The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857

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"Have patience with thyself, child; weeping must endure for a night;
all comes not at once. 'No trial _for the present_ seemeth joyous'; but
'_afterwards_ it yieldeth the peaceable fruit';--have faith in this
_afterwards_. Some one says that it is not in the tempest one walks the
beach to look for the treasures of wrecked ships; but when the storm is
past we find pearls and precious stones washed ashore. Are there not even
now some of these in your path? Is not the love between you and your
husband deeper and more intimate since this affliction? Do you not love
your other children more tenderly? Did you not tell me that you had thought
on the sorrows of every house in this village? Courage, my child! that is a
good sign. Once, as you read the papers, you thought nothing of those who
lost friends; now you notice and feel. Take the sorrows of others to your
heart; they shall widen and deepen it. Ours is a religion of sorrow. The
Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering; our Father is
the God of all consolation; our Teacher is named the Comforter; and all
other mysteries are swallowed up in the mystery of the Divine sorrow. 'In
all our afflictions He is afflicted.' God refuseth not to suffer;--shall
we?"

There is no grave so desolate that flowers will not at last spring on it.
Time passed with Albert and Olivia with healing in its wings. The secret
place of tears became first a temple of prayer, and afterwards of praise;
and the heavy cloud was remembered by the flowers that sprung up after the
rain. The vacant chair in the household circle had grown to be a tender
influence, not a harrowing one; and the virtues of the lost one seemed to
sow themselves like the scattered seeds of a fallen flower, and to spring
up in the hearts of the surviving ones. More tender and more blessed is
often the brooding influence of the sacred dead than the words of the
living.

Olivia became known in the abodes of sorrow, and a deep power seemed given
her to console the suffering and distressed. A deeper power of love sprung
up within her; and love, though born of sorrow, ever brings peace with
it. Many were the hearts that reposed on her; many the wandering that she
reclaimed, the wavering that she upheld, the desolate that she comforted.
As a soul in heaven may look back on earth, and smile at its past sorrows,
so, even here, it may rise to a sphere where it may look down on the storm
that once threatened to overwhelm it.

It was on the afternoon of just such another summer day as we have
described at the opening of our story, that Olivia was in her apartment,
directing the folding and laying away of mourning garments. She took up the
dark veil and looked on it kindly, as on a faithful friend. How much had
she seen and learned behind the refuge of its sheltering folds! She turned
her thoughts within herself. She was calm once more, and happy,--happy with
a wider and steadier basis than ever before. A new world seemed opened
within her; and with a heart raised in thankfulness she placed the veil
among her most sacred treasures.

Yes, there by the smiling image of the lost one,--by the curls of her
glossy hair,--by the faded flowers taken from her bier, was laid in solemn
thankfulness the Mourning Veil.

PENDLAM: A MODERN REFORMER.

My theatre-going friend pulled up suddenly in his ambling discourse
concerning the merits of the last actress, dropped his voice to a whisper,
touched my arm, and pointed with his cane.

"Look! the Reverend John Henry Pendlam!"

"Coming out of a bar-room! Ho, ho! Sir Reverend!"

I spoke gayly, but with an indefinably serious sentiment at heart I was
interested in this John Henry Pendlam; not particularly on account of
the reputation for eloquence and zeal which he had so early and rapidly
achieved, but his approaching marriage with my friend's second cousin,
Susan D----, (whom I had myself even barely escaped marrying,) quickened a
personal curiosity regarding my successor.

"He is on no base errand," replied Horatio. "He goes about carrying the
Gospel into these dens. The papers you see in his hand are tracts. Shall I
introduce you?"

Before I could fairly answer, No, (for I felt a repugnance to making the
acquaintance of any man who was to marry Susan,) Pendlam, standing a moment
in the gas-light before the door of the saloon, observed my friend, and
advanced quickly.

"Too late to escape!" cried the young clergyman, seizing Horatio by
the collar. "I have you, truant!" And he drew a tract upon him, like a
revolver.

"I surrender!" said Horatio. "If it's you, don't shoot; I'll come down, as
the treed coon said to the hunter."

"Don't think to disarm me by a pleasantry," replied Pendlam, brandishing
his spiritual weapon. "This is my sermon on the theatre, which you engaged
to hear me preach; I have had it printed for you."

"Really," said Horatio, with a humorous smile, "I had forgotten my promise.
Besides, I was engaged,--let me see, it was two Sundays ago, wasn't
it?--yes, I was engaged to dine with Miss Kellerton."

