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

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Sally's logic was rather confused, but George got at the idea as fast as
was necessary.

"If 'twas a common man, Miss Sally; but a king's set up on high by the
Lord, and we ought to obey what He sets over us."

"I don't see where in Scriptur you get that idee, George," retorted Zekle.

"Well, it says in one place you're to obey them that has the rule over you,
sir."

"So it do; but ef the king ha'n't got no rewl over us, (an' it looks mighty
like it jes' now,) why, I don't see's we're bound to mind him!"

This astute little sophism confounded poor George for a minute, during
which Sally began to giggle violently, and flirt in her rustic fashion
with the three rebels in a row. At length George, recovering his poise and
clear-sightedness, resumed,--

"But he did rule over us, Mister Parsons, and I can't see how it's right to
rebel."

"There don't everythin' come jest square about seein' things," interposed
Long Snapps; "folks hed better steer by facts sometimes, than by yarns.
It's jest like v'yagin'; yew do'no' sumtimes what's to pay with a compass;
it'll go all p'ints to once; mebbe somebody's got a hatchet near by, or
some lubber's throwed a chain down by the binnacle, or some darned thing's
got inside on't, or it's shipped a sea an' got rusted; but there's allers
the Dipper an' the North Star; they're allers true to their bearin's,
and you can't go to Davy Jones's locker for want of a light'us so long's
they're ahead. I calk'late its jes' so about this king-talk; orders is very
well when they a'n't agin common sense an' the rights o' natur; but you
see, George Tucker, folks will go 'cordin to natur an' reason, ef there's
forty parlamints an' kings in tow. Natur's jest like a no'west squall; you
can't do nothin' but tack ag'inst it; and no men is goin' to stan' still
and see the wind taken out o' their sails, an' their liberty flung to
sharks, without one mutiny to know why!"

"No!" burst out Sally, who had stopped flirting, and been listening with
soul and body to Long; "and no man, that _is_ a man, will go against the
right and the truth just because the wrong is strongest!"

This little feminine insult was too much for George Tucker, particularly as
he had not the least idea how its utterance burned Sally's lips, and made
her heart ache. He got up from his chair with a very bitter look on his
handsome face.

"I see," said he, quite coldly, "I am likely to be scarce welcome here. I
believe the king is my master, made so by the Lord, and I think it is my
honest duty to obey him. It hurts me to part otherwise than kind with
friends; but I wish you a good night, and better judgment."

There was something so manly in George's speech, that, but for its final
fling and personality, every man in the room would have crowded round him
to shake hands; but what man ever coolly heard his judgment impeached?

Sally swallowed a great round sob; but being, like all women, an actress in
her way, bowed as calmly to Mr. George as if he only said adieu, after an
ordinary call.

Aunt Poll snuffled, and followed George to the door; Uncle Zekle drew
himself up straight, and looked after him, his clear blue eyes sparkling
with two rays,--one of honest patriotic wrath, one of affection and regret
for George; while Long, from the corner, eyed all with a serpent's wisdom
in his gaze, oracularly uttering, as the door shut,--

"Well, that 'are feller is good grit!"

"All the worse for us!" growled Eliashib Sparks, the biggest of the three,
surprising Sally into a little hysterical laugh, and surprised himself
still more at this unexpected sequence to his remark.

"Pooty bad! George is a clever fellow!" ejaculated Zekle. "He han't got the
rights on't, but I think he'll come round by'n by."

"I do'no'," said Long, meditatively; "he's pooty stiff, that 'are feller.
He's sot on dooty, I see; an' that means suthin', when a man that oughter
be called a man sez it. Wimmin-folks, now, don't sail on that tack. When
a gal sets to talkin' about her dooty, it's allers suthin' she wants ter
do and han't got no grand excuse for't. Ye never see a woman't didn't get
married for dooty yet; there a'n't nary one on 'em darst to say they wanted
ter."

"Oh! Mister Long!" exclaimed Sally.

