Eventide

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EVENTIDE

A SERIES OF

TALES AND POEMS.

BY

EFFIE AFTON.

"I never gaze
Upon the evening, but a tide of awe,
And love, and wonder, from the Infinite,
Swells up within me, as the running brine
From the smooth-glistening, wide-heaving sea,
Grows in the creeks and channels of a stream,
Until it threats its, banks. It is not joy,--
'Tis sadness more divine."

ALEXANDER SMITH.

BOSTON:

FETRIDGE AND COMPANY.

1854.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by

J. M. HARPER,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
District of Massachusetts.

Stereotyped by
HOBART & ROBBINS,
New England Type and Stereotype Foundery,
BOSTON.

_To the_

FIRESIDES OF THE WESTERN WORLD,

_With the fond Hope_

THAT ITS PAGES MAY SERVE TO ENLIVEN OR ENTERTAIN SOME FEW OF THOSE EVENING
HOURS WHEN PLEASANT FACES GATHER ROUND WARM, GLOWING HEARTH-STONES,

_This simple Volume_

IS UNOBTRUSIVELY PRESENTED,

BY THE

UNKNOWN AND NAMELESS AUTHOR,

WHO WOULD

RATHER FIND WARM HEARTS AMONG HER READERS THAN WIN THE LAURELS OF
A TRANSITORY FAME.

Transcriber's Note:

There are two instances of illegible words in this text, both as
a result of ink blots. They have been indicated as [illegible].

PREFACE.

When the sun has disappeared behind the western mountains, and the stars
sparkled o'er the blue concave, we have been accustomed to sit down to
the compilation of this unpretending volume, and therefore it is called
"Eventide." O, that its pages might be read at that calm, silent
hour,--their follies mercifully overlooked, their faults as kindly
forgiven.

Fain would we dedicate this "waif of weary moments" to some warm-hearted,
watchful spirit, who might shelter it from the pitiless assaults of the
wide, wide world. But will not our simple booklet prove too insignificant
a mark for the critic's arrows?

In the language of another, we confidently say, melancholy is indifferent
to criticism.

Thus,

"In our own weakness shielded,"

O, Reading Public, we steal upon you 'mid the falling shadows, and lay
"Eventide" at your feet.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

WIMBLEDON; OR, THE HERMIT OF THE CEDARS, 7

SCRAGGIEWOOD, A TALE OF AMERICAN LIFE, 245

ALICE ORVILLE; OR, LIFE IN THE SOUTH AND WEST, 329

COME TO ME WHEN I'M DYING, 401

ELLEN, 404

I'M TIRED OF LIFE, 405

LINES TO A FRIEND, ON REMOVING FROM HER NATIVE VILLAGE, 407

HO FOR CALIFORNIA! 409

N. P. ROGERS, 411

LINES, 413

HENRY CLAY, 415

THE SOUL'S DESTINY, 417

LINES TO A MARRIED FRIEND, 419

NEW ENGLAND SABBATH BELLS, 421

MY HEART, 423

OUR HELEN, 425

MY BONNET OF BLUE, 427

DARK-BROWED MARTHA, 429

WIMBLEDON;

OR

THE HERMIT OF THE CEDARS.

CHAPTER I.

"The stars are out, and by their glistening light,
I fain would whisper in thine ear a tale;
Wilt hear it kindly? and if long and dull
Believe me far more deeply grieved than thou."

Clear and loud on the hushed silence of the midnight hour rang the chimes
of the village clock, from the tall steeple-tower of the quaint old
church of Wimbledon, while several ambitious chickens rose from their
neighboring perches, piped a shrill answering salute, and sank to their
nocturnal slumbers again. But nor clock nor chanticleer disturbed
Wimbledon. Still she slept on beneath the blossoming stars; and by their
soft, inspiring light, with your permission, gentle reader, we'll enter
the sleeping village.

