details differ, if the substance is identical."
I continued to survey the picture attentively. Sud-
denly, the mystic chord of association stirred within me.
" ' Waiting ! '" I exclaimed, giving Mr. Cambur a surprised
look, " why that was the subject of Harry Archum's last
picture, the one which has been so favorably " I stopped,
confounded. I had just discovered the initials, " H. B. A.,"
painted, artist-wise, in one corner of the canvas.
" Yes," replied Mr. Cambur, in a slightly constrained
tone ; " this is a copy" of that. He painted it for me."
Involuntarily, I glanced at "The Call," and was at
once struck by the great similarity of style and treatment
in the two pictures. Impossible to believe that they had
not been conceived in the same imagination, and executed
by the same hand. The first breathing of an odd suspicion
went through my mind. He colored ; his quick perceptions
detected it at once.
Ruth, less interested in the " Waiting," had gone back
to the " Foolish Virgin," and was studying her attentively.
The artist drew near to me.
" Can you keep a secret ? " he asked, in a low voice.
" I can keep my own secrets," I answered, lightly, " and
I recommend others to do the same, except where intimate
friendship warrants or enjoins their disclosure."
He drew himself up. " You wish me to understand that
you are not my friend," said he.
" Well, perhaps not in the closer and truer sense, that
is. Not enough your friend to have any good claim upon
your confidence ; yet too much your friend to listen to any
forced, unpremeditated revelation, of which you might re-
pent to-morrow."
SHILOII. 357
" Pardon me, but it was not so much confidence as
explanation that I was about to offer you."
" Believe me when I say that I do not need it. Know-
ing that you are Harry Archum, and remembering how
highly my father thought of you, I am satisfied that your
motives for your present incognito are good, or, at least,
innocent."
He looked down on me, gravely smiling. " Trust with-
out friendship ! " said he, musingly, " well, it is better
than friendship without trust."
" Friendship, Mr. Cambur, is generally of slow growth ;
trust is often intuitive, and springs up in a moment."
" In some cases, friendship is partially the offspring of
the will," he replied. " Miss Frost, just now you alluded
to your father. You do not know how strongly I was
attached to him, nor with what good reason. He it was
who when I sank down, bewildered, speechless, before the
mighty tide of art that swept over me on my arrival in
Rome ; crushed with the sense of my own littleness and
feebleness, and wondering that I had ever dared to call
myself an artist, he it was who lifted me up and gave me
new hope and confidence. He first spoke to me words of
kindly, intelligent, discriminating praise. I vowed to my-
self that I never would forget it, and I never have forgotten
it. It so happened that I was in Florence at the time of
his death, or I should have been at your side, caring for
him as a son, for you as a brother. He went so suddenly,
at the last ! I did not even know that he was gone, \intil
you had left Italy. I returned to Rome, to find only a
vacant place, where I had always before found ready sym-
pathy, wise counsel, seasonable encouragement, a cordial
welcome. And, for his sake, you see, do you not ? that I
must needs be his daughter's friend, whether she will be
mine, or no. My willing service, my faithful regard are
always at her disposal. Whenever she needs them, she has
358 SHILOH.
but to reach out her hand, and take them up. They will
be ready for her."
My eyes were fast filling with tears. Seeing them just
ready to fall, he gave my hand a gentle, sympathizing pres-
sure, and, with instinctive delicacy, went to join Ruth.
As for me, I sat down and settled accounts with my
pride. For it was that which had repelled the artist's con-
fidence. It had haughtily declined to listen to any confi-
dential communication from Harry Archum which was not
spontaneous, but merely forced out by circumstances. In
return, he had heaped coals of forbearance and generosity
on its head. I need not say that I found no balance in its
favor !
In a few moments, Ruth came toward me, with an ap-
pealing look.
" Mr. Cambur asks if I am ready to sit," said she.
" Won't you come ? "
The necessary arrangements were quickly made, and
the sitting began.
For a time, I sat and watched the twain. They made
a pleasing picture, in 'the artfully arranged lights and
shadows of the studio ; the absorbed and delighted artist,
standing at his easel ; the beautiful sitter, blushing beneath
his intent gaze. I wondered if the opening chapter of a
pleasant little romance might not be shaping itself before
my eyes. What more could an artist need or ask than
to have that surpassingly lovely face always at his side, for
inspiration, model, comfort, blessing ?
Then, as R\ith grew to be more at ease in her position,
and began to respond to the artist's efforts to engage her
in conversation, I went and sat down before the " Wait-
ing," letting it sink into my heart. Ah, Francesca ! if I
could but look forward to my future in just the spirit which
softens and beautifies that face !
XXXIII.
THE UNOPENED LETTER.
URING the few weeks past, some of the
hitherto disconnected threads of this nar-
rative have become curiously entangled.
It is typical, perhaps, of the way in which
lives and characters, apparently the most
remote, will be found to have been intimate
in relation and recipi-ocal in influence, when
the day of knowing as we are known shall
enlighten ou.r souls.
To make you understand it all, I must 'go back to a cer-
tain morning near the end of August. What a morning
it was ! There had been a shower in the night, and the
earth still fair with undimmed summer greenness and
glory seemed as daintily fresh and sweet as a newly-
washed babe. The sight stirred Mrs. Prescott's instincts
of neatness into renewed activity. Soon after break-
fast, . I heard her energetic footsteps overhead in the
garret, mingled with enlivening sounds of brushing
and scrubbing; and the staircase was quickly monopo-
lized by a procession of brooms, dustpans, mops, pails of
water, etc., of which Alice acted as the unwilling marshal.
A little later, I heard the busy household reformer's voice
projected from the garret Avindow toward Mrs. Divine at
the well-curb.
" You have no idea, mother, how nasty this garret is !
I shouldn't suppose it had had a thorough cleaning out
360 sniLon.
since the year One. The dust is half an inch thick under
the eaves, and there's cobweb enough hanging from the
rafters to make a carpet for the floor, if 'twas all spun and
wove ! "
" Um ! " returned Mrs. Divine, in a tone to indicate that
her mind was busy with some other subject, and declined
to qui^ it for the consideration of the one thus brought to
her notice.
" For my part," pursued Mrs. Prescott, seeing that no
further response was to be hoped for, and with a slight ac-
cession of sharpness in her tone, " if there's anything I
like, it's to be clean. I can't abide nastiness. I don't
mean to wallow in the dirt till I'm buried in it. And
that's the worst thing about being buried, to my mind ; I'd
rather be burnt up, or dissolved in a barrel of aqua fortis."
" Priscilla," remarked Mrs. Divine, mildly, yet not
without a certain decision in her tone, " the garret's clean
enough for my purpose, just as 'tis ; if it ain't for yours,
you've got the privilege of scrubbing it till it's suited to
your mind. But don't expect me to bother about it ; I've
got my soap to attend to, which you use up faster than I
can make it. I reckon dirt is only one of the miseries that
Eve brought on us by eating the apple, and I don't mean
to spend all my strength in fighting that, so I shan't have
any to bring to bear on the rest. When the earth gets too
filthy for decent folks to live in, perhaps the Lord'll be
good enough to send another deluge, and give it a good
washing out."
" He's more likely to send a fire," rejoined Mrs. Pres-
cott, grimly. " And that reminds me, there's the greatest
lot of old, useless trumpery up here that was ever got to-
gether ; if I had my way, I'd make a bonfire of it. I can't
think what you're saving it all for ! Do let me clear some
of it out ! "
Mrs. Divine quickly let go the dripping bucket, and
mounted the stairs, in terror for the safety of her cherished
SHILOH. 361
accumulations. Some of that " trumpery," doubtless, was
yery closely entwined with her heart-strings. Time, while
making it vulgar, dingy, and ridiculous to others, had
apotheosized it to her sight. Moreover, it was better than
a chronological table of her life.
At the foot of the garret stairs she stopped, as if struck
by a sudden thought, and called out to me ; "Miss Frost,
if you've a mind to step up garret a minute, I guess I can
show you something that'll interest you. There's a whole
secretary full of curiosities up there, that brother Horace
brought home from sea."
The secretary proved to be a time-battered combination
of desk and bureau, such as was in vogue a century ago,
minus two claw-feet, half the brass rings that did the duty
of modern knobs, and the lid which had .been converti-
ble into a writing-table. The top was composed of the
oddest little drawers and pigeon-holes ; enough, it would
seem, hopelessly to confuse the memory of whoever sought
to make use of them ; even a ghostly owner (and it must
have had more than one) would need all his spiritual attri-
butes to discover in which of them he had deposited his
mortal secrets. Altogether, it looked just fit to be the re-
pository of the curious medley stored within it, shells,
corals', uncut gems, coins, medals, buckles, amulets, seeds,
Aveapons, African fetishes, and whatever of rare or curious
the deceased captain (who appears to have had a very
pretty taste in such matters) had been able to pick up dur-
ing his lifelong employment, in one capacity or another, in
the merchant service. Many an odd or obsolete knick-
knack, for which a virtuoso would give half his fortune,
was here hidden ; and likely to remain so till the dry-
rotted rafters overhead should fall and bury them in their
ruins.
I was vainly trying to pick out and comprehend the
curiously-recondite stitch of a piece of Fejeean embroidery,
while listening to Mrs. Divine's animated rendition of an
16
302 SHILOH.
odd legend attached to it ; when she "broke off abruptly,
and uttered an exclamation that instantly drew my atten-
tion. She was holding a letter up to the light a large,
thick letter, written on a sheet of extraordinary size, and
folded and sealed as was customary before envelopes came
into use. The paper was yellow as parchment, and the
seal was unbroken.
" If that don't beat all ! " she cried. " Here I've found
a letter stuck fast in the crack between the back and the
bottom of that drawer; and the direction is in Horace's
handwriting ; and it's never been opened ! And he died
fifteen year ago, last spring! Can you make out that
direction, Miss Frost? My spectacles don't seem to see
quite so well as they used to."
I took thft letter, and read, " Frederick Thorne, Esq.,
No. 49 Street, New Orleans."
" Why, that's stranger yet ! " exclaimed she, staring at
me in great amaze. "That must be Mrs. Thome's hus-
band, who died eight or ten year ago, at least, and I
never heard Horace mention his name, and didn't suppose
he knew him ! A letter from a dead man to a dead man,
and the seal never broke it's not quite comfortable ! "
And Mrs. Divine looked around as if she half-expected one
or the other of the interested parties to gather up his bones
and his ashes, and whatever shadowy habiliments came to
hand, and come forth from the dimmest corner of the ecarret
' O
to claim his forgotten property.
" What's the use of wasting so much time on the out-
side?" demanded Mrs. Prescott, impatiently. "Open it,
and see what is in it."
Mrs. Divine looked at her, meditatively. " I don't fed
certain I've got any right to do that," she answered slowly ;
" I reckon Mrs. Thorne or Rick's got the best right to open
Mr. Thome's letters."
" Nonsense ! " exclaimed Mrs. Prescott, " when the
person the letter is written to, is dead, it's always sent
back to the writer."
SHILOH. "363
" When he's alive," returned Mrs. Divine, " but, you
see, Horace ain't. And it's beat into my mind, somehow,
that he never wrote to Mr. Thorne, except on Thome's own
business. And I don't feel no call to pry into that man's
affairs, dead or alive."
Mrs.- Prescott launched another suggestion. " Most
likely Horace concluded not to send it, after 'twas writ-
ten."
Mrs. Divine gave it a momentary consideration, and
shook her head. " If he had, he would have destroyed it.
No, no, Priscilla ; either he thought 'twas sent ; or he was
taken away before he had a chance to send it. You re-
member he died on a return voyage, within sight of port."
The matter was finally referred to Uncle True. Having
turned the letter over and over, spelled out its address,
weighed it on his palm, and balanced it on his forefinger,
the wood-pile philosopher decided thus :
" If a man's doin's died with him, and was buried five
foot under ground, as he is, the best thing to do with such
a letter as this, 'ud be to put it right inter the middle of a
good, hot fire, and look t'other way while the ashes was
agoin' .up chimney. But we're all links in a chain, and it
don't do to let go of one on 'em till it's hitched on to an-
other. A man's papers gen'rally does that. There's one
chance to nine that this letter was meant to do suthin' o'
that sort. And we mustn't send that chance a scurryin'
up chimney in smoke. Put on your bonnet, Hannah, and
go up to Mis' Thorne, and you and she open the letter to-
gether."
Mrs. Divine looked, aghast. " Land sakes ! I can't
do any such thing ! I'm right in the thick of soap-
making."
" Wall, send Priscilly, then."
It was Mrs Prescott's turn to demur.
" What ! and leave all that muss on the stairs and up
garret ! Not for forty letters ! I shan't stop and dress up
SIIILOII.
till I'm through, and that won't be before night. Besides,
I don't know Mrs. Thorne, and I don't want to."
Mrs. Prescott, be it understood, is not one whit less fas-
tidious about her acquaintance, in her own way, than Mrs.
Thorne herself.
There was a moment of perplexed silence. Curious as the
party undeniably were, their curiosity was not to be gratified
at the expense of personal integrity, nor of household order.
" Well," said Mrs. Divine at last, " it must wait till to-
morrow, then." And she turned slowly away.
Uncle True looked dissatisfied, and scratched his head
reflectively. " It strikes me that a letter that has waited
fifteen year to be opened, has waited about long enough,"
said he. " News and peaches often spile by keepin' just a
leetle too long. I'd go up thar myself, only my old chair
ain't able to travel quite so fur. Perhaps Miss Frost 'ud do
it, now; she's allers obligin'. Besides, she knows Mis'
Thorne. She'd do up the bus'ness right, and bring us hum
a full report."
And as this plan seemed best to .satisfy the homely up-
rightness of the parties, leaving a way open for the speedy
gratification of curiosity, or interest, without interfering
with the day's labors, it was decided xipon.
I found Mrs. Thorne in her old place, at her old occupa-
tion. She listened to my communication attentively, and
then fell into a fit of profound thought ; apparently she
was digging deep into her recollections, and weighing the
letter's possibilities with extreme care. Rousing herself,
she took up her work again, with something like a sigh,
and said wearily ; " It is probably some unimportant mat-
ter of business. Mr. Thorne was once, for a short time,
in a shipping house. Oblige me by opening the letter and
reading it aloud."
To enable you to understand its contents better than I
did, I give you, in advance, the explanations with which
Mrs. Thorne favored me after the reading.
SHILOH. 3G5
When she married Mr. Thorne, he was the presumptive
heir of his uncle, Marcus Thorne, a moderately wealthy and
immoderately eccentric bachelor. The marriage, however,
or the bride, or something, for she did not make this point
qxiite clear, so displeased the uncle as to cause a partial
estrangement; which continued, with little diminution,
till her husband's death. Up to this period she believed
that the old gentleman had contemplated no other disposal
of his property; but after that event she had heard of his
making some efforts to learn the fate or the whereabouts of
one Cyrus Thorne, an elder half-brother of her husband,
who had put the seal to a reckless youthful career by com-
mitting some petty crime, and then running off to sea;
since which time he had never been heard of, and was be-
lieved' to be dead. Nothing came of them, however, and
Mrs. Thorne had quietly settled down to the belief that her
son's prospects were bright and sure ; when, two or three
years afterward, Marcus Thorne went to his kindred dust.
The reading of his will disturbed that conviction. After
providing for Rick's college expenses, and naming a certain
sum to be paid to Carrie on her wedding-day, or, failing
that, on her twenty-fifth birthday ; it left the bulk of his
property in trust for Cyrus Thorne, or his heirs, who were
to be sought for with all speed and diligence. Whenever
undeniable evidence of their death was forthcoming, it
might be divided between Rick and Carrie in proportions
specified by the will; an instrument inspired, it would
seem, partly by a latent affection for the runaway, and
partly by a bitter determination that none of his property
should ever pass into Mrs. Thome's possession.
Twelve years had elapsed. Cyrus Thorne, or his heirs
were still to be heard of, and Mrs. Thorne had grown old
in suspense, longing, resentment, and despair.
Imagine, then, how her eyes first gloomed, and then
sparkled, as she listened to Captain Hart's letter, which
was long, and which I epitomize for you.
366 SIIILOH.
The honest seaman wrote that he believed it to be his
duty to inform Mr. Thome that, in a small seapoi-t of South-
ern Italy, into which he had been driven by stress of weather ;
he had encountered a pale, sombre, consumption-stricken
man, who had made himself known to him as Cyrus Thorne.
He had with him a child, a motherless girl, his love for
whom seemed to be the sole sentiment of. his waning life ;
and whose future engrossed his thoughts. Would Captain
Hart touch there on his return ? If he were still alive, lie
would embark with him for America ; if not, he would find
the child at his lodgings, witli full poAvers and instructions
for conveying her to her relatives.
The Captain did " touch," and was greatly shocked to
learn that Cyrus Thorne had died very suddenly of hemoi'-
rhage within a few days of his departure. So suddenly,
indeed, that he had had no opportunity to give any direc-
tions concerning the child ; and her nurse had finally sur-
rendered her to the charge of an American gentleman, who
had stopped in the town for a few days with his family ; and
whose interest in the orphan was, doubtless, heightened by
the fact that his own little daughter was about the same
age. He had promised to find out her friends, if possible ;
if not, to take kind care of her future. But the nurse went
on to state that the party went up to Sondrio, and that she
had learned through a friend employed as a servant in the
principal inn that the child had sickened and died there.
To enable Mr. Thorne to satisfy himself of the truth of this
story, Captain Hart had taken pains to find out, by dint of
patient inquiry in the town, that the said gentleman was
from Philadelphia, and that his name was . But here I
was completely at fault. The Captain's hand was crabbed
and difficult enough, in straightforward sentences; and
names, to which the context gives no clue, are always most
puzzling in manuscript. By dint of united effort, we made
out the Christian name to be Chester ; but the surname was
absolutely undecipherable. Mrs. Thorne thought it looked
SHILOH. 8G7
something like Sanford ; so it did* but between the " some-
thing like" and identity was a sufficiently wide margin.
She gave up the perplexing study, and rose with a
dawning triumph in her eyes. " You will leave me this
letter ? " she asked. " It will be wanted in evidence. Rick
and I shall set out for New Orleans to-morrow."
I assented.
" And Rick," she went on, as if unable to suppress her
growing exultation, " Rick will have his rights, at last !
He ought to have had them before, but it is not yet too
late. He has not yet learned to have a will distinct from
his mother's."
She thought only of Rick Carrie was forgotten ! Or,
it might be truer to say, she thought only of herself. In
Rick's good fortune she saw but her own elevation to
wealth, position, power. What an utter dislike I felt for
her, as I listened ! And Mala told me decidedly that,
however glad she might be for Carrie's, or even for Rick's
sake, she shoiild have chosen to be the bearer of such
tidings to anybody on earth rather than Mrs. Thorne. To
which Bona replied, quietly, that that was, perhaps, the
very reason why I had been selected for the office.
" Read that ! " continued Mrs. Thorne, possessed by the
restless, garrulous spirit of excitement, and thrusting an
open letter into my hand, " read that, and see What I have
had to endure so long ! Mr. Paul Venner will write me no
more such letters, I fancy ! "
I glanced at it mechanically, intending to push it aside,
and remained staling at the open page in amazement. I
forget the contents, a curt intimation that Rick's expenses
must be diminished, I think, but the handwriting was to-
tally unknown to me not a familiar line nor letter in it
anywhere. I could not help saying :
" This is not Paul Venner's writing it must be that of
some clerk."
" It is his, unquestionably," she replied, bitterly. " I
368 SHILOII.
have good reason to know it well. It first made me ac-
quainted with the fact that, instead of being left with a
comfortable support, I had almost nothing ; and I have
often watched Mi % . Venner write while he was drawing up
papers for me to sign."
I went home bewildered. Is Paul Venner so altered,
then, that even his handwriting partakes of the change?
But what is it to me ?
It is curious to note how quickly, when one link of the
solution' of a mystery is found, others start up to complete
the chain. Near the church, I met the artist. Something
moved me to tell him the strange story to which I had been
listening.
" What did you say was the nurse's name ? " he asked,
when I had done.
"Paola Valpino."
"Then I can tell you just where she is to be found.
Doubtless, her deposition will have to be obtained. She
left La Pizzo years ago, and, on account of some family
difficulties, took good care to leave no trace behind her.
She had charge of the house in the Via del , at Rome,
where I had my studio ; and she once told me this very
story, that is to say, what she knew of it."
My report elicited not a few exclamations of wonder, on
my return home. Mrs. Divine stared at me alternately
over and under her spectacles, as it went on ; and did not
bethink herself that it would be easier to take them off,
until it was finished. Then she remarked :
" Well ! I certainly didn't think that Priscilla was about
any special business of the Lord's, when she went to clean-
ing that garret ! And if I hadn't taken it into my head to
show you Horace's curiosities, that letter might have lain
there another fifteen year ! I'll never think anything is of
no consequence again ! "
" Umph ! " said Mrs. Prescott, drily, " the next time the
SIIILOH, 369
Lord sets us to find anybody's fortune in our garret, I hope
it'll be our own ! "
" Fortune," observed Uncle True, " is a word I ain't
partial to. It's so apt to get a ' mis ' tacked on to the fust
end on't afore you know it ! If the Lord ever uses it
which I doubt, I'm sartin He never applies it to houses,
nor lands, nor bank-stock. I reckon your an' my fortunes,
Priscilly, '11 never be found in the garret, unless we take
to keepin' our Bibles an' sayin' our prayers thar ! "
That afternoon, I sent the address of Paola Yalpino, so
unexpectedly obtained from the artist, to Mrs. Thome ; and
felt that my part in the affair was ended.
16*
XXXIV.
DAIST.
^ the following day Mrs. Thorne left for
New Orleans. I told myself frankly that I
was glad she had gone. There ai'e some
I S^^^T naturcs the association with which tends inevit-
\ ''Qwfft^' ably to debasement, a lowering of the moral
tone, and a darkening or obliquation of the
moral vision. It must be a strong mind, a
tenacious idiosyncrasy, a most alert and \inyield-
ing will, that can long endure their contact without deteri-
oration. I had learned to dread Mrs. Thome's. There
was some dull, remote chord in my heart that seldom failed
to acknowledge the subtle power of her influence, by giv-
ing forth a harsh and discordant sound. I breathed freer
therefore, in knowing that influence would be felt no more.
The temporary twisting of our life-threads was over ; here-
after each would be spun separately to its end. She would
not return to Shiloh until after my departure ; or she would
only come to gather up such of her personal effects as were
worthy of ti'ansferring to another and a different sphere.
Four or five days afterward, Mr. Divine having kindfy
placed the " woman-horse " (the current phrase for an ani-
mal suited to feminine use), and the small top-buggy (a
recent purchase), at my disposal, I set forth alone, purpos-
ing to call upon Mrs. Danforth, shop a little at Clay Corner,
and visit the railway station in search of a package of
music, etc., to be sent me by express.
SIIILOH. 371
Mrs. Danforth came first in order. . After we had dis-
cussed various affairs of the Sewing Society, and arranged
for a full report of its acts, to be read at the next meeting,
as the speediest and most effectual way of causing certain
grumblers to regale themselves in the fashion known as
" eating one's own words,"^the stream of her talk began
to eddy around various points of personal or family history,
of no special interest to me. I waited absently, therefore,
for a gap in the narrative through which I might civilly
take my leave, when a name, carelessly tossed upon its sur-
face, caught my attention.
" I beg your pardon, but of whom were you just now
speaking ? "
" Of Chester Danforth, my husband's brother."
A fac-simile of that illegible name in Captain Hart's
manuscript, stereotyped on my memory by a long process
of patient study, instantly rose before me. Danforth
Chester Danforth ! certainly ; how blind I was not to have
seen it before !
"Do you know if he was ever in the south of Italy?"
I asked.
"To be sure he was, as we have sorrowful cause to
remember. He lost his only child there by the malarial
fever."
" Ah, indeed ! how very sad ! " returned I, mechanically,
too intent upon my own train of thought 'to give much
heed or sympathy to the event. " Did you ever hear of
his having taken an orphan girl under his charge at La
Pizzo ! "
" Why, yes, of course. It was Pearl more's the
pity!"
" And she died soon after at Sondrip ? "
f * Died 1 good gracious, no ! She is very much alive -
vather too much so, all things considered ! ''
My surprise verged upon incredulity. " Dq I under-
stand you to say," I asked, with very distinct and deliber-
372 SHILOH.
ate emphasis, " that the orphan girl of whom Mr. Chester
Danforth took charge at La Pizzo, in the year 18 , lived,
and is still alive ? "
" Exactly," replied she, nodding her head. " She is
called Pearl Danforth, and I have the inappreciable honor
to be her aunt by adoption. Chester failed in every attempt
to find out her relatives ; and was glad to fail, I suppose,
for he and his wife had become so attached to her in the
year and a half that they had her with them in Europe,
that it would have been like losing a second child to have
given her up. So, finally, they adopted her formally a
hazardous proceeding, I think, with a strange child, for you
cannot tell what sort of blood it may have in its veins, nor
in what unpleasant shape it may manifest itself. Pearl,
certainly, has some very queer drops in hers. She grew up
a strange, self-willed, erratic creature, as innocent to out-
ward appearance as a child, but in reality as cool and subtle
and slippery as quicksilver. Chester had hard Avork to
keep her in order, at the last ; and after he died, her moth-
er that is to say, Chester's wife could not control her at
all ; since then she has taken her own course pretty much.
She consorts chiefly with spirit-rappers, clairvoyants,
short-skirted Bloomerites, long-haired philanthropists, and
the like ; she even professes to be a remarkably good me-
dium (of the Old Nick, I grant !) herself, and can tip
tables and spell out unmeaning sentences by the slow half-
yard with the best of them, when she likes ; in short, she is
up to all manner of mischief, and keeps her poor mother in
constant dread of what she may do next."
" Can you tell where she may be found ? "
"Well, no, not precisely; nobody ever does know just
where Pearl is to be found the most unlikely spot you can
think of is apt to be the one. Nevertheless, there is no
difficulty in finding her when you want her ; she is the sort
of person easy to be traced. She always leaves a dozen or
two of dazed individuals along her track, staring after her,
8HILOH. 373
open-mouthed and bewildered, and only too glad to get
a listener to all the strange things they have to tell of her.
