The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859

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So, while the purple shadows spread their gauzy veils inwoven with fire
along the sky, and the gloom of the sea broke out here and there into
lines of light, and thousands of birds were answering to each other from
apple-tree and meadow-grass and top of jagged rock, or trooping in bands
hither and thither, like angels on loving messages, Mary lay there with
the flickering light through the leaves fluttering over her face, and
the glow of dawn warming the snow-white draperies of the bed and giving
a tender rose-hue to the calm cheek. She lay half-conscious, smiling the
while, as one who sleeps while the heart waketh, and who hears in dreams
the voice of the One Eternally Beautiful and Beloved.

Mrs. Scudder entered her room, and, thinking that she still slept, stood
and looked down on her. She felt as one does who has parted with some
precious possession, a sudden sense of its value coming over her; she
queried in herself whether any living mortal were worthy of so perfect a
gift; and nothing but a remembrance of the Doctor's prostrate humility
at all reconciled her to the sacrifice she was making.

"Mary, dear!" she said, bending over her, with an unusual infusion of
emotion in her voice,--"darling child!"

The arms moved instinctively, even before the eyes unclosed, and drew
her mother down to her with a warm, clinging embrace. Love in Puritan
families was often like latent caloric,--an all-pervading force, that
affected no visible thermometer, shown chiefly by a noble silent
confidence, a ready helpfulness, but seldom outbreathed in caresses;
yet natures like Mary's always craved these outward demonstrations, and
leaned towards them as a trailing vine sways to the nearest support. It
was delightful for once fully to feel how much her mother loved her, as
well as to know it.

"Dear, precious mother! do you love me so very much?"

"I live and breathe in you, Mary!" said Mrs. Scudder,--giving vent to
herself in one of those trenchant shorthand expressions wherein positive
natures incline to sum up everything, if they must speak at all.

Mary held her mother silently to her breast, her heart shining through
her face with a quiet radiance.

"Do you feel happy this morning?" said Mrs. Scudder.

"Very, very, very happy, mother!"

"I am so glad to hear you say so!" said Mrs. Scudder,--who, to say the
truth, had entertained many doubts on her pillow the night before.

Mary began dressing herself in a state of calm exaltation. Every
trembling leaf on the tree, every sunbeam, was like a living smile of
God,--every fluttering breeze like His voice, full of encouragement and
hope.

"Mother, did you tell the Doctor what I said last night?"

"I did, my darling."

"Then, mother, I would like to see him a few moments alone."

"Well, Mary, he is in his study, at his morning devotions."

"That is just the time. I will go to him."

The Doctor was sitting by the window; and the honest-hearted, motherly
lilacs, abloom for the third time since our story began, were filling
the air with their sweetness.

Suddenly the door opened, and Mary entered, in her simple white
short-gown and skirt, her eyes calmly radiant, and her whole manner
having something serious and celestial. She came directly towards
him and put out both her little hands, with a smile half-childlike,
half-angelic; and the Doctor bowed his head and covered his face with
his hands.

"Dear friend," said Mary, kneeling and taking his hands, "if you want
me, I am come. Life is but a moment,--there is an eternal blessedness
just beyond us,--and for the little time between I will be all I can to
you, if you will only show me how."

And the Doctor----

No, young man,--the study-door closed just then, and no one heard those
words from a quaint old Oriental book which told that all the poetry of
that grand old soul had burst into flower, as the aloe blossoms once
in a hundred years. The feelings of that great heart might have fallen
unconsciously into phrases from that one love-poem of the Bible which
such men as he read so purely and devoutly, and which warm the icy
clearness of their intellection with the myrrh and spices of ardent
lands, where earthly and heavenly love meet and blend in one
indistinguishable horizon-line, like sea and sky.

"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear
as the sun? My dove, my undefiled, is but one; she is the only one of
her mother. Thou art all fair, my love! there is no spot in thee!"

The Doctor might have said all this; we will not say he did, nor will
we say he did not; all we know is, that, when the breakfast-table was
ready, they came out cheerfully together. Madame de Frontignac stood in
a fresh white wrapper, with a few buttercups in her hair, waiting for
the breakfast. She was startled to see the Doctor entering all-radiant,
leading in Mary by the hand, and looking as if he thought she were some
dream-miracle which might dissolve under his eyes, unless he kept fast
hold of her.

The keen eyes shot their arrowy glance, which went at once to the heart
of the matter. Madame de Frontignac knew they were affianced, and
regarded Mary with attention.