"The actress! On Sunday!" said Pendlam, with a shocked expression. "But you
might have heard me in the morning."

"In the morning we rode together," laughed Horatio.

I knew all this was a fiction on the part of my friend, designed to mystify
the minister. I said nothing, to avoid an introduction; I had stepped
aside, and now stood, amused and observant, under the street lamp. Pendlam
especially I studied, with one eye (figuratively speaking) on him, and
the other on Susan. I compared him with myself, and had no doubt but she
was weak enough to consider him the handsomer man of the two. He was of
medium height, slightly built, of a nervous temperament, with bright,
quick-glancing eyes, and vehement gestures. The chief characteristic of the
man seemed intensity. It manifested itself in his eager movements, in his
emphasis and tones of voice, in his swiftly changing expression, in his
wild hair, in his neckerchief, which seemed to have been tied with a jerk,
and in his dress throughout, which was evidently that of a man who had
things of vaster importance to think of.

He was whirling Horatio away in a torrent of eloquence, poured out against
the sins of the age, and mainly against the theatre, which he denounced as
the citadel of dissipation and all immoralities; and my poor friend, who
had opened the gates of this flood by his indiscreet pleasantry, was vainly
endeavouring to escape and rejoin me, when I observed a person come out of
the saloon, and gradually draw near, until he stood within a few feet of
the zealous reformer. A group watched him from the door. Before I suspected
his object, he threw out the coils of a concealed whip, and springing upon
Pendlam from behind, dealt him furious successive blows over the shoulders
and head. I ran to the rescue. But already Horatio had seized the whip.

"Good for evil," cried Pendlam, as I was on the point of throttling the
assailant. "My friend, how have I injured you?"

"Interfering with my business! getting away my custom! insulting folks with
your cursed tracts!" frothed the angry man. "I swore to cowhide you, and
I've done it!"

"If that is the case, I have no complaint to make," said Pendlam. "You can
go on with your cowhiding."

"You've had enough for once!" growled the other, rolling up the lash.

"But if I deserve whipping for doing my duty, I deserve a good deal more,"
cried Pendlam. "And if you are to be my castigator for each offence, you
will find yourself pretty well employed. It would be less trouble, I should
think, to do a little more, while you have your hand in. Meanwhile, take
this tract upon the sin of Anger, carry it home with you, and read it
carefully at your leisure."

Muttering threats, the man returned to the saloon, amid the laughs and
acclamations of his constituents. Pendlam followed impulsively, and left
the tract within. He then returned to us. Up to this time, he had appeared
exalted and firm; but now there came a reaction; his voice forsook him,
he trembled violently, and we were obliged to give him the support of our
arms. As we conducted him away, his condition might have been taken for
that of many others who get into difficulty in bar-rooms. Arrived at his
boarding-house, he thanked us with pathetic earnestness, and urged us to go
in.

"On one condition," said Horatio,--"that you say no more about the
theatres."

Pendlam smiled faintly. "I should think I might refrain from that and
kindred topics, at least until my shoulders have done smarting! But I
assure you, my zeal will only be quickened by the occurrences of this
night. The first horsewhipping is a great event. I now know what it is to
be a martyr!"

We went in and conversed. My repugnance to forming a friendship with
the man who was to marry Susan had vanished. I found him rather too
zealous,--almost fanatical; but we forgive every thing in a man who shows
generosity of heart, and sincere aspirations. Horatio took a paper from
his pocket and read for the twentieth time a certain criticism upon Miss
Kellerton's acting; occasionally looking up, to listen to some remark from
either Pendlam or myself,--then returning to his favorite article.

I had the honor of differing, on many essential points, with my new
clerical acquaintance; and we were soon on excellent terms of courteous
dispute. I assumed the philosopher, and expressed candidly my conviction
that his intellect had early projected itself into doctrines which would
prove too confined for its future growth. I remember distinctly his reply.

"On the contrary, it is you," he said, "who, I perceive, will some day come
over upon the very ground I now occupy. Our modern ways of thinking have
become too free and lax. We cannot draw the rein and tighten the girth."

There was a charming sparkle in his blue eyes as he spoke. I gave him my
hand, and we parted. As we walked away together, Horatio asked how I liked
him.

"He is in earnest, and that is everything. But mark me, he is not the man
for Susan."

"Your jealousy!" said Horatio.