But what, may I ask, do you know of her, or of Chester ? "
I hastily turned the matter over in my mind, and de-
cided that it was necessary to acquaint Mrs. Danforth with
the finding and the contents of Captain Hart's letter,
which I did as briefly as possible. She threw up her hands,
when I had done, with an odd, deprecatory gesture.
" So the little witch is to be an -heiress, and more inde-
pendent than ever !" exclaimed she. "Between you and
me, a fortune could scarcely have tumbled into a more pre-
posterous spot. Don't you think we should be justified in
suppressing the fact of . Pearl's identity with Cyrus
Thome's supposed-to-be-dead child, and leaving Rick and
Carrie in the enjoyment of the property ? I really believe
they have the best right to it."
I scarcely heard her. I was picturing Mrs. Thome's
disappointment, and striving to look a little way into the
dusk of her children's future.
" I see we are to do right, though the heavens fall,"
laughed Mrs. Danforth, construing my silence into disap-
proval of her mock-earnest pi-oposition. " Well, then, it
becomes my duty to inform Pearl of this odd turn in her
affairs ; -and you, I siippose, will do as much for Mr?.
Thorne."
The suggestion was like the firm grasp of a policeman
upon an escaped convict's shoulder. It was a positive des-
pair to be thus forced back into a distasteful atmosphere,
just as I was congratulating myself upon breathing it no
more ; and into a new and inauspicious connection Avith an
affair that I had believed to be, so far as I was concerned,
happily concluded. And Mala did not scruple to question
the wisdom of the providence by which I was alternately
made to appear as the good and the evil genius of a per-
son with whom I should be best pleased to have nothing
to do.
374 SHILOH.
" Let the matter alone," was her final advice, " and
leave Mrs. Thorne to be notified of Pearl's claim, in due
time, by Pearl's lawyer."
But Bona would not permit me to act upon it. She
averred that the blow would fall somewhat less crushingly
upon Mrs. Thorne, if dealt before she had time to settle
herself firmly into the belief that Rick's claim was beyond
all question. She reminded me that my antipathy to her,
and my tendency toward uncharitable judgment, in her re-
gard, should make me only the more solicitous to fail her
in no ordinary kindness ; in short, she made her quiet
voice so persistently heard through Mala's murmurs and
sarcasms, that I was forced to sit down to Mrs. Danforth's
desk, and scribble a hurried note to Mrs. Thorne, through
the house of " Venner & Co.," for I knew no other way
of reaching her. And I left it at the post-office on my way
to the station.
I arrived at the latter spot just as the up-train was
leaving. The little bustle occasioned by its departure was
all over w T hen I came out of the express oifice, and most
of the arrivals had been borne off by the various vehicles
in waiting. A single figure was pacing impatiently up and
down the platform. As it turned round, I found myself
face to face with Rick Thorne.
Our greeting was cordial and unembarrassed. In that
first moment, I think neither of us remembered precisely
how we had parted.
" I thought it most likely that you had gone to New
Orleans with your mother," said I.
" To New Orleans ! " he repeated in surprise. " Is
mother gone to New Orleans ? What on earth has taken
her there ? "
" Then you did not see her before she went ! " I ex-
claimed, amazed that Mrs. Thorne should have taken the
matter so completely into her own hands, as she appeared
to have done.
SIIILOH.
375
" No. She came to Haventon, it is true, a clay or two
ago ; and I understand she made a regular fuss because I
was not there, and they couldn't tell her where I had gone.
I I"
Here his self-possession quite forsook him, and a flush
rose to his brow. It was only for a moment.
" What is the use of mincing matters ? " he went on,
with a quick return of his old, easy, engaging frankness ;
" I am married, Miss Frost."
No doubt I opened wide eyes of wonder at him. The
scene in " The Bower " came back upon me, now, vividly.
I was provoked at myself that it caused a momentary pang.
I had no mind to furnish a confirmation, in my own person,
of the sneering assertion that no woman likes to see a
man's affections transferred from herself to another, even
though they may have given her pain rather than pleasure ;
yet from whence came that swift throe, if not fi-om
wounded vanity ? Or, was its deeper root in the sudden,
flitting vision of my own lonely future which rose before
me, as he spoke ? Yet what right have I to assume that it
will be lonely ? God's spirit, working in and through my
prayerful efforts, is able to^rowd it with peace, joy, use-
fulness, blessedness.
" Allow me to be the first of your Shiloh friends to con-
gratulate you," said I to Rick, quickly recovering myself.
" Is your aunt expecting you ? "
" No, I believe not. The truth is, my wedding was a
very sudden affair ; the fruit of a hasty impulse-, but a
good one, I hope. I met her that is to say, my wife
only a month ago, when I was in a wretched, despondent,
gloomy state (I need not tell you the reason why), and she
contrived to diffuse some sunshine through it, in such a
miraculous way, that I was grateful, of course ; and grat i-
tude turns easily to love, you know. Then she was in un-
comfortable leading-strings, subject to the control of cer-
tain people who were not at all in sympathy with her, and
376 SHILOH.
who were continually checking her bright, beautiful im-
pulses, and clipping the wings of her fancy ; and I saw her
so unhappy under it all, that I could not help marrying
her, just to set her free. I supposed mother would be
rather angry at first, but I knew I could coax her out of it.
And there was not time to write and consult her about it."
The frank, easy, kind-hearted, inconsiderate, infatuated
fellow ! I hoped his wife had brought somewhat more of
that uncommon commodity known as common sense into
the sudden partnership than he had done.
" And now," he concluded, " let me take you in and
introduce you to her."
I ceased to marvel at Rick's infatuation when a dainty
little creature, half-asleep in the dingy waiting-room, lifted
her picture-like head, with its great mass of golden curls
and its innocent, wondering blue eyes, and smiled up into
his face. But what a child ! What a pair of children !
What would become of them ! Had Providence gracious-
ly gifted them with some sparrow-like instinct, by the help
of which to seek their food and build their nest, as an off-
set to their scanty stock of human reason ! And what
sort of mercy might this soft? dove expect at the angry
talons of Mrs. Thome ! Poor, bitter, disappointed, Mrs.
Thorne !
Mrs. Rick received me w r ith the air of a childish prin-
cess, quiet, grave, slightly tinged with shyness, yet without
awkwardness or confusion. She replied to my congratu-
latory remarks appropriately enough, answered the ques-
tions I addressed to her, and left the rest of the conversa-
tion to Rick and myself.
A small boy, a rickety wagon, and a horse capable of
serving every purpose of a skeleton without taking the
trouble of dying, shortly appeared at the door, and termi-
nated the interview. With a laugh at the style of his
equipage, the only one he had been able to procure, dnd
a seriously expressed fear that the horse would be " off his
SHILOH. 377
legs " before they could reach Bryer Farm, Rick tossed in
his trunk, handed in his bride, took his small driver on his
knees, and set forth through the sunshine toward Shiloh.
An hour afterward, having finished my shopping and
turned my face homeward, I came upon them midway be-
tween Clay Corner and Hope Plain, where the loneliness
of the road is not tempered, for more than a mile, by any
dwelling. The horse had been loosened from the wagon,
and was panting under a tree by the wayside ; Rick stood
looking at him with a serious face ; his wife sat in the
wagon, unruffled and observant ; and the small boy was
making much ado of crying, with his dirty fists in his eyes.
" What is the matter ? " I asked, drawing up beside the
party.
" The matter is that this miserable beast is completely
knocked up with old age, or starvation, or hard work, or a
mixture of the three ; it would be a kindness to knock him
in the head and put him out of his misery. I've a great
mind to do it. Be off, you young rascal, and tell his mas-
ter to come and look after him, if he's got a master. It's a
question whether he'll have a horse when he gets here, and
may he never have another ! "
There was a short consultation. It ended in Rick's
placing his bride in the empty seat of my buggy, to be
conveyed to Bryer Farm ; while he turned back on foot in
search of a team to bring on his trunk and himself.
My passenger sat silent, stealing occasional glances at
me from under her long eyelashes ; doubtless, she was em-
barrassed by the novelty of her position. To set her at
ease, by diverting her thoughts into a familiar channel,
I inquired what place she had been accustomed to call
home ?
" Philadelphia."
" Ah ? I have many acquaintances there. Do you know
the Maxwells or the Lightfoots ? "
" No. I know the Heavyheads very well."
378 SHILOH.
I looked at her face. It was perfectly simple and seri-
ous, without a sign of having intended a witticism in it
anywhere. Repressing a smile at the odd, but, as it ap-
peared, fortuitous, conjunction of names, I said :
" Would it be an impertinence to ask what name you
have exchanged for that of Thorne ? I may know some
branch of your family."
" My name was Dorn Daisy Dorn."
" A dainty name for a dainty lady," I thought, but not
aloud. Truth to tell, I did not seem to " get on " with
Rick's wife. The child-like sweetness and simplicity of her
manner was slightly iced with a hauteur that seemed ab-
surdly out of place there. It occurred to me, finally, that
the congelation might be due to her knowledge of Rick's
former sentiment toward me, and I gave "Racer" a hint
to trot faster.
Not until I drove through the great gate of Brycr
Farm did I realize what an awkward mission had been forced
upon me to bring home Rick's unheralded, unlooked-for
bride; and Rick himself nobody knew where. I sent an
anxious glance down the long vista of the road, but he was
not in sight.
" Wiil you go in ? " I asked, hoping, and, indeed, fully
expecting, that the small creature beside me would beg to
remain in the carriage until he should appear ; but she
only put forth her fairy-foot, and alighted, as easily as a
bird might have done, on the porch. And Miss Bryer,
warned of my arrival by some domestic scout, was already
opening the door, with the pair of idiots at her back. Not
until she had ushered us into the parlor, and cast several
curious, questioning glances at my companion, did I ven-
ture upon an explanation. Taking Mrs. Rick's hand in
mine, in the belief that a friendly, sympathizing touch
would be helpful to her in her trying position, I said:
" Miss Bryer, I bring a new claimant for your love.
Rick expected to have had the pleasure of presenting her
SIIILOH. 379
to you himself, but a provoking, though harmless, accident
has detained him on the way hither. He is quite well, and
will soon be here. Meantime, he sends you, by my hands,
his wife."
"Hands his wife! hands his wife!" echoed the half-
wits, rapturously. Miss Brycr seemed turned to stone.
" Who's there ? " suddenly called Dr. Bryer's harsh
voice from the farther door. And after a moment he add-
ed, impatiently, " Thunder and lightning ! why don't you
answer ? "
Thus adjured, Miss Bryer found tremulous voice. "I
don't know I believe Miss Frost says it's Rick's wife."
" Rick's knife," said the old man, sharply, " he's always
losing something. Did that young woman find it ? Oh !
there's Miss Corse. How do you do, madam ? "
I threw a compassionate glance at the bride, whose
home-coming was so strange and so forlorn. Pier expi'es-
sion confounded me. Its innocent serenity was undis-
turbed : she stood looking on as at a spectacle in which
she had no concern. Yet, for one brief instant, I seemed
to catch a swift gleam of the eyes, a slight compression of
the lips, indicating that she was not so totally unmoved
as she appeared. I seemed to discover that the. glances
sped sidewise from under her long eyelashes, were cool,
keen, subtle, comprehensive ; noting every detail of the
scene, penetrating the thoughts and analyzing the charac-
ter of every actor therein. I seemed to see that she was
at once observant, amused, contemptuous, and guarded.
I say, seemed, for, the next moment, meeting her clear,
childlike eyes turned full upon me, I felt that I had been
under a delusion.
" I am sorry Carrie is not in," said Miss Bryer, address-
ing her new niece, in a trembling voice and with evident
effort ; " she would make it more pleasant for you. She
would not be so much overcome by " The quivering
voice broke down completely.
380 SHILOH.
" Then Carrie did not go with her mother," said I, think-
ing that the conversation would flow more smoothly on the
level of the commonplace.
* " No : she is only gone to one of the neighbors. I ex-
pect her in, every minute."
The information settled a difficulty for me. Since meet-
ing with Rick Thorne, I had been disturbed by a suspicion
that it was my duty to make him acquainted with the cause
and object of Mrs. Thome's journey to New Orleans, and
the discovery of Cyrus Thome's daughter ; and so save
him from the trying alternations of elation and disappoint-
ment which had befallen his mother. But it was not a
pleasant task to tell a newly made bridegroom, in the
presence of his bride, that his expectations of future wealth
were cut off; neither was it a moment to ask for a private
interview. The thought of Carrie made my way clear be-
fore me : I determined to tell her the facts, and leave her to
communicate them to Rick.
It happened that the brother and sister met at the gate,
and walked up the lane together. His story _was told,
therefore, and her surprise partly over, before they joined us.
Their coming was a relief to us all. Rick was so easy, gay,
and unembarrassed, and Carrie so unaffectedly glad of a sis-
ter-in-law, that the atmosphere grew light and bright at once.
Very soon, I drew Carrie aside. She listened to my
statement with a gentle surprise.
"Mother did not tell me that she felt at all certain
about it," said she, simply. " She only said that there was
a little more hope of Rick's getting the property."
I was unfeignedly glad to hear it. I trusted that reflec-
tion had made Mrs. Thorne somewhat less sanguine, and
that the edge of her disappointment might be proportion-
ably blunted.
Charging Carrie to put Rick in possession of the whole
story, before he chanced to hear the first part of it only
from any other quarter, I took my leave.
A VISIT TO THE CITY.
| HE next morning, I started for New York, tak-
ing Ruth Winnot with me. Thus it came
about.
Ruth's progress in music has more than justi-
fied my anticipations. Exercises and studies
that were Hills of Difficulty and Sloughs of
Despond to me, in the earlier stages of my musi-
cal pilgrimage, she cleared almost at a bound.
I was delighted, and told her so frankly, even enthusiastic-
ally. By and by, she grew careless. Content to read aL-
most by instinct and to execute easily, she neglected to
understand how and wherefore she did so. The faint
dawning of conceit showed itself, not directly manifested
to me, but by many subtile channels of look and tone. I
had praised her too much and made her way too easy.
Then, without preparation or warning, I threw her into
the thick of musical difficulties. I brought forth my old,
grand songs and interminable studies, sang some of them
to her, and gave her a lesson upon one or two others. She
began in confidence and ended in confusion. She blundered
and floundered through her hours of practice, and came to
her lesson with a most dissatisfied and anxious face. She
received plenty of criticism, and no word of praise. The
criticism was repeated, in nearly the same words, at every
succeeding lesson. At the fourth repetition, Ruth's head
went down upon the piano, and sobs brake forth. I in-
quired, composedly enough, what was the matter ?
382 SIIILOII.
" I never can do that in the world ! It's of no use to
try ! " she sobbed out. " After all, I am no singer. I have
got to the end of my powers ; I cannot go a step further.
It is all dark to me ! And yet, only a little while ago, the
way was so easy and plain ! What does it mean ? "
" It means," answered I, drily, " that I am not like
Providence."
She lifted her head and looked at me w T onderingly.
" Because Providence, Ruth, rarely gives to us more
than just that moderate and judicious degree of encour-
agement which serves to keep us in the humble and indus-
trious exercise of our best powers, knowing that more would
tend to pride and carelessness, as less does to discourage-
ment and despair. Whereas I, having unwisely begun
by giving you too much, was forced to balance matters by
giving you none at all. Having made your way too easy,
at first, the only alternative was to make it too difficult,
at last, so as to teach, you that it was necessary to take
heed to your steps."
" I see," she returned, moiirnfully, " I was doing in earn-
est what I once prophesied that I should do, in jest, I was
getting conceited. I fancied that I had but little, if any-
thing, more to learn, and that I could learn it without effort.
Forgive me ! I will not be such an idiot again ! Sill," she
added, sighing, " I do not see, now, how I am ever to learn
that exercise ! "
" Neither do I, until you have been over some prepara-
tory ground. We will return to the point w r here your way
ceased to be easy, and work up to the exercise by degrees.
By that time, I suspect that most of its difficulties will
have disappeared."
" And all this time has been wasted ! " she exclaimed,
dolefully.
" Not so, Ruth, if it has taught painstaking and humil-
ity to genius. Without the latter, it can achieve but little ;
without the former, it can achieve .nothing worthily."
SHILOH. 383
Thenceforth, her progress was sure as well as swift.
Every day seemed to add something to the compass or the
beauty of her wonderful voice. Its rare quality and rich
resources became continually more apparent. So much so
that I had a fit of humility, one day, and doubted if I were
really competent to train and develop so exquisite an organ.
To settle the doubt, as well as in the hope of getting
more light on the question of Ruth's future, which begins
to press upon me, I addressed a letter to my old teacher,
Signer Canto. It brought me an answer, highly compli-
mentary and encouraging, so far as concerned my qualifica-
tions for teaching, and closing as follows, in the Signer's
customary Italian-English : " When you can teach the
Signorina no more, bring her to me. If she be the prodigio
of genius that you believe, it shall please me much to help
her to perfect and make fruit of her talent. Voices supe-
riores are few; if you have found one, you have rare good
fortune, it must never be lost to the world for want of cul-
tivamento."
I showed the letter to Ruth. Her eyes sparkled at
first, then she grew thoughtful. After a moment, she
said, "It is very nice, only I am afraid he would expect
me to go upon the stage. I could never do that, you
know." And she made a silent gesture toward her feet.
" For other reasons, too, I hope, Ruth. The stage is no
place for a Christian woman, such as I trust you will be.
The* choir of the church, and, perhaps, the platform of the
concert-hall, will give ample scope for all your talent, and
not take you on dangerous ground."
She shook her head., " Not the latter, you forget "
And she gave another expressive downward look.
" No, I do not forget. Only, I do not recognise that as
an insuperable obstacle."
She gazed long and earnestly in my face. Suddenly,
she threw herself down at my side, hid her face on my
shoulder, and burst out with
384: SIIILOII.
" Tell me, Miss Frost there is no one else that I dare
ask, it would be so hai'd for my mother to say ' no ' to me !
tell me, is it not possible to have them straightened ? "
I was deeply moved ; there was so much pent-up suffer-
ing and desire in the tone. " I do not know, indeed, dar-
ling. Certainly, it would involve a fearful amount of
pain."
" I don't care for that ! I would bear anything every-
thing only to be made straight. Oh ! how often I dream
that I am so ! that Christ, passing by, turns his soft eye
on me, and says, ' Be healed ! ' And then to wake, and
find it only a dream, and that I am crooked still ! Ah !
you don't know what that is, Miss Frost ! "
The result of this conversation was that Ruth and I
made a flying .visit to New York. First, I took her to the
distinguished surgeon, Dr. Heartwell, my father's life-long
friend. He gave her a rapid, but searching examination.
This was his decision :
" Your medical adviser, at home, was right. I have
reason, every day, to know that my brother practitioners
of the country are not so far behind us of the city as their
patients are apt to imagine. Although there is not a single
sign or symptom of disease about you, and you may live as
long, under favorable conditions, as the majority of the
human race, or even longer ; yet your constitution is too
delicate, your nerves too sensitive, to justify our undertak-
ing the operation. If done at all, it should have been 'done
earlier. Still not to leave you to the gnaAving tooth of a
miserable ' might-have-been ' I tell you frankly that I
question if it could ever have been done safely."
Then the kind old man, the practised Healer, learned in
medicaments for the soul as well as for the body, laid a
fatherly hand on Ruth's head. " After all, my child, it is
not so serious a matter. You have yotith, health, beauty,
and, as Winnie tells me, talent. Why seek for more ? Few
have so much. And all of us have some crookedness, of
SHTLOH. 385
mind, or soul, or body, never to be quite straightened in
this life ; perhaps that we may the more ardently desii'e
the life in which all crooked things are to be made straight,
and all dark things plain. If your crookedness is "only of
the body, you have more reason to rejoice than to be sor-
rowful."
If Ruth was disappointed, she was also tranquilized.
Hope, suspense, and longing, were alike at an end. She
knew her ground. And the old man's reassuring words,
and benignant manner, were not without their effect.
Then I took her to Signor Canto. He listened to her.
with an ecstatic admiration that continually leaped over
the narrow limits of his slow English into enthusiastic
Italian. " Of course, she had much to learn, and he could
see that she was learning it," with a low bow to me, " but
her voice, it was magnified, sopra ogni cosa above every-
thing that he had imagined ! It was superba, maravigli-
osa, wonderful."
Then he said to me, in Italiap, " Something must be
done for her feet. She would make her fortune and yours
and mine, too on the operatic stage."
" It cannot be, signore"
" It must be. Take her to a surgeon."
" I have just done so. He does not advise it."
" Take her to another. Some one will be^ found to ad-
vise it."
" And kill her ! I beg to decline. Besides, neither Miss
"Winnot nor I like the idea of the stage."
He made a grimace. Then he besieged Ruth. Uncon-
sciously, the kind-hearted, enthusiastic little man played
the part of Satan in the wilderness, and played it well. He
held fame, wealth, admiration, power, before her dazzled
eyes. Paradoxical as the statement may seem, her crooked
feet enabled her to stand firm. For a moment, I was glad
she had them. With her rare, exquisite beauty, and her
marvellous voice, what temptations, what dangers, what
17
386 SHILOH.
downfalls may they not have saved her from ! They were
God's visible protection around her the pillar of cloud
that was shade by day, and light by night.
At last, he gave up the vain attempt. " It is a thousand
pities," he said, dolefully. " Such a career as you could
have ! Still, we have the concert, the oratorio, the Church
service ; we must make ourselves content. When will I
have the honor to count you into my pupils, Miss "Win-
not?"
I remained in the city two or three days, in order to
give Ruth a glance at some of its lions ; Uncle John being
only too glad to have us impart even a transient home-
aspect to his great, empty house, and very fertile in ex-
pedients for keeping us there. The business-mist did not
once envelop him during our stay. He was greatly charmed
with Ruth ; and she was soon quite as much at ease with
him as his own children ; for him, she put on her brightest
face and sang her sweetest songs.
When " she returned i-o Shiloh, it was plain that the trip
had done her good. The city accustomed to all sad and
forlorn eights, and keenly appi'eciative of beauty had
scarcely noticed her feet, but had gazed admiringly in
her face. She had met many strangers and not one rebuff.
She had gained in confidence and in spirits.
XXXVI.
THE TEUTH AT LAST.
N" the afternoon of the day of my return
from New York, I met Mrs. Danforth at
the Sewing Society. She soon took occasion to
lead me into a room apart.
" Well ! " she began, " I wrote to Pearl, or
rather, to her mother, and she wrote back that
Pearl was away visiting, and she had immedi-
ately forwarded the letter. Probably Pearl has
received it, by this time, and I shall soon hear how she takes
it. By the way, I hear that Rick Thorne is married, and
that you had the honor of carrying home the unexpected
bride. How does she look ? Is she pretty ? "
" Very pretty a perfect little fairy."
" Where does she hail from ? "
" Philadelphia."
" Indeed ! I have a large acquaintance there. What
is or what was her name ? "
"Daisy Dorn."
Mrs. Danforth gave me one look of unqualified amaze-
ment. Then, she dropped into the nearest chair, and burst
into a long, loud, ringing laugh, yet a laugh that I never
quite like to hear, because much too broad and noisy for a
woman.
"I do not see the joke," said I, rather severely.
" Don't you ? My good gracious ! it is too rich ! Daisy
Dorn is " and she went off into another peal.
388 SIIILOH.
I waited in silent disapproval.
"Is is," she went on, catching her breath hysterically,
" goodness alive ! she is Pearl Danforth ! "
" Impossible ! " I exclaimed. " That child ! "
" Child ! " cried Mrs. Danforth, fairly screaming with
mirth. " Bless your simple soul ! she was of age two years
ago. And she has the brain of a Machiavelli under those
yellow curls of hers. I'll bet on her against Mrs. Thorne,
two to one."
" But her name Daisy Dorn."
" You persistent sceptic ! Her name is Margaret : of
course she is entitled to all its variations. Chester called
her Pearl, because, as he said, he had picked her up on the
seashore. She assumes the others as the fit takes her
Daisy, Madge, Greta, and I don't know what not. Lately,
too, she has taken a fancy to resume the name of Dorn,
the name her father bore in Italy, and the only one Chester
knew anything about ; no wonder he never found her
friends ! "
" And it is the German for Thorne ! " said I.
" Exactly. The affair grows clearer every moment, you
sec."
" And Rick will get the property after all ! "
" Umph ! that's as Pearl pleases ! She is of age, you
know. Perhaps he will get as much of it as is good for
him ; he certainly will not get any more. He will find that
his wife has a will of steel under her soft, cushiony exte-
rior. By the way, I wonder what possessed her to marry
him ! I always thought her on the look-out for a rich hus-
band, to be sure, she can afford to mai'ry whom she
pleases, now; but then, she did not know it when she did
the deed ! Can she really have fallen in love with his
handsome face, and married him with her eyes shut to
everything else, silly-girl fashion ? "
Remembering a look that she had given her husband,
as he entered the depot, and another in the Bryer's parlor,
I averred that I thought she had.
SHILOII. 389
" Then," said Mrs. Danforth, " I should not wonder if
she macle him an excellent wife. She has brains enough
for both ; and artfulness enough to keep his simple head
from suspecting half the crooks and corners of hers. She
will manage him wholly, without his knowing that she does
it. She will seem as transparent as a meadow-brook, when
she is as deep as the sea. The more she loves him, the less
will she allow him to see her as she is, that is, until the
softening influence of wifehood and motherhood have made
her nearer to what she should be."
" And you call that an excellent wife ! Poor Rick ! "
Mrs. Danforth looked really abashed. " Miss Frost ! "
she exclaimed in a deprecating tone, " you surely know
that I was not speaking abstractly, but relatively, for the
present occasion. I do think that Frederick Thorne, with
his temperament and characteristics, might have done much
worse than to marry Pearl. For, after all, she is eccentric
and secretive, rather than wicked. She is such a consum-
mate actress, by nature, that she cannot help playing a
part ; and, loving her husband, she will play that of a good
wife to perfection. Besides, I meant to imply, in the con-
cluding clause of my unlucky speech, that I thought her
likely to change very much for the better, in due time.