The calm, sweet, elevated expression of her face struck her; it struck
her also that _that_ was not the light of any earthly love,--that it had
no thrill, no blush, no tremor, but only the calmness of a soul that
knows itself no more; and she sighed involuntarily.

She looked at the Doctor, and seemed to study attentively a face which
happiness made this morning as genial and attractive as it was generally
strong and fine.

There was little said at the breakfast-table; and yet the loud singing
of the birds, the brightness of the sunshine, the life and vigor of all
things, seemed to make up for the silence of those who were too well
pleased to speak.

"_Eh bien, ma chere_" said Madame, after breakfast, drawing Mary into
her little room,-"_c'est donc fini?_"

"Yes," said Mary, cheerfully.

"Thou art content?" said Madame, passing her arm around her. "Well,
then, I should be. But, Mary, it is like a marriage with the altar, like
taking the veil, is it not?"

"No," said Mary; "it is not taking the veil; it is beginning a cheerful,
reasonable life with a kind, noble friend, who will always love me
truly, and whom I hope to make as happy as he deserves."

"I think well of him, my little cat," said Madame, reflectively; but
she stopped something she was going to say, and kissed Mary's forehead.
After a moment's pause, she added, "One must have love or refuge,
Mary;--this is thy refuge, child; thou wilt have peace in it." She
sighed again. "_Enfin_," she said, resuming her gay tone, "what shall be
_la toilette de noces?_ Thou shalt have Virginia's pearls, my fair one,
and look like a sea-born Venus. _Tiens_, let me try them in thy hair."

And in a few moments she had Mary's long hair down, and was chattering
like a blackbird, wreathing the pearls in and out, and saying a thousand
pretty little nothings,--weaving grace and poetry upon the straight
thread of Puritan life.

CHAPTER XXIX.

BUSTLE IN THE PARISH.

The announcement of the definite engagement of two such bright
particular stars in the hemisphere of the Doctor's small parish excited
the interest that such events usually create among the faithful of the
flock.

There was a general rustle and flutter, as when a covey of wild pigeons
has been started; and all the little elves who rejoice in the name of
"says he" and "says I" and "do tell" and "have you heard" were speedily
flying through the consecrated air of the parish.

The fact was discussed by matrons and maidens, at the spinning-wheel,
in the green clothes-yard, and at the foamy wash-tub, out of which rose
weekly a new birth of freshness and beauty. Many a rustic Venus of the
foam, as she splashed her dimpled elbows in the rainbow-tinted froth,
talked of what should be done for the forthcoming solemnities, and
wondered what Mary would have on when she was married, and whether she
(the Venus) should get an invitation to the wedding, and whether Ethan
would go,--not, of course, that she cared in the least whether he did or
not.

Grave, elderly matrons talked about the prosperity of Zion, which
they imagined intimately connected with the event of their minister's
marriage; and descending from Zion, speculated on bed-quilts and
table-cloths, and rummaged their own clean, sweet-smelling stores,
fragrant with balm and rose-leaves, to lay out a bureau-cover, or a pair
of sheets, or a dozen napkins for the wedding outfit.

The solemnest of solemn quillings was resolved upon. Miss Prissy
declared that she fairly couldn't sleep nights with the responsibility
of the wedding-dresses on her mind, but yet she must give one day to
getting on that quilt.

The _grand monde_ also was in motion. Mrs. General Wilcox called in her
own particular carriage, bearing present of a Cashmere shawl for the
bride, with the General's best compliments,--also an oak-leaf pattern
for quilting, which had been sent her from England, and which was
authentically established to be that used on a petticoat belonging to
the Princess Royal. And Mrs. Major Seaforth came also, bearing a
scarf of wrought India muslin; and Mrs. Vernon sent a splendid China
punch-bowl. Indeed, to say the truth, the notables high and mighty of
Newport, whom the Doctor had so unceremoniously accused of building
their houses with blood and establishing their city with iniquity,
considering that nobody seemed to take his words to heart, and that they
were making money as fast as old Tyre, rather assumed the magnanimous,
and patted themselves on the shoulder for this opportunity to show the
Doctor that after all they were good fellows, though they did make money
at the expense of thirty _per cent_. on human life.

Simeon Brown was the only exception. He stood aloof, grim and sarcastic,
and informed some good middle-aged ladies who came to see if he would,
as they phrased it, "esteem it a privilege to add his mite" to the
Doctor's outfit, that he would give him a likely negro boy, if he wanted
him, and, if he was too conscientious to keep him, he might sell him at
a fair profit,--a happy stroke of humor which he was fond of relating
many years after.