"Not a bit! I see a discrepancy."

"Where?"

"In my mind's eye, Horatio."

I concluded that silence was discretion, and refused to answer more
questions. Horatio looked at his watch.

"We have just time to see Miss Kellerton in the last act of 'The Stranger.'
She is great! You should see her, when she turns and embraces the children;
it's a scene of overwhelming pathos! Come!"

"With Pendlam's printed sermon in your pocket?"

Horatio laughed. "We will read it during the dance!"

But I declined; and he went alone into the theatre.

Not long after, I received a certain wedding card, and, in consequence,
made a certain call. Susan was all blushes and smiles at sight of me; but I
was cool and circumspect.

"We are friends, are we not?" I said, "We once thought we were more than
that; but we became older and wiser. We agreed to disagree, very properly.
It did not break our hearts; and that shows that it is better as it is."

"Perhaps," murmured Susan.

"Let us be quite frank with each other; that is the best way, Susan. We are
good friends?"

"O, yes!" said Susan.

"Thank you, dear Susan,--if I may still call you so, in the sense of
friendship. I know your husband, and love him. I congratulate you on having
so noble a companion."

Susan sighed, and concealed a tear. Just then Pendlam entered. He seemed
abstracted, and took a quick turn across the room; then gave me a surprised
look, a pleased smile, and a cordial grasp of the hand. The next hour I
was oblivious of all external things, in the delightful excitement of our
conversation. I even forgot Susan. Poor Susan! the trouble was, she was
not intellectual; not at all imaginative; but a very plain, matter-of-fact
person, with deep affections, and paramount instincts. During that
memorable hour, she spoke not one word. When at length I observed her
consciously, she was gazing at us with a look of weariness and vacancy.

"Is it not so?" cried Pendlam.

He appealed to her. She smiled sweetly, and said with simplicity that she
scarcely understood any thing that had been said.

I could see that Pendlam was a little shocked. From clear, joyous heights
of poetic discourse, we looked down, and saw how far off below was her
beingless mind. To the vision we then enjoyed, there was something thick
and earthy in her expression. It was the first time Pendlam had observed
it; I had seen it before. And even as before, I looked back, with wonder at
myself, to the earlier period when I deemed her beauty peerless.

Both Pendlam and I were chilled. The fine tension of the spiritual chords
relaxed, and gave forth heavier music. Susan failing to ascend to us, we
came down to her. She now made haste to atone for her long silence by
talking freely of the pretty new church, and the people she saw out Sunday;
and she seemed proud and happy when she brought out her wedding gifts, and
I praised them.

It was several weeks before I again saw Pendlam. I went with Horatio to
hear him preach. The sermon surprised me. Many of the thoughts which I
had advanced in our private conversations, and which he had opposed, were
reproduced, but very slightly modified, in his discourse.

"Pendlam is enlarging," whispered Horatio. "The very things you said to him
the first time you met!"

I was gratified by the fact, and gratified that Horatio observed it;
regarding it as evidence of Pendlam's emancipation from his chains.

The services over, the young clergyman made his way to us through the
crowd.

"I have so much wished to see you!" he exclaimed, grasping my hand. "You
were a little astonished at my sermon."

"And a good deal pleased," I added.

Pendlam's delicate and changing features colored finely.

"You think I have altered my views, I see by your smile. Not at all, except
that I have gone farther."

"I am glad you have gone farther," I answered.

"But in the same direction, I assure you!" said Pendlam, quickly. "Step by
step, step by step."

"You were on your way back to Paul and the Fathers."

"Yes; and on my arrival among them, I found myself one of the Fathers! It
was a necessary experience. As Paul spoke by authority, so I, when I stand
where Paul stood, also speak by authority. We must first be obedient,
before we can be free. You see where I am," said Pendlam.

Here a young woman came forward, and, with tears in her eyes, thanked her
pastor for the glorious truths he had that day preached.

"They are not my truths; they are the Lord's; I am but his mouthpiece,"
answered Pendlam, well pleased.

A gray-haired deacon now approached.--"On the hull," said he, "I liked your
sarmon tolerable well, Brother Pendlam; but it warn't one o' your best;
and if anybody else had preached it, I should have thought it contained a
little dangerous doctrine."

Pendlam blushed. This compliment did not please him quite so well. But
before he could shape a reply, quite an old woman seized his hand and
kissed it.

"God bless you for those words! They have done my soul good, sir!"