But, my dear Miss Frost ! pray do not think that I have no
higher standard of womanhood than that ! none higher
than I had when I came to Shiloh, three months ago ! Is
it possible you do not see that I am trying to lead a little
higher life myself, even though I do still talk and perhaps
act carelessly, that being the 'natur of the critter,' as
the farmers say ? "
She ended " 'twixt a smile and a tear." My own eyes
grew dim. I had seen the change in her though far too
subtile a thing to define in words and rejoiced at it. I
told her so, earnestly.
" As the angels in heaven do over a sinner that repent-
eth ! " said she, with the same mixture of mirth and seri-
390 SHILOH.
ousness; which, I have learned, she uses instinctively as a
mask to her deeper feelings. " Perhaps you'll never know,
till you get there, how much you have had to do with it. Sun-
day School teachings sometimes rebound from the children
and hit the parents. Seeing Gordon and Effie so earnestly
trotting and tumbling heavenward, under your guidance,
I could not well help asking myself whither my own
ways tended. You may be sure that it has taken some of
the conceit out of me, to find that what I did so unwil-
lingly, as a great favor to you and a wonderful condescen-
sion to the Sunday School cause in Shiloh, turns out to
have been, humanly speaking, the salvation of my children
and myself. To be sure, I was a Church member before,
and active enough in Church work, after my fashion ;
but I suspect I had as little of the Christian spirit as any
Hottentot."
I was dumb. Never did I feel so humbled. It was so
plain to me that it was not " I," weakly and wearily oscil-
lating between Bona and Mala, but the grace of God, that
had done it ! Mrs. Danforth had been very far from my
thoughts, in my Sunday School work.
She wiped her eyes, and recurred to the preceding topic.
" I suppose ! must go and call on Pearl," said she,
" though she doesn't deserve it. To think that the little
minx should have gone sti'aight past my door with you,
and not have stopped ! not even long enough for that
sorely tried husband of hers to come up. But it is just
like her ! I know she enjoyed her sudden, single-handed
descent upon those startled Bryers a great deal better than
any more commonplace introduction. She fairly luxuri-
ated in that absurd scene. Well ! I will go and see her
this evening, and tell her of her good fortune, if such it is
to be called."
The next morning, Mrs. Danforth knocked at the open
door of the out-room, where Ruth and I were seated at the
piano.
SIIILOH. 391
" I thought I would just stop in and tell you that I
found only an empty nest," she said, as we shook hands.
" The bird is flown."
" What who ! " I asked, bewildered.
"Who? Pearl Daisy Mrs. Frederick Thorne. I
have just come from the Bryers ; I did not go up there
last night, I had a sick headache. Meanwhile, Carrie had
made Rick a statement of facts, as you requested her to do.
He imparted them to his wife. The name of Chester Dan-
forth made the whole thing clear to Pearl's very quick
comprehension. Finale: she and Rick started for New
Orleans at six o'clock this morning. Son voyage ! "
XXXVII.
THE BUMMER'S WOKK.
| HE summer is* fast gliding by a summer of
some pleasure, of more labor, of multiply-
ing interests, of much that has left a rich
residuum of experience in the depths of my
heart. It has made life's purpose and signifi-
cance clearer to me. It has taught me that, as
our nature is constituted, and under its present
conditions, we are made more contented, as well
as wiser, by a due admixture of sorrow and disappointment
in our earthly cup. The life that is rightly lived, groAvs
richer by its losses and gladder through its tears. Not only
"knowledge," but joy, "by suffering entereth." So long
as we make earthly happiness an end, and seek it directly,
we are certain to miss it, and to be continually chilled and
soured and disappointed thereby ; but as soon as we make
up our minds to do without it, and put submission, useful-
ness, an earnest striving after holiness, in its place, we are
apt to find it quietly waiting upon them, as their humble
handmaiden.
So much of truth has the summer broiight to me in its
gliding by. Let us see what it has brought to others, for
it lias suffered none of the persons left behind by these
chronicles to stand quite still.
Alice Prescott took to the study of Italian as a bird to
the air. So far, the poet's dower is hers she has the gift
of tongues.
SIIILOII. o;);j.
Moreover, the readings long ago inaugurated have been
quietly educating her taste, and deepening her thought.
For her sake, I have made frequent selections from the
poets, and accompanied the reading thereof with copious
commentary, analysis, and criticism. I left these to do
their silent work. That they did it I knew well, not only
by frequently surprising Alice with a pencil and a scrap
of paper in her hands, and the pleasant trouble of poetic
travail in her face; but by seeing the same scraps thrust
silently and despondently into the kitchen fire. It was
long ere I put forth a hand to save one of these frof-
doom.
" I hope I Jiave your permission to read this," said 1;
when I had done so.
" If it were worth reading, I would have brought it to
you unasked. Do not mortify me by looking at it ! "
" Is it lately written ? "
" Oh, no ; I wrote it more than a fortnight ago."
" Did it not seem worth reading to you, then ? "
" Ah ! yes, everything does, at first. But, in a few
days, all the flavor, all the life, have gone out of it. It is
wishy-washy, and sickens me ! It is cold and dead, and
chills me ! I hasten to put it out of my sight."
" That is to say that the inevitable moment of doubt,
discouragement, and disgust, which comes to every worker
for Art, be it painter, sculptor, or poet, comes also to you.
It may be that it is the moment wherein his late standard,
well-nigh reached, begins to mount higher ; it may be the
one which first reveals to him that the fairest, subtlest
graces of his spiritual ideal are not to be embodied in color,
marble, or rhythm. Still, that moment of disgust is not
the time to judge fairly of the work done. Leave the
decision to me whether this deserves the flames, or no."
" Not that," she exclaimed hurriedly ; " let ipe bring
you something I wrote this merning."
" Which has not yet lost its flavor ? No, thank you.
394: SIIILOH.
My praise, if I have any to give, will seem fearfully cold
to that birth-warai effusion. While my criticism will not
hurt this one nearly so much."
Her reluctance continued, and seemed so disproportion-
ate to the occasion, that I was first puzzled, then half-vexed.
Seeing that, she yielded at once, and sat with a downcast
face and deeply-suffused cheeks, awaiting the result.
Of course, I expected to see " Lines to " something,
summer, autumn, a cat, a flower, on the death of a friend,
or some one of the hackneyed themes of youthful rhymers.
What I actually saw, therefore, astonished me not a little.
The verses had no title, and they ran thus :
" I have locked my heart, and I give you the key.
Throw it, I pray you, into the sea,
It's of no use to you, and still less to me.
" None shall come after you into that door,
None after you, and you enter no more !
Let the dust gather on ceiling and floor.
" Let the dim ghost of our dead love all night
StaHc through the empty rooms, bare of delight,
Smell the brown roses that once were so white.
" Let it count over 'mid silence and dearth,
Hopes that once laughed in the glow on the hearth,
Snows that have chilled both the flame and the mirth.
" Then, when the dawn o'er the hilltops doth peep,
Back to its grave let it silently creep,
Grave that the slow years dig ever more deep ! "
The cause of Alice's reluctance was at once made clear
to me. For a moment, I felt a flush on my own cheek.
By means of that marvelous intuition of hers, she had ar-
rived at some conception of the sort of chill and torpor that
had fallen on my heart, and given it voice, in my stead.
Strange that the poet's insight can almost dispense with
SHILOH. 395
experience ! That a slender New England girl, hid away
in the quietest corner of a quiet town, with no personal
knowledge of love, and quite innocent of its heartache,
should write such a sombre, hopeless, death-scented lyric as
this, was indeed a marvel !
I read it twice or thrice, partly to get rid of my self-
consciousness, partly to qualify myself for judgment.
" Well, Alice," I said, at length, " you need not burn
this, and you may go on rhyming."
She looked at me with a slow, tremulous joy dawning in
her blue eyes. Yet the mute gaze seemed to ask for some-
thing more. To gratify it, I went on :
" Your verses are better than I expected. They are
simple and unpretending, and, therefore, do not greatly
challenge criticism. I .am glad to observe that you avoid
false rhymes and mixed metaphors, and that a distinct line
of thought is traceable throughout. This is something
much, in so young a poet."
Her face grew radiant, but her questioning look did not
change. What an unerring instinct the girl has !
" If you really crave a little criticism," said I, smiling,
" here it is ! The last line is not quite smooth."
" Ah, yes ! I know it," she replied. " But how else am
I to get both the thought and the rhyme ? "
" There, I suspect, is the poet's woi-st difficulty," said
I. " To make sense and rhyme perfectly harmonious, so
that neither warps nor constrains the other ; to manage
both so artfully as to make it appear that the thought could
in no otherwise be so well and adequately expressed ; that
must give him his hardest labor. But I should really like
to know what is the poet's process, Alice."
" I do not know if I can tell you," she answered, slowly.
" With me, it seems like a remembering rather than a mak-
ing. My verses come to me precisely as you recall a half-
forgotten poem or song. Whole lines and stanzas start up
in my mind, without the least effort ; but here and there
396 SHILOH.
are gaps which it is hard to fill. In vain I try to remember
what belongs in them; the missing line or phrase hovers
about the outer edge of my mind, but cannot be coaxed
within it. It is only after long trial that I can fill up these
gaps, at all ; and the interpolation always has the air of a
patch over a hole in a garment, at least, to me."
She then brought mo her morning's production. It
proved to be better than this, after all, more original, and
with a stronger, sweeter flow. It is too long to copy, .but
it can be found in the August NO. of the Magazine.
For, after Alice had copied it in her best hand (and it is not
the least of her literary qualifications that she writes one
which it is a pleasure and not a penance to read), I sent it
to the editor thereof, whom I happen to know slightly,
bespeaking for it a more prompt apd careful examination
than is usually vouchsafed to the production of an un-
known author. Two or three days brought back a letter,
saying that he would be " happy to hear from her again ; "
and enclosing a sum which filled Alice with shy, crimson
delight, and made Mrs. Prescott hold up her head as high
as if she had received the first instalment of an ample and
certain fortune.
But Alice's literary path was not always to run thus
smooth. Her second venture was " declined, with thanks ; "
it was "too grave for our columns," (which means simply
that it was devotional), would she " try again ? " She did
try again, and her article was accepted; but not without a
warning that it was below the mark of the first one, duly
emphasized by a much smaller enclosure. Her rejected
"Hymn" which was really the best of the three finally
found a place in the columns of a religious weekly ; at a rate
of compensation so low as to leave no question whatever
about the comparative values of religion and non-religion
in the literary market ; nor any shred of doubt in which
branch of the trade a neophyte's talent would be best re-
warded that is, so far as earthly remuneration is concerned.
SIIILOII. 397
And this brings Alice's intellectual history up to the
present point. As for her emotional one, that lies, for the
most part, beyond my ken. Not that she is deliberately
secretive ; but she is naturally reserved and likes little to
talk about herself; easier for a deep, shadowy, enclosed
well to turn itself into a running and sparkling brook than
for Alice to assume the openness and communicativeness of
Ruth. Her natural channel of expression is her pen ; that
suffices her for interpreter and confidant.
Of course, this summer of constant association has knit-
ted Alice, Ruth, and myself very closely together. Any
picture of me, at this epoch, would be incomplete without
one or both of them at hand, looking up to me with an
affection that is half worship. I get even a little .too much
of their society, and am often oppressed by their reveren-
tial regard. It may be morally good for one, but it is none
the less wearisome to fallen human nature, to be compelled
to live always t the height of some loving, worshipping
friend's ideal. Often I feel an insane impulse to do some-
thing unredeemably weak or wicked, just to cast my image
down from that uncomfortable and insecure elevation, and
give it leave to stand, henceforth, upon the lower earth,
among its kind. I am withheld therefrom by no selfish
considerations of loss of power or prestige, but by an intu-
itive knowledge that both these simple, loving souls would
seem to see, in its downfall, the entire universe tumbling
backward into chaos. In life's earlier years, as I have sore
reason to know, it is a serious matter to lose one's ideals.
With them the fair structure of faith crumbles to dust.
The whole moral world falls, seemingly, into irretrievable
ruin. Its foundations heave and gape beneath our feet; its
sky crashes down upon our heads, w r ith fearful and start-
ling effect. All that was worthy of reverence has hopelessly
gone to rack, we think, as we struggle forth from the ruins,
stunned and bewildered. It may be years before we find
out the scarcely less bitter, if more wholesome, certainty
398 SHILOH.
that it was only an unfounded, illusory fabric of our own
creation which fell, and that the fair temple of Truth, with
its immutable foundations in Goodness and Right, was in
nowise involved in the crash.
To be sure that crash must come to Ruth and Alice,
sooner or later, but woe to him by whom it cometh ! To
escape which malediction, I go on teaching, moralizing, sug-
gesting, encouraging, according to the established routine,
and striving to keep my interests and sympathies unflag-
gingly up to their work, in spite of the inevitable loss of
their first fresh impetus, till I can recover it by a temporary
withdrawal and rest, things indispensable, it would seem,
to the health of any friendship, however sweet and cordial,
wherein the sum of help, sympathy, and rest received does
not very closely approximate to the amount rendered. In
this effort Mala, as may be expected, gives me little assist-
ance. Not even under the guise of pride or self-respect is
she capable of lending a steady, lasting aid to any good
and unselfish work. But Bona, though often sore grieved,
and, doubtless, tempted to withdraw and leave me to
the unhelped and unhindered tendencies of my nature, doth
yet stand by me, and enable me to struggle on, if not to
the unmixed approval of my conscience, at least to the
apparent satisfaction of my duo of satellites.
Perhaps I ought to say trio, since the summer did what
it could to bring Carrie Thorne into the same category.
Still, no part of the foregoing paragraph applies to her.
The distance between the Divine and Bryer farms saved
me from her too close attendance, and she is of too gentle,
humble, and self-forgetting a nature ever to be felt as a
restraint or a burden. She is content to adore her idols
afar off, and accepts from them much or little with the same
sweet thankfulness. Whereas Ruth can be both jealous
and exacting, upon occasion, I find, or even without it ; and
Alice, though she is neither of these, has such an insatiate
hunger for thought, feeling, emotion, knowledge, and all
SIIILOH. 399
sorts of mental pabulum things by which her genius is to
live and grow, in truth a vital necessity of its existence
that she becomes in constant association (not to use the
simile harshly, and divesting it of every heartless and repul-
sive idea), a* kind of human leech. The one wearies by
excessive stimulation, the other by continual absorption.
Carrie presented the reposeful side of the picture. She
neither excited nor drained. She simply soothed.
But the summer did something better for Carfic
Thorn e than to give her an assured place in my interests
and affections. It brought her into closer contact with the
life that beats around her, and so warmed her own into
expansion and usefulness. She became an efficient teacher
in the Sunday School, quiet, painstaking, and obedient,
and she was one of the most regular attendants and faith-
ful workers of the Sewing Society.
I say, was, because these last summer days have swept
Carrie away from me, into an atmosphere of trouble and
anxiety. Poor Mrs. Thorne was stricken with paralysis,
on the receipt of Rick's sudden announcement of his hasty
marriage. Following close upon my notice of the discovery
of Cyrus Thome's missing child, it seemed the deathblow
to all her schemes, hopes, and ambitions. Rick's arrival,
and the discovery that the bride and the heiress were
one and the same, could not undo the bodily mischief,
though they may have brought some comfort to her mind.
Carrie was immediately sent for. A letter just received
from her, reports Mrs. Thorne in a very dangerous situa-
tion.
There have been no new developments with regard to
the artist. Though we meet often, and upon terms which
time and a better knowledge of each other render more and
more friendly, it is always in the presence of others, and
the subject of his incognito has never again been broached.
He has nearly finished my picture of Ruth. The like-
ness is perfect ; yet he has not failed to add, or take away,
400 MHLOII.
that indefinable, inestimable something which makes all the
difference between a mere portrait and a work of art.
The " Dream ; Reverie ; Reflection," is also in progress.
At my earnest solicitation, the artist has substituted Alice's
face therein for mine ; as furnishing a stronger contrast to
Ruth's, and more perfectly embodying the idea reverie
being Alice's normal expression. Both she and Ruth give
him a sitting, when desired ; yet I cannot report satisfac-
tory progress in the little romance heretofore hinted at.
His artist-eye lights np at sight of Ruth's face ; yet his
enjoyment of Alice's silent, intuitive sympathy with all his
thoughts and moods is scarcely less evident. Certainly, he
is beguiled, by its subtile charm, to talk to her more freely
than to any one else of whatever he has done in the world,
or dreams of doing. Nevertheless, he may forget her even
while he talks to her most unreservedly, being moved solely
by the natural impulse of thought to flow into the first
sympathetic ear that comes in its way.
Yet the themes which chiefly engage his mind and con-
versation, the history, scope, and mission of Art, the suc-
cesses, discouragements, and self-consecration of her work-
ers, these, and kindred topics, discussed in a lofty, gener-
ous spirit, and with a rare flow of language and imagery,
are not without a noticeable effect in quickening and
Enlarging the minds both of Alice and Ruth. With every
visit to the studio, their faces are informed with a deeper
thought ; the girlishness is fast departing thence, and some
new charm of womanhood blossoms there daily.
As for Essie Volger, though Shiloh would seem to lose
half its sunshine without her, and parish-work would
greatly miss her helping hand, yet any detailed record of
her fresh, active, joyous life, free and bright as a meadow-
brook, and as innocent of care and turmoil, would but serve
to illustrate the French proverb, " Heureux le peuple dont
rhistoire ennuie"
XXXVIII.
IK ST. JTJDE'S.
St. Jude's the summer has wrought some
greatly needed improvements. The fund
for repairs prospered to such a degree, under
Mrs. Prescott's fostering care, that a self-consti-
tuted committee, composed of that active lady,
Mrs. Taylor, Mrs. Danforth, Essie Volger, and
your indefatigable reporter, aided and abetted
by the artist, whose surplus fancy and energy
like to bubble over in gratuitous church architecture and
decoration, ventured to turn a half-dozen carpenters and
painters into the sacred edifice, and to set them at work
there. It was irregular, we knew; but then, Church
work had to "be done irregularly in Shiloh ! To call a
parish meeting, and pass a vote, was to quash every for-
ward proceeding. Fortunately the opposition wouH be as
irregular as the advance. It would never organize, and
therefore would be ineffective, save in producing uncom-
fortableness. -
The aspiring gallery, which actually seemed to. climb
higher every time I mounted it, was first brought low.
ISTot alone to the confusion and wrath of the wasps that had
tenanted it undisturbed all the week, and waged fierce war
upon' intruders on Sundays ; nor of the urchins that had
whispered and tittered and contorted in its recondite nooks
during service, wholly out of eye-shot either of minister or
congregation ; but to the dire dismay of all .the representa-
402 SHILOH.
tive stagnancy and ossification of the parish. Major Bur-
cham came to inspect the work, one day ; and I heard him
saying to Mr. Taylor, in his most pompous and overbearing
tones,
" You little sus imagine what you are doing, sir ! The
gallery is the main support of the church, sir, the main sup-
port of the church. It keeps the walls in place, and when
it is taken away they will turn collapse, sir, and leave
nothing but a heap of ruins a heap of ruins ! I wash my
hands of the whole business, sir, of the whole business ! "
Which supererogatory ablution the Major immediately
performed, by rubbing his large hands together, sprinkling
the air with imaginary water, and turning his broad, impos-
ing back, typical of universal disapprobation, upon us and
our proceedings. Whereat Mr. Taylor looked a little
scared ; but the feminine wing remained undaunted ; and
the artist, emerging from the shadowy corner where he had
listened to Major Burcham's comments with what struck
me as a very odd and inexplicable expression of counte-
nance, laughed and poohed and insisted ; so the work went
on. The huge heap of gallery timber was quickly trans-
formed into a small organ loft, at a moderate elevation,
with not an inch of lounging or play-room in it ; also a
vestry at the rear of the chancel, to supersede a narrow
cuddy in the vestibule, wherein Mr. Taylor had hitherto
groaned himself into his surplice, and then walked, in state,
up the aisle to the desk. Finally, two of the obnoxious win-
dows were suppressed, the others were darkened with
blinds, . the chancel was refurnished, the artist gave an
effective touch here and there, and St. Jude's was success-
fully remodelled. Its walls, in spite of the loss of their
" main support," preserved their equilibrium, and the ob-
jectors recovered theirs.
However, by the inevitable fatality attending all such
work, the repairs outran the fund. Hereupon, Mrs. Dan-
forth's fair came magnanimously to the rescue. It was
sniLoir. 403
held in Mrs. Divine's house, not that it was more roomy,
central, or adaptable, than many, of its neighbors, but be-
cause its mistress's heart was larger, warmer, and less easily
irritated by domestic turmoil and upset, than any similar
organ within a radius of many miles. It was good to see
how cordially she entered into it, how readily she sacrificed
domestic routine and comfort to it, how she aided, satirized,
and enjoyed it.
Being an exotic, it required all Mrs. Danforth's tact,
fluency, and skill, to save it from languishing in Shiloh's
ungcnial air. To use her own felicitous phrase, she "gal-
vanized the thing through," forcing a kind of spasmodic
life from the very joints and muscles of death. The re-
freshment tables were tolerably well patronized, an appe-
tite being the one thing to be counted upon with certainty
in all gatherings. But the native population " fought shy"
of the fancy-work table stocked with all sorts of frail and
fanciful money-traps (under other names!), knitted or cro-
cheted by Mrs. Danforth, or donated by her idly-busy city
friends. Great, brown farmers touched them with the tips
of their horny fingers as if they suspected them to be dan-
gerous combinations of the brittleness of glass with the
flimsiness of cobweb, asked what they were for, bestowed
upon them a certain amount of half-bewildered, half-con-
temptuous admiration, and went their way without open-
ing their purses.
But for the timely presence of a waif from the city, who
bought whatever he was requested to buy without looking
at it ; and a small army of Essie Volger's admirers, anxious
to impress her with their generosity ; these elegant nothings
would have been left upon our hands. The quilts, how-
ever, sold readily enough, by " chances," as the softening
phrase goes. Taken as a whole, the fair was a success,
but a success resembling certain victories in the battle-field,
which not even the conquering general himself would care
to repeat.
404 SHILOH.
The summer has done much for the Sunday School ; it
is now in a most flourishing condition. Though it 'has a
duly appointed superintendent, Mr. Taylor never fails to
give it the strength and inspiration of his pi'esence ; and
makes it a point to shake the hand of every teacher and
scholar, at each session, with, at least, a cordial " How do
you do ? " When the lessons in class are over, he devotes
a quarter of an hour to catechising the scholai-s, in person ;
a time to which they look forward with real pleasure. For
he has the rare faculty of talking to children in a manner
that is at once simple, entertaining, and instructive ; neither
wrecking himself* upon the Scylla of silliness nor the
Charybdis of obscurity.
As for my own class, in which you take so kind an in-
terest, it has bettered my anticipations. Being a work in
an untried field, and undertaken very much on my own
responsibility, my pride as well as better feelings was
deeply concerned in its success ; and I spared no pains in
its behoof. I prepared myself for the recitations with the
utmost care ; looking out or inventing stories, and hunting
up pictures and curiosities whatever could be made to
serve the purposes of illustration. An old herbarium, con-
taining dried specimens of fig-leaves, palms,' pomegranate,
and other plants mentioned in the Bible, helped me out ; so
did the artist's collection of antiquities and portfolios of
sketches. I took care never to be without something of
the sort, to awaken and interest the childrens' minds, and
give shape and point to their very vague ideas of Bible ac-
cessories (to borrow a term from the language of Art).
Also, I made it a rule to visit, at the earliest moment pos-
sible, every child that was not in its place, on Sunday ; and
the mother's certainty that every such absence would be
followed by my appearance beside her wash-tubs, on Mon-
day morning, may have had its share in bringing about a
gratifying regularity of attendance. The class now num-
bers thirteen ; it has greatly improved in appearance and
SIIILOII. 4:05
behavior ; clean faces and clean garments, quietude, and
good lessons, are no longer the exception, but the rule.
Yet its best fruits appear in the fact that some few
of its members are really setting their young faces heaven?
ward ; though not, of course, without much blundering
and tripping by the way ; the truest evidence of their sin-
cerity being that they pick themselves up after every fall,
and, while yet sore and smarting, set forth again. Libby,
sweet and patient by nature, and early trained by circum-
stance to a sense of duty and responsibility, is most for-
ward of them all ; I am sometimes oppressed by a vague
fear of I know not what, when I observe how very near to
the kingdom she is. Next to her so far as is patent to
human vision, for I do not count my judgment infallible,
in this matter comes Gordon Danforth. That boy has in
him the making of another Bayard ! His manner toward his
smaller, weaker, poorer classmates, is redolent of the pur-
est essence of chivalry.
But the class has also borne good fruit, in an indirect
way. Very soon after its commencement, such members of
the congregation as ai-e wont to spend the short intermis-
sion between morning and afternoon service at the church,
began to gather in its neighborhood, listening attentively
to its recitations, and begging a reversionary look at the
pictures, maps, etc., used in illustration of the lesson.
Doubtless, some of them read their Bibles more understand-
ingly thereafter. Certainly, the audience increased even
faster than the class. One day, I was surprised to discover
Mrs. Danforth's diamonds flashing in the midst of it.
" Gordon and Effie make such a -fuss about you and
your teaching," whispered she, " that I am devoured with
curiosity to see what it all means. You have fairly be-
witched them, and I would like to make sure that you use
no unlawful magic."
When the recitation was over, she came to me with a
piquant air, but an unusually thoughtful face.
406 SHILOH.
" Well ! I must say I never saw you lay yourself out
for anybody as you do for those children ! No wonder
they are fascinated ! But do you really like it ? Does it
pay?"
" I do like it, Mrs. Danforth, better, I think, than any
work that I do. And if any of them are made better and
wiser for this life, even, to say nothing of the future one,
does it not ' pay ' well ? Think of the amount of moral
usury to be gained, by my small principal, from the hearts
and lives of thirteen children ; some of whom are certain
to become centres of influence to families, neighborhoods,
friends ! "
She looked down thoughtfully. " Miss Frost," she ex-
claimed, suddenly, " I am afraid I shall have to cut your
acquaintance ! "
" Indeed ! May I ask wherefore ? "
" Because I never meet you without being made to feel
I do not say it is your fault that I am not, and never
have been, of much use in the world. And I shall be
driven either to renounce- you or run in opposition ! Good
bye ! "
Two days after, she stopped me in the road. " Have
you ever been ragamuffin-picking down in m^ district ? "
she asked.