"Well, Sally, it's nigh about so; you han't lived a hunderd year. Some o'
these days you'll get to know yer dooty."

Sally turned red, and the three young men sniggered. Forgive the word,
gentle and fair readers! it means what I mean, and no other word expresses
it; let us be graphic and die!

Just then the meeting-house bell rang for nine o'clock; and every man got
up from his seat, like a son of Anak, bowed, scraped, cleared his throat to
say "Goodnight," did say something like it, and left.

"Well, Sally, I swear you're good at signallin'," broke out Long, as soon
as the youths were fairly out of sight and sound; "you hev done it for
George Tucker!"

Sally gave no answer, but a brand from the back-log fell, blazed up in a
shaft of rosy flame, and showed a suspicious glitter on the girl's round,
wholesome cheek. Aunt Poll had gone to bed; Zekle was going the nightly
rounds of his barns, to see to the stock; Long Snapps was aware of
opportunity, the secret of success.

"Sally," said he, "is that feller sparkin' you?"

Sally laughed a little, and something, perhaps the blaze, reddened her
face.

"I don't know," said the pretty hypocrite, demurely.

"H'm! well, I do," answered Long; "and you a'n't never goin' to take up
with a Tory? don't think it's yer dooty, hey?"

"No indeed!" flashed Sally. "Do you think I'd marry a Britisher? I'd run
away and live with the Indians first."

"Pooty good! pooty good! you're calk'lating to make George into a rebel, I
'xpect?"

Long was looking into the fire when he said this; he did not see Sally's
look of rage and amazement at his unpleasant penetration.

"I'm sure I don't care what George Tucker thinks," said she, with a toss of
her curly head.

"H'm!" uttered Long, meditatively, "lucky! I 'xpect he carries too many
guns to be steered by a woman; 'tis a kinder pity you a'n't a man, Sally;
mebbe you'd argufy him round then; it's plain as the Gulf you can't crook
his v'yage; he's too stiff for wimmin-folks, that is a fact!"

Oh, Long Snapps! Long Snapps! how many wives, in how many ports, went to
the knowledge of feminine nature that dictated that speech? Sally set her
lips. From that hour George Tucker was a doomed man; but she said nothing
more audible than "Goodnight." Long looked at her, as she lit the tallow
dip by the fire, and chuckled when he heard her shut the milk-room door in
the safe distance. He was satisfied.

The next afternoon, Sally was weeding onions in the garden;--heroines did,
in those days;--the currant-bushes had but just leafed out; so George
Tucker, going by, saw her; and she, who had seen him coming before she
began to weed, accidentally of course, looked up and gave him a very bright
smile. That was the first spider-thread, and the fly stepped into it with
such a thrill!

Of course he stopped, and said,--

"What a pleasant day!"--the saving phrase of life. Then Sally said
something he couldn't hear, and he leaped the low fence without being
asked, rather than request her to raise her voice; he was so considerate!
Next he remembered, just as he turned to go away, that there were some
white violets down in the meadow, that Sally always liked. Couldn't she
spend time to walk down there across lots and get some? Sally thought the
onions could not be left. Truth to tell, her heart was in her mouth. She
had been playing with edge-tools; but just then she smelt a whiff of smoke
from Long Snapps's pipe, and the resolve of last night came back; her face
relented, and George, seeing it, used his utmost persuasiveness; so the
result was, that Sally washed her hands at the well, and away they went, in
the most serene silence, over fences, grass-lots, and ditches, through bits
of woodland, and fields of winter-green, till they reached the edge of the
great meadow, and sat down on a log to rest. It was rather a good place for
that purpose. An old pine had fallen at the feet of a majestic cluster of
its brethren, so close that the broad column of one made a natural back to
part of the seat. The ground was warm, dry sand, strown with the fine dead
leaves of past seasons, brown and aromatic. A light south wind woke the
voices of every bough above, and the melancholy susurrus rose and fell
in delicate cadences; while beyond the green meadow, Westbury River, a
good-sized brook, babbled and danced as if there were no pine-tree laments
in the world.