The quilting was in those days considered the most solemn and important
recognition of a betrothal. And for the benefit of those not to the
manner born, a little preliminary instruction may be necessary.

The good wives of New England, impressed with that thrifty orthodoxy of
economy which forbids to waste the merest trifle, had a habit of saving
every scrap clipped out in the fashioning of household garments, and
these they cut into fanciful patterns and constructed of them rainbow
shapes and quaint traceries, the arrangement of which became one
of their few fine arts. Many a maiden, as she sorted and arranged
fluttering bits of green, yellow, red, and blue, felt rising in her
breast a passion for somewhat vague and unknown, which came out at
length in a new pattern of patchwork. Collections of these tiny
fragments were always ready to fill an hour when there was nothing else
to do; and as the maiden chatted with her beau, her busy flying needle
stitched together those pretty bits, which, little in themselves, were
destined, by gradual unions and accretions, to bring about at last
substantial beauty, warmth, and comfort,--emblems thus of that household
life which is to be brought to stability and beauty by reverent economy
in husbanding and tact in arranging the little useful and agreeable
morsels of daily existence.

When a wedding was forthcoming, there was a solemn review of the stores
of beauty and utility thus provided, and the patchwork-spread best
worthy of such distinction was chosen for the quilting. Thereto, duly
summoned, trooped all intimate female friends of the bride, old and
young; and the quilt being spread on a frame, and wadded with cotton,
each vied with the others in the delicacy of the quilting she could put
upon it. For the quilting also was a fine art, and had its delicacies
and nice points,--which grave elderly matrons discussed with judicious
care. The quilting generally began at an early hour in the afternoon,
and ended at dark with a great supper and general jubilee, at which that
ignorant and incapable sex which could not quilt was allowed to appear
and put in claims for consideration of another nature. It may, perhaps,
be surmised that this expected reinforcement was often alluded to by
the younger maidens, whose wickedly coquettish toilettes exhibited
suspicious marks of that willingness to get a chance to say "No" which
has been slanderously attributed to mischievous maidens.

In consideration of the tremendous responsibilities involved in this
quilting, the reader will not be surprised to learn, that, the evening
before, Miss Prissy made her appearance at the brown cottage, armed with
thimble, scissors, and pin-cushion, in order to relieve her mind by a
little preliminary confabulation.

"You see me, Miss Scudder, run 'most to death," she said; "but I thought
I would just run up to Miss Major Seaforth's, and see her best bed-room
quilt, 'cause I wanted to have all the ideas we possibly could, before I
decided on the pattern. Hers is in shells,--just common shells,--nothing
to be compared with Miss Wilcox's oak-leaves; and I suppose there isn't
the least doubt that Miss Wilcox's sister, in London, did get that from
a lady who had a cousin who was governess in the royal family; and I
just quilted a little bit to-day on an old piece of silk, and it comes
out beautiful; and so I thought I would just come and ask you if you did
not think it was best for us to have the oak-leaves."

"Well, certainly, Miss Prissy, if you think so," said Mrs. Scudder, who
was as pliant to the opinions of this wise woman of the parish as New
England matrons generally are to a reigning dress-maker and _factotum_.

Miss Prissy had the happy consciousness, always, that her early advent
under any roof was considered a matter of especial grace; and therefore
it was with rather a patronizing tone that she announced that she would
stay and spend the night with them.

"I knew," she added, "that your spare chamber was full, with that Madame
de ------, what do you call her?--if I was to die, I could not remember
the woman's name. Well, I thought I could curl in with you, Mary, 'most
anywhere."

"That's right, Miss Prissy," said Mary; "you shall be welcome to half my
bed any time."

"Well, I knew you would say so, Mary; I never saw the thing you
would not give away one half of, since you was that high," said Miss
Prissy,--illustrating her words by placing her hand about two feet from
the floor.

Just at this moment, Madame de Frontignac entered and asked Mary to come
into her room and give her advice as to a piece of embroidery. When she
was gone out, Miss Prissy looked after her and sunk her voice once more
to the confidential whisper which we before described.