" Not yet," I began, after a moment's consideration
had shown me the drift of the inquiry.
" Not yet ! " she interrupted, " then, don't you dare to
do it ! .1 will not stand any trespassing on my gi'ound ! "
And, shaking her finger at me, with a humorous de-
fiance, she went her. way.
On the following Sunday, such persons as happened to
be standing in or about the porch of St. Jude's to wit,
the majority of the males and a considerable number of
the females of the congregation saw an amazing sight.
Mrs. Danforth's carriage drew up to the door, packed to
bursting with small, tanned, freckled, oddly-clothed, and
SHILOH. 407
restless figures ; and not far in the rear appeared its owner,
on foot, leading her two children by the hand. Her eyes
sparkled even brighter than her diamonds, as we encount-
ered each other at the corner.
" You see that I've decided on running an opposition ! "
said she, laughing. " Look out for your laurels, my
dear!"
" They certainly are in danger," I answered, " if you in-
tend to make a practice of sending a carriage after your
scholars. But, Mrs. Danforth, you surely do not intend to
walk home ? "
" No ; I told them fair play was a jewel, and we would
each ride one way. To make sure of them, I gave them
the first chance. Aren't they a nice-looking set, though ?
I expect to have a gorgeous time with them ! "
She stowed them into her seat, and managed to keep
them tolerably still during service ; then, she took them
into a vacant corner and there began the work of teaching
them. Her success has been quite equal to mine ; and she
has even more adult listeners. She is none- the less indus-
trious in hunting up illustrative matter ; while she has
greatly the advantage of me in vivacity of manner and ex-
pression ; and especially in her wonderful spontaneity and
fitness of gesture, by the help of which she tells a story or
describes a scene in such manner as to seem to set its
actors and images bodily before the listenei*'s eyes.
The Sewing Society has made its payments to the rec-
tor's salary promptly, far more so, I regret to say, than
the pewholders, and its later meetings have been charac-
terized by unusual harmony and energy.
Yet, notwithstanding so much good work done, done,
I realize more fully now that I see it on paper, than when
under the influence of the delays, vexations, and discour-
agements attending it, Mr. Taylor has been much de-
pressed of late. He began his work in Shiloh with a
generous enthusiasm that gave a kind of personal warmth
408 siiiLon.
to everything he said and did. He continued it with an en-
ergy, indefatigability and engrossment, worthy of all praise.
But the era of enthusiastic impulse and impetus is soon over j.
and when that of patient, plodding labor, looking rather to
the Master's smile at the end than the day's gain, was be-
gun, he found it, doubtless, comparatively slow, wearisome
and disappointing. Likely enough the inevitable discrep-
ancy between the amount of time and strength lavished
and the immediate results, forced itself upon him, and sad-
dened him. He came to me one morning with a face and
voice full of the flaccidity of discouragement. He spoke
drearily of indifference that had chilled, calumny that had
stung, opposition that had bruised him ; finally, he uttered
the sombre suspicion that he had mistaken his calling.
" See how little I have accomplished ! " he went on, bit-
terly. " The bishop comes soon for confirmation, and I
know not that I have .three candidates to present to him.
And yet, when I began my ministerial work, I thought
that nothing could long resist such zeal, faith and love, as
I brought to it. I fancied that the world was getting sick
and tired of the old, broad, bad way, and only waited for
my hand to lead it into the narrow, new one. I believed
that I saw the harbingers of a new and triumphant era for
the Church, in the sky ; and that I should live to see it
begun gloriously, and to feel that I had done what I could
to help it along."
" As to your personal work," said I, " may you never
have better cause to decry it ! As to the main point of the
Church's ultimate triumph over the world, may we never
live to doubt it ! You were chiefly mistaken, I apprehend,
in thinking that in this age, more than another, is the
Church's march toward millenial glory to gather speed
and volume, or that of the world toward ruin to be
arrested and turned back. God's plans arc worked out
not less slowly than surely. He, being eternal, can afford
to wait."
SHLLOII. 409
" And I, being mortal, cannot afford to see that my life,
so far, is a failure."
" What right have you to pronounce it a failure ? "
" It has wrought so little for God's cause."
" That remains to be seen. Neither you nor I can esti-
mate the increase of the seed you have sown. Men die, and
count their labor vain, yet the cause prospers. Results ap-
pear, now and then ; possibly some present worker takes
the credit of them, and forgets to add his predecessor's la-
bors to the long account. What matter? The drop which
overflows the bucket, and gains the applause of men, is not,
therefore, larger, nor of greater value, in God's sight. Be-
sides, we may all solemnly comfort ourselves with the cer-
tainty that, after all, it is of little moment to His cause
whether we work for it, or no. It will not fail nor flag, for
want of our poor, weak instrumentality. Innumerable
agencies are at His command. He can call them forth
from the mire, and fashion them out of the stubble. Fire
and flood, battle and storm, and the unruly wills of sinful
men, alik serve him."
" You preach strange doctrine," said he, looking at me
intently. "So it does not matter whether we work for
God's cause ? "
" Ah ! I did not say that ! It is of vast moment to us !
For our own sakes, we ought not to let our hands rest, for
one moment, out of His work. For we know that, if we
build not according to His will, we build in opposition to
it ; and all such work is vain, and will be overthrown. We
are working out our ruin, if we are not working out our
salvation. That- last is the work which we are chiefly set
to do, and for which alone we are wholly responsible. To
save us from selfishness, God has so arranged that we cannot
accomplish it without doing our utmost for the salvation
of others. Every stroke deliberately withheld from theirs,
is so much withheld from ours. Still, our own is the main
thing."
18
410 SHILOII.
Mr. Taylor looked at me meditatively, and as if not
quite satisfied.
" Else, how dark the providence," I went on, " when a
good man is cut off in the midst of his days and his use-
fulness ! But if we understand that, his own calling and
election being made sure, his earthly work was finished, we
see light. God could do just as well without him, on earth ;
and he was fitted, so far as he was ever likely to be, for
heaven. What need to keep him longer in a state of pro-
bation and trial ?
" Work on in faith and hope, Mr. Taylor, and look in
your own heart for results. If you find them there, be
content ; for even St. Paul contemplated the possibility of
being a castaway, while preaching to others. Leave out-
side results to God."
" Ah ! " said he, with a smile that was tinged with sad-
ness, " you should have been the preacher, and I the lay-
worker, Miss Frost."
" Not so," I answered. " It would be strange indeed, if
I were not furnished with material for one short sermon
to you, since you have preached me so many ! I give you
back the slow distillation of your own wisdom."
" It is better than I thought it was," he rejoined, cheer-
iiy.
The event proved that Mr. Taylor's work was more
fruitful in results than he had known. Yesterday he pre-
sented eleven candidates to the Bishop for confirmation.
Among them were Carrie, Ruth, and Alice fruits, I hum-
bly dared to think, not alone of his faithful sowing, but of
my own quiet watering. The sweet thought bowed my
head so low, while it lifted my heart to the skies, that I
quite forgot that my voice was to take the place of Ruth's,
in the hymn to be sung while the candidates were gather-
ing at the chancel-rail. Essie sounded the preliminary
and opening chords, but I was deaf to the call. There was
a momentary flutter of embarrassment and perplexity in
SIIILOII. 411
the choii 1 . Then Ruth, standing just before the altar, half-
turned, and took up the lagging strain. The sweet, clear,
thrilling voice swept round the church, drawing a few trem-
ulous voices after it, as it went ; and then soared alpft, like
the very spirit of sacred song. The choir followed after
as soon as it could recover itself with a kind of breathless
swoop, and the church was filled with harmony. Still, that
swelling voice from the chancel-rail led all the rest, domi-
nating all, etherializing all, infusing through all its own sub-
tile sweetness and intensity of feeling. How wondrously,
and yet with what entire unconsciousness, the inspired girl
sang, putting her whole soul into her voice, and slightly
bending her head, as if listening -to some celestial accom-
paniment, inaudible to us:
" Witness, ye men and angels ! now
Before the Lord we speak :
To Him we make our solemn vow
A vow we dare not break ! "
I drew a long, breath when it was all over. For, I need
not say that, not Alice, with her budding genius ; nor Car-
rie, with her softness ; nor even Essie, with her bright
good-nature, and the healthful play of her fresh, full life ;
but Ruth, with her varying moods, her sore cross of in-
firmity, and her entrancing voice ; lies nearest my heart.
Aunt Vin met us in the vestibule. " I know 'twould be
a work of superderogation to tell you that you sing like a
sheriff, Ruth," she said, benignantly ; " you've had the
opinion of better cynosures than I am. But I hearjl Essie
Volger saying, the other day, that you could sing the
rheumatic scale to refection ; and I'm coming up, some day,
on purpose to hear it. I haven't the least idea what sort
of a piece it is ; but if there's any music to be distracted
from the rheumatiz, I'm the person to depreciate it. I have
it awful, sometimes."
XXXIX.
A BE-FLOW OF TROUBLE.
" artist of wonderful power has appeared in
Shiloh, and is painting the quiet little ham-
let with a gorgeousness of color, a boldness
of treatment, a breadth of effect, and a brillian-
cy of tone, beyond all that Ruskin could con-
ceive, or Turner dare to paint. She charges
the forests with great masses of glowing
reds, shading, at the edges, into orange. She
makes a tree on the hillside otherwise green to hold out
one bough burning as with flame, and another reddened as
with blood. She paints the oaks in rich raiment of purple
and crimson, blotched with golden brown. She dips her
pencil in bright scarlet for the sumach, and pale yellow for
the beeches. Here and there, in the meadows, an isolated
maple becomes a fixed, earthly embodiment of the sunset's
celestial and evanescent glories. At last, having emptied
her palette of all its most brilliant colors, she tones down
the dazzling effect by drawing over the picture, soft, gauzy
veils of azure and amethystine haze. Needless to say that
her name is Autumn !
Yes, Francesca, the feet of October ai'e bright on the
hilltops, and still I am in Shiloh ! Two weeks ago Uncle
John wrote to ask if it was not time for the " rose crop " to
be in, and Flora ended a resume of her winter's plans with
a threat to come and see for herself what mischief I was
about, if I did not at once return to help in their execu-
SHILOH. 4:13
tion. Even Aunt Belle added a gracious postscript to the
effect that a kindly welcome home was ready for me when-
ever I chose to claim it ; to characters so radically disso-
nant as hers and mine, an occasional separation is a wonder-
ful promoter of harmony. We shall tolerate each other all
the more cordially through the winter for the summer's
escape from the necessity of toleration.
First, I was kept in Shiloh by the autumn pictures, to
which every day added some new effect that I could not
bear to miss ; then, by a new wave of trouble, or rather, the
reflow of an old one. In the fair, still, sunny days of late
September, the fever, so long held in abeyance, broke out
again. My child-woman, Libby, was one of the first to
sicken. She was so unmistakably a child of God that, when
Bob burst into my room crying out "Libby's got the
fever ! " I felt how fit it was that she should be called to
enjoy her heavenly inheritance, and knew that I had not a
thread to hang an earthly hope upon. A few days later
her mortal part went to swell the immortal harvest to be
finally reaped from Shiloh burial ground.
From the clods and the flowers laid gently upon her
small grave, I went to Mrs. Burcham's bedside. She had
been stricken down by the fever, about a week previous.
Soon after, Major Burcham had sought Aunt Yin and
begged her, with tears in his eyes, to take charge of the
sick-room ; his wife had no relatives within easy distance,
none of them could reach her under some days ; meanwhile,
she would be left to such care, willing but unskilful, as he
could give her, and the various assistance of the neighbors.
The appeal was not made in vain. For five days the faith-
ful old nurse had been at her post : for the past three days
and nights she had scarcely slept. That morning, I had
looked in upon her, on my way to Libby's corpse, and
found her looking nearly as haggard as her patient.
" You are killing yourself," I remonstrated. " Surely,
you can have watchers at night."
414 SHILOH.
" Don't you be troubled ! I'm made of tougher imma-
terial than you think. As to the watchers, there's plenty
of 'em to be had for the askin' good, bad, and diiferent.
But the truth is, that every time I've left her, she's run
down unrecountably, pulse all gone to most nothin', and
it's took all my wits to bring her up again. So I've made
up my mind that it's easier to stick by her as long as she's
in such a carious situation ; or, at least, till you have done
your last good deed for poor little Libby, and can come
and stay with Mis' Burcham while I refute myself with a
nap. I ain't afraid to trust her with you, but there ain't
another person in all Shiloh that I'm willin' to leave her
with, though it does sound a little like self-gloriousness ! "
So Mr. Divine drove me directly from the graveyard to
the house of Major Burcham. That gentleman was stand-
ing by the gate, and assisted me to alight. I saw him look
at Leo (who was with us, as usual) in a way that I could
not understand ; I saw Leo look at him grimly, fiercely,
giving utterance to a low growl.
" Leo ! " said Mr. Divine, sharply, yet with no intona-
tion of surprise.
It was plain that the dog had an antipathy to Major
Burcham, and that Mr. Divine understood it well.
Mrs. Divine began to make kind inquiries after Mrs.
Burcham. Before they came to an end, I discovered that
the soft, warm slippers, in which I had expected to be
" shod with silence " and with comfort, during the night-
watch, had been left behind ; and I begged Mrs. Divine to
send them to me, by Leo, sometime in the course of the
evening.
" He has seen me alight here," said I, in conclusion,
" and will know where to find me."
" Ye-es," returned she, hesitatingly. Then, seeing that
Mr. Divine had engaged the Major's attention, she leaned
over, and whispered ; " Leo'll bring them, I guess, seeing
it's you ; but you had better keep a little lookout for him,
SHILOH. 415
for I doubt if he'll come inside the gate, that is, unless he
sees you somewhere round. I'll send him about eight
o'clock."
The wagon rolled away ; Leo, after a long, wistful look
at me, as he saw me turn toward the house with Major
Burcham, bounded after it ; and I went in, wondering what
possible cause of feud could exist between the faithful, mild-
tempered dog and the pompous man at my side,
" Mr. Divine told me that he had bought Leo of Major
Burcham's Irishman," said I to myself. " Ah ! yes, I see,
the Irishman's dog, treated with contempt, possibly Avith
cruelty, by the Irishman's master. Leo remembers and
resents it."
Aunt Vin met me at the door of the sick-room. Wben
she had made me fully acquainted with its routine, I said
to her ;
" Xow, go straight to bed, and leave every care
behind."
" I'm agoin'," replied she, with a long yawn, "I don't
need but one such conjunction. I didn't know I teas so
sleepy till you come in ; the very sight of you was omniv-
orous ! Be sure and call me at nine o'clock ; then, it'll be
time to shift her on to t'other bed." And Aunt Vin took
herself oif.
Mrs. Burcham appeared not to notice the change of
nurses. She lay with her eyes closed, in a half stupor,
from which (I had been warned) she roused completely
only at intervals. Sometimes she slept, a troubled, un-
easy sleep, wherefrom it was necessary to waken her
partially, at least every few moments.
Two hours crept slowly away ; twilight began to gather.
With it, heavy clouds rolled up from the east ; a peal of
thunder sounded from afar. Mrs. Burcham woke from a
brief slumber with a start and a moan, and the sorrowful
lament of David fell brokenly from her lips ;
" My son ! my son ! oh, my son ! "
41G SHILOH.
I heard it with alarm. Delirium was always a dreaded
symptom, in the fever. And no question but she was de-
lirious, for, if she had ever had a son, he must have been
dead years ago ; I had never heard of him. Indeed, I be-
lieved her to have been childless. I laid my hand upon her
head, felt her pulse, listened anxiously to her breathing, but
could detect no sign of increasing fever or weakness ; and I
sat down again, a little reassured, just as another rumble of
thunder filled the air. It helped to rouse her completely.
She opened her eyes and looked at me, intelligently enough.
There was no sign of the delirium I had feared.
"It is Miss Frost," said she, feebly. "You are very,
kind. Is Aunt Vin resting ? "
% " Yes ; for a little while. She needed rest ; and she
said she was not at all afraid to leave you with me," re-
plied I, fearing lest she might be disturbed at finding her-
self in other hands than those of her accustomed and ex-
perienced nurse.
" I am very glad that she is resting, I mean. I hope
you are making yourself comfortable. There is wine in the
closet ; it will help to keep up your strength. And there
is an easier chair in the parlor, tell Bridget to bring it in
for you."
" Do not trouble yourself about me, I am quite comfort-
able," I answered, much marveling at the change that a
few days of sickness had wrought in Mrs. Burcham's man-
ner. Gratitude for kindness and consideration for others
were not its most prominent chai'acteristics, formerly.
She insisted, and, to satisfy her, the chair was brought.
Then, she closed her eyes, and sank again into stupor.
An hour went by. Darkness was fully come. The
storm, which had seemed to retreat, for a time, now drew
near again ; heavy drops of rain fell ; flashes of lightning
came and went, followed by the loud roll of thunder.
Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was about time for
Leo to arrive ; and began to wonder how I was to manage
SHILOH. 41 7
that " lookout " which Mrs. Divine had advised. The bed-
room, was at the back of the house; one window opened
upon a dense orchard, the other, into a small recess or al-
cove, enclosed on three sides only, and termed in Shiloh a
"shed." While I was yet considering the difficulty, I
heard a sound in this shed ; which, after listening a moment,
I knew to be made by my canine friend, shaking the rain
from his shaggy coat. Immediately, his huge head and
chest appeared framed in the open window, his fore-paws
resting on the sill, and, in his mouth a small package
carefully wrapped in oiled-skin, to protect it from, the
rain. Instead of scratching at the main entrance, as is
his wont, in his character of messenger, it would seem
that the sagacious animal had quietly reconnoitered the
premises, until, discovering me sitting alone in the sick-
room, he had ventured to make his appearance at the
window.
I rose, intending to relieve him of his burden, give him
a pat on the head, and silently motion him to depart, when
a fearful peal of thunder shook the house, startling Mrs.
Burcham into sudden consciousness. Her eyes opened full
upon Leo's dark figure.
" Who is that ? " she asked, in alarm.
" It is only Leo Mr. Divine's dog," I hastened to say,
soothingly, "he has brought me some slippers that I for-
got to bring myself."
The look of fright passed quickly from her eyes, and a
soft, mournful expression came there instead. To my utter
surprise, she said, in low, faint tones, but distinct enough,
doubtless, to the dog's quick ears,
" Leo ! come here ! "
He leaped through the window, came to the bedside,
and looked down upon her with a benignant, yet an inquisi.
tive, face. She feebly lifted her wasted hand and laid it on
his great, rough head.
" Oh, Leo ! Leo ! " she exclaimed, mournfully, " where
18* '
4:18 SIIILOH.
is your master ? " Two large tears gathered in her eyes,
and rolled down on the pillow.
I was amazed and alarmed. The scene was utterly in-
comprehensible ; but I saw that it involved excitement and
emotion which could not be otherwise than hurtful to my
patient, and I hastened to put an end to it.
" Leo ! " I began, somewhat sternly, " it is time for you
to go home, sir."
" Oh ! no, no," exclaimed Mrs. Burcham, pleadingly,
" do not send him away yet ! It is so pleasant to have him
here once more ! Besides, he never likes to go out in a
thunderstorm, you know."
It was true. Leo has a very human dislike, amounting
to a species of nervous terror, of a thunderstorm. He will
face one at the call of duty ; but he would much prefer to
have duty choose a fairer occasion. Yet I was astonished
at Mrs. Burcham's intimate knowledge of his idiosyncrasy.
However, it was no time to question nor argue. I
pointed to a dim corner and bade Leo lie down, which he
did at once. Then, seeing that it was nearly time for the
patient's anodyne, I ventured to anticipate it a little, and
to increase the dose by two or three drops, to balance the
unexpected excitements of the moment. As she swallowed
it, there came another heavy clap of thunder.
"It is a fearful storm!" said she, with a slight shiver.
" It was in just such a storm that "
She checked the words, or they faltered on her tongue,
I could not tell which. A spasm of pain crossed her face ;
then, she closed her eyes and lay quite still, but neither in
stupor nor in sleep, I saw plainly. I sat watching her,
praying that the anodyne might quickly take effect. My
anxiety was too great to allow me to wonder much at the
scene which I had just witnessed. I only felt dimly, that
here were memories and sorrows at work to which I had no
clue ; curiously connected with Leo, too ; and not in the
least explained by that hypothesis of the Irishman's dog
6HILOH. 419
and the Irishman's master which had BO satisfactorily ac-
counted for whatever was strange in the joint behavior of
Major Burcham and that dumb, black animal coiled up in
yonder corner : whom, by the way, I was resolved to send
quietly home as soon as I could do so without attracting the
sick woman's attention. I deeply regretted that he had
ever been sent hither on errand of mine.
Little did I imagine that it was God's errand, and not
mine, which which had brought Leo there, that night !
Some silent moments passed by, and I trusted that Mrs.
Burcham's over-burdened heart was slowly sinking into the
soft depths of slumber, when her eyes opened once more.
There was no sleep, no forgetfulness in them, only thought,
trouble, wistfulncss.
" Miss Frost," said she, quite calmly, " how long do you
think I have to live ? "
" My dear Mrs. Burcham ! " I exclaimed, almost in des-
pair, " pray do not agitate yourself any further, at present !
Try to leave all your cares your life also in the hands
of God, who cai'eth for you, who pitieth you as a father
pitieth his own children. Lay yourself in His mercy as in
a bed, and there sleep all your cares and fears away ! "
" As a father pitieth his own children," she repeated,
slowly, as if thinking aloud, and paying no heed to the rest
of my words, " yes, that is it that is what I must say to
him. Miss Frost, please tell my husband I want to see
him."
" Would it not be better to wait till morning ? " I en-
treated. " You have had too much excitement already ; I
really ought to forbid any more. Do try to forget all that
troubles you, and go to sleep ! "
" I have tried," she answered, " and I cannot. Besides,
I may not live till morning, ' the night cometh, in which
no man can work.' And I have something to do before I
die, Leo has come here on purpose to remind me of it,
to rouse me up to it, to help me through it. Let me do it
420 SfllLOH.
while I have strength and reason. Please call my hus-
band ! "
I saw that it was necessary to do her bidding. Feeling
her pulse, I found it strong and regular, though quick :
something love, duty, hope was strengthening her for
the work she had to do. Dimly I began to discern the
finger of Providence, of Guidance, in the strange, and, at
first sight, casual incidents of the evening : whither it
pointed, I would go !
As Major Burcham entered the room, I cast an anxious
glance at Leo. He lifted his head, and his eyes looked
gloomy and sullen, but he made no \mfriendly demonstra-
tion ; plainly, he respected the sanctities of the sick-cham-
ber, or he deferred to the rights of the master of the house,
or his fierceness was held in check by awe of the thunder-
storm. I went out, and left the husband and wife to-
gether.
I had been in the sitting-room but a few moments, when
Aunt Vin joined me.
" It thundered so hard I couldn't sleep," said she, yawn-
ing, " so I insided I might as well come down. What time
is it?"
" It is near nine o'clock."
She looked thoughtfully at the closed door of the bed-
room, through which came indistinctly the faint, beseeching
tones of Mrs. Burcham's voice, and the heavier, yet sub-
dued and broken, accents of her husband.
" I don't quite like that" said she, significantly, " though
I've been participating it, this three days."
It was plain that the mystery was no mystery to her !
Before I could answer, Major Burcham threw wide open
the door. If that was Major Burcham ! All his pomposity
and self-sufficiency gone as completely as foliage from a
forest where fire hath been, teai*s in his eyes, a broken,
shaken, grief-stricken man, whose very aspect smote me
with compassion.
siiiLoir. 421
" Aunt Vin Miss Frost " he began, in faltering tones,
" my wife wants me to call you to witness that I promise
her to to forgive our son Henry fully and freely, from this
day forth ; and to take immediate steps to find out what
has become of him ; and to rreceive him, whenever he re-
turns, as as a loving father, whether "
His voice failed ; a great sob heaved his broad chest.
" Whether I am dead or alive," prompted Mrs. Burcham,
slowly and distinctly.
" Whether she is dead or alive, so help me God ! "
faltered the Major, in trembling, yet earnest and solemn
tones.
Mrs. Burcham's face, while these sentences were in pro-
gress, was a sight to see ! the eager, hungry look with
which she waited, at every break, for the next words, seem-
ing to draw them foi'th by the very force of her expectation,
the perfect satisfaction and peace that settled upon her
features as the Major ended, transfiguring them into a soft
and beautiful unearthliness.
" I can die happy now ! " she murmured, reaching up
her arms to her husband, the dew of a new birth of wifely
love shining in her eyes.
Aunt Vin softly closed the door upon them. "I'll
give 'em jest two minutes, by the clock," said she, almost
fiercely ; " then, I shall gravitate that man out of that room
so quick, he'll think he's an extant race ! "
Getting no answer, she turned and saw my face of mute
perplexity.
" Goodness ! child ! " she exclaimed, " didn't you ever
hear about Henry Burcham ? "
" Never."
" Then I s'pose I must give you an exclamation. Well !
he was Major and Mis' Burcham's only child, and as bright
and handsome and good-hearted a boy as ever you see,
high-sperited, too, as you might demise, seein' what stock
he come from, but a boy that everybody liked and made
422 8IIILOH.
much of, in Shiloh. Well, his father was sot on makin'
him a lawyer, but Henry wanted to be a painter, he took
to brush and pellet jest as nateral as a duck takes to
water; couldn't help makin' picturs no more than he could
help breathin', poor fellow ! His father forbid it, in ex-
tinct terms, over and over again, but his mother derived at
it, in secret, I guess, anyhow, Henry had his canvas-backs
and his boxes of brushes and collars up in his own room,
and painted all the time he could get. Well, the upshop
of it all was that Major Burcham found it out, one day,
and flew into a tearin' passion, and told Henry that if he
was bent on disgracin' his name by being a poor miserable
painter, he wished he'd clear out and never show him his face
agin. The boy took him at his word, it was an awful,
stormy night jest like this ; and in the morning, they found
his room empty, and him miners ; and he's never been heerd
on since. That's most eight year ago. It's strange you
never happened to hear on't, and you a-stayin' at the Di-
vines, too ! Why, if you say, ' Henry Burcham ! ' to that
great dog of theirs, now to this day, he'll, whine and take
on like mad."