I believe the air, and the odor, and the crying wind drove the violets
quite out of both the two heads that drooped silently over that pine
log. If Sally had been nervous or poetical, she would have been glad to
recollect them; but no such morbidness invaded her healthy soul. She sat
quite still till George said, in a suppressed and rather broken tone,--

"I was sorry to vex you last night, Sally! I could not be sorry for any
thing else."

"You did grieve me very much, Mister George," said Sally, affecting a
little distance in her address, but sufficiently tender in manner.

"Well, I suppose you don't see it the way I do," returned George; "and I am
very sorry, for I had rather please you than any body else."

This was especially tender, and he possessed himself of Sally's little red
hand, unaware or careless that it smelt of onions; but it was withdrawn
very decidedly.

"I think you take a strange way of showing your liking!" sniffed the
damsel.

George sat astounded. Another tiny spider-thread stopped the fly; a subtle
ray of blue sped sideways out of Sally's eye, that meant,--"I don't object
to be liked."

"I wish with all my heart I knew any good way to please you," he fervently
ejaculated.

"_I_ should think any way to please people was a good way," retorted Sally,
saying more with her eyes than with her voice,--so much more, that in fact
this fly was fast. A little puff of wind blew off Sally's bonnet; she
looked shy, flushed, lovely. George stood up on his feet, and took his hat
off.

"Sally!" said he, in the deepest notes of his full, manly voice, "I love
you very much indeed; will you be my wife?"

Sally was confounded. I rejoice to say she was quite confounded; but she
was made of revolutionary stuff, and what just now interfered with her
plans and schemes was the sudden discovery how very much indeed she loved
George Tucker; a fact she had not left enough margin for in her plot.

But, as I said, she was made of good metal, and she answered very low,--

"I do like you, George; but I never will marry a Britisher and a Tory."

A spasm of real anguish distorted the handsome face, bent forward to
listen.

"Do you mean that, Sally? Can't you love me because we don't think alike?"

Sally choked a little; her tones fell to a whisper. George had to sit down
close to her to hear.

"I didn't say I didn't love you, George!"--A blissful pause of a second;
then in a clear, cold voice,--"But my mind's set. I can't marry a Britisher
and a Tory, if I died sayin' so."

George gasped.

"And I cannot turn traitor and rebel, Sally. I can _not_. I love you better
than any thing in the world; but I can't do a wicked thing; no, not even
for you."

He was pale as death. Sally's secret heart felt proud of him, and never had
she been so near repenting of her work in the good cause before; but she
was resolute.

"Very well!" replied she, coolly, "if you prefer the king to me, it's not
my fault; when your side beats, you can take your revenge!"

The thorough injustice of this speech roused her lover's generous
indignation.

"If you can think that way of me, Sally, it is better for us both to have
me go! Good night!" And away strode the loyal fellow, never looking back
to see his sweetheart have a good cry on the pine-log, and then an equally
comfortable fit of laughter; for she knew very well how restless Mister
George would be, all alone by himself, and how much it meant that they both
loved each other, and both knew it.

Sally's heart was stout. A sort of Yankee Evangeline, she would not have
gone after Gabriel; she would have staid at home and waited for him to the
end of time; doing chores and mending meanwhile, but unmarried, in the
fixed intention of being her lover's sixth wife possibly, but his wife at
last.

So she went home and got supper, strained and skimmed milk, set a sponge
for bread, and slept all night like a dormouse. George Tucker never went to
bed.

"Hooraw!" roared Long Snapps, trundling in to dinner, the next day;
"they're wakin' up down to Bostin! Good many on 'em's quit the town.
Them 'are Britishers is a-gettin' up sech a breeze; an' they doo say the
reg'lars is comin' out full sail, to cair' off all the amminition in these
parts, fear o' mutiny 'mongst the milishy!"