Dim gleams of snowy cottages, peeping through a wealth of embowering
vines, steal on our star-lighted vision as we roam along the grassy
streets, and we scent the breath of gardens odorous with the sweets of
dew-watered flowers. Above and around we hear the musical stir of the
night wind among boughs and branches of luxuriant foliage, while ever and
anon it comes from afar with a deep-toned, solemn murmur, as though it
swept o'er forests of cedar and mournfully-echoing pine. Still roaming
on, the low rippling of flowing waters comes soothingly to our ears, and
we pause on the bank of a flower-bordered river that goes sweetly singing
on its way to the distant ocean. A tiny sailboat lies in a sheltering
cove, rocked gently to and fro by the swaying current. On a hill beyond
the stream we mark a large white-belfried building, relieved against a
dark background of wide-stretching timber-land. And turning our delighted
footsteps down an avenue of lofty cedar and linden trees, there rises at
length before our vision a splendid mansion, built after a most beautiful
style of architecture, with deep, bay windows, long corridors and
vine-covered terraces. Magnificent gardens, displaying the perfection of
taste, lay sloping to the southward. On the east the silvery river was
seen glancing through the shrubbery that adorned its banks. To the west
lay a beautiful park and pleasure ground, while far away to the northward
stretched the deep, dense forest, tall, dark and sombre.

And over all this lovely scene the stars shed their mild, ethereal light.
O, Wimbledon! art thou not beautiful 'neath their soft, silver gleams?
And doth not shadowy-vested romance roam thy grassy paths and
flower-strewn ways to-night, and with her wild, mysterious eyes gloating
on thy entrancing scenery, doth she not resolve to dwell awhile, 'mid thy
embowering vines, thy dewy-petalled flowers, mournfully-musical
cedar-groves, and web a fiction from the thousand tangled threads which
complicate and ramify thy social life?

We shall see what we shall see in Wimbledon; for gray dawn is already
breaking in the dappled east, and a man, closely buttoned to the chin in
a gray overcoat, emerges from a large brick mansion on the outskirts of
the village, and directs his steps toward an old, black, rickety-looking
house, which stands just on the bank of the river, surrounded by a
tangled growth of brush-wood.

Here the gairish day at length disclosed what the modest night had
obscured with her diamond veil of stars. Squalid poverty glared through
the broken window-panes, and want seemed clattering her doleful song on
the flying clapboards and crazy casements. A feeble, struggling light
from within showed the inmates were stirring as the man in the overcoat
gave a loud, careless thump on the trembling door, which was opened by a
pale, gaunt-looking urchin, clad in garments bearing patches of divers
hues.

"Is your mother at home, Bill?" inquired the man, gruffly.

"Yes, sir," answered the boy in a meek tone; "will you please to walk in,
Mr. Pimble?"

"No; tell her I want her to come and wash for me to-day," said the man,
in a harsh, rough voice, as he turned away.

The boy bowed and reentered the miserable apartment, where a few soggy
chips smoked on a bed of embers that were gathered in the corner of a
huge fire-place. A woman, with a begrimed cotton handkerchief tied over
her head, sat on the hearth endeavoring to blow them into a blaze, while
the smoke, that poured down the foul and blackened chimney, caused the
tears to roll from her eyes, and baffled her efforts.

"Never mind the fire, mother," said the lad, approaching; "I'll try and
pick up some dry sticks in course of the day to have the room warm when
you come home to-night. Mr. Pimble has just called, and wants you to go
and wash for him to-day."

"He won't pay me a cent if I go," answered the woman moodily; "all my
drudgery for that family goes to pay the rent of this miserable old
shell."

"I think he will give you something to-day, mother, if you tell him how
needy we are," suggested the boy.

"Never a cent," said the woman, with a gloomy shake of her head;
"however, I may as well go. I shall get a cup of tea and bit of dinner,
and I'll look out to bring you a cake, Willie."

"O, will you, mother?" exclaimed the boy, his wan features brightening
momentarily at the prospect of a single cake to appease the gnawings of
hunger.

The woman threw a coarse, threadbare blanket over her shoulders and went
forth, while the boy bent his way along the riverbank in search of dry
twigs and branches with which to replenish their wasted stock of fuel.
And he thought, as he picked up here and there the scanty sticks and laid
them in small bundles, of some lines of poetry he read on a bit of
newspaper that blew across his path one day:

"If joy and pain in this nether world,
Must fairly balanced be,
O, why not some of the _pain_ to them.
And some of the _joy_ to me?"