" Leo ! " I exclaimed, " what has he to do with it ? "
" Why, Leo was Henry Burcham's dog, first. Some-
body made him a present of him, when he was a pup, and
they were uncommonly detached to each other. You nev-
er saw one without t'other ; Mr. Dragner used to call 'em
' Tamon and Pathos.' When Henry went off, he give the
dog to Mike, his father's Irishman, to keep for him ; but
the Major never could bear the sight of him, I guess he
was an onpleasant momentum of his son ! and he kicked
him, one day ; and the dog spi'ang at his throat, and like
to choke him to death afore they could pull him off; and
so the Irishman had to sell him to Mr. Divine."
For some moments, I sat silent, slowly digesting these
various items of information. Then, I took out my tablets
and began writing rapidly.
SHILOH. 423
" What are you doin' ? " asked Aunt Vin, with sur-
prise, " takin' notes ? "
" No ; I am writing these words ; ' Your mother is
dangerously ill, and longs to see you. Come immediately?
I sign it with my name, and I am going to send it, by Leo,
to Henry Burcham alias, Harry Archum alias, Mr.
Cambur ! "
" Good land ! " exclaimed she, settling into the nearest
chair, and jerking her head in her grimmest fashion, " if
that don't beat all ! And to think that I never once in-
spected him ! Yet I've told him, a dozen times, that he
dissembled somebody I'd seen afore ! "
" And now," said I, wrapping my tablets in a part of
the oiled-skin so seasonably provided, " if you think you
cati venture to open that door, I will call Leo out, and
send him on his errand."
" Bless us ! " ejaculated Aunt Yin, recalled to the recol-
lection of her patient's situation, " I ought to have done it
afore ! "
I led Leo quietly into the porch, and closed the door
behind us.
" Take this," said I, slowly and distinctly, and strongly
emphasizing the underscored words, " take this, quickly,
to Henry Burcham. He may be at the studio, or at Mrs.
DanfortNs, or at the' depot. FIND HIM ! "
The last words, I knew, Leo understood perfectly.
How far he comprehended the rest of my directions, I
ccruld not be sure : but, as he had often surprised me by
showing that he knew the names of many persons, places,
and things, which no one had taken any special pains to
bring to his notice ; and as he had visited all these spots
with me, on several occasions ; I felt tolerably at ease, even
on this point. The more, that he took the tablets be-
tween his teeth, and, without the least hesitation, dashed
out into the storm. The thunder was dying away in the
distance, but the rain fell more heavily than ever, and an
424: SHILOH.
angry wind drove it in sheets against the windows and
shook it -from the groaning trees. It was a wild night,
dark to utter obscurity ; no man would have liked to lace
it ; my messenger, I felt, was the fittest, swiftest, surest,
that could have been provided. In that faith, I went back
to the sick-room.
Before taking you thither, however, I will give you the
explanation of my instructions to Leo. A few days previous
to Mrs. Burcham's seizure, the artist had gone to the city, on
business. He had told me that he should positively return
on this (Saturday) evening. The train would be late, I
knew ; it would not reach the depot till aftej the storm
had begun. He might wait there for it to cease ; he
might set forth, and be glad to take shelter with Mrs. Dan-
forth ; or he might persevere till he reached the studio.
In one or the other of these places, I felt certain, he would
be found.
Mrs. Burcham was quietly falling asleep. The anodyne
which I had administered, aided by the relief of mind and
heart afforded by Major Burcham's promise, was at last
taking effect.
I stole softly to Aunt Vin's side and asked, in a whisper,
if the mother ought not to be informed that her son was
nearer than she had believed, and that she might hope to
see him soon ?
" Not till she's slept," answered Aunt Vin, decidedly.
" That's her great consideratum, now. Time enough to
break his revival to her, when he gets here.- But you'd
better tell Major Burcham."
He listened to the communication almost without a
word. He looked even more pained than surprised to find
that his son had been in Shiloh so long without making
himself known ; nor did the shadow wholly dissipate as I
talked of his rising fame as an artist. He exhibited some
fear lest my message might not reach its destination, and
talked of setting forth himself ; but, being made to consider
SHILOH. 425
the fury of the storm, and Leo's excellent qualifications for
the task entrusted to him, he went sadly and wearily back
to the silence and solitude of his chamber. The argument
which really prevailed with him, however, was probably
shadowed forth in a few words spoken as he went ;
" After all, Mrs. Burcham might want me, before I
could get back again."
Together, Aunt Vin and I kept the watch in the sick-
room. Neither of us could sleep, now, till this matter was
brought to some conclusion. We sat and listened through
the subsidences of the wind and rain.
Very slowly the hours wore away. Ten eleven
struck ; midnight drew near. It was three hours since
Leo's departure. Anxiety took possession of me ; per-
haps he had misunderstood my directions perhaps he had
failed in his quest possibly the artist had not arrived, a
hundred ii's and perad ventures, the gray, teasing progeny
of suspense and expectation, thronged my mind and tor-
mented me with their pertinacious, yet changeful, shapes.
It exasperated me to see Aunt Vin's calm patience ; it
sickened me to think what long experience of just such
vigils, such expectation, such delay and such anxiety, it
argiied !
Was there a sound outside ? I held my breath to listen,
with my eyes involuntarily resting on the outer door of the
sitting-room. I saw the latch noiselessly lifted ; the door
swung open; two dripping figures, a man and a dog,
entered. Between them and me rushed Major Burcham,
more upon the alert than I, to throw his arms around his
son, and murmur some incoherent words.
It was all the work of an instant. Before Aunt Vin
could turn round to see what was going on, before I could
reach and close the bedroom door, Mrs. Burcham opened
her eyes, saw the tableau, and read its meaning.
" My son ! " she cried, in tones that thrilled every
heart, " it is my son ! "
XL.
THROUGH SHADOW TO LIGHT.
is said that joy never kills ; neither does it
always cure.
Sunday morning dawned fair and still. Its
early rays showed Mrs. Burcham's face lit up
with such peaceful brightness, the soft reflection
of a mind and heart at rest, that I thought her
better; but Aunt Vin, quicker to detect the
signs betraying the waste and progress of dis-
ease, quietly shook her head.
At seven o'clock, the hour which the nurse's experi-
ence declared to be the one wherein her patients were
strongest, the long weariness of the night being over, and
that of the day scarce begun, Mr. Taylor came, according
to previous arrangement, to administer the Holy Commun-
ion to the sick woman.
" You will join us ? " he said to Harry, as he was pre-
paring for the feast.
" Yes, as my mother wishes it so much. That is, if
you do not think I am unfit."
" You have been confirmed ? "
" Oh, yes, and I .have communicated, before I left
home; but "
" But what ? Have you lost your religious faith and
hope ? "
" No, I think not. I believe firmly in religion, and I
have tried to live it, of late, at least, according to my
SHILOH. 427
light ; but I do not that is, I did not, two months age
believe in Churches."
Mr. Taylor laid his hand on his friend's shoulder, with
a grave smile. "An artist," said he, " and cannot see the
beauty and the fitness of organization ! As well say that
you believe in boughs and roots, but not in trees ; in flesh
and bones, but not in bodies ! All God's higher works are
organized bodies, not loose elements nor disjointed mem-
bers floating about without connection or concert, then
why not the highest work of all, His Church ? by which,
as says St. Paul, His manifold wisdom is made known unto
the principalities and powers in heavenly places, a won-
derful proof, certainly, of its excellency and importance."
The artist returned the smile with one as grave, and
more thoughtful. " I see that I must take this matter into
deeper consideration than I have yet done," said he.
" Meanwhile "
" Meanwhile, if anything in your heart responds to the
Church's broad, yet solemn, invitation, ' ye who do truly
and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and
charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new
life ' , I think you may venture to draw near with faith
and take this holy Sacrament to your help and instruction
and comfort."
It was a holy and a beautiful hour, that early Sunday
morning Communion of the reconciled, reunited family, in
the sick-room's hush; the world seemingly, so far, the
Redeemer and the Comforter so near ! And, seeing Mrs.
Burcham's face so radiant with serenest joy, I said to
myself once more, " She is certainly better."
Three hours afterward, she died in her son's arms !
Standing by her grave, and remembering how gentle
and patient she had been in her sickness, how anxious to
avoid giving trouble, how grateful for Mr. Taylor's con-
stant visitations, and how desirous of making amends to
everybody whom she had wronged, I thought remorsefully
428 SHILOH.
of the many severe and sarcastic things I have written
about her, and wished that they might be wiped out of re-
membrance. It would be well if wo could always, or
even in general, speak of others as we do over their newly-
turfed graves ; recognizing their good, and silently leaving
their evil to the Blotter-out of transgressions. For what
* have any of us to do with judgment, when our one, con-
stant prayer is for mercy !
After the funeral, I had a long talk with Harry
Burcham, as he must now be called ; which cleared up
some points that had puzzled me-, among them his two
aliases.
Stung to the quick by his father's angry, ill-considered
words, he had left home resolved nevermore to be -known
by his patronymic till that father himself should acknowl-
edge that he honored rather than disgraced it. So, with a
natural desire to feel that he had some small right to the
name he was henceforth to bear, he had made it into an an-
agram ; writing himself, in Rome, as " H. B. Archum ; "
and winning, under that title, whatever measure of reputa-
tion, as an artist, he now enjoyed.
For seven years, in America and in Italy, he had led
his lonely, struggling artist-life ; absorbed, almost forget-
ful ; content to feel that he was slowly climbing toward
those heights whereon his soul ever gazed with aspiration
and longing. But, during the last summer, a strange
homesickness had stolen over him. For the first time, he
felt something of the exile's pain. Standing by the turbid
Tiber, he saw only the clear, blue river of his boyhood's
love. In the Campagna, he dreamed of New England
hills and rocks. The churches, palaces, ruins, and sepul-
chres of the Eternal City, were continually fading from his
^ sight, and quiet New England homesteads, embowered in
lilacs and apple-blossoms, rose in their stead.
So it had come to pass that, when the time drew near
for Rome's foreign population to flee from the atmospheric
SHILOH. 429
terrors which overhang it, like a pall, in the summer-time,
the artist said to himself,
" Why not spend my summer in my native land ?
Why not revisit the scenes of my childhood, secure in
the changes that time and foreign habits have wrought in
me, and judge for myself if my father's heart has soft-
ened ? I know my mother yearns for her son ! "
But he had reason to suppose that his father might
now be cognizant of his whereabouts and change of
name ; a mutual friend, residing in New York, having met
and recognized him, in Rome, three years previous. So
he twisted his name into a second anagram, H. H. Cam-
bur, while a slight acquaintance with Mrs. Danforth,
formed abroad, and a more intimate one with an artist
friend of hers, had Opened the way for his introduction
to Shiloh, in a manner to ensure him courtesy and confi-
dence. He had given Mrs. Danforth such outlines of his
history as were necessary to account for his change of
name from Archum to Cambur, but had not confided to
her the real facts of his birthplace and parentage. She
supposed him to be living near, not absolutely in, his na-
tive town.
Many things had tended to prolong his stay in Shiloh.
He had found a curious charm in residing among the scenes
and companions of his boyhood, as a stranger ; sometimes .
listening to his own story, and the varied commentary it
provoked. He had not been able to decide whether his
father really wished for his return, while he had been
pained to discover "that his mother was not the mother of
his memories and his dreams. All the sweet bloom and foli-
age of her character seemed to have .been blighted and
stripped oft* by some sharp frost-touch, leaving but a hard,
bare, gray, and unattractive outline. Nor did he at once
understand that this was the result of his own sudden
flight and the long anguish, anxiety and suspense follow-
ing it ; aggravated by Major Burcham's stern interdiction
430 SHILOII.
of any future mention of his name, which had compelled
her to shut all her sorrow and care within the depths
of her own heart. But, beginning dimly to discern this,
at last, he had determined to make himself known to
her on his return from the city ; and try whether joy
and assurance would not soften and heal where grief and
suspense had hardened and irritated. Sickness a surer
softener, a better reconciler, than either had anticipated
him !
Now, too, the history of Leo's night-search for Harry
Burcham was made known by the mouth of four witnesses.
Mrs. Baird (with whom the artist boarded) stated that
Leo scratched at her door at nine o'clock, on that Satur-
day evening ; that she admitted him ; that lie rushed
straightway up to the studio, and there scratched and
whined until she opened that door to him, also, and satis-
fied him that the room was empty ; whereupon, he rushed
out again, and was seen no more.
Mrs. Danforth's statement ran thus:
" I was in the sitting-room with the children, when Leo
marched in, all dripping, through the long window that
opens on the veranda. Seeing a roll of something in his
mouth, and knowing that you are in the habit of using
him as a telegraph, a mail-carrier, an express-wagon, and
every sort of go-all, fetch-all, and carry-all, I took it for
granted that his errand was to me. But he would not suf-
fer me to touch the roll ; when I insisted, he growled,
not a musical nor a reassuring sound, by any means ! So
I suffered him to take his own course. He raced around
the room, smelt the chairs and the carpet, looked disgusted,
put his head on one side, seemed to ask himself, ' What shall
I do next ?' and departed just as he had come."
The depot-master testified that " Mr. Divine's big New-
foundland came into the depot, that night, just as I was
beginning to shut up ; smelt round a little, and went out
at the back door, about ten or fifteen minutes after Mr.
SHILOH. 431
Cambur I mean, Mr. Burcham went out the same way,
with Squire Delbyn. I noticed that he went with his nose
to the ground, as if he was following a trail."
Harry furnished the sequel, in telling his own story, as
follows :
"The cars were late; we arrived in the midst of the
thunder-storm. There were no teams at the depot, nothing
but a drenched horse and buggy belonging to Mr. Delbyn,
who was a fellow-passenger on the train. We waited until it
was plain that the storm was settling into a steady, heavy
rain, likely to last through the night ; then, Mr. Delbyn said
to me, ' You won't get any chance to ride to Shiloh, to-night,
and you certainly won't foot it over, in this storm ; besides,
it is so dark you can't see your hand before your face. Get
into my buggy and go home with me ; in the morning I'll
take or send you over to Shiloh, with pleasure.' The offer
was too seasonable a one to be refused. We started ; but
ran into a tree in tvirning the first corner I never saw so
dark a night ! Mr. Delbyn got- out, to extricate the wheel,
and feel his way back to the road, for he could not see it.
At the same moment a heavy body plunged into the buggy,
and Leo thrust his nose and your tablets into my hand ! I
suspected some calamity at once. Mr. Delbyn, being a
smoker, was provided with matches ; I lighted one under
my hat, and made out to read what you had written. He
now insisted upon taking me over to Shiloh ; so we turned
about, and took a fresh start in that direction, creeping
along at a snail's pace, and almost literally feeling the road.
Just beyond Clay Corner, we ran into the fence. Here, I
made up my mind that, under the circumstances, pedes-
trianism was to be preferred to wheeling. So I got out,
thanked my kind friend, turned his horse's head in the
direction of his home, bade him good-night, and plodded
on with Leo. At first, I was continually getting out of the
road, into th- ditch, or among the bushes and stones ; the
dog was wholly invisible, his blackness blended indistin-
4C2 8HLLOH.
guishably with the pitchy darkness of the night. Finally,
I bethought myself to fasten my handkerchief into his collar,
and the dim white spot guided me surely, and even swiftly,
to my fathei*'s door."
" But how," said I, " could Leo have divined that you
were in Mr. Delbyn's wagon ? "
" Probably he heard the sound of the wheels, in the dis-
tance, and reasoned that it was worth while to follow them,
not knowing what else to do. Or he may have caught the
sound of our voices ; his ears ai - e quick, and that corner
where we first came to grief, is not far from the depot.
Faithful, sagacious fellow ! I wonder if Mr. Divine would
let me have him, now ! I would give him anything he
chooses to ask."
" I think not. You know Leo once saved Mr. Divine's
life. He would sell half his farm before he would consent
to part with him."
" I am afraid so," returned Harry, with a sigh. " But
you have not yet told me how you found me out ! "
" Leo is, responsible for that, too. Do you remember
the day he caught you sketching us, in the glen ? I was
then perfectly well satisfied that you and he were old ac-
quaintances, although you chose to ignore it. And wnen I
learned that Major Burcham had a runaway son, an artist,
- and Leo's first master, the chain of evidence was complete,
and the point whither it tended, manifest."
"I wonder, sometimes," said the artist, thoughtfully,
"whether my life would not have been better, happier,
nobler, even, if I had 'stayed at home, done my father's
will, and made my mother happy ! Might I not look back
upon it with more satisfaction ? "
" You surely do not regret giving your life to Art?"
" No, only the manner of doing it. I seem to see that it ,
would have been better to wait for God, who gave the
talent, to open a lawful road to its exercise. Besides, Art
does not mean, to me, all that it did once. I thought it
8HILOH. 433
the regenerator, I find it is but the refiner and polisher, of
mankind. And a great deal of outward fineness and finish
may co-exist with inward foulness and turpitude. Those
Avonderful, mutilated fragments of Greek sculpture, which
no modern art can rival, were wrought in days of such
social depravity as is almost unmentionable, in our times.
I have long since been convinced of the utter futility of
that gospel of beauty, which so many preach, at the pres-
ent day, and upon which so many others rest their hopes
for the regeneration of mankind ! Art, alone, is impotent
to that end! Only the Gospel of Christ can purify the
heart and ennoble the character. But, as soon as we admit
that, a new standard of life rises before us. We see that it
is not so much its outward form and object, as its spirit,
which makes it beautiful and noble. I seem to catch,
dimly, glimpses of a life of obedience, patience, humility,
self-sacrifice, of outward narrowness, even, lived here in
Shiloh ; which, in its spirit and aim, would be loftier and
lovelier than any artist's life in Rome. Ah ! if I had only
been strong enough, and patient enough, and noble enough,
to have lived it ! "
" Go back to your studio," said I, " and paint the "Wise
Virgin ! I am sure you can do it, now ! And so painted,
it will serve to show that if Art, of herself, cannot purify
the heart nor ennoble the life, she may be one of God's
blessed instruments for doing both."
" Do you think so ? " he exclaimed, his face lighting up
with all an artist's fire and fervor " do you really think
so?"
19
XLI.
THE EMPTY CHAIE.
LL this time, the fever spread. It was creat-
ing something like a panic, in Shiloh.
Many persons avoided the houses where
it had entered. "Watchers were hard to find.
Aunt Vin's good offices were in constant
demand, either for the sick or the dead. She
gave them freely ; yet she was looking much
Avorn. Alice, Ruth, and I, constituted our-
selves her corps of assistants, and helped her as we could.
But there was work enough for all, it grew continually
on our hands.
Coming home after a morning spent with one of the
sick ones, I noticed Uncle True at the woodpile, leaning his
head on his hand, in an attitude of weariness unusual to
him.
" "Wall, I don't feel reel smart," said he, in answer to
my hurried inquiry if anything was amiss. "There's a
singin' in my head that ain't birds ; and once in a while the
woodpile trots round me like a horse round a cider-press.
I hope it's agrindin' out suthin' that's worth while ! Some
on us takes lots o' grin din' before the reel good juice gits
squoze out, ready to be cleared by the blood o' Christ and
stored in the kingdom o' God. They used to clear wine
with blood, sometimes, ye know. I guess it had a meanin',
most things do have, if you only know how to find it."
I took his hand. The quick pulse, the dry, hot touch,
I was getting to understand these symptoms only too well !
SHILOH. 435
"Is't the fever?" he asked, simply.
No need to deceive the good old man, with his guile-
less, trustful face, so childlike through all its wrinkles !
" I am afraid it is," I answered, gravely.
" I kinder thought so. You see that holler in Hart's
rock, thar, 's run dry this two days. And though I ain't
superstitious, I know the Lord made the rock, and takes
count o' the water, and He might mean it marcifully as a
hint to me that my spring o' life's arunnin' dry, too, with-
out goin' out o' His way, partic'larly, to do it. I've allers
found His ways and works full o' signs for my good or my
comfort, when I looked arter 'em. This woodpile, now, it's
pooty considerable of a world itself. It's got crooked sticks
and straight uns, little uns and big uns, green uns and dry
uns, sound uns and holler uns, hard uns and soft uns. And
they all have to take their turn in the fire of affliction.
But see how different they act thar ! Some on 'em begin
to give out light and heat right off; it does you good to
see 'em burn, they take it so cheerful like, as if they meant
to find out the good in it; but there's others that does
nothin' but fizzle an' sizzle, an' sug an' smoke, an' try not
to stay put, you may poke 'em an' stir 'em an' turn 'em
over, jest as much as you like, but you can't coax a good
blaze an' a revivin' wannth out on 'em, an' do yer best !
Howsomever, they all go to ashes, at the last."
" Is not that rather a sad conclusion ? " I asked.
" Not a mite of it. We don't throw away our ashes,
you know; they're good for manure, or -lye, or suthin'.
And the Lord don't throw away His'n, no more, I guess.
They're safe enough in His hands." Then he took up the
axe, and drew his finger lightly along its edge. " I'm glad
I give it a good grindin' up yisterday," said he. " I allers
like to leave my tools in good order. It's tryin' to human
natur to have to stop and sharpen up tools that somebody
else has dulled, before you can go to work yourself. Many
4:36 8HILOH.
a good mind for work's been sp'iled that way. Wall,
p'raps I'd better be agittin' into the house, while I can."
At the gate, he paused and looked round on the familial-
landscape, rich with its autumnal glory.
" It's a pooty world," said he, " and a good world, for
the Lord made it. And, seems to me, it never looked
pootier than it does now. But I guess 'taint the best He
can turn out. And His will be done ! "
And thus Uncle True quitted the scene of his active
labors.
The fever wrought very gently with him. He was not
tortured with thirst nor pain ; much of the time he slept
quietly, or lay in a kind of misty stupor that had the
appearance of sleep. Six days of care and watching, on
our part ; six days of patient waiting upon the Lord, on
his ; and the watching and the waiting were both over. /
The morning before he died, he said to me, while his
eyes rested lovingly on his old arm-chair, the faithful com-
panion of so many years, now standing empty by his bed,
" You wouldn't think it, would ye, now, Miss Frost ? but
that old chair thar's been the greatest blessin' the Lord
ever give me. I had suthin' of a wild turn in my young
days, and if He hadn't fust thrown me out of a wagon,
and then sot me down in that chair for the rest o' my life,
thar's no tellin' how swift to do evil my feet might have
got to be ! That chair's been the Hand o' Providence res- .
trainin' me, and the Everlastin' Arms round me, all my
days, though I- never see it quite so clear afore. If you've
got any cross to bear and sometimes I've kinder suspected
you had, though you've allers done your best to show
a bright face and not shadder other folks with your
troubles ; but if you've got any, take my word for't, the
time'll come when you'll thank the Lord more for that
cross than for all the pleasant things that ever He poured
into your bosom."
Shortly after, he turned his face to the wall. " I feel as
SHILOH. 437
if I could sleep a little," said he. " Sleep's about as good a
thing as the Lord gives us, I reckon ; it comes reel refreshin'
at the end of a hard day's work, or onto a bed of sickness.
Some think it's a type o' death. I shouldn't wonder if
'twas, one ain't to be dreaded no more'n tother, I reckon,
by them that love the Lord."
None of us could tell when the type became the reality.
We only knew that the waking was beyond our sight, past
the shadow wherein man walketh and disquieteth himself
in vain, in the sunshine of the eternal shore.
For the sake of convenience, on the morning of the fun-
eral, Uncle True's chair was restored to its wonted, out-of-
the-way corner of the kitchen fireplace, and there it stands
still. Through the day it tells its quiet story of a humble
life well lived, a humble cross cheerfully borne, a humble
spirit divinely nurtured into rare beauty of holiness and
dignity of faith ; and at evening time, seen through the
dancing firelight, by eyes dim with a slow-gathering mois-
ture (that seldom falls in a tear), it becomes a dazzling,
iridescent throne, fit to stand by the Crystal River, under
the boughs of the Tree of Life. Over it Bona, Mala, and
I, have many subdued talks. Of the latest of these, being
yet fresh in my memory, I give a brief report.
I had been thinking not only of Uncle True's sweet,
mellow, genial character, and of the wisdom unto salvation
whereof he had gathered such rich store ; but of the seem-
ingly infertile soil of infirmity and bachelorhood but of
which these had bloomed. So far as I could learn, Uncle
True had never known love human love, par excellence^
that is neither in its joy, nor in its sorrow. Yet who,
looking at the first and highest end of our earthly existence,
namely, the developing and training of the germ of im-
mortal life within us until it is fit for transplantation into
the King's Garden, which end being gained, all other
losses may count for nothing, and which being lost, all
other successes are worse than failures ; who, looking at
438 SHILOH.
these things, would dare to call Uncle True's life incom-
plete ? And so I began the talk by asking myself:
" Have the poets all been wrong, then, in singing human
love as the sweetest, the richest, and the most ennobling
thing in human life ? "
MALA. Assuredly not. Look at the great and glorious
deeds whereof it has been the inspiration ! at the courage,
the patience, the fortitude, the self-sacrifice, the constancy,
the heroism which it has brought forth ! What grand na-
tures it has helped to enlarge and enrich ! what lovely ones
to beautify and refine !
BONA. A fair picture, and not without a certain truth.
But it has black shadows, be mine the painful task to
point them out ! Look at the sinful and shameful acts of
which Love is often the motive, the deceit, treachery, vice,
degradation, misery, remorse, and despair, of which it is the
too prolific parent. What gifted minds it has helped to
drag down to the dust ! what gentle hearts it has soured,
withered, or hardened ! No, no ! Human Love, though it
may sweeten human life more than anything else, if its
course do but run tolerably smooth, does not necessarily
ennoble, nor unqualifiedly enrich, it. If it is entire, absorb-
ing, satisfying, it tends to narrowness of aims and sympa-
thies, and so to poverty of life and experience ; if it is not,
it provokes doubt, jealousy, anger, and discontent, on the
one hand, and on the other, leaves the way open for trifling,
falsehood, duplicity, and a gradual searing of heart and
conscience, likely to end in actual crime. Crossed or dis-
appointed, its only natural fruit is sorrow. In its unhal-
lowed, illicit form, no need to say how surely it tends to
infamy and ruin !