"Come along!" shouted Zekle, "let 'em come! like to see 'em takin' our
powder an' shot 'thout askin'! Guess they'll hear thunder, ef they stick
their heads inter a hornet's nest."

"Dredful suz!" exclaimed Aunt Poll, pulling turnips out of the pot with
reckless haste, and so scalding her brown fingers emphatically; "be they
a-comin' here? will they fetch along the batterin' rams?"

"Thunder _an'_ dry trees," ejaculated Zekle, "what does the woman--";
but at that instant Long made for the door, and flung it open, thereby
preventing explanations.

"Goin' to Concord, George?" shouted he to George Tucker, who in a one-horse
wagon and his Sunday-best clothes was driving slowly past.

"No! goin' to Lexington, after corn. Can I do anything for you?"

"Well, no, I 'xpect not. When be you a-comin' back?"

"I don't know."

"Well, go long! good-luck to ye; keep to wind'ard o' squalls, George."

Long nodded, and George drove on. That day the whole village of Westbury
was in an uproar. News had come from Boston that the British were about
to send out forces to possess themselves of all the military stores in
the country, and forestall rebellion by rendering it helpless. From every
corner of every farm and village, young men and old mustered; from every
barn, horses of all sizes and descriptions were driven out and saddled;
rusty muskets, balls of all shapes and of any available metal that would
melt and run, disabled broadswords, horse-pistols, blunderbusses, whatever
wore any resemblance to a weapon, or could be rendered serviceable to that
end,--all were hunted out, cleaned, mended, and laid ready;--an array that
might have made a properly drilled and equipped army smile in contempt,
but whose deficiencies were more than supplied by iron sinews, true blood,
resolve and desperate courage.

Sally and Aunt Poll partook the gale of patriotism. They scoured the "ole
queen's arm" to brilliancy; they ran bullets by the hour; baked bread and
brewed Spring beer, with no more definite purpose than a general conviction
that men must and would eat, as the men of their house certainly did, in
the intervals of repairing harness, filling powder-horns and shot-belts,
trotting over to the tavern after news, and coming back to retail it,
till Aunt Poll began to imagine she heard the distant strokes of a
battering-ram, and rushing out in terror to assure herself, discovered it
to be only Sam Pequot, an old Indian, who, with the apathy of his race, was
threshing in the barn.

Aunt Poll took down Josephus to refresh her memory, and actually drew a
laugh from Sally's grave lips by confiding to her this extreme horror of
the case; a laugh she forgave, since Sally reassured her by recommending to
her notice the fact that Jerusalem had stone walls that were more difficult
to climb than stone fences. As for Sally, she thought of George, all day of
George, all night; and while the next day deepened toward noon, was still
thinking of him, when in rushed Long Snapps, tarpaulin in hand, full of
news and horror.

"I swan! we've got it now!" said he. "Them darned Britishers sot out fur
Concord last night, to board our decks an' plunder the magazine; the
boys heerd on't, and they was ready over to Lexin'ton, waitin' round the
meetin'us; they stood to't, an' that old powder monkey Pitcairn sung out to
throw down their arms, darned rebels; an' cause they didn't muster to his
whistle, he let fly at 'em like split; an' there's some killed an' more
wounded; pretty much all on 'em our folks, though they did giv the reg'lars
one round o' ball afore they run."

"Hooray!" shouted Zekle; "that's the talk; guess they'll sing smaller next
time!"

"They'll do more'n that, Zekle," responded Long; "this a'n't but the
beginnin' o' sorrers, as Parson Marsh sez, sez he; there'll be a hull gulf
stream o' blood, afore them darned reg'lars knows the color on't well
enough to lay their course."

Sally glided past Long, and plucked him by the sleeve, unseen by the rest.
He followed her into the shed. She was ghastly pale. "Long," said she,
hurriedly, "did you hear who? was anybody shot?"

"Bless ye, gal! a hull school on 'em was shot; there wasn't many went to
the bottom, though; han't heerd no names."