"I have heard strange stories about that Frenchwoman," she said; "but as
she is here with you and Mary, I suppose there cannot be any truth in
them. Dear me! the world is so censorious about women! But then, you
know, we don't expect much from French women. I suppose she is a Roman
Catholic, and worships pictures and stone images; but then, after all,
she has got an immortal soul, and I can't help hoping Mary's influence
may be blest to her. They say, when she speaks French, she swears every
few minutes; and if that is the way she was brought up, may-be she isn't
accountable. I think we can't be too charitable for people that a'n't
privileged as we are. Miss Vernon's Polly told me she had seen her sew
Sundays,--sew Sabbath-day! She came into her room sudden, and she was
working on her embroidery there; and she never winked nor blushed, nor
offered to put it away, but sat there just as easy! Polly said she never
was so beat in all her life; she felt kind o' scared, every time she
thought of it. But now she has come here, who knows but she may be
converted?"

"Mary has not said much about her state of mind," said Mrs. Scudder;
"but something of deep interest has passed between them. Mary is such an
uncommon child, that I trust everything to her."

We will not dwell further on the particulars of this evening,--nor
describe how Madame de Frontignac reconnoitred Miss Prissy with keen,
amused eyes,--nor how Miss Prissy assured Mary, in the confidential
solitude of her chamber, that her fingers just itched to get hold of
that trimming on Madame de Frog--something's dress, because she was
pretty nigh sure she could make some just like it, for she never saw any
trimming she could not make.

The robin that lived in the apple-tree was fairly outgeneralled the next
morning; for Miss Prissy was up before him, tripping about the chamber
on the points of her toes, knocking down all the movable things in the
room, in her efforts to be still, so as not to wake Mary; and it was not
until she had finally upset the stand by the bed, with the candlestick,
snuffers, and Bible on it, that Mary opened her eyes.

"Miss Prissy! dear me! what is it you are doing?"

"Why, I am trying to be still, Mary, so as not to wake you up; and it
seems to me as if everything was possessed, to tumble down so. But it is
only half past three,--so you turn over and go to sleep."

"But, Miss Prissy," said Mary, sitting up in bed, "you are all dressed;
where are you going?"

"Well, to tell the truth, Mary, I am just one of those people that can't
sleep when they have got responsibility on their minds; and I have been
lying awake more than an hour here, thinking about that quilt. There is
a new way of getting it on to the frame that I want to try; 'cause, you
know, when we quilted Cerinthy Stebbins's, it _would_ trouble us in the
rolling; and I have got a new way that I want to try, and I mean just to
get it on to the frame before breakfast. I was in hopes I should get out
without waking any of you. I am in hopes I shall get by your mother's
door without waking her,--'cause I know she works hard and needs her
rest,--but that bed-room door squeaks like a cat, enough to raise the
dead!

"Mary," she added, with sudden energy, "if I had the least drop of
oil in a teacup, and a bit of quill, I'd stop that door making such a
noise." And Miss Prissy's eyes glowed with resolution.

"I don't know where you could find any at this time," said Mary.

"Well, never mind; I'll just go and open the door as slow and careful as
I can," said Miss Prissy, as she trotted out of the apartment.

The result of her carefulness was very soon announced to Mary by a
protracted sound resembling the mewing of a hoarse cat, accompanied by
sundry audible grunts from Miss Prissy, terminating in a grand finale
of clatter, occasioned by her knocking down all the pieces of the
quilting-frame that stood in the corner of the room, with a concussion
that roused everybody in the house.

"What is that?" called out Mrs. Scudder, from her bed-room.

She was answered by two streams of laughter,--one from Mary, sitting up
in bed, and the other from Miss Prissy, holding her sides, as she sat
dissolved in merriment on the sanded floor,

[To be continued.]

OLD PAPERS.

As who, in idly searching o'er
Some seldom-entered garret-shed,
Might, with strange pity, touch the poor
Moth-eaten garments of the dead,--

Thus (to their wearer once allied)
I lift these weeds of buried woe,--
These relics of a self that died
So sadly and so long ago!
'Tis said that seven short years can change,
Through nerve and bone, this knitted frame,
Cellule by cellule waxing strange,
Till not an atom is the same.

By what more subtile, slow degrees
Thus may the mind transmute its all,
That calmly it should dwell on these,
As on another's fate and fall!

So far remote from joy or bale,
Wherewith each dusky page is rife,
I seem to read some piteous tale
Of strange romance, but true to life.

Too daring thoughts! too idle deeds!
A soul that questioned, loved, and sinned!
And hopes, that stand like last year's weeds,
And shudder in the dead March wind!