MALA. Do you pretend to deny that Love has arrested
many a youth's depraved and downward course, and lifted
it up to purer air ?
BONA. Not at all ; no more than you will deny that it
has hindered, 6r turned aside and befouled, many another
8HILOH. 439
that was struggling up toward righteousness. But let us
not forget that, in both these cases, Love was less a con-
trolling power than a mighty lever, either in the hands of
the Spirit of Evil or the Spirit of Good. Satan tries all in-
struments to work out his evil purposes ; God blesses many
means to His wise ends. Often He gives us Divine help
through human hands. Graciously He orders or permits
that an earthly love shall illume or direct the first step or
two in the heavenward path, while the heart is still far
from Him and the ear deaf to His call ; but if the pilgrim
do not soon learn to look to a purer and more steadfast
light, and to depend upon a higher and safer guidance, he
will never get far on the heavenly road. Left to the nat-
ural impulses of the natural heart, Love becomes but a
blind leader of the blind, and it is by God's mercy alone
that both do not fall into the ditch.
I. The drift of all which appears to be that Love par-
takes of the nature of the soil from whence it springs :
from a pure heart, a pure sentiment ; from a vicious heart,
a vile one.
BONA. And a pure heart is from whence ?
I. From the grace of God, duly sought in prayer, and
faithfully applied in thought and act.
BONA. It follows, then, you see, that God's grace is the
true inspiration, the original cause, of whatever, is really
noble, pure, lovely, and of good report, in human love !
MALA (insidiously). Do you not see that she wholly
ignores all the good, great, generous, beneficent deeds
done in the name and service of Love by men who never
thought, nor cared, to seek God's grace ?
BOKA. Take care that your eyes are not dazzled by
worldly glory, neither suffer yourself to confound worldly
honor with the Divine blessing. No deed can rightly be
called good, except it spring from an earnest desire to do
God's will and a loving regard for the honor of His
name, no matter how wisely and well He may overrule
440 SHILOH.
its 'results to the good of mankind and His own glory.
Nor must we forget how strong an indirect influence re-
ligion exerts upon unrenewed hearts. Little does a man of
the world realize that what he proudly calls his " honor,"
is but the shadow of the fairer form of Christian virtue ;
and that his integrity, benevolence, temperance, and what-
ever is comprehended under the head .of morality, have their
deep root in the Divine law that thundered from Sinai, and
draw their unseen nourishment from the gentle precepts
that dropped from the lips of Christ ! And even so, human
love continually perhaps unconsciously touches the hem
of her divine sister's robe, and is insensibly penetrated and
purified by her virtue. Without this involuntary borrow-
ing, this unacknowledged help, how inevitably would she
go astray, how often would she perish !
I (rather sadly). And so Art and Song and Poetry have
all gone wrong, in their long apotheosis of human Love !
In lavishing upon it their brightest colors, tenderest mel-
odies, and sweetest numbers, they have insensibly led to
an undue magnifying of its importance and an over esti-
mate of its power !
BONA. "Would it hurt you much if I were to say, yes ?
Alas ! Art, Poetry, and Song, are too much of the earth,
earthy ; their immortal spirit is hampered by a mortal
body, or misread by mortal interpreters. Servants of
earthly Beauty, and lovers of earthly Love, artists and
poets and musicians forget that no heart was ever regener-
ated by the one, no soul ever saved by the other ! They
forget, too, that all of their work which cannot be made
to subserve these vital ends, is worthless, and must utterly
perish !
I looked grave, perhaps sorrowful. For a moment, I
was in doubt how many of the sweet creations of genius
would stand this test. But, after a swift, timid glance
sent round the world of imagination, I took courage. Few
of the characters which one would really sorrow to miss
SHILOH. 441
from that fair land, but shine with some soft reflection of
heavenly virtue, or walk in the strength and serenity of a
divine faith. Even that genius, which, in its life and creed,
violates every principle of religion sets at naught its pre-
cepts and denies its power is forced, in its works, to pay
reluctant homage to the beauty of holiness, and to irradi-
ate its creations with the light of Divine truth.
Seeing this point established in my mind beyond her
power to shake it, Mala suddenly recurred to that at which
the talk began. " Still," said she, " we must admit the
experience of the whole world goes to prove it that nothing
develops the higher nature like Love, that it as essential
to life's completeness, as it unquestionably is to its hap-
piness."
BOXA. We must admit nothing that arraigns God's
providence, nothing that questions His wisdom or His
goodness. There are lives into which love never enters (in
the shape under consideration), yet we may safely believe
that God withholds from no soul anything essential to its
preparation for a future state of being. If you find Love
in your path, either its sunshine or its gloom, you may
fairly infer that it is 'meant to you for good, that it is
a part of that mysterious process, by which time educates
for eternity, an instrument which, if used aright, will do
you good service in shaping your course for heaven. But
if you find it not, you may rest assured that to you it
would have been a hindrance and a snare, and you can
work out your salvation more surely and safely without it.
Be not deceived by that plausible word, " completeness."
Human life, being what it is, a means, a seedtime, a pro-
bation, looking to a future state for its end, its harvest, its
entering into possession, is, and must be, from its very
nature, incomplete. No estimate of it, that takes not
eternity into the account, is worth anything. But with that
important addition, how quickly the balances change !
What seems most incomplete here, may there round out
10*
442 SHILOH.
into the fulness of orbed perfection. The life that was
lived without love technically so called may be found to
have been fullest of that divine Charity, who holds both the
life that now is and that which is to come in her sof^ em-
brace, greatest of " these three," in their abiding upon
earth, and sole survivor of them in the ages of endless
fruition and perfect knowing ! The point which I wish to
impress upon you being, that all material which God gives
us, not love, nor talents, nor influence, nor successes
alone, but all things, losses, failures, hindrances, disap-
pointments, impoverishments, may be so wrought into our
life-temple by patient labor and fervent faith, that the com-
pleted structure shall show no deficiency, no incongruity,
no want of fair proportion and costly adornment ; but every
stone shall seem chosen and fitted for its place ; and all
shall be polished into the similitude of that diviner temple
" eternal in the heavens." Human love may be one of its
carved and gilded capitals ; or a lofty, illuminated arch ; or
a great, rich glory of an altar-window, many hued, and
crowded with luminous blazonry of sacred symbolism ; or
only a blood-incrusted, ebony cross ; or its absence may
make room for a more minute and delicate finish of all the
parts, a softer, chaster, more mellow and harmonious diffu-
sion and exquisiteness of beauty !
And yet there is a certain sense in which Love is an ef-
ficient element of moral training ; everywhere felt, but
dimly discerned, and therefore vaguely expressed. But
that efficiency grows out of its infirmity, its faithlessness, its
earthliness, the very qualities, you observe, which most
surely detract from the sum of human happiness, and
which each one most earnestly deprecates, in his own
experience. Yet, like our Lord, we must needs be made
perfect through suffering. And to most hearts no suf-
fering like that which comes from the affections ! none
penetrates so deep, nor rankles so long, nor is so little sus-
ceptible of earthly consolation. But, in the black depths.
SHILOH. 443
of that bitterest of sorrows, the soul often finds the pearl
of divine love, and struggles up with it to the fair shore of
Peace. Out of the loneliness of bereavement or desertion
is first born that deep, tender, spiritual yearning for the
visible presence of its Lord " My soul thirsteth for Thee,
my flesh also longeth after Thee, in a barren and dry land,
where no water is ! " And thus we reap a richer harvest
from Love's losses than ever we could have gathered in
from its increase. Out of its barrenness, or its ashes, its
divine sister rises winged, and we are alone no more
forever !
All this and much more said Bong, softly to me over
Uncle True's empty chair, from which Mala had flown dis-
comfited. A wonderful touchstone is it by which to try
earthly experiences and possessions. Worldly balances un-
dergo strange transformations in its light ; debt and credit,
profit and loss, change places. And daily it recalls and
points the good old man's last comfortable assurance,
" Take my word for't, Miss Frost, the time'll come when
you'll thank the Lord more for that cross than for all the
pleasant things that ever He poured into your bosom."
And sometimes, Francesca, it seems to me that that
tune, if not yet come, is swiftly coming is near at hand.
So near, at least, that I can now bear to set down how
the cross came and of what material it was wrought, Now,
you shall know all the strange, sad story of the two months
that intervened between that joy-cry sent you from the
fulness of a happy heart, " Paul has told me that he loves
me ; count us one forevermore ! " and that brief, bitter sen-
tence, wrung from the depths of a crushed, exhausted spirit,
" Paul and I are two ; never mention his name to me
again ! "
XLII.
THE TREACHEROUS FLOWER.
|EYER till now, Francesca, could I have borne
to rake out and sift these ashes of my heart ;
thank you for awaiting the process so patient-
ly. It is not every friend that knows how to be
at once sympathetic and silent, tender without
exaction, and interested without inquisitiveness.
But first, how the love was told ; for that is
essential to a clear understanding of the rest.
It so happened that we were all in the drawing-room,
on that March morning Flora; Sylvia Gay, a friend of hers ;
Marcia Bodley, a friend of mine ; Winnie Frost, a friend of
yours when Paul was shown in. It chanced, too, that I
was sitting near the door, so I heard him say to the servant
in the hall, with marked emphasis, "Miss Winnie Frost,
mind ; " saw the slight start of surprise and brief expres-
sion of chagrin with which he caught sight of our party ;
and felt my cheek flush with a sudden, shy consciousness
of what these things might bode. Recovering his equa-
nimity immediately, however, he drew a chair into our cir-
cle ; and Sylvia, with her wonted, free, dashing manner
toward gentlemen, made him acquainted with the subject
in hand.
" You are just in time, Mr. Venner. I am taking counsel,
and ' in a multitude,' and so forth, there is wisdom. The
uncomfortable truth is, that I cannot afford a new dress for
Mrs. Bizarre's grand reception to-night, and there must be
SHILOH. 445
a rentree of some one of the stock in hand. I am halting
between two opinions supposing one opinion to represent
my white moire, and the other, my pink tarlatan. You
have seen me in both which are you longing to behold
me in again ? "
"Miss Gay looks so well in both, as to leave me no
ground for a choice," he returned, bowing somewhat list-
lessly. " Nor is it likely that I shall have the pleasure of
seeing her in either to-night. I am suddenly called to New
Orleans, on important business. I must take the three
o'clock train in the morning, and I have scant time, for all
that must be done beforehand ; it was with difficulty that I
could find a moment to come and bid you good-bye." His
gesture comprehended the party, but his eyes rested full
on me.
There was a chorus of regrets and deprecations from the
three girls. Sylvia's Avere loudest and longest. " Prepos-
terous !" she exclaimed, " why, this is to be the affair of the
season. Besides, you cannot do any business this evening."
" There is to be a consultation of the firm at my uncle's,
and I must be present."
"And your uncle's is on the same block as the Bi-
zarre' s. You can certainly look in when the consultation
is over."
He sat looking at her absently, meditatively.
" Don't stare at me in that Mrs. Jellyby fashion," she
went on, saucily. " Come back from the left bank of the
Nile, and tell me you will look in at the Bizarre's to-night,
and see how brilliant we all are."
" Well, possibly I may."
" Good ! " she returned, in excellent humor at the con-
cession. " And now for your vote on the dress question,
don't think to escape with a compliment. Which shall it
be, pink or white ? "
There was the faintest possible curl of the lip, I thought,
accompanying the reply. " If I might presume to recom-
446 SHILOH.
mend either, it would be the white moire, because it is
going to be a chilly night."
" How absurd ! " laughed Sylvia. " As if it mattered
in the least what temperature is outside of a crowded recep-
tion ! You see the kind of criticism your tulle is to en-
counter, Flora." .
To my unspeakable amazement, Paul suddenly roused
to an appearance of interest in the subject. Looking at
Marcia, he said :
" And in what, may I ask, is Miss Bodley to be beauti-
ful to-night ?"
"In pink silk and white roses," she replied, with mock
seriousness. " I hope they meet your approval."
" Entirely," with a grave bow. " And Miss Winnie
how am I to find her in the crowd ? "
" By your lack of any toilet-data to guide you," answer-
ed I, quietly, for the tone of the conversation had jarred
upon me a little.
" How disobliging ! " exclaimed Sylvia. " I will tell
you, Mr. Venner ; she is to wear blue silk and dignity !
Which becoming trimming will be visible and unmistak-
able at any distance ! "
" Thank you," replied Paul, gravely ; " I have now all the
information I require." And very soon he took his leave.
At dusk, a box and a letter were left at the door for me.
In the box, rich, creamy, odorous, saflrona rosebuds ; in the
letter, a man's love, strong, tender, true at least, I thought
so then !
" If there is any feeling in your heart which answers to
mine," the letter concluded, " wear these rosebuds to-night.
Seeing them in your hair, on your bosom, I shall under-
stand what it would be very sweet to hear you say ! See-
ing them not, I shall understand, not less plainly what it
will be very hard to bear ! "
Ah ! Francesca, how exquisitely, girlishly, exuberantly
happy I was! Impossible to shut it all within my own
SHILOH. 4:47
heart, and hence that joyous postscript to you! Before
the night was over, how gladly would I have recalled it !
My toilet for the evening was completed, all but the
rosebuds; they should wait till the last moment, that their
beauty and freshness might be unimpaired. Meanwhile, I
heard little Bella crying in the nursery; the child was
timid and forlorn in her new nurse's hands, and sorrowful
for the old one, lately discharged. I opened the door, and
she held out her little arms to me with a piteous wail and a
look of entreaty, not to be resisted. My heart was so full
of happiness that it was most fit the little one should profit
by the overflow, I thought there was enough for both of
us, and to spare ; so I took her into my room, and gave her
a blissful half-hour of stories and caresses.
Then Aunt Belle's maid knocked at the door, " Would
you please step to Miss Flora's room a moment ? she wants
your advice about her hair."
I opened the door into the nursery, called hurriedly,
" Elise, come and see to Bella ! " and went. Twenty min-
utes Flora kept me, commenting, altering, discussing, till
her coronal was arranged to her liking. " Thank you," said
she, at length, " it is quite right now. Go and finish your-
self ; it is nearly time for the carriage."
I entered my room, humming an air. It was the last
of my singing for many days. On the floor sat Bella, by
her side an upturned box, all around a litter of creamy
petals and green leaves. She held up the last fragment of
a rosebud to me, with a smile. At the same time the nurse
entered.
"Why did you not come when I called?" I asked,
faintly.
" Did you call ? " returned the woman. " I did not hear
you. I just ran down stairs a moment. Shall I take Miss
Bella out?"
The child cried, and ran from her. Captured at last, she
was carried out, wailing. I sat quite still, cold, and silent.
448 SHILOH.
The maid reappeared. " The carriage is waiting, Miss.
Mrs. Frost begs you will hurry." She put a shawl round
me, and I descended mechanically.
In the carriage I gathered courage. Paul would misin-
terpret at first, of course ; but it would be easy to unde-
ceive him as soon as we spoke together ; some way for ex-
planation must open. I could not admit any other conclu-
sion.
The reception you know what those things are like
a crush of silk, tulle, and broadcloth ; snatches of talk,
snatches of music, snatches of supper I need not describe
it. I moved through it all like one in a dream, a single
thought in my heart.
Midnight drew near. Standing by the mantel, I heard
the French clock strike the sombre hour in the midst of the
gay scene. Some quick intuition made me look up. In the
doorway opposite, between two smiling faces, I saw an-
other, so pale, so gloomy, so stern, that I scarcely knew it
for Paul's. One moment, its sad reproachful gaze met
mine, and it was gone !
Unconsciously, I took a step or two toward the vacant
place. The crowd surged heavily between, and threw me
back.
Half an hour after, Flora found me, sitting stonily in a
corner. " Why, how pale you are ! " she said, in alarm,
" and you shiver like an aspen leaf. What's the matter ?
Are you ill ? " And she went for Aunt Belle, whose stiff
satin soon rustled by my side. She ordered Uncle John
and the carriage, and sent me home with a charitable hope
that I was " not going to be sick."
I was not sick. The next morning, to be sure, I rose
with a dull pain in head and heart ; but I went about
much as usual, and not particularly wretched. Paul would
return in due time, I thought ; we should meet ; all would
be made right. In that conviction, I lived and breathed.
Two months went slowly by. About the middle of
SHILOH. 449
May, Marcia Bodley called. " Have you heard the news ? "
she asked. " Paul Venner is to be married to a young lady
in New Orleans."
" Impossible ! " burst from my lips.
" Indeed, it is not. Here is a letter I received yester-
day from cousin Hallie. Seeing is believing; read that
paragraph."
I read accordingly: "Tell me what is pretty for a
bridesmaid to wear ; I am to stand with Adele Roche. She
will be married in June to Mr. Paul Venner, recently made
a partner in the house of ' Venner & Co.' you must know
the New York branch. He is a splendid fellow, and she is
as good as she is pretty, which is saying much," etc., etc.
I crept up to my room, after she had gone, and felt as if
the foundations of the earth were shaking under my feet !
I grew pale ; I grew thin ; I lost my appetite ; I forgot
how to smile. The doctor gave me a course of "iron,"
unnecessary trouble, so much had already entered into my
soul ! Finally, at his wit's end, he prescribed country air,
change of scene, etc. And so I came to Shiloh, seeking a
" Place of Rest " rest from the bitterness of Paul Venner's
memory. I have found it, too, in " Shiloh ; " but I think
not now of the quiet little hamlet, so fair under the dreamy
autumn haze, so restful, even to sluggishness, in its aspect,
oh, Francesca, how could I have missed so long that
deeper, sweeter meaning of the word which lends such
music to Israel's blessing of Judah ! " Until Shiloh come "
into the heart, and until the gathering of 'its hopes and
affections be " unto Him ; " there is no place of rest for it
in the universe ! But, with Him, entereth the fulness of
rest unutterable, the soft ripple of peace " that floweth as a
river ! "
And now si taccia delpassato. Here hath it its decent
burial, its sufficient epitaph. It hath done God's work ; .
driving me out of myself because introversion was so intol-
erable, forcing me to live in the present and in eternity,
19
4-50 SHILOH.
"because earth's future was so blank, it hath brought me
to see wherein life's real value lies ; to taste the sweetness
that comes, not of the work done, but of the doing it unto
the Lord. So, let it rest in peace !
In finishing this letter, I seem also to have gotten to the
end of all my energies. A strange languor, that is half
weariness and half delicious peace, has hung about me all
day, and grown with every word I have written. Good
night !
XLIII.
THE FINDING OF THE CLUE.
[Francesco, to her Husband in Europe J\
TRUCE to domestic historiography in this
letter. Content yourself in knowing that
the home- world revolves smoothly, by sun-
shine and starshine. My mind is too full of
Winnie and her affairs for possibility of other
chronicle. Besides I want to make confes-
sion, and get absolution yours, the only
mortal remission I care for !
I have been meddling. I am a would-be Providence,
with a rankling fear of turning out an evil geniiis. Need-
less to say (to you !) that I have been yielding to a head-
strong impulse, and now begin to question its right to
obedience. Write tout de suite, and pronounce that I have
done well, or that I have not done ill, and deliver me from
this bond of fear, this gall of uncertainty.
To afford you the necessary standpoint for your judg-
ment, I enclose Winnie's last letter. Stop, precisely here,
and read it.
Have you done so ? Now recall the fact that, next to
you, she is the dearest thing I have on earth. Ere your
love lapped me in incalculable opulence, I counted myself
rich in hers. Remember how she stood by me, in my trial
"as by fire." Reflect what a woman she is, strong of
mind, lofty of soul, tender of heart. Then, knowing me as
452 SHILOH.
you do, to the innermost, you will be able to picture my
reading of it. How I fumed and glowered ! How I shook
the child Bella, in imagination, till she could not tell rose-
buds from falling stars ! What vindictive fists I doubled
up in Paul Venner's face ! "What fierce sarcasms I hurled
at the whole race of male mankind, and how energetically
I told my toilet-table that* I was glad Providence had gra-
ciously interposed to prevent Winnie from throwing her-
self away upon any one of them ! How, finally, when my
fury had burnt itself out, I wrapped her in my faithful
love, and wept over her tears of regret and pity and
despair.
For I had never credited the rumor of Paul Venner's
marriage. My mind refused to take iu the possibility that
a man, manly, who had once found entrance into Winnie's
great heart and mind, could thereafter endure a narrower
abiding place! I believed that the estrangement, however
it had grown up, belonged to the order of things remedi-
able.* He of the scythe and hour-glass would cut it up,
root and branch, in the fulness of time ; its thorny work
being done, its bitter-sweet fruit borne. I would lend him
a helping hand myself, so soon as home duties should let
me out of their grip long enough to look Winnie up, get a
succinct account of the affair, and find out where such hand
would be in order. Meantime, seeing how her character
was getting its crowning grace of humility through it all,
I managed to possess my soul in a fuming patience.
This letter gave a death-blow to my hopes and plans.
Paul Venner being married, what remained to be done ?
Clearly, nothing but to wish him joy, and Winnie, forget-
fulness. Lucky for him that the "joy" did not depend on
the sincerity of my good wishes.
As for Winnie, she declared herself "at peace." The
past was not only dead, but buried. Neither ghost nor
vision haunted her memory, to disturb or to appal. The
stream of her love, dammed up from its late channel, had
8HILOH. 453
spread into a broad lake, for the mirroring of heaven and
the refreshment of the people.
Stuff and nonsense ! I exclaimed, contemptuously.
Docs she think to make me believe that love Tier love
can die so easily ? Does she fancy I forget how that vio-
loncello voice of hers used to roll its molten richness along
the last verse of Parthenia's song,
" And tell me how love cometh ? "
" It comes unsought unsent."
" And tell me how love goeth ? "
" That was not love which went ! "
while I held on to my chair to keep myself in the world of
sense ; to know, by touch, that I was somewhere, and not
floating out on that purple stream of melody to nowhither !
Then I knocked myself down with a suddenly-grasped
conviction. Winnie was not the sort of person to consume
herself with love and longing for another woman's husband.
She would tear such an affection out of her heart, by the
roots ; no matter how much bleeding flesh and fibre came
with it. And I ! I was Spartan enough, thank Heaven ! to
stand by and encourage her in the doing it, though every
wrench and every pang had its double in my own !
/Sans doute, she had done this. Without human encour-
agement; without other cry for help than toward the Cross
on Mount Calvary ; without visible shrinking of spirit, or
quivering of flesh. Silently, in the strength of God.
Now, the bloody work was accomplished, the sharp
agony over. She was healed, and " at peace."
Why could I not be more thankful ? Why did I so
rebel against the hard necessity ? Because, knowing the
sweetness and the rest of happy wedded love, as I do, the
comfortableness of being cherished and taken care of, I
longed to have Winnie know it also. I did not want her
to braid St. Catharine's tresses, though she grew ten times
a saint in the process. I wanted her life to have bloom as
454: SHILOH.
well as fruit. Sweet verdure of earth as well as illimitable
blue of heaven.
But what was to be done about it ? Nothing. Only to
write her a comfortful letter, deep rather than broad (we
are not the sort of women to bedear and bedarling one
another much), tell her I love and honor her above all
other women ; and then let her go forth alone into her
starlit dusk. That was all !
' Lame and impotent conclusion! It made me frantic
with helplessness. It oppressed me as with an insufficiency
of air to breathe. I longed for space, freedom, motion. A
breezy walk on the Common would, perhaps, give me bet-
ter heart to write. I bonneted, shawled, and set forth.
I walked till I was tired, yet found no rest. A seeming
paradox, but a simple truth. You will understand.
Coming back through Main Street, it occurred to me to
step into Mr. Watling's office, and ask for news of Bessie.
The business card of " Venner & Co., New Orleans," side
by side with another of " Venner & Co., New York," was
nearly the first thing that smote my gaze. Glad that my
talk might have an excuse for hovering around the engross-
ing subject of my thought, however remotely, I inquired if
he knew the Venners, personally ?
"Certainly, all of them, more or less," said he. "I
know Mr. Amos Venner, head of the New Orleans house,
tolerably well. And Hugh Venner, late head of the New
York firm, was my most intimate friend. In truth, we
were like brothers. I sorrowed for him as David for
Jonathan."
" Then you know Paul Venner, of course ? " said I. .
" Which Paul Venner ? " he returned. " Though, to be
sure, I know them both."
How I pricked up my ears and my hopes! There
were two Paul Venners, then? Here might be another
comedy no, tragedy of errors !
Holding up the possibility to look at it, I saw a flaw.
SHILOH. 455
Doubtless, the twain were uncle and nephew. And it was
the junior, unquestionably, that was reported to be a
candidate for matrimony. My ears dropped; my hopes
likewise.
" I mean the young man," said I ; "do you know if he
is married ? "
" They are both young men," he answered. " But the
question of marriage settles the identity. Paul Venner, of
New Orleans, was married last summer. Do you know
him?"
" I have heard him spoken of," I answered, dryly, thrust-
ing down by the strong hand an inclination to " speak of "
him myself, nippingly as frost.
Mr. Watling looked at me sharply. " You have heard
nothing to his disadvantage, I am sure ; at least you ought
not to have done. He is a fine young man, as young
men go, which, after all, is saying too little for him,
most young men go to the bad in these days. But his
cousin, Paul Venner, of New York, is a finer young man
still, as young men do not go, brave as a lion, gentle as a
lamb, pure as a vestal, wise as a sage, another Bayard,
'without fear and without reproach.' I should feel con-
siderably easier about our country's future than I do, if I
were sure that Uncle Sam could put his finger on fifty more
like him, at need. To be candid, I love him like my own
son. And it cuts me to the heart that he should be going
out of business just now, when the commercial world needs
men like him so much, firm, calm, candid, upright men,
with stamina and conscience enough to resist the speculat-
ing, defaulting, stock-gambling, gold-worshipping tenden-
cies of the times."