Her gratitude and piety were quite affecting. Tears gushed into Pendlam's
eyes. The deacon turned away with a smirk and an ominous shake of the head.

Horatio had found Susan. Pendlam took my arm, and we walked out of the
church. The crowd pressed on before us; and as we reached the vestibule, we
overheard suppressed voices the merits of the sermon.

"It was full of beautiful truth!" said a sweet young girl's voice.

"The most eloquent discourse I ever heard!" added a young man with a
singing-book under his arm.

"For my part," remarked a portly and well-dressed pillar of the church, "I
was a good deal surprised. Rather too wild and flowery. Must have a bad
tendency."

"What we want is sound doctrine," observed another prosperous pillar.
"Better let such abstract subjects alone."

"Dangerous doctrine! dangerous doctrine!" chimed in the gray-haired deacon.

On reaching the open air, I observed that Pendlam was quite tremulous and
flushed.

"You see," he said with a smile, "what it is to be a minister."

We went home to his house. Horatio had arrived before us, in company with
Susan and her mother. The latter was looking very uncomfortable at seeing
me, I thought, for she had hated me cordially since my affair with her
daughter.

"I declare, John Henry," she said, in her energetic way, "I hope you never
will preach another such sermon as long as _I_ live! I couldn't make
neither head nor tail to it." And she gathered up her Sunday things, which
she had taken off in the parlour, with an air of offended piety that
occasioned a general smile. Pendlam smiled with the rest.

"Well, Horatio, you next,--what did you think of my sermon?"

"I liked it."

"Good! but give your reason."

"Because you said nothing about the theatre. I was mortally afraid you
would; for, d'ye see, you had a distinguished theatrical personage in your
audience."

"Indeed! I was not aware; who?"

"Miss Kellerton herself!"

"Is it possible?" Pendlam looked surprised, Susan interested, Mrs. D----
(with her Sunday things on her arm) amazed.

"She told me she was going to hear you, to show you that she could be quite
as tolerant as yourself. She expects you to return the compliment, and go
to her benefit."

Poor Pendlam hardly knew what to say in his confusion. Susan spoke up,--

"Why didn't you point her out to me? I have such a curiosity to see her."

"It was to her I took off my hat, coming away from the church door."

"To her!" broke forth Mrs. D----, "to an actress! Horatio, I'm ashamed of
you. You wouldn't have caught me walking with you, if I had known!" She
shook her Sunday things indignantly; and there was another general smile,
as she took these representatives of her piety abruptly out of the room.

"Ail this is very interesting," said Pendlam, recovering his equanimity. "I
wonder what sort of a sermon I shall preach next Sabbath?"

We were invited to stay to luncheon. Horatio consented; but I declined, and
took my leave, much to the gratification of Susan's mother, no doubt.

Some months passed before I again saw Pendlam. Our next meeting was in the
street. I observed him coming towards me with the peculiarly abstracted and
intense expression which his face assumed under excitement.

"What now?" I asked.

"A little difficulty with my people," he said, with a forced smile. "I have
just come from a church meeting; it was terribly hot there!"

"No serious trouble, I hope?"

"O, no,--only, you will hardly be surprised to hear, my preaching has been
somewhat too liberal for them."

"Why, sir," I cried, "if I remember right, you were for restoring the more
rigorous and stringent forms of religion; drawing the rein and tightening
the girth."

"Most certainly! and do you not see? Step by step I worked back to the
primitive and central principle, the soul of all religion. You know what
that is. It is Love! This I have preached," said Pendlam, his features
suffused, his eyes glistening bright; "and this I shall continue to preach,
while life lasts. Persecution cannot influence me. I know my duty, and I
shall perform it, at all risks. You see where I am," added Pendlam.

I was thrilled to admiration by his enthusiasm and heroic resolution. At
the same time I saw him in that transitional state which is so full of
peril to persons of certain temperaments, escaping into too sudden freedom
and light from the walls of a narrow and gloomy belief; and I could not
but smile, with mingled amusement and commiseration, at his singular
step-by-step processes.

It was during the following autumn that Horatio and I one day looked in
upon a reform meeting, held at the Melodeon. The audience was thin, the
speakers numerous. The platform was crowded with male and female reformers,
among whom I recognized our clerical friend Pendlam. A celebrated female
orator sat down, and Pendlam stood up. The audience cheered a little; the
platform cheered a good deal. He at first stammered and hesitated, not from
want of thoughts, but from their pressure and multitude. They soon fused,
however, and poured forth streams of fire, rather largely mixed with smoke.