And he could not settle the point in his youthful mind. He could not
tell why David Pimble should go to school the year round at the great,
white seminary on the hill, while he could only go about two months in
the cold, biting winter to a town-school a mile distant. He could not
tell why said David should have warm woollen jackets, while his were
threadbare and patched with rags; nor why David should fare sumptuously
on buttered toast and smoking muffins, while he starved on the crusts
that were cast from his well-spread table.

All these were knotty points which poor little Willie Danforth was too
young and untaught to solve. When he should be older and wiser, would he
be able to solve them? He didn't know;--he hoped so; though he feared he
never would be much wiser than now, if he was always to remain so poor,
and be debarred from the privilege of attending school.

There's one school whose doors are and have ever been open wide for
Willie--the school of poverty and experience. Lessons swift and bitter
are indelibly impressed on the minds of the pupils there.

Thoughtful and abstracted, Willie wandered along, gathering his little
bundles of firewood, till he found himself at the foot of the hill on
which stood the great, white seminary where David Pimble, his brother and
sister, went to school month after month and year after year. He heard
voices, and, looking up, beheld the little group that were occupying his
thoughts, on the hill-top, laughing and mocking at him as he toiled along
with his bundles of sticks. His cheeks glowed with anger for a moment,
and then grew ashy pale, as he plodded on toward his miserable home.

Dilly Danforth, the poor washerwoman, had seen better days; but the
drunken dissipation of a husband, who was now in his grave, had reduced
her to abject, despairing poverty. Her unfortunate marriage and
persistence in clinging to the man of her choice, and enduring all his
abuses, excited the displeasure of her family, and they cast her from
them to suffer and struggle on as best she might. She knew not as she had
a relative in the world. She surely had no friend, save Willie, her
little boy, with whom she dwelt in the comfortless abode we have briefly
visited.

Alas for the suffering poor! How prone are the wealthy, by warm, glowing
grates, to forget their cheerless habitations, and turn inhumanly from
their pitiful tales of want and destitution!

CHAPTER II.

"This work-day world, this work-day world,
How it doth plod along!"

Tap, tap, tap, on the back kitchen door of Esq. Pimble's great brick
mansion, and a clattering of plates and tea things within which quite
drowned the timid knock. A second and louder one brought a fat, red-faced
woman with rolled-up sleeves and a dish-towel in hand, to answer the
summons.

"Sakes, Dilly Danforth!" exclaimed she, on beholding the well-known,
faded blanket of the washerwoman; "what brings you here so airly in the
mornin'? If you are after cold victuals, I can tell you you can't have
any, for mistress--"

"I am not come seeking charity," said Dilly, cutting short the woman's
brawling speech; "Mr. Pimble wished me to come and wash for him to day."

"_He_ did?" said the bold-visaged housekeeper, opening her large,
buttermilk-colored eyes with astonishment; "well, for sure!"--and here
she seemed debating some matter in her mind for several moments, her hand
still holding the door in forbidding proximity to poor Mrs. Danforth's
pale, grief-worn face.

"Well, you can come in then, I s'pose," she said, at length, flinging it
open spitefully, and returning to the wiping of her breakfast dishes,
which she sent together with such a crash, that poor Dilly, as she stood
over the stove trying to warm her chilly fingers by a decaying fire,
momentarily expected to see them scattered over the floor in a thousand
fragments.

"Sakes! are you cold this warm spring morning?" snarled the plump,
well-fed housekeeper, as she thumped back and forth, carrying her piles
of plates to the cupboard. "Why don't you shut the outside door after
you, then? For my part, I'm most roasted to death."

"You have been in a warm room, while I have not seen a fire this
morning," said Dilly, meekly, as she closed the door and returned to her
place by the stove.

"Well, I wish I hadn't," answered the ireful Mrs. Peggy Nonce;--"a hard
fate is mine; sweltering over a great fire all my life, to cook for a
family that don't know nothing only to make the work as hard as they can.
Now, here's Mr. Pimble goes and gets you here to wash; never tells me a
word about it till you come right in upon me just as I have got my
breakfast things cleared away, settin'-room swept out, and fire all down
in the kitchen. I s'pose you have had nothing to eat to-day, for you
always come half starved, though why you do so I don't know, save to make
me work and get all you can out of us. When Mr. Pimble rents you that
great house so cheap, too! I declare, I should think, with all that man's
trials, he would get to be a hypocrite and believe in total
annihilation."