Grave of gone dreams!--could such convulse
Youth's fevered trance?--The plot grows thick;--
Was it this cold and even pulse
That thrilled with life so fierce and quick?

Well, I can smile at all this now,--
But cannot smile when I recall
The heart of faith, the open brow,
The trust that once was all in all;--

Nor when--Ah, faded, spectral sheet,
Wraith of long-perished wrong and time,
Forbear! the spirit starts to meet
The resurrection of its crime!

Starts,--from its human world shut out,--
As some detected changeling elf,
Doomed, with strange agony and doubt,
To enter on his former self.

Ill-omened leaves, still rust apart!
No further!--'tis a page turned o'er,
And the long dead and coffined heart
Throbs into wretched life once more.

RIFLED GUNS.[1]

When, nearly fifty years ago, England was taught one of the bloodiest
lessons her history has to record, before the cotton-bale breastworks
of New Orleans, a lesson, too, which was only the demonstration of a
proposition laid down more than a hundred years ago by one of her own
philosophers,[2] who would have believed that she, aiming to be the
first military power in the world, would have left the first advantage
of that lesson to be gained by her rival, France?

When the troops that had defeated Napoleon stopped, baffled, before a
breast-work defended by raw militiamen; when, finding that the heads of
their columns melted away like wax in fire as they approached the
blaze of those hunters' rifles, they finally recoiled, terribly
defeated,--saved from total destruction, perhaps, only by the fact that
their enemy had not enough of a military organization to enable them to
pursue effectively; when, in brief, a battle with men who never before
had seen a skirmish of regular troops was turned into a slaughter almost
unparalleled for disproportioned losses in the history of civilized
warfare, the English loss being about twelve hundred, the American some
fifteen all told; one would have thought that such a demonstration of
the power of the rifle would have brought Robins's words to the memory
of England,--"will perhaps fall but little short of the wonderful
effects which histories relate to have been formerly produced by the
first inventors of fire-arms." What more astonishing disparity of
military power does the history of fire-arms record? twelve hundred to
fifteen! But this lesson, so terrible and so utterly ignored by English
pride, was simply that of the value of the rifle intelligently used.

They tell a story which makes a capital foot-note to the history of
the battle:--that General Jackson, having invited some of the English
officers to dine with him, had on the table a robin-pie which he
informed the guests contained twelve robins whose heads had all been
shot off by one of his marksmen, who, in shooting the twelve, used but
thirteen balls. The result of the battle must be mainly attributed to
the deadly marksmanship of the hunters who composed the American forces;
but the same men armed with muskets would not only not have shown the
same accuracy in firing, but they would not have felt the moral force
which a complete reliance on their weapons gave,--a certainty that they
held the life of any antagonist in their hands, as soon as enough of him
appeared to "draw a bead on." Put the same men in the open field where a
charge of bayonets was to be met, and they would doubtless have broken and
fled without crossing steel. Nor, on the other hand, could any musketry
have kept the English columns out of the cotton-bale breast-work;--they
had often in the Peninsula stormed stronger works than that,--without
faltering for artillery, musketry, or bayonet. But here they were
literally unable to reach the works; the fatal rifle-bullet drew a line at
which bravery and cowardice, nonchalant veterans and trembling boys, were
equalized in the dust.

[Footnote 1: _Instructions to Young Marksmen_ in all that relates to the
General Construction, Practical Manipulation, etc., etc., as exhibited
in the Improved American Rifle. By John Ratcliffe Chapman, C. E. New
York: D. Appleton &. Co. 1848.

_Rifle-Practice_. By Lieut.-Col. John Jacob, C. B., of the Bombay
Artillery. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1857.

_The Rifle; and how to use it_. Comprising a Description of that
Admirable Weapon, etc., etc. By Hans Busk, M.A. First Lieut. Victoria
Rifles. London: J. Routledge & Co. 1858.

_Report of the U. S. Commission on Rifles_. 1856.]

[Footnote 2: Robins {on Projectiles) said in 1748, "Whatever state shall
thoroughly comprehend the nature and advantages of rifle-pieces, and,
having facilitated and completed their construction, shall introduce
into their armies their general use, with a dexterity in the management
of them, will by this means acquire a superiority which will almost
equal anything that has been done at any time by the particular
excellence of any one kind of arms, and will perhaps fall but little
short of the wonderful effects which histories relate to have been
formerly produced by the first inventors of fire-arms." Words, we now
see, how prophetic!]

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