I pricked up my ears again. This sounded like Win-
nie's first mention of her Paul ! She, too, had quoted the
French knight, sans peur et sans reproche. Was there
some miserable mistake, after all ? If so, it was my duty
to ferret it out.
456 SHILOH.
" And why," said I, " does he quit business, then ? "
Mr. Watling sighed and shook his head. " I suspect
it is the old story a woman who ' would, and would not.'
Paul owned as much to me when I saw him last. ' His old
future was slain to him,' he said. ' He must build a new
one out of other and better material.' In short, he had de-
termined to study for the ministry. It had been the dream
and desire of his youth, but he had given it up at his
father's request ; he wanted his son beside him in his count-
ing house. He was not sorry that he had yielded ; his
commercial training would not come altogether amiss in
the ministry; and it was an inexpressible gladness to re-
member that he had been by his father's side in dark days
of commercial quake and distress, and had been a stay and
a comfort to him. But it had pleased God, now, to remove
every obstruction from his onward path ; his father needed
his help and companionship no more ; he had left him a for-
tune ampler than his wishes or his needs ; he saw his way
quite clear before him, stripped of everything to hinder his
progress or divide his strength.' I grumbled out that he
would only spoil a good business-man to make a poor min-
ister. ' I think not,' he answered, quietly ; ' I have lived in
and of the world, and I know what it is like. I have been
down to the gates of death, and I know how it looks from
thence. I know what it is to ' lose all, yet find all,' and I
can ' teach men so.' And you would be the last man on
earth, Mr. Watling, to counsel me to resist my convictions
of duty.' So I could only wring his hand and let him go.
But I have not done mourning about it yet."
He must mourn alone, then ! My call was, clearly, to
rejoice. For them who knew not yet what cause of re-
joicing was coming to them. Coming ever since the
world came out of the murk of chaos. " Prepared " before
chaos "was." The thought took my breath away. It
pitched me down, headlong, from the mount of joy into
the valley of humiliation. For, all this time, I had been
SIIILOH. 457
crying out against God's ways, in my heart ! You know
I never distrusted Him, for myself. But, for my friend, I
could have done better, I thought !
So it was not a " miserable mistake." A wholesome
one, instead, of the Father's own making. His machinery
for cutting and polishing a pair of human souls into fit-
ness for His day of making up His jewels. His veil drawn
between, while He was beautifying them each for the
other, and both for Himself. His sign and seal upon His
" elect," elected, first, to the purification by fire ; next to
the sweetness and the hardships of His service ; finally, to
the fulness of the glory to be revealed !
This was what I felt. What I said when I could say
anything was too far away of - kin for kinship to be
traceable.
" How strange that two cousins-german should bear ex-
actly the same name ! It must give rise to endless confu-
sion and mistake."
" It happened naturally enough," said Mr. Watling.
" Twenty-five or thirty years ago, Amos Venner was a cot-
ton planter in Texas, and Hugh the American Consul at
Naples. Sons were born to them, within a fortnight, or
thereabouts, of each other. Letters traveled slowly in
those days. Both the children were christened Paul, in
honor of their paternal grandfather, before either brother
knew of the other's good fortune. But I don't think it
ever caused any trouble. They have lived too far apart ;
one at the South, the other in Europe or New York."
I denied myself the pleasure of dispelling the illusion.
I was in a white heat of impatience to get home and write
to Winnie, " Paul is not married.. He has never so much
as dreamed of the thing. He is going to be a minister.
He has buried you in his heart, and mourns the living
dead. Over that grave, God writes ' Resurgam.' For He
is gracious, and His mercy endureth." This would I
write.
20
458 SIIILOH.
But there must be something more, of where and when
and why.
" Do you know where Paul Yenner is now ? " I asked.
" In New Orleans ; or, it may be, on his way home.
Most likely the latter."
" Has he been in New Orleans all summer ? "
'Now, Mr. Watling looked at me suspiciously. This
persistent questioning about a stranger began to strike him
as odd, to say the least of it. I answered his look. " I
ask from a deeper motive than curiosity. I take an inter-
est in Paul Venner, which shall have a future explanation.
Meantime, it will do no harm, and may do good, f6r me to
know what have been his outward movements since last
spring."
" First," replied Mr. Watling, " his father despatched
him to New Orleans, on important business for the firm.
There, it was decided that he must proceed forthwith to
California. He returned in August, to find his father look-
ing ill and woi'n ; ' waiting,' he said, ' for Paul to come
back and take his place, so that he might give up, and be
sick a little while.' The giving up was final ; he died a
month afterward. For a time, Paul seemed quite stunned
by the blow. Then he came to the decision I told you of.
He is closing up the business. The two houses having
always been connected, he was obliged to visit New Or-
leans again, two or three weeks ago, for consultation with
his uncle. It is about time for him to return."
Now, I had got all I wanted. I bade Mr. Watling good-
bye, hurriedly. I set out for home at a great pace.
On the way, it slackened. Thoughts came to me ;
thoughts and a question. I could write to Winnie, but
she would she write to Paul Venner ?
I tried to tell myself, Yes ; and could only get out an
unwilling, No ! Womanly pride, womanly delicacy, fine-
spun as cobwebs, yet strong as steel, these would hold
her back.
SHILOH. 459
I sputtered furiously against the folly, the sin, of sacri-
ficing the happiness of two lives to a figment, a scruple, a
mere conventionalism. It would be setting up an image of
straw, and not daring to knock it down. Blenching at a
moment's pain, and going out deliberately into a long ag-
ony of years. Sickening at a little drop of bittersweet,
and drinking slowly a great, bottomless cup of gall. In
vain. Over all my resentful metaphors strode that relent-
less, " No." It set its foot on my neck, and held me at its
mercy.
With clearest soul-sight, I saw what she would write
back. " Providence, having brought me so much, will
surely bring me the rest, in His good time. I can wait."
And what then ? A dull pain of suspense, a slow fever
of expectation, a growing weight of patience. Across
that peace whereof she had told me, " flowing as a river,"
I should have thrown a long, wavering shadow of unrest,
a haunting " if," a slow-dripping " when." A joy with an
ache in it. A gift with a sting in it. No, a thousand
times, no ! whatever I did, I w r ould not do that !
I walked slowly enough now, and pondered. Cleai-ly,
here was a case where Providence needed an instrument.
None more ready and glad than I. That, sans dire. There-
fore this clue had been put into my hands. What was I
to do with it ? The answer flashed back, as along an elec-
tric wire. Give it to Paul Venner. But how ? I did not
know him. Write. An anonymous letter
I stopped short. Anonymous letters are instruments of
Satan. Slimy, as with the trail of a serpent on them.
Smutched, as by pitchy hands. Of evil reputation, be-
cause found in bad company.
Besides, Paul Venner might suspect Winnie of having.
Avritten it. I flushed all over at the bare thought. Nor
did it help me much to pronounce that such suspicion
would prove him unworthy ever to have stood at the white
portal of her heart.
460 S1IILOH.
"What I did, then, should be done openly. I took my
pen, and dashed off this :
" He that could trust his happiness to so fragile a thing
as a flower, deserved the swift retribution that overtook
him. But the spring will bring again saiFrona buds as
sweet as those that perished with their mission but half
fulfilled ; and for hopes which we mourn as dead, there
may also be a springtime and a reblooming. So (speaking
as the spirit only moveth her) saith
" FEANCESCA GOLDEN."
Reading it over, I thought I might have signed it "Py-
thia," with fitness ; it sounded oracular enough. But its
meaning would not be dark to Paul Venner. And I sealed
and sent it forthwith.
Then I began to be dubious. I discerned that none
can go back to the precise place in life, he has left behind.
Circumstances have dug it up, or built a Avail around it, or
greened it over, or blighted it with barrenness. Or he has
grown, or dwindled, and no longer fits into it.
Besides, there is no such thing as a perfect reparation
on earth. When a man would restore the fair image of
Right to the place from whence he stole it, the old niche is
filled up or vanished. He must take up with the one
which nearest resembles it ; or go on with his burden, vow-
ing to steal no more.
Perhaps Winnie and Paul have lived so far past that
old point of divergence, as to make it impossible to return !
Perhaps it is too late for the old mistake ever to be set
right. Perhaps Winnie's love is dead, as she thinks; and
not in a trance, as I have taken for granted ! Perhaps
Paul, in " finding all," counts nothing lost ! Perhaps
I am in a state of mortal bewilderment with all these
perhapses! Write quickly, and settle me into a certainty
of having done well, or ill ; either would be preferable to
these doubts. Thine, FEANCESCA.
XLIV.
A :NTOTE OF WAKNTVG.
[Alice Prescott to Francesco,.]
'EAR Mrs. Golden : I am sorry to have to
tell you that Miss Frost is very ill with
that dreadful fever which has already
caused us so much sorrow. Will you come
to her at once, and also send word to her
uncle in New York ? We could not find his
address among her papers, and none of us
happen to know it. We found yours, how-
ever, and therefore I write to you ; indeed, I should have
done so in any case, for I feel certain that she would send
for you, first of all, if she could. At present she is uncon-
scious, and recognizes no one.
I think her illness began early last week : I remember
she said to me that she had been writing you a long letter,
and that it had been difficult to finish it satisfactorily ;
" My mind seemed all afloat, I could not anchor it any-
where," was her expression. All through the week she
was not quite her usual active, cheery self ; but she declared
positively that she was " not sick, only tired and languid,"
and as Uncle True's death had left us all in an exhausted
and dispirited state, it did not occur to us to be uneasy
about her until day before yesterday. Then grandma
announced that it was " high time to take her in hand," and
did so, administering medicine and forbidding her to leave
462 SHILOH.
ner room. Yesterday she was so much better as to dissi-
pate all our anxiety. This morning, on entering her room,
I was terror-stricken to find her delirious ; she called me
"Annita," and began talking to me in Italian. I could just
make out that she fancied herself in Italy. We sent for
the doctor. He looked very grave, and told us " it was
always safest to prepare for the worst, while hoping for the
best."
We shall send to the depot at every train, after to-mor-
row morning. Meanwhile, be quite sure that she will
have every care and comfort. Aunt Vin came up as soon
as she heard of her sickness, took off her bonnet, and pro-
claimed that she had " come to stay, wanted or not." She
immediately took charge of the sick-room, and she is a
most experienced nurse. As for Ruth and I, either of us
would give our lives for Miss Frost, and we shall not leave
her a moment. Besides, we have almost too many offers of
help, watchers, etc. ; there has been a continual stream of
people coming and going, to inquire after her or to tender
assistance, ever since the evil tidings went out. I tell you
all this, that you may know that there are plenty of loving
hearts and willing hands about her, that will not let her
miss anything they have to give. Still, we should be glad
to have some of her own friends here, to share the respon-
sibility ; and we thought Mr. Frost might wish to bring a
physician from the city.
Yours truly,
ALICE PEESCOTT.
THE SPIRIT OF HEAVINESS.
\Francesca to her Husband.]
is little more than a week sintfe I wrote
you. It is years since I wrote you. The one be-
ing the literal fact ; the other the felt truth. Such
days as those through which I have just lived
are not to be measured by clock-strokes. They
stagger under a weight of event, emotion, pos-
sibility, which sets the night afar off from the
morning, and the morning at a weary year's jour-
ney from the night.
Alice Prescott's letter, herein enclosed, will tell you all
it told me. Before I had well finished it, I was thrusting
indispensables into a travelling-bag. On my way to the
depot, I telegraphed " Uncle John." In half an hour I was
on board the express, dashing southward. Two changes
of cars and eight hours of travel brought me to Shiloh
station at dusk.
A tall, erect, broad-shouldered, gray-headed man ; keen
of eye, benignant of face ; with an enormous black dog at
his side; stood on the platform, expectantly. Straightway
I went to him. " Mr. Divine, how is Winnie ? "
The answer came through quivering lips, ending with a
sound akin to a sob :
" Sinking fast."
Recovering himself, the fanner asked, "Are you. the
464 SHILOH.
only one ? " And he looked behind me as if I should have
been leader of a troop.
" The only one. I am Francesca Golden. Is not Mr.
Frost arrived ? "
He shook his head.
" I telegraphed him at once," said I. " He should have
been here first. He .had not half the distance to come."
" The worst of it is that this is the last train, and he
cannot get here now till morning," said he. "And I'm
afraid"
But the fear, whatever it was, would not " out." No
need.
I got into the wagon without another word. The sta-
tion was on a hill, lit pallidly by the latest gleam of the
west. From it the road sank swiftly toward the shadow of
the valley below ; hiding itself, as it went, under the gloom
of trees. We sank with it, drearily. " Sinking fast," rever-
berated dismally through my heart. Everything was sink-
ing with her, into the dusk of grief, the blackness of des-
pair, the night of death !
Clay Corner, with its clustering lights, its hum of busi-
ness, its murmur of falling water, its red glow of a black-
smith's foi'ge, was quickly reached, and left behind. In the
darkness beyond, the fai'mer found voice, and even a degree
of eloquence. Winnie's goodness, Winnie's talents, Win-
nie's genuineness, these were the heads upon which he en-
larged, as if enamored of the subject. Especially did he
dilate upon her unlikeness to " city folks," as he had known
them.
"I own I didn't use to take to 'em much," said he.
" There was more ' fine feather ' than ' fine bird ' about 'em,
I reckoned. They came and went among us like comets
in the sky ; no great shakes for light, and no account at all
to steer by. They sickened us with their condescension, or
riled us with their superciliousness. They left their religion
at home, mostly, in their five-hundred-dollar pews with
SHILOH. 465
their gilt-edged Prayer Books. They had plenty of bank-
bills for pleasure, dogs, horses, boats, excursions, and
what -not, but only the smallest kind o' change for our
contribution box ; and they seemed to think we was well
paid for giving 'em up our best seats by the honor they did
us in sitting in 'em once a day, in fine weather. They were
bothered within an inch of their lives to find ways to kill
time, but they never thought of giving an hour to our Sun-
day School, or our poor, or our Sewing Society ; or, like
Mrs. Danforth, they'd make a great show of work, and do
a little something just as long as they could have their own
way, and no longer (at least, that's the way s/ie used to be,
but I really think she's improving, too, and I reckon Miss
Frost's at the bottom of it !). As for trying to find out
our talents and helping us to make the most of 'em, they'd
sooner their own would rust out for want of using ! They
lived among us as if they wasn't of us, and didn't mean to
be. And they never left behind 'em any idea of a life any
higher and deeper than our own ; only one with a little
more surface and glitter.
" Now, Miss Frost wasn't none' of that sort. She's what
I call a lady, through and thi'ough. She didn't leave her
fine breeding nor her religion behind, when she came into
the country. She was just as polite and respectful to Uncle
True's gray hairs and mine, as if they'd grown on mayors
of New York. She was never a mite stuck up, to anybody.
She spent all her time and strength in our service ; and she
carried her talents and her edication in her hand, ready for
anybody that wanted 'em most. She went right into our
kitchens and bedrooms, and watched by our sick and dying,
just as if she had been one of ourselves ; only with twice as
much gentleness, and delicacy, and handiness. And there's
no end to the good she's done, when you come to reckon it
up ; though its all come along so easily and naturally, that
you wouldn't know what to lay it to, if you didn't keep
your eyes open. She's made another creature out of Ruth
20*
466 SHILOH.
Winnot. She's done everything for Alice. She's softened
down Mr. "Warren from a regular bear to something border-
ing on hiiman. She's won all Jack's heart ; and if- she'd
only been spared long enough, she'd have made room in it
for something else. She's managed the Lord knows how !
to keep peace in the Sewing Society, though some of the
folks in it go together like fii-e and gunpowder. But, bless
me, I couldn't begin to tell you all she's done, directly and
indirectly, if I talked from now till morning !
" But perhaps the best of it all was the way she's be-
haved to Mr. Taylor. She's always treated him with as
much respect and consideration as if he'd been a Bishop ;
and she paid as good attention to his sermons as if he was
the most learned man on earth, though everybody knows
she's got more edication than ever he thought of. And she
has always supported him right straight through, even
when she didn't quite fall in with his way of thinking. I
remember when the Sunday School was reorganized, she
talked over a plan with Priscilla that she thought was just
about right ; and so did Priscilla. But when Mr. Taylor
come, he'd got his mind set on something quite different ;
and Priscilla wasn't going to give in, ' she couldn't recon-
cile it to her conscience to give up a good plan for a poor
one,' she said. But Miss Frost told her that the question
between the poor plan and the good one, and the responsi-
bility, too, was Mr. Taylor's ; the only question for them
was whether they'd submit themselves to their spiritual
pastor, and gladden his heart by their goodwill, and
strengthen his hands by their example and influence; or
whether they'd set themselves up in opposition to him, and
give rise to a dissension in the parish, and hinder his work,
and weaken his power to do good ; and so Priscilla had to
come round. And there's no telling the good of such an ex-
ample, from such a person, in a community that ain't over-
weighted with reverence for anything or anybody, and
that would* just as soon pick a quarrel with their minister
SHILOH. 467
as eat their victuals. The fact is she's done us good, some-
how, every day of her life since she come here. There ain't
many city folks, I guess, that have made such a record of
a summer in the country as the recording angel has written
down of hers ! "
This long speech did not run its course without interrup-
tion. Thrice a shadowy horse, wagon, and driver had come
out of the dusk before us, and halted ; a voice, nasal per-
haps, but certainly kind and interested, had propounded
the query, " How is Miss Frost ? " Without drawing rein,
Mr. Divine had responded, " Sinking fast ; " and the vision
had disappeared in the gloom behind. My heart ached
anew with each repetition of that answer sank lower as
with a fresh burden of despair.
The road now began to climb. Reaching a level, Mr.
Divine announced that we were on " Hope Plain," and
pointed out the homes of* Mrs. Danforth and Essie Volger.
Up two or three more hills, and the " Gwynne Place " rose
duskily into the darkening sky. I shuddered to come thus
upon places made so vivid to my imagination through Win-
nie's graphic picturings; and to find them dim, sombre
shapes, wavering of outline and vague of tint, eluding my
straining gaze and vanishing into gloom. The world she
had evoked seemed fading dying with her !
More hills to climb ; more jolting ; a denser shadow of
trees ! Then a little white church reared itself lonelily
upon the sky before us. Now, I knew my ground. Swiftly
we turned the corner, gently we trotted up to the gate.
The large, sloping-roofed, venerable, kindly homestead of
Winnie's story and my dreams rose before me.
A comfortable vision after that long, dark, heavy-heart-
ed ride ! Bursting with light, every door and window
contributing its cheery quota. Through one wide portal,
the ruddy glow and flame of the kitchen fire. Between its
gleam and our dusk, a short, brisk figure, with straight-
down skirts and flying cap-borders, hurrying out to meet
468 SHILOH.
me. Hearty, homely words of welcome, of sympathy, of an
unconquerable springiness of hope, upon its lips.
Can you guess what I did next ! Up to this moment I
had shed no tear. Now, the kind tone, the motherly man-
ner, overcame me. My "windows of heaven" were opened.
For one minute there was a swift downpour.
" Come right into the kitchen," said Mrs. Divine, "there's
nobody there. The rest of the house is pretty much filled
up with people waiting to see how the- fever turns with Miss
Frost. I told 'em they might go where they liked, if they'd
keep out of her room, and leave the kitchen clear for Fris-
cilla and me and the kitchen- work ; that needs to go on all
the more regularly when there's sickness in the house. And
I've got a cup of tea and a bite all ready for you."
I tried to decline the refreshment ; I desired to go to
Winnie at once. But there was no resisting Mrs. Pivine's
mingled kindness, peremptoriness, and good sense.
"You're not fit to go just yet; and there's no hurry
she won't know you. Take your tea and get up your
strength ; you want to be able to stay when you do go.
We try to keep her room as free from coming and going
and confusion, as possible. Aunt Vin says that noise and
excitement tells on the nerves of sick people, even when
they don't seem to take any notice. And I guess she's
right."
The kitchen was exquisite in neatness ; redolent of Mrs.
Prescott's spirit, tempered by the blither one of her
mother. Mrs. Prescott herself took my bonnet and
placed my chair. She was quieter, gentler than my ex-
pectation ; but I remembered that sickness and death had
but lately visited the house, and that one perhaps both !
had crossed its threshold again. Wonderful softeners
they!
As I sat at table, a slight, graceful, thoughtful-looking
girl stole quietly to my side, and kissed me silently, with
quivering lips. I needed no telling that I beheld Alice
SHILOH. 409
Prcscott. A few moments after, Essie Volger appeared,
a fine, open, intelligent face, a frank, easy, cordial manner,
both a little shadowed now by grief and anxiety. With
her, came Mr. Taylor to wring my hand and utter a sym-
pathizing, comforting word. All these, I felt, took me di-
rectly into their hearts, for Winnie's sake, and made com-
mon cause with me. My sorrow was theirs. " One prayer
was in all our hearts " Spare her, good Lord ! "
Alice led me up stairs. Leo followed us, with grave
and dignified aspect.
In the little entry above, on a large chest, in a position
to command the interior of the sick-room beyond, a boy
sat motionless, sombre, mute, watchful.
" It is Jack Warren," whispered Alice. " He will stay
here."
Stirred to the depths, I passed on.
A large, wainscoted room, with the bed drawn near the
middle, for greater convenience and freer air. On one side,
a tall, gaunt woman, her finger on the patient's pulse, her
head shaking fatefully Auntr \ 7 in. Flung down at the
foot, in an attitude of complete dejection, a girl with au-
burn hair. "On the pillow, a wan, wasted face, veiled with
stupor. These things I took in at a glance.
The girl rose, and turned round. Xo lovelier counte-
nance ever lit the interior regions of a painter's imagination.
With a sob, she threw herself into my arms, sweet, lov-
ing, impulsive Ruth Winnot, gifted and stricken by Provi-
dence as at one blow.
" We're amasin' glad to see you," said Aunt Yin.
" We've been in a state of expectoration all day, and we'd
about giv' up."
Alice noiselessly placed me a chair on the farther side
of the bed. I sat down and looked at Winnie through my
tears. So changed oh ! so changed !
" Speak to her," said Aunt Vin, " and see if she reck-
onizes you."
470 SHILOH.
Once twice thrice, I called her name. Into it I con-
densed an agony of supplication and, tenderness that should
have brought her back from the very portal of the grave,
I thought. At the third repetition she half-opened her
eyes, murmured something in Italian, of which I caught
only the sombre word " notte," and relapsed into coma.
" Oh ! this is too much ! " I groaned. " Not to knoAV
me, not to speak to me, not to hear what I would say to
her ! I cannot bear it ! Oh ! will she not wake will she
not understand just for one moment, before she dies ? "
" Couldn't conjuncture," said Aunt Yin, gravely. " The
fever'll turn about midnight, I guess. What'll follow, I
couldn't intend to say ; not if I'd swallowed the pharma-
copious and was physician in ordinal to the Queen. "We
must do our best and wait upon the Lord."
The evening wore slowly on. Intense quiet in the sick-
room, broken only by the rattle of spoons and phials, an
occasional remark or direction from Aunt Vin, and faint
sounds from below indicating the coming and going of anx-
ious and sympathizing friends.
At ten o'clock, Mr. Taylor stole quietly in, knelt by the
bed, and said a prayer or two from the order for the Visita-
tion of the Sick, in low, solemn tones that only seemed to
add to the chamber's hush. They were folloAved by an
" Amen ! " so loud and deep that it startled me. Looking
up, I saw a new comer in the entry, by Jack's side. The
form was hidden in shadow, but the rough, leonine
head, the deepset, glittering eyes, could only belong to Mr.
Warren !
Then the sounds from below ceased, the house grew
still, the long, fateful night-watch began !
THE CRY IX THE NIGHT.
[Francesca to her JETusband.]
HILE I live, that night-watch will live, too,
in my memory. I wish I could set it be-
fore you, reasonably true of outline and col-
oring!
The large, low, quaintly-furnished room,
dimly lit by the swealing candle. Two open_
windows one merely a square of blackness,
dense shadow laid against it, like a thing to
be felt ; in the other, the dusky foliage of a lilac, here,
catching the light from within, there, vanishing into gloom.
Without, a dark, clouded sky ; an atmosphere still and
warm, even to sultriness ; the soft murmur of the brook
flowing in the meadow.
On the bed, the sufferer's motionless form and pallid
face ; low moans, as of pain, breaking at intervals from
her parched lips. Ruth fanning her, with a tireless, mo-
notonous motion. Alice gliding to and fro, noiseless as a
shadow ; bringing water from the well, ice from the cellar,
broths and decoctions from the kitchen, obedient to a sign
or a word from Aunt Tin. The latter personage by the
bedside ; cool, vigilant, cautious, and prompt, as a sentinel
at his post or a general in the field.
In one corner, Leo, observant, alert; with an expression
almost human in its anxiety, its mournfulness, and its in-
telligence, upon his face.
472 SHILOH.
Just outside the door, the dark, watchful gleam of Jack
"Warren's eyes. Behind, him, indistinct in the shadow, his
father's saturnine features. In the room beyond, Essie
Volger, seated by a table, shading her eyes from the light
thereon. Near her, a sheen of silk, a sparkle of diamonds,
a rapid, dramatic gestui-e, speaking for Mrs. Danforth.
Below, Mrs. Divine, keeping up the kitchen fire ; can.
die-stand by her side, Bible in her hand. Opposite to her,
Uncle True's empty chair !
These are the bald details of the picture. By the
power of your sympathy, you will endow them with truth-
ful light, shadow, tint, tone. The candle will be less an
illumination than a revealer of gloom. The faces will
darken with anxiety and whiten with dread. The atmos-
phere will be full of the breathlessness of approaching
crisis.
As the night wore on, Winnie's moans ceased. Her
breath grew faint, her chest scarcely moved. Her pulse
was like the slow lapping of a retreating tide. Growing
lethargy, scarcely distinguishable . from death, held her
more closely locked in its embrace.
Suddenly a harsh sound smote the night. It came
nearer : it resolved itself into a trampling of horses, a
lashing of a whip, a rattling of swift-revolving wheels. It
swept past the window, and was quenched in a moment, at
the gate.
Silence, for a brief space. Then a slight bustle, a sound
of voices, from below. Presently, a rustling on the stair-
case; a group of new-comers in the doorway.
I recognized Mr. and Mrs. Frost, Flora, Dr. Heartwell.