"There is no other religion but Love," declared the speaker. "And where
Love is, there is Religion; in the Mohammedan, in the Mormon, in the
savage,--I care not for names. And where Love is not, there Religion is
not, though her image be preserved and clothed in all Christian forms.
Theology and sects fall away from it; it is alone vital; it is eternal, it
is unitary, it is God. Here I proclaim it to the world; here I announce to
you and to all where I stand."

This speech was reported along with others in the morning papers. It was
not long before Pendlam had more church business to perplex him; and he
soon withdrew from the pastorship of his troublesome flock. A number of
these went with him; there was a schism in the church; and the following
spring, a new society was formed, which gave Pendlam a call.

I also gave him a call, at his house. Changes had taken place since my last
visit. I was shocked at Susan's altered appearance. She had had an infant,
and untold trouble along with it. The bloom of the bride was gone, and
the finer permeating beauty of the happy mother had failed to replace it.
Mrs. D---- was with her. This excellent lady received me with surprising
politeness, and brought out the little Pendlam for my inspection.

"Is it possible, Susan, that this living, breathing, dimpled little wonder
is yours?"

"I suppose it is," said the blushing Susan.

"Where is its father?" I inquired, for John Henry had not yet appeared.

"It hasn't got any father!" ejaculated Mrs. D----, with grim sarcasm. "A
man can't be a reform-preacher, and a father too. His sermons, lectures,
and conventions are of too much importance for him even to think of his
wife and child."

I looked to see poor Susan writhe with pain under these harsh words. But
she merely heaved a sigh, and let fall a tear on the babe, which she had
taken from its grandmother's arms.

"I will speak to Mr. Pendlam," she said, as she hastily left the room.

"I am glad you have come," said Mrs. D----, bitterly, seating herself on
the sofa. "I am glad to see any person enter this house, who isn't all
eaten up with the evils of society. I have heard about the evils of society
till I'm heartily sick of them. People that come to see Pendlam don't
generally talk about anything else. It's the ruin of him, as I tell Susan;
I never in this world can be reconciled to his leaving his church."

Mrs. D---- became confidential, and abused her daughter's husband in a
style which did not argue much for the peace of his household during that
energetic lady's visits. Her indignation against him had quite swallowed
up her old cherished resentment against myself. She soon went so far as to
insinuate a regret that Susan had not married a man of solid sense and some
mental ballast, (meaning me,) instead of a hotheaded reformer.

Susan reentered. "Mr. Pendlam is very busy; but he will come down
presently."

She sighed, and took a seat. Mrs. D---- continued her abuse of her
son-in-law, in her daughter's presence,--which I thought in very bad taste,
to say the least. Susan uttered not one word in her husband's defence,
but simply sat and sighed. I defended and praised him; for which act of
friendship I earned not one look of gratitude from her, and only contempt
and sneers from her mother.

I was glad when Pendlam appeared. He was looking care-worn and toil-worn;
his expression had grown more intense than ever. His face lighted up a
little at sight of me; but it was some minutes before his mind seemed
capable of extricating itself from its abstractions, and meeting me upon
social grounds.

"You will excuse me. I am heartily rejoiced to see you. I was hard at work.
Just pass your hand over my forehead; it will relieve the pressure upon
my brain. My mission is now fully revealed to me; everything is reform,
reform. I have been led here step by step. Your magnetism is very soothing.
The old crumbling walls of creeds and conventionalities are to be swept
away, and their foundations subjected to the plough and the harrow. I am in
the harness. I have no motive for concealment; I tell you frankly where I
stand," said Pendlam. Another long sigh from Susan. Mrs. D---- tossed her
contemptuous chin, and expressed scorn in divers significant ways.

"I should want to conceal a little, if I was in your place," she remarked,
cuttingly.

"Truth is truth; it can harm only those who are in error," said Pendlam.

"It certainly hasn't done you a very great amount of good." Another toss of
the contemptuous chin.

"On the contrary, it has done me incalculable good," answered the
son-in-law, with a smile.

"Oh! you consider it good, then, to be cut off from the church,--to give up
a good situation and sure salary,--to lose the respect of everybody whose
respect is worth having!"

"If I have done all this for the truth's sake, it is good,"--the reformer's
face kindled with enthusiasm,--"and I for one find it good."

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