Dilly made no reply to this speech. Probably the latter part was beyond
her simple comprehension.

Mr. Pimble himself, the man of trials, as his housekeeper affirmed, now
opened the sitting-room door and looked forth. He was habited in a long,
faded, palm-figured bed-gown, all muffled up round his chin, and
sheep-skin slippers without heels. He had a lank, pale, discouraged
visage, and thin, light hair, streaked with gray, in a very untidy state
straggling about his face. He pulled his wrapper up yet closer about his
head, when he discovered the washerwoman, and shambled across the
clean-swept floor, his heelless slippers going clip-clap after him, as he
stalked along. What a gaunt, unhealthy-looking personage was the rich
Peter Paul Pimble, Esq., of Mudget Square!

"Well, you are come, then, are you?" said he, glancing toward the kitchen
clock, which was on the stroke of eight; "pretty time to commence a day's
work."

"And she has had no breakfast; and the water is not in the kettles," put
in dame Peggy. "I could have had that all hot for her, if you had just
told me she was comin' to wash. But some folks always like to be so sly
and underhanded."

"Stop your clack!" said the master, turning toward her with an angry
glance, "and get a bite of something to eat while she is putting her
water on and building a fire. I shall be at home through the day to
superintend matters and see that all is done to my wishes."

Thus saying, he scuffled back to his warm fire in the parlor; for, though
it was a bright morning in the early part of May, and odorous flowers
opening their petals to the genial sunbeams, and groups of singing birds
merry on all the foliage-covered trees, still Esq. Pimble was
cold--always cold, summer and winter. No genial influence could warm his
sluggish blood, or impart a glow to his dry, parchment-colored face.

There he sat; his feet poised on the fender, and a newspaper in his
skinny clutch, from which he seemed to read. Now and then he yawned,
stretched himself, approached the window, gazed forth for a moment with
some anxiety depicted on his expressionless face, and then sunk down in
his cushioned chair again. All the while the washing was going on briskly
in the kitchen. Peggy Nonce had outlived her morning's asperity, and
concluded to bake a batch of dried apple pies, as there must be a fire
kept in the stove for Billy, and it would save burning the wood another
day for the express purpose of cooking operations. So it appeared dame
Peggy, with all her tempers, had one good point at least, and one but
seldom found in servants,--a lookout for her employer's interests. The
bluffy housekeeper was given to gossip, too, as all of her class are; and
who could give her a better synopsis of the private affairs of half the
families in Wimbledon, than Dilly Danforth, the washerwoman, who
performed the drudgery and slop-work in many of the fine homes of the
upper class? But, after all, Peggy had more to give than receive; for by
some means the poor washerwoman did not seem possessed of the "gift of
gab." She was lamentably ignorant on many points where Peggy thought,
with her advantages, _she_ would have been well-informed and able to
answer any question proposed. And so the news-loving housekeeper, though
she remembered her master's interests in the article of firewood, was
fain to forget them in a matter of far more importance, and broached
forth into a long tale of his trials and domestic discomforts. Warming
with her discourse as she proceeded, her voice grew so shrill and
vehement, that Mr. Pimble, had he not been deeply engaged in poring over
the trials his loquacious housekeeper was so eloquently setting forth to
her silent and rather inattentive listener, he would have discovered
himself the hero of a tale which might have lost Mrs. Peggy Nonee a
place she had occupied half a lifetime. But Mr. Pimble sat in bed-gown
and slippers till dinner was announced at one P.M., and the three young
Pimbles tumbled into the hall in boisterous glee, just escaped from the
restraint of school discipline. They all rushed to the table at once,
and called for half a dozen kinds of food in a voice, which the glum,
abstracted father heaped indiscriminately on their plates. There was no
sound save the clatter of knives and forks for several minutes, while
the interesting family discussed their amply-provided and well-prepared
meal. At length Master Garrison Pimble, a lad of a dozen years, declared
sister Sukey had got the biggest piece of venison pie. Susan, a little
girl of seven summers, said she "didn't care if she had; she ought to
have."

"No, you oughtn't either," returned Master Garrison, "for you are not
half as big as I."

"I don't care for that," lisped Susan; "mammy says women ought to have
the best and most of everything, and do just what they like to, and go
just where they want to."