"We greeted each other gravely, briefly, as people do greet
by deathbeds.
Uncle John whispered an explanation. " Did not get
your telegram till this afternoon some confounded remiss-
ness at the office. Came to Pontport in last train hunted
up a carriage and driver told him to drive like Jehu, for
life and death."
BHILOH. 473
The last word choked him. He had just caught sight
of Winnie's corpse-like figure. He stood for a moment si-
lently regarding her. Then he turned away, .drawing his
hand across his eyes.
Dr. Heart well wasted no time in courtesies. He went
straight to the bedside, gave the patient a rapid, compre-
hensive glance, tasted the contents of the phials on the
stand, asked Aunt Vin a question or two, and vanished.
In a moment he reappeared with a flask ; Alice brought
him a spoon ; he administered a dose to the patient with
his own professional hands. Then he sat down, expectant.
Now, first, I discovered, with a start, that still another
spectator had been added to the scene. By the window,
out of everybody's way, yet where he could command a
full view of Winnie, a young man had quietly planted him-
self. Dark hair ; a square brow ; a calm, clear face ; an
attitude iv udy, resolved, and patient: these traits struck
me at a glance.
Who could it be, I wondered. A son of Mr. Frost's ?
No, he had none grown up. A friend of the family,
perhaps.
Suddenly, my mind swooped upon the truth, Paul
Venner.
I went to him and held out my hand. " You received
my letter ? "
" Yes. I know not how to thank you. It confirmed
what I had begun to suspect. For I met Frederick Thome
in New Orleans. He told me much that was suggestive.
I found your letter awaiting me in New York. I went im-
mediately to Mr. Frost's, to learn if Winnie had returned.
I met your telegram there. I am here."
The look said, " Here, because it is my right ; here, be-
cause she is mine, as I am hers. Here, to save her if I
may ; to yield her into God's hands, if I must."
Another hour went by. Slowly, as if stretching its
elastic length across an age. Time is the tent of Peri-
474 SHILOIT.
Benou, in the Arabian tale. Capable of compression into
a nutshell, or of expansion to cover a kingdom.
Dead silence, now. Even Dr. Heartwell and Aunt Vin
spoke no more. They understood well enough without
words. A look, a gesture, a nod, these sufficed for con-
cert of aim and action.
As Winnie's strength declined, their vigilance and activ-
ity increased. There was something awful, thrilling, sub-
lime, in that struggle with death, in w r hich they were
plainly engaged. No inch of ground was to be yielded
without a fight, no point left unguarded, no resource un-
tried. Again and again they rallied Life's forces to the
battle.
Of the two, Aunt Vin seemed most persistent, most in-
defatigable. Holding fast by the hem of Hope's garment,
she would not once turn her eyes toward the Medusa-head
of Despair. Woman's patience, woman's intuition, woman's
trust, in the long run, often come out ahead of manly
strength, reason, independence.
Nevertheless, the battle was going against them. I read
that truth in their set lips, their anxious faces. Read it with
alternate fever of revolt and chill of despair. In my heart,
continual beginnings of fervent prayer, losing themselves
in vagueness, ending in stony despondency.
A little past midnight, I saw Winnie's lips move. I
bent over her. " Lift me up," she murmured, faintly.
Quick as thought, I was put aside. Paul's arms were
under her ; deftly, tenderly, he raised her.
Not less prompt Was Aunt Vin with a spoonful of stimu-
lant. As it touched her lips, Winnie half opened her eyes.
There was a gasp, a sigh. Her head fell lifelessly over
upon Paul's arm. The unswallowed liquid flowed from her
mouth.
Aunt Vin laid down her spoon with a gesture of entire
relinquishment, needing no word to enforce its meaning.
Dr. Heartwell turned moodily away. In the faces of
SHILOH. 475
'both, at that instant, was even more of discomfiture than
grief.
For a moment we stood looking at each other, in ghastly
silence. We had seen understood, but could not realize.
Then, manifestations of grief broke forth. Variously,
according to temperament. None are made alike. God,
who rounds no two pebbles on the seashore to perfect iden-
tity of shape, molds humanity also into infinitude of form
and character.
Mr. Taylor, hurrying in at somebody's frantic call, knelt
and began the Commendatory Prayer. I believe he thought
her, not dead, but dying. The solemn words brought in-
stant hush.
Paul gently lowered his white, motionless burden to the
pillow, and, with one arm still under her and his eyes fixed
on her face, sank upon his knees. I dropped beside him.
Two soul-cries, voiceless and unheard on earth, rang pierc-
ingly up to heaven. Not the calm " Thy will be done ! "
of Christlike power and patience, but the sharp passion of
anguish that once echoed over the waters of Gennesareth,
" Help, Lord, or we perish ! "
And then, there came to pass a thing so marvelous that
I should fear to be discredited in the telling, if you were not
the listener. One of those strange, unlooked-for happenings
that reason terms " coincidence," and faith, " God."
A shrill, sombre cry rang through the chamber. So
sudden, so weird, so startling, we held our breath in super-
stitious awe, and looked fearfully in each other's faces.
None understood its import ; none could tell whence it
came !
There ensued an intense, terrified silence. But some-
thing awful in the silence. A horror that had suddenly
come out of it, and might come again.
Two three minutes ; they seemed like hours to our
strained sense and shortened breath.
Once again it smote our ears ; three piercing, rising-
476 SHILOH.
inflected notes, sad as a human wail, sharp as a cry of mor-
tal distress.
Afterward a rustle of the lilac leaves behind me.
Now I began to understand. I breathed again; my
chilled blood resumed its regular flow.
A whippowill was hidden in the lilac, uttering his wild,
lugubrious cry close to the window. Not softened by twi-
light distances, as usually heard ; but loud, shrill, startling,
because so near.*
The explanation did not mitigate the wonder. That a
bird so shy, a dweller in woods and by streams, haunting
the twilight, escaping into the darkness, should thus ap-
proach a lighted window and send foi'th his voice within a
few feet of a dozen people, was a circumstance so amazing
as to leave little room for marvel at what followed.
For, at the third weird repetition, smiting sharply again
the chamber's hush, Winnie lifted the eyelids we had thought
would never lift more. Suddenly, as if startled from slum-
ber by the strange sound. Quickly her eyes went round the
room, seeking its cause.
They fell on the circle of familiar faces. Perfect con-
sciousness, perfect recognition were in their look.
Lastly, they rested upon Paul Vernier. A swift light of
joy, slowly clouded by a vague amaze, a struggling recol-
lection.
He leaned down over her close, answering them with
something in his own that she alone saw. She read it, and
was satisfied. The estranged hearts, the tried souls, met
again. Not at the old point of divergence, but at a new,
diviner point of union.
The boughs of the lilac tree shook. There was a whirr
O
of wings. The bird of the night, its appointed work being
done, had flown !
* Lest this incident should seem not only marvelous, but impos^
sible, it may be well to state that it is an actual occurrence.
SHILOH. 477
Its work ? To pierce the failing sense with its sharp
cry. To reach after the flying consciousness, and startle it
back to its place and its function. To recover lost identity
out of dreamless void. To return the naked soul to the cast-
off garmenting of the body. To bring Winnie back from
the gate of death to the gate of life, that Love, standing
there, in the person of Paul, might seize her and draw her
in. So said I.
But Science, in the person of Dr. Heartwell, said some-
thing else. He averred that Winnie was not dead, after
all, only in a swoon. That consciousness, struggling up
from temporary anaesthesia, was met half-way by the bird's
shrill cry, and startled at once into vigorous action. That
wonder and. joy, together, kindled anew the failing spark
of the spirit, and sent the ebbing life-current back to the
heart.
What, after all, is the difference ?
For Science did not attempt to explain the whippowill's
temporary forgetfulness and abdication of all its well-known
habits. Nor why it happened just at that moment and at
that spot.
Here, finally, Faith (still in the person of Dr. Heartwell),
had somewhat to say. That science always has to stop
something short of the Soul and its Maker. That no probe
ever yet found spirit, though it made the opening through
which that etherial tenant escaped. That no dissecting
knife ever laid open its structure or its laws. That far be-
low the point which science reaches and explains, the finger
of God works on, invisibly, inscrutably. That any science
which does not admit this, and grow humble with the ad-
mission, and glad, finally, to put its feeble hand into that
of faith, is only a learned ignorance.
But this talk came afterward !
Commonplaces thrust themselves into the tenderest,
as in the grandest of earthly scenes. Between Winnie
and P,aul came Aunt Vin's prompt spoonful of stim-
478 SHILOH.
ulant. Meekly Winnie swallowed it. As if it had been
nectar.
Then her eyes closed wearily, her head still resting upon
Paul's arm.
Dr. Heartwell bent over her, scanning her well. Then
he came toward us. " There is hope ! She sleeps ! " he
whispered. His gesture said the rest. " Clear the room.
Leave her in quiet."
Is joy harder to bear than sorrow ? It would seem so.
For no sooner had we reached the " out-room," with the
door shut, than sobs and tears broke forth. The long ten-
sion of nerve and spii'it gave way. Some wept silently in a
corner ; others threw themselves into the nearest arms and
shed their tears in common.
A sudden crash startled us. Amazed, we beheld the
articles on the table flinging themselves on the floor, with-
out hands. Would the night's wonders never cease ?
Alice, coolest of us all, perhaps because the vivid glo-
ries of her inner world of imagination make all outer events
seem tame in comparison, stooped and dragged forth from
the debris Jack Warren !
The boy had crept under the table for his own private
" cry." Thinking Himself not sufficiently concealed, it had
occurred to him to pull the table-cover further over from
beneath. Near the edge were books, a vase, a card-
receiver, a candlestick. These fell with a crash, not less
startling to' the author of their destruction, than to us, the
astonished spectators.
Now, the full reaction came. From joyful tears to joy-
ous laughter the way is easy, to hearts exhausted with deep
emotion. It takes but little to set' them upon that path.
Jack's misadventure sufficed for us. And the laugh let us
down easily into sober gladness of heart.
Then Dr. Heartwell, standing on the hearth, ordered us
all peremptorily to bed.
" For there is plenty of nursing and watching yet to be
SHILOH. 4T9
provided for," said he. " It will be days before Winnie is
past danger. You, Francesca Golden, must be ready to
take that queer old nurse's place in the morning ; she will
need rest by that time, though she is made of steel. To-
night, there will be but little to do. Winnie will sleep
most of the time. And if 'Axint Vin ' (is that what you
call her ?) wants help, she has it at hand. Mr. Venner is a
fixture in that room, for the present, I suspect ! Mrs.
Divine,' 1 with a wide, bottomless yawn, " where shall I
find a 'shakedown'*"
So, Paul Venner and Axmt Yin kept the rest of that
night-watch.
They were very quiet, peaceful days that followed.
Winnie was too weak to talk or to listen. But her face
was full of a deep content, a quiet joy, that could wait for
utterance. Much of the time she slept, recruiting so the
waste of disease.
It was a week before Dr. Heartwell would let us talk of
the past. When the full explanation came, it was no longer
needed. Mutual love, mutual trust, had carried them far
past that point. They felt the blessedness of faith in each
other, " without sight."
Each would have assumed the whole blame of the mis-
understanding. " Forgive me," said Winnie, " I ought to
have known you better."
" Forgive me," said Paul, " I ought not to have trusted
a flower, nor a circumstance. In such a matter, a man
should ask and wait for the spoken word, the unmistakable
yea or nay."
Easy to see it now ! For moments like these are the
mountain-tops of life, giving one a clear outlook before and
behind. Happy they who find wisdom there, to carry with
them down to the valleys !
So I left them. For home needed me, now, more than
they. Sufficient, henceforth, each to the other.
STRIKING TENT.
ERE beginneth the end, Francesca. The
end of the old life, the beginning of the
new. For all life's ends are beginnings,
till its final end begins the Endless.
I have sent them all out, Ruth, Alice,
Essie, Flora, fluttering down the staircase
in their snowy draperies like a flock of white
doves; the last moments of Winnie Frost shall be
given to you. If that white-robed vision which I beheld,
just now, in the ancient mirror over the modern toilet-table
be really she, for I have my doubts ! It was so different
from anything I have seen there before, so softly radiant
with happiness, as if diaphanous and lit from within,
that I failed to recognize it for an acquaintance.
Yes, let me write it down and ponder it well, I am
happy ! Not through any seeking, planning, or expecta-
tion of my own, but by the gracious gift of God. That is
what makes it so sweet ; because it is so manifestly of His
providence, so straight from His hand. The cup of earthly
pleasure which we mix for ourselves hath ever its great
drop of bitterness at bottom ; but " His blessing maketh
rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it." The happiness
that He gives ; springing out of sorrow and ripened out of
pain ; holding the promise of the life that is to come, as
well as of that which " now is ; " is happiness indeed !
Best and beautifullest of it all is it to feel how tenderly
SHILOH. 481
God has been leading me hither, all these days ; that the
error, the separation, the pain, the complete relinquishment
of hope, were only so many necessary steps to this end. Be-
yond all question, Paul and I needed just the lessons that we
have learned. Without them, our present joy would lack
its subtlest, most enduring flavor; our future relation be
robbed of its most quickening and preservative element.
The fact is profoundly suggestive. Perhaps the most won-
drous of all the wonderful revelations of the Last Day, will
be that those very burdens and trials under which we were
most restive, which seemed absolute hindrances to our
power of being or of doing good, the cups which we prayed
most earnestly might pass from us, and which, if Christ had
been a Deliverer from present trouble instead of future
woe, He would surely have removed; that these were
the very steps by which we climbed, with His help, to our
place in the heavenly habitations.
It is good to be able to take this lesson, this realization,
into coming times of trial. For happiness, I know well, is
no lasting condition of human life ; save, perhaps, as an in-
ward spring ; never as an outward cii-cumstance. Hearts
that rest upon God will have their inward sun shining be-
hind and gilding all earth's clouds ; but the clouds will
visit them none the less with needful shadow and rain.
Life will be a battle-ground and a conflict all the same,
with inevitable foes of sin and mortal calamity standing in
array ; though Divine and earthly love combine to arm
and to strengthen us for the fight.
Not for earthly bliss merely, or mainly, therefore, do
we join hands ; but for mutual help, comfort, elevation ;
mutual strengthening of heavenly hope and faith ; mutual
encouragement in a life of earnest striving toward the
right. And so long as we keep faith with each other in
this point, we may look hopefully for God's blessing on
our union. Along the borders of the path that tends to-
ward higher things, He will graciously cause the human
21
482 SHILOH.
happiness that we do not live for, to blossom as a wayside
flower, or gush forth as a wayside spring, full of casual
sweetness, full of unexpected refreshment, and leading us
continually more and more to acknowledge His wisdom,
and praise His goodness. This, we dare to hope. For we
have not hesitated to tell each other frankly that we could
have done without each other, if He had so willed. Our
onward lives had ceased to look dark ; the love of Christ
would have been sufficient for us, here, not less than here-
after. Do we, therefore, love each other less ? No ! more
infinitely more ! Not till His human children have
learned to hold all love as subordinate to His, does God
pour into their hearts the richest treasures of earthly affec-
tion. When the gift will no longer harm, but wholly bless,
He gives it to them without stint. " Seek first the King-
dom of God and His righteousness, and all these things
shall be added unto you."
Pray for us, Francesca, that we may so seek, and so be
added unto !
But the moments are gliding fast, and I forget that you
are still in the dark upon several important points ; I think
nothing, save the wedding day, was fixed when I Avrote
you before, all else was undelightfully chaotic.
Dr. Heartwell came to our help at last Paul's and
mine and forbade that grand, glittering, wearisome city
wedding which we so deprecated, but upon which Aunt
Belle had set her heart.
" If you want to kill your niece outright," said he,
bluntly, " drag her through all that parade and fatigue, for
which she has neither strength nor nerves ; and you can't
well miss of your aim. But if you want her to live,
marry her the quickest and speediest way possible, and get
her out of this climate before Old "Winter is upon us in good
earnest. There is a spark of pulmonic disease about her
which he might fan into a flame : a warm climate will
quench it. If you must make a fuss over her, Mrs. Frost,
SHILOH. 483
do it when she conies back next April, well and strong.
Then you may give her the most costly, fashionable, and
absurd ' reception ' that you and Brown and Delmonico
can devise among you. But not before, with my consent."
There was no disputing professional dictum like this ;
and Aunt Belle, finding that she must needs yield the
point, was good enough to do it gracefully.
She is here; so are Uncle John and Flora and the
younger ones, down to that unconscious agent of Provi-
dence, little Bella. The old house is brimming over with
guests ; yet not more so than the hearts of its owners with
genuine, old-time hospitality, neither overlabored nor
overcareless, giving of its best as freely as the sky of its
sunshine, and with as little self-misgiving. Mr. and Mrs.
Divine were never more easy, more unembarrassed, more
wholly themselves,, than now. Aunt Belle looks at them
with growing wonder and respect ; she will carry some
new lights upon farmers and farm-life back to her aristo-
cratic home.
The old house is full of cheer, too, but of a subdued
and heart-deep kind ; none that need turn aside, in its ful-
lest flow, from Uncle True's chair ; which Alice has had
the lovely inspiration to wreathe with white flowers, fast-
ened here and there by dainty bows of soft, white ribbon.
The same pure taste and felicitous touch have been busy
throughout the house, causing flowers to fall and cling to-
gether everywhere, in such wise as must needs have sprung
from the unhindered operation of their own sweet laws of
being ; and using autumn leaves, where flowers grew
scarce, with wonderful richness and harmony of effect.
To me, the latter have the deeper meaning. The fullest
beauty of life and love has been revealed to me through
the frost-touch of sorrow.
What further miracles of decoration Alice and her
corps of assistants have wrought, over at the church, re-
mains to be seen. I only know that they have been busy
484 SHILOH.
there half the morning, and that Aunt Belle took care that
they should be amply supplied with flowers.
For we are to be married in St. Jude's, Mr. Taylor offi-
ciating. All Shiloh will be there to see, if it pleases. For
all Shiloh is, in one sense, a friend.
We go to Cuba for the winter. Alice accompanies us ;
I cannot yet do without my deft little hand-maiden, who
has been hands and feet, strength and motion, to me, so
long. During my illness, I learned to value her as she
deserves. Her quick insight, which used to annoy me so
much, was a rare treasure in my sick-room ; divining what
I wanted before I knew it myself. Moreover, I desire to
kindle her imagination and enrich her memory with tropi-
cal pictures palms waving and shimmering in moonlight
glory, the golden gloom of orange groves, the rythmic
tread of the breeze in the canefield, the purple distances of
starry nights ; sometime, perhaps, to be distilled, by her
thought-alembic, into verse that shall set them, in all their
finest essence and deepest sentiment, before eyes that every-
where long for, yet are denied the actual sight. The trip
will not unhinge the self-poised, self-moved little maiden.
She will come back to the old, quiet life, with vision cleared
to discern its hidden beauty and value ; to brighten the
venerable house with her quickened thought and fuller
knowledge ; to be Mr. Taylor's faithful helper ; to succeed
me in my secretaryship and Sunday teaching ; to take up
whatever work I lay down, and carry it forward to better
end, I hope, than I have done. Sometime, too, I trust, to
become the centre and light of a home of her own ; which,
I now have good reason to believe, will also be the home
of Harry Burcham.
A few days ago, I laughingly hinted this conviction to
Ruth. She heard it in silence, turning her face away.
When her time for practice came, instead of the vocalizes
which I expected, there rose from the outroom a song (if
song it could be called, that had no distinguishable words,
SHILOH. 485
only a wild melody), which seemed to give full, fit expres-
sion to every pang and pain that could rend a human
heart. Never, it seemed to me, were tones so deeply
pathetic* so exquisitely sweet, so heart-breakingly mourn-
ful. Sorrow seemed to have been molten into music. I held
my breath to listen, with unconscious tears in my eyes.
But, while the anguish was yet at its profoundest depth,
the voice seemed to soar out of it, as it were, and, with
only enough of sorrow left for richest sweetness, gradually
to rise and float out of hearing.
x And thus was it revealed, to Ruth and myself, that she
has the faculty of musical improvisation ! So, when Sig-
ner Canto gets his coveted pupil, he will find' her even more
gifted than he expects. And he will get her very soon.
For, it has been arranged that Ruth shall take my vacant
place in Uncle John's household, this winter. Flora has
taken an immense fancy to her ; so has Uncle John ; even
Aunt Belle has been quickened into un wonted kindliness of
interest by her beauty, her talent, and her misfortune. In
the spring, when Paul and I return to set up our temporary
home in the city, during the prosecution of his theological
studies, she will come to us. So far as human prevision goes,
Ruth's future is assured. Needless to add that, so far as
human plans and purposes are of avail, it will be musical.
That is her desire.
" I must give my life to music, now" she said to me,
recently, with an unconscious betrayal of some hidden dis-
appointment, some incommunicable sorrow. "And some-
time, no doubt, I shall be quite happy in it," she added,
sighing low, yet with eyes deeply lit by inward resolve and
hope. Her genius, baptized in pain, will now soar on
strong and purified wing !
Essie came to me, a few days since, with a blush on her
cheek and a new sweetness in her blue eyes. She, too, is
won. I have promised, if I am in life, to be here for her
wedding in the spring. I am glad to be furnished with so
486 SHILOH.
pleasant an excuse for an early visit to Shiloh ; a spot that
will always be thickly embroidered with golden memories
and suggestions. I came to it seeking rest. I got, first,
work ; then, peace ; finally, joy. It may be a type. For
all healthful life is labor, death may be only a peaceful
sleep, and heaven is surely joy !
I learn that Mrs. Thorne is slowly getting the better of
the paralytic attack, but will probably be more or less of an
invalid, for the rest of her days. Carrie, of course, is with
her. So are Rick and Pearl. The latter will soon be in
the enjoyment of their inheritance. Paul saw a good
deal of them, at New Orleans, and liked them much. He
avers that Pearl has only enough of singularity left, to
make her charming ; and that the twain are excellently
well suited to each other. A degree of friendship sprang
up between him and Rick, out of which grew certain con-
fidences that prepared him for your letter, and helped to
interpret its meaning.
Mrs. Danforth is still here ; also her diamonds. Both
will lend their brilliancy to my wedding. But they are
not so inseparable as formerly ; the lady is sometimes seen,
now, without the jewels. She said to me, this morning,
laughingly indicating them,
" It is the last time that they will go into St. Jude's ;
and they will certainly never go into any other church, ex-
cept to do honor to a wedding ! I have learned better
than to wear them to service. I wonder that I ever had
the bad taste ! So much good, you see, if no more, has
grown out of my exile in Shiloh, slow, stupid, dear, de-
lightful spot ! "
That exile is almost over. Mr. Danforth is expected on
the next steamer, his business having been brought to a
satisfactory and prosperous termination.
Harry Burcham cannot yet leave his father in that des- v
olate home. It is probable that he will never return to
Italy, except for a visit. Life has shifted its human prom-
ise, its best reality, to Ms native land.
SHILOH. 487
The question of the ownership of Leo, mooted by Har-
ry, was referred to Leo, himself. The two masters shook
hands, separated in opposite directions, and each called the
dog. There was a moment of hesitation ; then, Leo rub-
bed his head against Harry's hand, by way of farewell,
and followed the master whose life he had saved, and whom
he had served so long and so well. If he had done other-
wise, I think it would almost have broken the farmer's
heart ! Certainly, it is best so. For both, alas ! are grow-
ing old. Let the last sands of their simple, genuine, and
unselfish lives run out together !
Dear, noble, absurd Aunt Vin was one of the visitors
turned out of my room at the beginning of this epistle.
" She had come," she said, " to offer me her conglomerations.
Also, to utter a Jeremy ; Shiloh would be as dissolute as a
grave without Alice, and Ruth, and me." She has prom-
ised to visit me in my own home. Aunt Belle could not
refrain from a comic lifting of her eyebrows, when she heard
the invitation given and accepted ; doubtless, she was pic-
turing Aunt Vin's introduction to some of our city friends.
Nevertheless, even she has learned to esteem the faithful,
self-devoted nurse at an approximation to her real value ;
and Aunt Vin will meet with all due courtesy at her hands.
In Mr. Warren there is no positive change for the better.
The most that can be said, is that he is less cynical, less
morose, less ready with his scepticism, than formerly. Also,
he has taken to studying the Bible ; but whether to find
matter for cavil or for faith, I know not. But his wife
hopes and prays.
Mrs. Prescott will be left to carry on the Sewing Society,
and other lay Church-work, almost alone. She will do it
with more tact and discretion than formerly, I think ; she
cannot do it with more zeal, perse vei*ance, and singleness of
heart. With all her faults, would there were more like her !
Mr. Taylor is still in that spell-hedged dwelling, the
Gwynne Place, whereof it is yet to be written that ever
Angel of Life or Death has crossed its threshold. His work
488 SHILOII.
in Shiloh, so far as his temporal support is concerned, at
least, will rest hereafter upon a more assured basis. As
a thank-offering to God for His tender mercy toward us,
Paul has bestowed upon St. Jude's an ample endowment.
Many would consider it wasted upon a place so small, so
out of the way, and so sparsely populated ; but he thinks
otherwise. These by-ways of New England, he says, these
quiet, out-lying farm districts, hidden away among the hills,
are the sources whence the waste of our towns and cities
is largely supplied ; whence, too, the great West draws
much of its best brain and energy. It behooves us of the
city, therefore, to see to it that these springs of our being
are not poisoned by indifference or infidelity ; that this
strength, wherewith we continually recruit our exhausted
energies, is not of the Spirit of Evil, unto destruction, but
of the Spirit of Good, unto God.
And Bona and Mala ? Both remain with me. My heart
is still to be shaken and trampled by their irreconcilable
warfare ; the entity called " I " is still to be tossed to and
fro on the tide of battle, the will burdened with the ever-
recurring necessity of declaring for one or the other. Every
life, which is not all a miserable defeat, must needs be a
conflict. The hour of death, only, is the hour of complete
victory. Thanks be to God, who, in that hour, through
our Lord Jesus Christ, maketh us " more than conquerors ! "
And now, oh, Francesca ! they call me Winnie Frost no
more ! But not less faithfully yours is
WINNIE VENNEK.