"But George?" gasped Sally; "he went to Lexington yesterday."

"Well, I am took aback!" growled Long. "I swear I never thought on't. I'll
go see."

"Come back and tell me?" whispered Sally.

"Lord-a-massy, yes, child! jest as soon's I know myself trewly! but I
shan't know nothin' more till sundown, I expect. Desire Trowbridge is
a-ridin' post; he'll come through 'bout that time with news."

Long did not come back for several hours, some time after sundown, when he
found Sally in the shed, waiting for him. She saw the news in his face.
"Dead?" said she, clutching at the old sailor's hand.

"No! no! he a'n't slipt his moorins' yet, but he is badly stove about the
figger-head; he's got a ball through his head somewhere, an' another in his
leg; and he a'n't within hail; don't hear no speakin'-trumpets; fact is,
Sally, he's in for the dockyard a good spell, ef he a'n't broke up hull and
all."

"Who shot him?" whispered Sally.

"That's the best on't, gal; he's took an' tacked beautiful; he went into
port at Lexin'ton yesterday, and heerin' there all sides o' the story,
an' how them critters sot up for to thieve away our stores, he got kinder
riled at the hull crew, like a common-sense feller, an' when Pitcairn come
along, George finally struck his colors, run up a new un to the mast-head,
borrered a musket, an' jined the milishy, an' got shot by them cussed
reg'lars fur his pains; an ef he doos die, I'll hev a figger cut on a stun
myself, to tell folks he was a rebel and an honest man arter all."

"Where is he?" asked Sally in another whisper.

"He's to the tavern there in Lexin'ton. There a'n't nobody along with him,
cause his father's gone to Bostin to see 'bout not gettin' scomfishkated,
or arter a protection, or sumthin."

"And his mother is dead," said Sally, slowly. "Long! I must go to Lexington
to-night, on the pillion, and you must go with me. Father's got too much
rheumatiz to ask it of him."

"Well!" said Long, after a protracted stare at Sally,--"wimmin is the
oddest craft that ever sailed. I swan, when I sight 'em I don't know a
main-top-sail from a flyin' jib! Goin' to take care o' George, be ye?"

"Yes," said Sally, meekly.

Long rolled the inseparable quid in his cheek, and slyly drawled out,
"W-ell, if ye must, ye must! I a'n't a-goin' ter stand in the way of yer
dooty!"

Sally was too far away to hear, or she might have smiled.

Uncle Zeke and Aunt Poll were to be told and coaxed into assent;--no very
hard task; for George Tucker was a favorite of 'Zekiel's, and now he had
turned rebel, the only grudge he had ever owed him was removed; he was only
too glad to help him in any way. Aunt Poll's sole trouble was lest Sally
should take cold. The proprieties, those gods of modern social worship, as
well as their progenitors, the improprieties, were unknown to these simple
souls; they did things because they were right and wrong. They were not
nice according to Swift's definition, nor proper in the mode of the best
society, but they were good and pure; are the disciples and lecturers of
the 'proper' equally so?

Sally's simple preparations were quickly made. By nine o'clock she was safe
on the pillion behind Long Snapps, folded in Aunt Poll's red joseph, and
provided with saddle-bags full of comforts and necessaries. The night was
dark, but Sally did not feel any fear; not Tam O'Shanter's experience could
have shaken the honest little creature's courage, when George filled the
perspective before her. The way was lonely; the hard road echoed under
the old cart-horse's hoofs; many a black and desolate tract of forest lay
across their twenty miles' ride; more than once the tremulous shriek of a
screech-owl smote ominously on Sally's wakeful sense, and quavered away
like a dying groan; more than once a mournful whippoorwill cried out in
pain and expostulation, and in the young leaves a shivering wind foreboded
evil;--but they rode on. Presently Sally's drooping head rose erect; she
listened; she laid her hand on the bridle. "Stop, Long!" said she. "I hear
horses' feet, and shouts."