"Well, they shouldn't do any such thing, should they, father?" demanded
the argument-loving Garrison.

"Eat your dinners quietly, my children," returned the silent father, "and
not meddle with matters you do not understand."

"But I do understand them," continued the youth. "I know sister Sukey
ought not to have the largest piece of pie, and she shan't."

Thus saying, he made a dive at Miss Susan's plate, and bore off her
generous slice of venison pastry on his fork. Susey screamed at the top
of her voice, and, clutching her hands in her brother's hair, she pulled
it so vigorously he was fain to drop his prize, which fell to the carpet
and was devoured by a half-starved grimalkin, while he boxed his sister's
ears soundly for her vixen attack upon his bushy black hair.

"I'll learn you to pull my hair!" said he, with a very red face.

"I'll learn you to steal my pie!" shrieked she, as, maddened by her
smarting ears, she flew at him and dug long, bloody scratches in his
cheeks with her sharp little nails. The father now parted the combatants,
and shut the warlike Susey in the closet, where she was loud in
pronouncing maledictions against her brother, and heaping vituperations
upon her father; declaring, when mammy came home, she would tell her how
she was abused in her absence, and mammy would take sides with her,
because she knew men were all cross and ugly, and tried to hurt and wrong
poor feeble woman. Garrison and David finished their meal in silence; and
when the seminary bell rang to announce the hour for reoepening of school,
Mr. Pimble liberated Susey, and all went shouting off together.

Then he called in Dilly and the housekeeper, and, while they dined on the
fragments, went out in the kitchen to inspect the progress there. All
seemed to be moving on well, and, as he was returning to his seat by the
sitting-room fire, a covered buggy drove to the front piazza, and a
gentleman descended and assisted two ladies to alight. Directly the
parlor was dashed open, and the trio made their entry. Foremost was the
mistress of the mansion, Mrs. Judith Justitia Pimble. What a puny,
trembling thing appeared the husband, as he stood there like a galvanized
mummy in presence of that tall, portly woman, with her broad shoulders
and commanding aspect! Her first act was to smother the fire; her second,
to throw open the windows; her third, to ensconce herself in her liege
lord's easy-chair, and bid her guests lay aside their travelling garbs,
and make themselves at home. Finding his comfortable seat appropriated,
and no notice vouchsafed him, Mr. Pimble shuffled off into the kitchen.

"Was that your husband, sister Justitia?" inquired the lady visitor, as
she threw off her shawl and bonnet, with an energetic toss.

"Yes," answered the majestic lady in her most majestic tone, "that was
Pimble. You will not mind him at all; he is as near nothing as can be,--a
mere crank to keep the machine in motion,--you understand. He has his
sphere, however. The lowest brute animals have theirs. Pimble's is to
stay at home and superintend the minor matters of life, such as milking
the kine, feeding the chickens, and slaughtering a lamb occasionally to
subserve the grosser wants of poor human nature. In brief, all those
trivial and perplexing things in which a superior mind cannot be supposed
to feel an interest, and by which it is not right it should be fettered,
and prevented from soaring to its own lofty sphere of thought and
action."

Mrs. Pimble paused for breath as she delivered herself of the above
voluble speech, and the lady visitor replied:

"You speak heroicly, sister Justitia. I see you have obtained your
rightful position in your own household. O, would that all our crushed
and down-trodden sisters were possessed of but a tithe of your energy and
independence of character! Then would our young Reform, which encounters
on every side the swords and pickaxes of infuriate battalions of the
tyrant man, ride in triumphal chariot over our whole broad country's
proud domain!"

"Ah, sister Simcoe, how doth your inspired language fill my soul with
fire! I rejoice that you are come among us. How will your presence
encourage our ranks, and, in the triumph of your medical skill, vile male
usurpers of the healing art shall sink to rise no more! I long to read
again the proceedings of our late convention, the thrilling speeches, the
sweeping resolutions!"

"Let us thus occupy ourselves," said young Dr. Simcoe, turning toward a
remote corner of the apartment where sat the small man who had
accompanied the ladies, perched on a hard, uncushioned chair, his hands
folded in his lap, and his eyes bent studiously on the carpet. This was
the personage on whom the accomplished young medical practitioner had, a
few months previous, condescended to bestow the princely honor of her
hand.

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