"Look here!" said Long, after a moment's listening, "there's breakers
ahead, Sally; let's heave to in these 'ere piny bushes side o' the track;
it's pitch dark, mebbe they'll go by."

He reined the horse from the road, and forced him into a group of young
hemlocks, which hid them entirely from passers by. Just as he was well
ensconced, a company of British cavalry rode up, broken and disorderly
enough, cursing and swearing at the Yankees, and telling to unseen ears
a bloody story of Concord and its men. Sally trembled, but it was with
indignation, not fear, and as soon as the last hoof-beat died away, she
urged Long forward; they regained the road, and made their way at once to
George in Lexington.

Is it well to paint, even in failing words, such emotions as Sally fought
with and conquered in that hour? Whoever has stood by the bed of a
speechless, hopeless, unconscious human being, in whom their own soul lived
and suffered, will know these pangs without my interpretation. Whoever
knows them not need not so anticipate. If Sally had been less a woman, I
might have had more to say; but she was only a woman, and loved George, so
she went on in undisturbed self-control, and untiring exertion, to nurse
him.

The doctor said he could not live; Long said he was booked for Davy Jones;
the minister prayed for "our dying brother";--but Sally said he should
live, and he did. After weeks of patient care he knew her; after more weeks
he spoke,--words few, but precious; and when accumulating months brought
to the battlefields of America redder stains than even patriotic blood had
splashed upon their leaves,--when one nation began to hope, and another to
fear, both hope and fear had shaken hands with Sally and said good-bye. She
was married to George Tucker, and, with the prospect of a crippled husband
for life, was perfectly happy; too happy not to laugh, when, the day after
their wedding, sitting on the door-sill of the old Westbury homestead, with
George and Long Snapps, George said, "Would you ever have come to take care
of me, Sally, if I'd 'a' been shot on the side of the reg'lars?"

Sally looked at him, and then looked away.

"I 'xpect she'd 'a' done her dooty," said Long Snapps dryly; and Sally
laughed.

THE MANCHESTER EXHIBITION.

In a number of the "Illustrated News," not long since, there was what
professed to be a view of Manchester. It represented a thousand tall
factory-chimneys rising out of a gray mist, and surmounted by a heavy,
drifting cloud of smoke. And in truth a view not very different from this
was presented to any one who, standing at the entrance of the Palace of the
Exhibition of Art Treasures, turned and looked back before going within.
Two miles off lies the body of the great workshop-city, already stretching
its begrimed arms in the direction of the Exhibition. The vast flat expanse
of brick walls, diversified by countless chimney and occasional steeples,
now and then interrupted by the insertion of a low shed or an enormous
warehouse, offers no single object upon which the eye or the imagination
can rest with pleasure. Such a view was never to be seen in the world
before this century; a city built merely by trade, built for the home of
labor, of machines, and of engines, and for the dwelling-place (one cannot
call it the home) of crowds of human beings, whose value is, for the
most part, estimated according to the development of their machine-like
qualities. Beauty is not consulted here. In those places in or near the
city, where Nature, reluctant to be driven utterly away, still tries to
keep a foothold, she is parched and scorched by the feverish breath of
forges and furnaces. Standing here, one may see the cloud of smoke, which
waves in the wind like a pall over the city, slowly moving and settling
down upon the land. One may almost hear the roar of the continual fires,
the throb of the engines, the heavy beat of the trip-hammers, and the
rattle of the spindles, by which the work of the world is done; and their
noises, blended by the distance into one monotonous sound, seem like the
voice of the restless, hard-working, unsettled spirit of gain. Manchester
is built and is worked for profit, not for pleasure; beauty is driven away
from her as a thing at variance with practical life; and even the sky above
her and the fields around her yield only at rare moments and for short
seasons those precious and gracious shows of beauty which are the free and
blessed gift of love to all the world. Smoke, steam, coal-dust, blackened
walls, and bare fields lie outside the Exhibition; and now let us go
within.

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